The Trump-DeSantis feud is neat:
Former President Donald J. Trump hasn’t endorsed Gov. Ron DeSantis this year because, as he has explained, his fellow Floridian never asked. Mr. DeSantis didn’t attend the Trump rally on Sunday in Miami, his allies said, because he wasn’t personally invited.
Bruised egos are commonplace in politics. But rarely has a rift at the top of a party spilled so fully into view at such a pivotal moment. At a rally on Saturday night in Latrobe, Pa., Mr. Trump bestowed one of his signature nicknames on Mr. DeSantis: Ron DeSanctimonious.
Their escalating tensions took center stage on Sunday, with dueling campaign rallies in Florida just two days before voting concludes in the 2022 midterm elections. Mr. Trump campaigned in South Florida with Senator Marco Rubio and other Florida Republicans, while Mr. DeSantis made his case for re-election during a set of events along the state’s west coast.
If you don’t understand this, let me explain. This is all about the money. With these fucking guys, this is the Highlander, but instead of seeking the quickening and attendance at the gathering, it’s the grifting they are after. For the non ners- this is two mafia families having a turf war.
Since the GOP leadership is not about policy (they have no ideas- they just do things that various bases want in order to retain power), it’s really all about the Benjamins. But since they don’t actually create or build anything or create anything of value, like a normal business, the only way for them to get the money is to have control of the donor base and launder as much of the donations as they can for their personal use. And they don’t like and don’t want to share.
It’s the entire reason for their existence- the only reason Trump is in the game. Money. It’s why when people are outcast from the tribe like the shitbirds at the Lincoln Project, the first thing they do is start fleecing people for money.
So that is what this is all about. It’s not about issues, about who has the better vision for the country, etc. It’s about who gets to control the piles of cash. It’s fundamentally no different from what Putin has done for the last twenty years- consolidating wealth and through that wealth and the ability to distribute it, more power. To earn more wealth.
Headlines & Quick Takes Don’t Tell the Whole Story
lowtechcyclist
Can’t forget staying out of prison. That’s kind of a biggie.
ETA: Though like most of us, I’m delighted at the way the Trump organization Hoovers up the grassroots RW cash. That’s kept a lot of money from reaching actual Republican campaigns this cycle.
TaMara
Rooting for severe injuries and bankruptcy
RAM
The thing I’m interested in watching is whether DeSanctimonious actually has much national support. Because Trump’s cultists are just that; they aren’t Republicans (or Dems or anything else). They’re members of Trump’s cult and aren’t interested in supporting anyone else. So whether DeSanctimonious can actually get Trump’s nutcase supporters to come out for him is, I think, really questionable.
Spanky
I’m happy to see this post is not about Thurston.
NotMax
Highlander: The Griftening.
Renie
DeSantis was even up here in NY doing a rally for Lee Zeldin, who is completely unqualified to be NYS governor. But lately he has been moving up in the race. All he talks up is bail reform and crime. So where did all this campaign funding come from lately? Ronald Lauder and his billionaire neighbors in Wainscott, Long Island’s South Shore near the Hamptons. The state’s first offshore wind farm is being constructed there and a cable to connect the wind farm would have to burrow underneath the hamlet’s beach and several of its streets to join with a substation further inland. So now we have another GOP in the pocket of a billionaire and if God forbid Zeldin wins, he will stop the project as he destroys New York State with all his trump MAGA extremism.
One other thing: my son teaches English courses at a Long Island State college and last week, he asked his students how many were voting. No one raised their hands. Ugh
lollipopguild
@TaMara: A steel cage death match. Two men go in….. and none come out.
MattF
Also, resentment. Always resentment.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
By far, the most succinct and accurate description of the modern GOP.
Frankensteinbeck
As a strongly empathic person, John, you severely underestimate the allure of cruelty, prestige, and power. Greed is only one leg of this shitting stool.
trollhattan
DeSantis has a Ted Cruz-like misunderstanding of his appeal. IDK if that ironically makes him the perfect Republican, but I’d run that picture of him in the white boots in all my ad campaigns opposing him, and let the larger public decide whether he’s their guy.
That effing video ad of essentially god declaring how amazing DeSantis is, is creepier than anything the Trump org has ever managed to put out. Holy hell.
schrodingers_cat
Good let them eat each other.
OT: Does anyone have recommendations for a laptop lap desk that can be adjusted to several different heights? I also want to use it with my 15 inch drawing tablet (on a desk). So it has to have a lip so that the laptop/tablet don’t slide.
Thanks.
mvr
This seems like an astute analysis. The cruelty may be the point for much of the fan-base these two have developed, and it is reflexive behavior for each of the principles. But the point does seem to be the grift, and staying out of prison as lowtechcyclist noted.
Mr. Longform
Charlie Pierce has a post up about the money power in Wisconsin which is a direct example of what John is talking about here. It is all about the money.
Brachiator
@NotMax:
Very good.
Didn’t much care for the movie. The TV series was fun. I thought that Adrian Paul would have made a good James Bond.
Loved Amanda, the lady Highlander.
Betty Cracker
Spot-on description of the campaign stage — as you described, it’s a battle for the donor base and donations to convert to personal wealth. But as you also noted, the ultimate aim is to corrupt the state for personal wealth and power. Putin is one model — that’s the one Trump tried to follow with limited success (given that he got tossed out on his keister after a single disastrous term).
DeSantis lacks the carnival barker cunning Trump possesses in spades, but he’s got a more workable vision for corrupting the state, and it’s more along the lines of Viktor Orbán than Putin. In the Orbán model, the trappings of democracy remain, but essentially there’s corrupt, one-party control.
My guess is the fat cat donors are starting to break for DeSantis because they see that model can work in the U.S.
Old Man Shadow
It’s also about power.
Authoritarian crave the power to humiliate and belittle others. If they don’t have that power, they must kiss the ass of the one who does all the while plotting to destroy them
Brachiator
@Renie:
Wow. That’s sad. I recently watched a short video piece on why people don’t vote. Some interviewed college students were not apathetic. They didn’t feel that they had enough knowledge of the issues to vote intelligently.
Heck, I feel that way when I am asked to vote for judges.
Omnes Omnibus
@Renie: Copied from below: How it’s going in Madison this morning. Can’t project that over the whole state but Madison is doing its part. Anecdotally, my niece and nephew are both voting ON CAMPUS at their respective universities.
danielx
The thought of Trump and DeSantis savaging each other for the next two years is amusing, but only for a little while. Then it gets sort of depressing. Yes, rooting for injuries, but I don’t think DeSantis really knows what it’s going to be like getting in a lengthy pissing match with TFG. Trump regards him as a betrayer and competitor for money and adulation and DeSantis doesn’t truly understand Trump’s appeal or hold on his voter base. There’s no way to win a mud wrestling contest with a pig.
Geminid
@RAM: There are a lot of Republican voters besides trump’s nutcase supporters. And I think Republican elites definitely want to put trump in the rearview mirror, if only for the good of the party.
DeSantis has demonstrated grass roots support at some events already, and I think he can get traction among the party’s rank and file. They want to win, and DeSantis may appeal as a stronger general election candidate, which I believe he is.
I think the problem that keeps people like Karl Rove up at night is: how do we ditch trump and keep his supporters? The Georgia Senate runoffs demonstrated the problem. An atypical dropoff in Republican voting helped put Warnock and Ossoff in the Senate. Observers attributed the dropoff to disgruntled trump supporters taking their anger out on the “RINO” establishment, because iy would not vindicate their hero’s claim that he won their state.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Omnes Omnibus:
A thought that just occurred to me is that Dem over-performance, even in one county/city, can help with statewide races, right?
schrodingers_cat
RWNJs also get off on cruelty. There are some Sangh swayamsevaks (volunteers for the RSS) who take a vow of poverty and celibacy and they are also amongst the biggest zealots in the organization.
RSS is BJP’s parent organization.
Kay
@Renie:
That name makes me laugh- it’s like a parody of rich people town.
oatler
You can witness the contortions this bunch goes into to find a way to unite in hatred against the Other:
https://ricochet.com/1334208/ron-desanctimonious/#comments
Omnes Omnibus
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
Dane County usually goes Dem around 75-25. The City of Madison itself is well above that. At the very least, they are votes already banked for the good guys.
Geminid
@Kay: The name is funny. It’s fake classy. Wainscott sounds like it was named after some Revolution War general, like there was a Silas Wainscott.
But wainscoting itslf is just a just an old timey house detail, something the jointers built after the carpenters left. It’s featured now in higher end homes. I bet modern-day carpenters installed a lot of wainscot in Wainscott!
Motivated Seller
I don’t think its for money per se. Money = Power to people like him.
For example when Trump attempted the coup, I don’t think he was in the mood for counting Benjamins. He wanted to crush resistance to his so-called dominance. He got off on the fact that his believers were storming the gates in his name.
Kay
This reflects so poorly on the GOP base. Not a thing about Ukraine has changed other than the fact that Ukranians are fierce, have a ton of international support from other countries in the region who feel threatened by Putin, and are holding off Putin, yet there is this HUGE swing.
Led around by the nose by the GOP Congress, Fox News, Tucker Carlson, Glenn Greenwald and Tulsi Gabbard. Jump, how high.
Kay
@Geminid:
Right, I know what wainscot is.
I guess they’re concerned about “crime” there in Wainscott, hence attempting to purchase the State of New York. The Wainscott crime wave. That and inflation. A gallon of 2 per cent has gone up in Ye Olde Wainscott Market.
I think women candidates have a tougher time in the US. There’s an entire male pundit class who deny this, but the US is backward and rigidly conventional re: women in power. The female governor has a harder race than a man would.
UncleEbeneezer
@Renie: So far, early voting numbers are looking pretty good in NY as far as young voters are concerned.
Matt McIrvin
@Brachiator:
This is absolutely endemic among even older liberals. I think it’s one of the main reasons that Democrats habitually undervote down-ballot: they have this ideal of being one of the community of learned philosopher-kings and they think you should recuse yourself if you don’t know enough.
I tell them the other side sure as hell isn’t recusing itself. Knowing that Democrats are better than Republicans is enough information to go on even if you have absolutely nothing else–the chance that you’ll vote the “wrong” way on any given race if you’ve actually got that information is low, given the alignments of the parties today. But young, educated voters particularly seem to be really repelled by the idea of automatically voting a straight ticket.
Josie
Desantis seems to be pulling in the big donors while Trump is holding onto the voting base. It will be interesting to see who takes over the party – the rich people or the schlubs.
UncleEbeneezer
@Kay: They were fine with supporting Ukraine (in theory) when it was assumed Russia would easily conquer them. Now that Ukraine has made Putin/Russia look foolish, they’re mad.
Betty Cracker
@Geminid: You’ve described the dilemma perfectly. One of the political gossip rags had several sources who claim DeSantis will sit out 2024 if Trump runs vs. one who said he wouldn’t. I think the smart play would be to sit it out. Trump is 76 and DeSantis is mid-40s? The latter can afford to wait.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@TaMara:
Same. Plus a side of demoralized and disaffected Trump / DeSantis voters. I mean, if they can’t have their plushy DeSantis/Trump doll, they should just take their toys and go home. That would really show us!
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
Agree. And then they get mad that Dems don’t do better. (Ok, could be different groups of people, but still.)
Matt McIrvin
@Betty Cracker: Paul Campos, FWIW, believes there won’t even be Republican primaries in 2024–the party will cancel them and nominate Trump by acclamation, to eliminate any chance of him being weakened by a contested primary race.
Campos likes doom scenarios even more than I do but I do think this is at least plausible. There certainly isn’t any law saying they have to have primaries. It probably is their best chance of winning the general election, especially since if the actual vote doesn’t go their way, rogue state legislatures are more likely to rig the Electoral College for Trump than for anyone else.
Geminid
@Kay: That thesis is borne out by polling at least. Poll numbers show Abrams trailing Warnock, Whaley trailing Ryan, and Hobbs trailing Kelly in Arizona. The difference in offices and overall candidate and campaign quality might make for some of the difference, but I think misogyny has the greater impact.
Cameron
@Betty Cracker: If, however, the swinish oaf is indicted in Georgia, I fully expect Gov. DeSantis to send the Election Gestapo to personally escort him to Atlanta.
Matt McIrvin
@Baud: Of course, what’s tough are the ostensibly “nonpartisan” local elections where they don’t give you that information, and you have to do a little homework to sniff out who is a wingnut. It can be hard to tell. This is how reactionaries do surprise takeovers of school boards and suddenly try to ban the teaching of evolution, etc.
way2blue
And. Also to skip ahead of the law nipping at their heels. The power (& accompanying intimidation) put a big fat thumb on the scales of justice…
Mike in NC
We all know that if DeSatan gets reelected in Confederate Florida, he gets one week to bask in victory before announcing his candidacy to be the next GQP presidential nominee.
Geminid
@Betty Cracker: If ambitious Republicans think Biden is vulnerable, as they surely will, they’ll have a hard time forgoing the 2024 race. I think they’ll decide to “grasp the nettle” and compete with trump. Cris Christie will probably jump in first, and Pompeo and DeSantis (if he is still Governor) won’t let him get too big a head start. The money will be there for all three.
Kay
@Geminid:
That’s interesting- I hadn’t noticed. Women aren’t “likeable”! That’s just fact.
I warned local Democrats about running a woman for governor. I fucking knew the “you’re not the boss of me” impulse would kick in. It’s weird how pundits and media are so invested in denying this exists even while watching it become completely normalized that US pregnant women should get SUBSTANDARD medical care! Not best practices. Lower quality. More of them will die in a country with a multi-billion dollar private sector health industry that is regularly described as world class in quality. Doesn’t get much more sexist than that. If you’re pregnant in the US you’ll get some crappy, archaic “medical” care that is actually religious zealotry. You’d be better off traveling to Mexico.
Barbara
@Matt McIrvin: I don’t believe this will happen. I don’t see the possibility of a consensus among the people who control the levers by which this could happen. Not to mention the entrenched, if idiotic, devotion in many early states to the economic “primary boost” they get in attention and revenue — I mean, it might be really quick, and people might be pressured to concede very early, which would make the primaries basically meaningless, but I don’t see them outright canceling primaries.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Kay:
While your point is noted, I’m not sure running a male candidate would’ve made a difference either. It didn’t in 2018, a strong Democratic year, with a male candidate that had name recognition, who had held statewide office before
There’s Democratic men running for state offices now, I have no idea how they’re polling, but I doubt they’ll win.
How do you think state Supreme Court candidates will fare now that they have partisan labels on the ballot?
artem1s
DeathSantis does have another goal that affects his standing in the GOP power death match. Florida has become the bellwether state for determining who is a likely winner in the WH general election. Has been since 2000. Whoever controls FL’s 30 electoral votes can make or break who gets nominated and win in 2024. Realistically, I see him biding his time in FL until 2028 demonstrating exactly how to enact all the terrible GOP fascist policies. He’ll let TFG shit all over the party again and blow up the 2024 race and then wait for the GOP party leaders to come kiss his ring. If he can destroy the monster the GOP created he will be the de facto leader of the party.
FYI, I think Cheney is planning on the same strategy. The only difference is she doesn’t care about POTUS. A woman won’t ever be allowed to be the top of the ticket for the GOP. I think she brokers a deal for the VPOTUS seat to bring in the White Karen vote. The top of the ticket will some weak ass toady like Dense or maybe even (FSM help us) one of the Lesser Bushies like the other, more horrible Bush brother whose name escapes me just now. Her goal with the J6 hearings is to keep her name in front of the real money donors like the Koch Brothers.
One of these days those guys are going to get tire of the clown car parade and decide to put their bucks behind a real nasty cutthroat leader who can herd the feral felines like Green or boot them out – that task won’t be about who they back for the WH. Right now I think DS is about neck and neck with Darth Cheney’s daughter for that title.
Betty Cracker
@Matt McIrvin: Nothing would surprise me at this point, but I think DeSantis would be a much more formidable opponent in 2024 than twice-impeached, two-time popular vote loser Trump. In a Biden-DeSantis matchup, the Beltway media will pound the age issue so hard it will make “but her emails” look like a day at the beach
@Cameron: That would be hilarious!
Kay
@Geminid:
Pregnant women in the US are being DENIED cancer care because it conflicts with their role as incubators. This was not important enough to be covered to by national media.
It’s shocking to me how this absolutely nutty level of sexism is now just ordinary. Women will die for the beliefs of fundamentalist religious. It’s not even newsworthy.
Matt McIrvin
@Barbara: The analogy, I suppose, would be to a year in which one candidate is the incumbent–there usually is a presidential primary but it’s not seriously contested, so it might as well not be happening. Trump is effectively their “incumbent” since he’s going for the Grover Cleveland trick.
Elizabelle
I have no interest in either TFG or Florida’s puerile governor. They’re attention hogs and horrid people and I refuse to listen to anything about either. Unless it’s about their impending court dates.
I’m with TaMara. Rooting for severe injuries, and for the DOJ and courts to go medieval on their asses.
Matt McIrvin
@Betty Cracker: I think Trump is a unique case where the fact that he lost is almost irrelevant, since a large part of the mythos is the lie that he didn’t really lose–hell, even if he loses THAT ELECTION it might be irrelevant.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Kay:
Congress could codify Roe soon
Barbara
@Geminid: Here is my usual reminder of the impact of misogyny on political outcomes. The only Democrats to lose statewide races in Pennsylvania in 2016 were women. Every statewide D male candidate won, including Josh Shapiro for AG. The “female” penalty was probably around 3% of the electorate, just by the differential outcomes between the D men and women. It wasn’t “just Trump” because Pat Toomey won against Katy McGinty as well, and it’s not like Toomey has much in the way of charisma or personality. Nope.
Kirk Spencer
@way2blue: See Paxton, Atty Gen of TX, for example.
Kay
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
It’s a personal belief of mine, but it’s based on real info. I have decades of experience working with male lawyers and judges and I listened to men, even Democratic men, describe Hillary Clinton for a year in completely sexist terms. Every time I raise it on Balloon Juice I get denials, which is fine! I absolutely could be wrong, but I always get denials :)
You know it when you see it. But US media are crazy-invested in denying this (they’re conventional, traditionalist people who always back the status quo) so no one will look into it seriously.
Barbara
@Matt McIrvin: I don’t have a crystal ball, but my sense is that there are too many people who really don’t want to capitulate to the notion that the Republican Party is for all intents and purposes Trump’s party, including more than a few donors. Like I said, if Trump prevails in early contests, it will be quick and pressure will build for others to go away, but I don’t see not holding primaries at all.
Mike in NC
So just this morning the odious Nikki Haley — another self-loathing minority that Republicans can’t get enough of — said that Senator Warnock (D-GA) should be deported. A slight variation on Trump’s biggest hate rally applause line when he demands that some non-white person “go back where they came from”.
Kirk Spencer
@Barbara: i add a 1 to3 point handicap to my personal projections if one of the candidates is a woman. Halve it if she’s a first term incumbent, quarter it for longer termers.
This handicap is why I have no hesitation rating Nancy the most effective House Speaker of at least the past 75 years.
Geminid
@artem1s: Cheney has burned her bridges. If the Republicans are thrashed this cycle and the next two, the radicals might give the Chamber of Commerce wing the steering wheel back. But I think Cheney will still be too toxic to win a Republican primary anywhere.
Adam Kinzinger might make a comeback. He’s younger, and has been less of a lightening rod. Plus he’s a military veteran as well as male.
Barbara
@Mike in NC: I wonder how many times she had to deal with that particular dart being aimed at herself when she was growing up in South Carolina. It’s all projection, all the time even when it embodies self-loathing.
Another Scott
@trollhattan: My impression that our absentee governor Fuzzy Vest, who has been campaigning for RWNJs all over the country, is hoping to be the anti-DeSatan. Since he can’t run again as VA Governor, he’s looking for the next level of government that he can try to destroy. He’s got a mountain of Carlyle Group money, he knows how to appeal just enough to the both-sides press while mainly going around it to get the RWNJs to come out, so he shouldn’t be underestimated.
The main thing is, of course, to defeat them so that they go back under their rocks for a while.
Forward!!
Cheers,
Scott.
Kay
@Mike in NC:
She’s the serious, thoughtful Republican. The standards could not be lower and if their newest INCREDIBLY low quality candidates win, standards will sink still further.
“Quality” is really hard. Once you lose it it’s hard as nails to get it back. They sure as shit won’t get there electing Walker, who is a moron.
LITERALLY ANYONE can be a GOP Senator. There are no standards at all.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Mike in NC:
Didn’t she always try to portray herself as “moderate”? And wasn’t she the US Ambassador to the UN under TGF? Jesus Christ, a former UN Ambassador (and state governor) is talking about how an elected member of the opposition party, should be “deported”. Not that it should really matter, but Warnock is a U.S citizen who was born on American soil
Mimi Haha
I hope they end up dead in bed together. With Eric unable to provide an alibi.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Kay:
I mean, I have no doubt misogyny is a real handicap for female Dem candidates. I just don’t think a male candidate would have much of a better chance against a Republican incumbent like DeWine in a state like Ohio. It was an open seat in 2018, and we had a male candidate with name recognition who had been in statewide office before, and he still lost to DeWine
Kay
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
The least sexist place I worked as a manager was the postal service, which I THINK has to do with civil service testing to get in and consistent, transparent rules for promotion. It’s part of why I back objective measures and union rules on job posting and filling- I think those measures can benefit women and minorities. Level the field by mitigating bias.
When I worked on Issue Two in Ohio (the response to Kasich’s anti-union push) AA activists gave me this lesson in why so many of them worked for state or local government in urban areas. Because the private sector had no objective, accessible measures like a civil service test. They couldn’t get hired in the private sector, but they could if there was an exam or other objectve measure.
Kay
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
I agree re: DeWine. I’m not staying in Ohio when I retire. I’m moving to Michigan. I just don’t want to live in a Right wing nutjob state. I think I’m a good citizen! Frankly, these assholes don’t deserve me. I’ll go pay Michigan taxes and do civic-minded volunteer work there.
Geminid
@Another Scott: I would not underestimate Foungkin Youngkin either. Virginia’s singular term limit for Governor benefits him since can’t even try to win reelection.
Youngkin’s a careful and patient man, though. I believe he’ll work towards 2028, campaigning for and directing money to candidates around the country. But he will be very “open” to the second spot on the 2024 ticket.
In the meantime, Youngkin can field test his new, high-tech fleece vest. I hear it changes color depending on which side of his mouth he’s talking out of.
greengoblin
@Mike in NC: He was born in Savannah GA, so where does she want him deported to? I don’t understand that comment at all.
Eolirin
@Kay: Oh its real, the only question is how big of an effect it is. In Ohio it probably doesn’t lose you an election you could otherwise win, because you probably can’t win the election in the first place. If Tim Ryan manages to pull it out there he’ll be part of a two member club of Dems who can win in the state alongside Sherrod Brown.
Assuming Lee Zeldin doesn’t manage an upset, Kathy Hochul may underperform a lot vs Andrew Cuomo, but it, hopefully, won’t be enough of a drag to stop her from winning in a state like NY.
So all things being equal women will have a harder time getting elected, though there is some evidence that the effect of this is lessened for incumbents. But that’ll mostly matter in places where things are close to begin with. Given the realignments that have been going on, that’s just a handful of states and the Presidency.
gratuitous
This “feud” has all the feel of a professional wrestling feud, where the two disputants denounce each other for weeks before setting up their climactic match at Gruntlemania.
Matt McIrvin
@Kay: We worry a lot about bias in standardized tests, but one thing to remember is that standardized tests can be relatively unbiased compared to whatever system (or non-system) was in place before they were adopted. They can be a good sight better than “I like the cut of your jib”. (Or “your dad was good people.”)
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Kay: In studies of women in engineering, the ones working under government fairness rules do best. They could civil service or employees of contractors bound by fairness rules
Frank Wilhoit
@Mr. Longform:
No, you’re fighting the last war. Every mob has the goons who are only in it for the violence, for its own sake. Today those goons are running the mob. There are still people looking for chances to steal, but they’re working on the margins and they’ll end up caught in the crossfire.
Eolirin
@Matt McIrvin: Worrying a lot about bias in standardized testing is important even. It’s part of how you reduce bias in standardized testing. But anyone trying to sell that worry as a reason to get rid of standardized testing should be met with a lot of skepticism.
There are some valid arguments around the limits of standardized testing, but bias isn’t one of them. You can make that better.
oatler
Musk is using twitter to tell users to vote Republican. We have a comic book supervillain, now where is the Marvel Universe to strike the counterblow?
Eolirin
@oatler: Musk doesn’t need any help blowing himself up.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@oatler:
Wait, are you serious?
sab
@greengoblin: She just doesn’t want to admit that African Americans built this country from the beginning of foreign settlement, for 500 years.
Matt McIrvin
@Eolirin: They get misused in a lot of ways too–there’s the public-school death spiral where you punish “underperforming” schools by denying them funding, which is just perverse.
cain
Excellent points!
Let me add one thing though – not to be a downer – but let’s refrain from using slang like “all about the Benjamins” whose origin comes from anti-semitic messaging. You all might recall that the right made a big fucking deal about it when Ilhan Omar was accused of it. It was a petty attack – but we should probably stop using it if anything but give respect to our very awesome Jewish commentators. :-)
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Kay:
That’s a good point re: unions and civil service having more objective standards for hiring and promotion. It’s a better deal for women and minorities
Omnes Omnibus
@cain: Who is on the $100?
Mr. Longform
I think this is irrefutably true – and I feel like I hear the same circular crap over and over again: There is just something about Hillary I don’t like; the Clintons are untrustworthy; I don’t think all women are harpies, it just happens to be all the ones who get stuff done and who are smart and capable.
Betty Cracker
@Kay: You’re not wrong, and one hard lesson is that sexism is bipartisan. Democrats are better than Republicans on the issue, which is one reason I’m a Democrat, but it’s a huge problem in the U.S. generally. And as you noted, it’s a problem considered to be of so little consequence to the media that hardly anyone talks about it. My guess is religion has something to do with it, but who knows.
Brachiator
@Barbara:
Wow. That is really sad. We’re there any news coverage about this in the local media?
Brachiator
@cain:
I always thought that this came from Benjamin Franklin being on the 100 dollar bill.
brendancalling
@TaMara: The most serious of injuries, like you’ve never see before. Jail sentences that would make a banana-republic dictator blush!
@RAM: From your mouth to God’s ear. Frankly, I find DeSantis’s voice to be like fingernails on a chalkboard, and i hope it’s like that for Joe and Jane Sixpack as well.
@Renie: that’s sad. On our local N(ice) P(olite) R(epublicans) station this morning, they did a piece on college students voting, and from what I heard, the PA youngs are fired up about abortions, both women AND men.
Eolirin
@Kay: Anywhere you go is going to be lucky to have you.
Baud
@Omnes Omnibus:
Benjamin Netanyahu.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
DeStantis is merely an old school Republican. As in Simon Cameron; you know the, Lincoln’s first secretary of war, was fired for issuing the Union Army shoddy clothing that literally melted off the soldiers bodies in the rain, pocketing the savings and coined the phrase “An honest politician is one who, when he is bought, will stay bought.“, so that was Cameron, right there in the first Republican administration.
This shit is nothing new in American history.
oatler
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
Sorry, I meant it in a Movie Producer Guy in a “Pitch Meeting” tone. Just hope we’re paying attention and staying alert.
Anyway
@brendancalling:
UPenn campus had “Save choice Vote Dem” (words to that effect) plastered all over the place. Didn’t check Drexel.
Eunicecycle
@Kay: I agree with you 100% about the sexism in Ohio. I remember when she ran for Senate (she was SOS at the time so won statewide) and was defeated in the primary by Lee Fisher, who was a horrible candidate. But he was a man, who proceeded to run one of the worst campaigns in history. Sigh.
Anonymous At Work
Don’t undersell the theocracy aspect, especially for DeSantis. He holds conversations with God in the mirror.
JMG
My view of Trump vs. DeSantis or any other Republican is that it’s a total mismatch. Trump wipes the floor with any and all of them. For the Republican base, it’s voting for Elvis or an Elvis impersonator.
Eolirin
@Renie: If the school’s makeup is mostly locals, that may be a good sign. Long Island is pretty red, and having grown up there I wouldn’t be surprised if young people choosing to stay close to home tilt very Republican.
Miss Bianca
@cain: Benjamin Franklin was Jewish? That’s news to me.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@oatler:
So, Musk isn’t doing that, then?
geg6
@cain:
Huh? It’s from Puff Daddy and it’s about Ben Franklin being on the $100 bill.
I must have missed this “controversy.”
cain
@geg6:
It was last year I think? – https://www.cbsnews.com/minnesota/news/ilhan-omar-twitter-anti-semitism-aipac-its-all-about-the-benjamins/
Basically she said approximately the same thing and a bunch of Jewish groups and AIPAC jumped all over her and of course the GOP couldn’t resist either.
She had to publicly apologize.
Anyway
As far as big donors go – to me it doesn’t seem like it matters who the R nominee is. Their big and I mean BIG ticket donors will show up dwarfing the contributions of Ds and their aligned partners. The RW ecosystem is swimming in gobs of money. The discrepancy is too huge – we can’t keep ignoring that. Where are the woke billionaires (and their heirs)?
citizen dave
Saw this on twitter, but apparently tiktok is the original source: new game show Roe V. Bros
https://www.tiktok.com/@roevbros/video/7161580460101995822?is_from_webapp=v1&item_id=7161580460101995822
Baud
@Anyway:
Woke billionaires donate to causes rather than political campaigns.
trollhattan
@Geminid: In late -18th century America, the popular indoor sport of bumper chairs inspired wainscotting to protect fragile plaster walls.
I am an internet expert.
Barbara
@cain: I think the expression originally refers to $100 bills, as in, the bills with Benjamin Franklin’s image, but it has been interpreted as anti-semitic when the expression is used by certain people, like Rep. Ilhan Omar. Best to avoid at this point, I agree.
Torrey
@NotMax: These are Floridians. “Highlander” seems a bit off-base.
Altitudinally inaccurate, one might say. But then, I have never summited Britton Hill or Sugarloaf Mountain, so don’t trust me on this.
trollhattan
@Mike in NC: Deported to…Georgia? Literally “where he came from.”
Soprano2
@Geminid: I think Hobbs hurt herself a lot by refusing to debate Lake. Her opponent is a woman, so that removes the misogyny factor.
Brachiator
OT. Heavy rains and snow have been predicted over areas of California. But because of mail ballots and early voting, about 1 million votes have been cast.
Soprano2
@Matt McIrvin: We had one of those in our last election. He was really cagy about that stuff until he got elected; then he started going on local right wing talk radio and talking about how much he agreed with the other wingnuts on the board about things like CRT. I could tell he was one of them, but I think a lot of voters were fooled.
Wapiti
@Brachiator: Some interviewed college students were not apathetic. They didn’t feel that they had enough knowledge of the issues to vote intelligently.
I get around that by using endorsements from trusted sources. I used to use The Stranger. Now I just look at what my legislative district Democrats recommend. Good enough; it’s not likely to make things worse.
MisterForkbeard
@Kay: I find it very hard not to agree with you after seeing the results from the national media to Hillary Clinton and Kamala Harris.
The media treats women (and mostly democratic women at that) with a hugely different standard, and routinely ignores women’s issues and threats to women. Hell, even when Roe was abruptly overturned the media was full of “oh it’s fine, you silly goose” hot takes. Lots of “are women overreacting to having their basic rights overturned and lives threatened? Could be!”
Bruce K in ATH-GR
@cain: As others have said, “all about the Benjamins” is taken from urban slang “Benjamins” for money, which came from Benjamin Franklin’s portrait on the $100 bill. It’s not inherently a slur, and the only reference I can find that comes close to claiming that is a column in the Jerusalem Post specifically referring to a quote talking about the US-Israel alliance. In that context, sure, but not generally
Still, “cash” or “C.R.E.A.M.” says roughly the same thing.
UncleEbeneezer
@Betty Cracker: Like Racism, we were all raised marinating in Sexism. I think the media don’t think it’s worth discussing for the same reason so many non-media do. They just don’t (or refuse to) see/acknowledge it. And you are absolutely right about it crossing party lines. My FreeAssange/ACLU buddy got real defensive when I noted several tweets by his Australian, rat-fucking Savior that were incredibly sexist towards Hillary. Likewise we are finding that my 80-year old, Bernie-Bro FIL has really horrible views of women, just by the way he interacts with Male vs. Female doctors, not to mention how he talks about women politicians. It’s so gross and incredibly wide-spread.
Geminid
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: One critic said of Simon Cameron, “He wouldn’t steal a hot stove.”
Another Scott
@UncleEbeneezer: Yup. It’s everywhere.
My J loves tennis and has it on the TV just about all day every day (except when she’s watching Masterpiece or something similar). The Tennis Channel cameras are always, always, undressing the women players while they don’t cover the men that way at all.
We’re marinating in the sexism and misogyny and it’s not clear how many more generations we’re going to have to put up with it. It’s toxic and is holding us all back from the progress in reach.
Grr…,
Scott.
Baud
@Another Scott:
What’s this now?
SFAW
@Omnes Omnibus:
Benjamin Franklinsteinowitzberg, apparently.
SFAW
@Baud:
“Undressing.” This, apparently, is not a term familiar to the pantsless.
Baud
@SFAW:
Do cameras have x-ray vision now?
Geminid
@Soprano2: Campaign decisions and candidate quality can make a difference. But Hobbs is still running several points behind Kelly. He is a high quality candidate, and Hobbs made a debatable decision to pass up debates. But misogyny still might account for some of the differential.
Another Scott
@Baud: You know, starting with their feet and slowly panning up their legs. Looking down their cleavage. Back view while they’re bending over. That kind of thing.
[/dissecting-the-frog]
Cheers,
Scott.
Ivan X
I’ve been pretty meh on the whole Elon Musk (whom I don’t care about) acquisition of Twitter (which I don’t care about). However:
Elon Musk recommends voting for Republicans in U.S. midterm elections
I don’t really want any CEO of an alleged open marketplace of ideas using his platform to make political recommendations, even for my side.
What an ass.
Baud
@Another Scott:
Haven’t watched tennis in eons. Interesting observation.
trollhattan
@SFAW: Not Benjamin Braddock? Holy hell, I’ve been wrong this whole time!
Baud
@Ivan X:
He wants the GOP to bail him out.
The impact of his statement would be the same even if he didn’t own Twitter.
I would be more worried about what he does with Twitter’s content policies.
Qrop Non Sequitur
@cain: I think Omar got in trouble for linking Israeli politicians to financial interests. It wasn’t the phrase about Benjamin’s, it was who it was being applied to.
Honestly I don’t remember precisely what she said but I remember calling my Rep to make sure he voted not to censure.
Honestly I think it said more about her detractors than it does about her.
OverTwistWillie
Tom Cotton is out.
I mean, was he ever really in?
SFAW
Re: Griftening/Quickening
Maybe TFG, DeathSantis, Cruz, and the rest of them could get locked in a steel cage with Kuwabatake/Tsubaki Sanjuro or maybe Kyuzo (or their latter-day equivalents). Hilarity would ensue.
knally
@greengoblin:
It reminds me of the UK comedian Lenny Henry’s take on this:
In the 1970s he would say to audiences: “Enoch Powell says he wants to give me £1,000 to go back to where I came from. Which is great, because it’s only 20 pence on the bus from here to Dudley.”
SFAW
@Ivan X:
It seems FYWP truncated the last word.
Matt McIrvin
@UncleEbeneezer: One of the Green brothers, forget if it was Hank or John, was recently talking about how “news” is literally what’s new, not necessarily what’s important, if what’s important is systemic and ubiquitous.
(We often phrase this in terms of “man bites dog” vs. “dog bites man”. The unusual, counterintuitive or unexpected thing will be news. The thing that happens all the time isn’t, but what happens all the time will generally be more important.
(He used a debunking of a bogus folk etymology he’d heard online– “NEWS” = “noteworthy events, weather and sports”–as a jumping-off point, pointing out that, as you’d think, the etymology of the word “news” really just comes from “new”. But the critique of what we consider news was his real point.)
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Geminid: Yes, but Cameron forced Stephen’s to walk that back.lol
Apparently Cameron was fired over some railroad contract, thus the hot stoves/
I think it really broils down to DeStanis is another example of how all the good government reforms of the 20th c never really happened in the South.
Betty Cracker
@Ivan X: Musk has been worse than I thought he would be, and I started with a low opinion of him. What a shit show. I hope he loses his whole ass.
trollhattan
@Baud: Know a woman who objectifies Andy Roddick sufficiently to have named her doberman after him. He’s a very good boy–the doberman, IDK anything about the player.
Ohio Mom
@Wapiti: Even when I was a young, uninformed normie, I just automatically voted for Democrats. If I didn’t have a clue, say for a school board position or a judgeship, I left it blank. Nowadays with the internet, it is a lot easier to figure out who you should vote for. I don’t leave anything blank for a long time.
The youths I know who don’t vote are mainly revolutionaries who don’t want to stoop to participating in a corrupt system. I suspect they will outgrow that.
SFAW
@trollhattan:
My boy, I just have one word for you:
PlasticsBitcoinVote!Geminid
@JMG: The Republicans I know would much rather vote for DeSantis than Trump. And they’ve voted Republican for decades, unlike some of the nuts you see at Trump’s rallies. Some of those folks never even voted before 2020.
I think a lot of Republicans will vote on the basis of who they think can win the general election. If I were a Republican Trump would be my last choice. There is just too much Trump fatigue among Independents and even among Republicans.
SFAW
@Baud:
I know they had X-Ray glasses when I was a kid. At least, that’s what it said on the back page of some of my comic books.
Betty Cracker
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: It’s true in a surface way that DeSantis is just another shitty Republican, but there are differences in degree as well as kind. A category 1 and a category 5 are both hurricanes.
Nicole
@Kay:
You’re not wrong, Kay. My lifelong Democratic voting father was planning to vote for Sanders in the 2016 primary (he died a few weeks before) and, god help me, I think would have voted Trump in the general. And he was not at all right-wing inclined; it’s just misogyny runs really deep.
Biden was not my choice at all in the primaries, but I think he really was the only candidate who had a shot at beating Trump, because he took away all of Trump’s weapons, which were “othering” his opponent. Old, white, male, tall, straight; Trump just didn’t have any ammunition.
And it was still a near beat, and that’s with Trump having completely f*cked up the response to COVID, too- like, had Hillary been in office, we’d have lost a quarter of the lives we did and she would have been a one-termer because she would have been blamed for 25,000 deaths. Trump was given a pass on 100,000.
This nation hates women, is what I’m saying. You’re not wrong, Kay.
Matt McIrvin
@Ohio Mom: Back in the 90s I remember having some friends who voted Libertarian as their way of signaling “I hate both parties” even though they weren’t particularly Randite/ancap types. And some who voted for Perot for “wouldn’t it be funny”/”thumb in the eye of politics” reasons. Those people have mostly outgrown the tendency but there’s always new kids.
Geminid
@geg6: Early in her Congressional career Ihlan Omar explained the strength of the Democratic party’s support for Israel by saying “it’s all about the Benjamins.” She walked that back after catching a lot of flak.
trollhattan
@SFAW: I think Homeland Security bought them all up for use in airports.
Another Scott
Meanwhile, … AlJazeera:
Fake News!!11ONE
:-/
They’re not going to give up. We can’t either.
Forward!!
Cheers,
Scott.
greengoblin
@knally: I like that.
Geminid
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: Cameron got to see more hot stoves than he ever wanted when Lincoln made him Ambassador to Russia.
Cameron survived the cold, and came back to play an important role in Pennsylvania politics.
raven
The hysterical emails are why I don’t want to contribute. Don’t tell me all the cutesy ways to avoid them.
Tony G
@RAM: Well, I dunno. At least in my part of the world (northern New Jersey) the handful of people that I know who are Trumpies have been Republicans for decades — going back at least as far as the regime of Saint Reagan. If these people are asked about Trump, they might say something like “I know that he can be rude sometimes, but I agree with his policies.”. His “policies” being tax cuts for the rich, right-wing Supreme Court justices and tormenting non-white people. Maybe it’s different in the Real America (i.e., rural states and states of the former Confederacy).
Martin
So, Twitter basically died on Sunday.
That’s when the users of the platform collectively decided that the question was no longer whether they would stay or go, but that Musk’s behavior would kill the platform and make that decision for them. Sunday is when *everyone* made their backup plans, and Sunday is when the value of *everyones* Twitter account got slashed, making it easier to either burn in service of trolling Musk, to decide to leave, etc.
Social graphs have this sort of built-in sense of health by the members. It’s not quantitative – you can’t measure it (or if you can, the measurements aren’t made available) but you can just sort of tell. The leaders are all advertising their new address somewhere else. A consensus forms on what the correct somewhere else is. The risk/cost of jumping goes down. And that’s how platforms die, and Twitter died on Sunday.
My guess is Twitter permanently loses 90% of their advertising for the duration of Musks tenure. Twitters only future is under someone else’s ownership. Nobody is going to tolerate the CEO going scorched earth on the platforms top follows and advertisers and there’s nothing Musk can do to repair those bridges.
NutmegAgain
@Another Scott: I read the story in The Guardian. You’ve got an alJazeera link. Last I checked neither the WaPo nor FTFNYT has any kind of a (major) story about this. I am surprised and disappointed by the lack of home-grown coverage–although you’d think I’d know by now. It’s pretty highly relevant to tomorrow’s election after all.
Another Scott
Meanwhile, the SCOTUS is going to weigh in on whether Puerto Rico can be stripped of even more of its people’s power to provide their consent to be governed… BallsAndStrikes.org:
Every election matters. Judges matter. We can’t forget that.
Fight for 15!!
Statehood for Puerto Rico!!
Cheers,
Scott.
Matt McIrvin
@Nicole: I think the tendency of the Democrats to run women is a major factor in Republicans being oddly dominant in the Massachusetts governorship. This year is an exception because the Republican candidate is a hardcore Trumpist instead of the usual centrist Republican daddy, and maybe they’re going to stick with that going forward. But it seems like the women often get the “she doesn’t inspire me; I can’t put my finger on it” response.
The only woman we’ve had in the office was a Republican who became Acting Governor for two years when the incumbent was appointed ambassador to Canada, and declined to run again.
Another Scott
@NutmegAgain: Google News has Reuters and NBC News links for me now. It’s percolating.
Cheers,
Scott.
BC in Illinois
John: money
@lowtechcyclist: staying out of prison
@MattF: resentment
@Frankensteinbeck: cruelty, prestige, and power
@Old Man Shadow: the power to humiliate and belittle others
@Kay: [misogyny]
Betty Cracker
@Martin: Sounds about right. I’ve thought about deleting my account but am just spending less time there for now. Lots of people have bailed though — the magnitude of that is reflected even in a small account like mine. It sucks because for all its well-known problems, Twitter could be a fun platform. Hard to imagine the community reconstituting itself elsewhere.
I’ll miss Bird Twitter most of all.
Sean
@Geminid:
I’ve seen more than one poll, including ABC/Wapo from some months back showing Trump tied or with a slight lead in a Biden rematch. Most would understandably debate the value of a poll 2 years out from the election, but if “Trump Fatigue” was truly that high among the electorate, I don’t see how he consistently polls like that. I think he remains terrifyingly electable, and when he starts winning primaries, everyone will line up to kiss the ring because he brings the voters.
Steeplejack
@Kay:
Wainscott, NY: a “census designated place” with population 650. Totally worth screwing over the energy needs of the rest of the state. 😹
Anoniminous
@UncleEbeneezer:
Fish don’t know they are swimming in water.
trollhattan
@Sean: Further proof we are a nation chock-full of morons. Am recalling the billboards with a waving Dubya “Miss me yet?” and questioning whether they were an ironic joke.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Martin:
What do you think of GOP threats to punish companies who do not advertise with Musk’s Twitter?
Soprano2
@Kay: Oh, the “you’re not the boss of me” thing men have about women candidates is real, no matter how much male Democrats want to deny it. I think with some men the “lizard brain” part that hates feeling like their mommy is telling them what to do kicks in, and they say they just can’t vote for “that woman” for some completely silly reason, when the lizard brain thing is the real reason. That’s why it affects things like governor and president more than House rep or Senate.
Geminid
@Qrop Non Sequitur: I’m pretty sure Omar was talking about American, not Israeli politicians. The implication was that they supported Israel because of the campaign contributions they receive from pro-Israel Americans.
Nicole
@Matt McIrvin: I hear you and I think you’re right. The only reason we currently have a woman as Governor here in NYS is because Cuomo couldn’t keep his hands to himself and picked her as running mate because he figured she wouldn’t be any hassle in the Lt. Gov spot (who doesn’t do much of anything anyway). I’m pretty confident Hochul’s going to win tomorrow in her own right, but that seems to be the pattern- woman gets put into top spot because the guy ahead of her dies or fucks up and then the society at large realizes the sky didn’t actually fall.
But if she were a man, it’d be an absolute blowout tomorrow.
Kay
@Steeplejack:
Guffaw. I know Hochul is a girl but perhaps NYers could find it in their hearts to vote for her anyway.
Wealthy people in this country now have enough money to outright PURCHASE giant states like NY.
OMFG, can we please start taxing them?
rikyrah
This is straight up..
ain’t my business and pass some popcorn.
Baud
@rikyrah: Heh.
Soprano2
@Mike in NC: Deported to where, since he was born in the U.S.? It’s crazy, wasn’t she supposed to be one of the “sane” ones? I don’t think there are any “sane” Republicans left who are willing to campaign for the current crop of candidates.
rikyrah
Get the ENTIRE PHUCK OUTTA HERE![]()
![]()
![]()
Obama Democrat #BringHomeBrittneyGriner (@trcterp) tweeted at 7:32 AM on Mon, Nov 07, 2022:
First generation American @NikkiHaley thinks a 7th generation Black American minister @ReverendWarnock should be deported.
(https://twitter.com/trcterp/status/1589611766027550721?t=k9oYe5E7O7OXYkIhfNsCrw&s=03)
Geminid
@Sean: I’ve seen polls that say differently. Anyway, I think if Trump is leading a poll it’s a reflection of disatisfaction with general problems and pinning them on Biden.
But we’ll get more polls than we want soon enough. I still think Trump has declined in popularity sine he left office, more among Indepents than Republicans. I also think he is declining in cognitive ability and mental health. If this is so it will be more apparent this time next year.
Matt McIrvin
@Sean: They’re still doing those Biden vs. Trump head-to-head polls–they’re all over the place, often with Biden showing a lead of a few points in registered-voter polls but Trump polling ahead when they apply a “likely voter” screen. But it’s not a Biden blowout. I think they’re still basically being answered as “Are you a Democrat or a Republican?”
Ruckus
@Frankensteinbeck:
I was going to say pretty much this.
SFB has 3/4 of a century of looking in a mirror and lying to what he sees, about what he sees. DeathSantas is a younger version of that same crappy human. SFB has spent his entire life lying to himself about himself. DeathSantas is a very good student in this art, just without the wealth and as many years experience in the art of self bullshit. Neither has ever even attempted to be actually human, it runs against everything they think, such as that is. Both of them are OK with being completely shitty humans, and as they both have egos larger than Alaska, and as cold, they are perfect conservative politicians. Something no one should ever aspire to.
Soprano2
One reason I was turned off of religion is that they all make women into second class citizens. Liberal Christianity tries hard to mitigate that, but the Bible says what it says, and much of it says that women are secondary and under men. I can’t be part of any system with a holy book that says that, and all the religious holy books say it!
lowtechcyclist
@cain: Rep. Omar mentioned the Benjamins in conjunction with the pro-Israeli lobby AIPAC. On account of that connection, she was accused of anti-Semitism. Jews, money, etc.
I thought it was pretty thin gruel even under that circumstance, but if she’d said the same thing about the petroleum lobby instead of AIPAC, nobody would have been accusing her of anti-Semitism.
Funny, though, how the GOP routinely makes claims about Soros using his billions to manipulate our politics, and nobody ever jumps on them in a similar way.
trollhattan
@rikyrah: Right?
“Go home. To Georgia. From Georgia.”
You first, “Nicky.”
Torrey
@cain:
The problem is that Omar was tweeting about Israel, specifically. I don’t know whether she thought she was going for an implied reference to Netanyahu or just deploying a phrase from a well-known song, but, as noted, Jewish groups and AIPAC came down hard on her for the Tweet. They, at least, were quite clear that the problem was the implied claim that the only reason the U.S. supports Israel is that American Jews buy political influence. Then someone jumped on the use of the name Benjamin as a distraction, and that became the focus of attention, ignoring the original source of offense.
trollhattan
@lowtechcyclist: Republicans have me convinced one Soros Dollar is worth elebenty times more than a Koch Dollar or a Thiel Dollar. Definitely more than a Musk Dollar, but for different reasons.
Steeplejack
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
Musk on Twitter this morning:
Points off for “Democratic” instead of “Democrat.”
patrick II
The trouble with Republican presidential hopefuls waiting until 2028 for Trump to be gone, if he wins in 24 he may not want to leave in 28. His intellectual powers may atrophy, but so will democracy, and it doesn’t take a lot of brains to repeat his list of gripes while he lets Putin and Miller run the country.
Soprano2
@Geminid: Maybe for the differential between her and Kelly; that tells me that some people who are going to vote for Kelly won’t vote for governor at all. I’m pretty sure that’s going to happen in GA with Stacey Abrhams too, which is a shame since she’s such a great candidate. I’m only saying that since her opponent is a woman, someone who is misogynistic isn’t going to vote for her opponent because of misogyny.
Anyway
Why is the former gov of SC tweeting about the GA sen race?
Sean
@Geminid:
Obviously, I’d prefer you were right, RE: the polls. But it is deeply unsettling to me that Trump could perform well in any poll or circumstance, given all we’ve witnessed. I’ve been waiting/hoping for the Trump cognitive decline and it doesn’t ever seem to manifest. I’ll keep hoping.
@Matt McIrvin: They are all over the place, and I hardly expect them to be representative of specific intention at this stage, but after all we’ve seen from 1/6 onwards, if half of poll respondents in a reputable polling outfit sample are picking trump…yikes.
I hope the fatigue is real, I hope his ultimate decline is real too, but I’m skeptical given the current horror show of political support in this country.
Matt McIrvin
@Sean: Usually, a Republican nominee who loses a general election gets loser-stink and doesn’t come back, but in this case, they successfully convinced the base that Trump really won in a landslide, and the election results were fake, so they don’t see him a loser at all. They just have to believe that
the fix will be inthe conspiracy will be thwarted the next time.Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Steeplejack:
I like how he tries to pass himself as “politically neutral” by saying “vote for the Republicans to create divided government to curb the excesses of BOTH parties!” It’s so simple-minded it’s laughable, but he’s not that stupid, obviously. He knows that divided government would be beneficial to him
trollhattan
@Steeplejack: Dude isn’t very bright, is he. What are his thoughts about the Republican Supreme Court, I wonder?
TBH I don’t.
Martin
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): I want them to try. Democrats could use the political spending.
Understand this is strictly limited to social media. Texas’s focus is on social media. Nobody cares if they stop spending on Fox News. Established media spaces are safe, it’s the ones run out of California which are the problem, so I kind of think that advertisers will simply dump all forms of social media. Facebooks ad revenue was down 27% last quarter. Google’s was down similarly. I think ad supported social media is mostly fucked right now thanks to the GOP.
They’ll come back to the space once the GOP calm the fuck down.
trollhattan
@Anyway: Wants to be Trump’s vp.
cain
@Torrey: yeah, so I know there was some ratfucking involved – and I was reading earlier about how that term had some anti-semitism links – but I could not find where I read that.
Another Scott
Meanwhile, Robyn P. at Wonkette:
Every state, and every seat, is worth fighting for. History is not destiny.
Forward!!
Cheers,
Scott.
Qrop Non Sequitur
@Torrey: To the authoritarians, being against the policies of the government of Israel will always be anti-Semitic, but concocting elaborate fantastical theories about rich Jewish individuals or the influence of Jewish people in media never will be.
lowtechcyclist
@Nicole:
This. As much as I loved Liz Warren, she was a woman and she would have lost on account of the sexism-based differential. Biden really was the right choice.
This too. As the incumbent, Hillary would have been crucified by both the GOP and the allegedly “liberal” media over those 25,000 Covid deaths, and Trump would be President right now.
Betty Cracker
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Maybe Musk IS stupid. He was born rich and got in on the ground floor of other people’s ventures and became obscenely wealthy that way, which would seem to indicate baseline intelligence of a specific type.
But I can’t reconcile the idea that he’s a savvy businessman with the astonishing speed and thoroughness of his destruction of Twitter. He took over what, a week or two ago? He paid twice what it was worth and has probably decreased its value by half in that time. Seems pretty dumb!
Geminid
@Steeplejack: “And now for CNN’s coverage of New York elections, we turn to our team at Ye Olde Wainscott Taproome.”
Mike in NC
Getting ready to board a plane to DC for a service at Arlington National Cemetery on Wednesday. We’re infrequent travelers and it gets more stressful every year.
Qrop Non Sequitur
For the truth value on this, one only need consider who is making the allegation.
schrodingers_cat
@rikyrah: She is so awful.
lowtechcyclist
@BC in Illinois: Well played!!
cain
@Martin: My mastodon feed now looks a lot like my twitter feed, but except much calmer. People are really enjoying the feel of community here and unlearning twitter ways.
cain
@Matt McIrvin: I suspect that is true for Oregon governorship.
Geminid
@Sean: My Atlanta friend shares your alarm at a Trump presidential run. I tend to agree with Joe Biden, who said he’d be fortunate to run against “that guy” again.
cain
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
Spoken like true fascists – using government power to coerce people – the party of small govt is gone. I have no idea how they think they can punish companies with anything.
My response? “Please proceed..”
Citizen Alan
@Sean: The reason I feel a general sense of malaise and despair is simply because I think no Democracy can survive if a sufficiently large percentage of citizens would prefer to live under a dictatorship. It was bad when that percentage was around 27%, but right now I think we’re in the 45% range and it scares the shit out of me.
Suzanne
@MattF:
Yes.
Money is just a proxy for power.
As Ali Wong says….. “MONEY, POWER, AND RESPECT”.
Omnes Omnibus
@Citizen Alan: I normally don’t advise people in red states to move, but I will make an exception in your case. Living where you live seems to affect your emotional health.
Geminid
@Torrey: I expect Omar’s colleagues talked to her about better phrasing. She has been more careful since, and expresses her support for the Palestinian cause in ways that don’t call her fellow Democrats’ motivations into question.
This can certainly be a divise and wedgy issue among Democrats. I think the total criticism of the Biden administration here, during Israel’s 11 day war with Gaza in May of 2020, may have exceeded the total on all other issues before or since.
Another Scott
On the other hand, it’s yet another illustration of the space they take up in our – and the MSM’s – heads. When we’re talking about them, we’re not talking about what our team is doing:
TFG loved it when reporters were calling him a slumlord in NYC – because he was in the papers and in people’s heads. DeSatan no-doubt loves it too. We need to clear them out of our headspace. (While letting the professionals investigate and charge and convict and jail them and crush their companies to dust.)
My $0.02.
Forward!!
Cheers,
Scott.
Matt McIrvin
@Omnes Omnibus: I feel the same way and I live in Massachusetts. The state isn’t going to be electorally taken over by a wingnut government–quite the reverse, in fact–but sooner or later, not soon but some years from now, I don’t rule out a fascist US government pacifying us by force of arms or supporting a police coup in Boston.
Omnes Omnibus
@Matt McIrvin: I can offer no advice to help you.
lowtechcyclist
@Matt McIrvin:
Cool! Per the 22nd Amendment, he can’t be elected again because he’s already been elected twice.
The language of the Amendment doesn’t say anything about whether one actually took office after being elected in each instance, just whether one had been elected twice. Trump and his supporters say he was elected in 2020 as well as 2016, so he can’t be elected again.
lowtechcyclist
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
And I’m sure the Russians feel the same way. The more chaotic and ineffectual our government, the better for them.
Matt McIrvin
@Sean: For us in the Northeast, Trump’s last year in office was a time of mass death, people here just dropping dead from plague by the thousands. But for the rest of the country, COVID effectively hit them after Biden was in office, at least as far as effects on society were concerned. The Trump years were genuinely better times, just because of that. If we were dying here they didn’t particularly give a shit.
Another Scott
@Martin:
As I said yesterday, I wouldn’t be surprised if they vacate their Market Street offices before the weekend. He’s a black hole for corporate value.
Cheers,
Scott.
MisterDancer
@Geminid: My concerns around T-antimatter running in ‘2024 are primarily about the people who’ll get hurt along the way.
Same with DeSantis. Same with all of them, of course.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Betty Cracker:
Well, I think he’s an arrogant fool who’s bought into his own hype. But I don’t think he actually believes that BS, was my point.
I still have the niggling feeling that he either tanked Twitter intentionally given it’s role in communications for numerous oppressed peoples around the globe in service to foreign autocratic backers or he was manipulated into doing it for the same reasons.
I don’t like what Musk has been doing re:Ukraine since September and that’s made me distrustful of his intentions
Paul in KY
@Matt McIrvin: Democrat = good. Repub = bad. Simple as that!
Matt McIrvin
@lowtechcyclist: Ah, but Trump explained even before 2020 that he actually “deserved” an exception to the term limit, because people were cheating against him in 2016 even though he won, or something something argle bargle.
Ruckus
@danielx:
I think that if you are in a mud wrestling match with a pig, you’ve already lost.
StringOnAStick
@Martin: I chatted with a friend who was laid off by Twitter (happily) on Friday. Because he had a lot of stock options, he had been in favor of Elmo buying it back in the spring, a combo I suppose of financial self interest, being too close to the company to see the bad side of what it does even though I know he is a strong D. He said he first started to realize how bad this was going to go when GM stopped all advertising on Twitter sometime earlier this year (I don’t remember when that was, but I think it was once it was clear that the deal would be forced to happen). He did make a comment that the company had grown too fast and added way too many employees, so he did the usual “clean out the dead wood” dance, but he thinks its just a matter of time before it fails.
He didn’t hold much hope for people migrating to mastadon because it is so siloed, anyone can set up a server, which also means all the issues with authentication and content standards are still there, but with no paid employees.
One quip I read that I find amusing is absolutely no one is saying “hey, let’s all go to Facebook!” Rumor has it that Facebook is the next to announce big layoffs any moment now. I am still looking at Twitter, just not logging in; the amount of dragging Elmo is increasing dramatically every day and his ego is getting slapped around hard. I don’t think a narcissist like Elmo will handle that for very long before he does something really stupid (if that is possible, he’s set the bar pretty low already),
Betty Cracker
@StringOnAStick: I’m kind of astonished (and more dismayed than expected) at how fast Twitter is being destroyed. Lots of the people in my timeline who made it fun are either scarce or gone already, and consequently I’m not there much either. I still look out of habit, but it’s a habit I’m losing. I looked into Mastodon, but it seems really clunky. My hope is Musk loses every penny of that $44B. What a gaping asshole that guy is!
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@Betty Cracker:
For conservative Christians, sexism is baked into their religious views. However, I just don’t think we can dismiss the fact that rules against sexual harrassment only happened in the late 80’s / early 90’s. Well into the 80’s, career women were frowned on. I’m Gen X, and I think men in my generation had a certain expectation about women’s roles that a lot of women have flat out rebelled against. They are mad about it. Add on to this the fact that gay rights and trans rights further erode traditional gender roles, and they are losing their sh!t over it. My generation is in their 40s and 50s right now. We aren’t that old. Its been a lot of change in a short period of time and they can not handle it.
Matt McIrvin
@StringOnAStick: I confess, Facebook, for all its horrible faults, is my primary venue for (a) communicating non-publicly with friends and family, and (b) participating in discussion groups on mostly non-political fun topics.
Even there, though, any time I choose to say something that is broadly public it turns out to be a bad idea. It is not a nice place for broadcasting contentious thoughts to the world. And it’s certainly a platform past its prime, such as that was.
StringOnAStick
@Betty Cracker: Agreed on every point. I had enjoyed just looking at what would show up when I looked at Twitter, and the change between even yesterday and today is huge.
Matt McIrvin
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony: My 1980s college-boy cohort were, by and large, profoundly sexist and homophobic and transphobic and obnoxiously proud of it. What I don’t have a feel for is whether things are any better among young men now or if they’ve just continued to fester.
We’re now at the point with trans rights that some transphobic jokes that were generally considered unproblematic japery in the 2000s and 2010s will now raise eyebrows. (Remember, Graham Linehan went completely around the bend and became the pre-Rowling face of anti-trans hate in the UK just because people called him out on a transphobic joke in The IT Crowd. Linehan is almost exactly my age.)
Ruckus
@Martin:
As a twitter user who has already lost one account and has had serious thoughts about leaving my second one already, I agree with your take. The tone is rather different today than it has been over the last week. Many accounts I wouldn’t have expected it from have been commenting pretty much no holds barred. And of course EM is reacting as a toddler does when you take away their sippy cup, even though it is him throwing his sippy cup around the world.
JoyceH
@Matt McIrvin:
I actually managed to interpret a baffling bit of Trumpism recently. What has always puzzled me is to hear the Trumpists say that Trump is the ‘only one fighting for US!’. I always wondered what fighting? When? What did he ever do for YOU?
But then I noticed something. When he gives one of those interminable speeches where he whines on and on about how persecuted he is, like nothing that’s ever been seen before, in the middle of the whine, he will often add, “And remember, when they’re attacking me, they’re attacking you.” So basically, Trump whining about HIMSELF is him valiantly fighting for THEM.
trollhattan
@StringOnAStick:
Is building a Twitter replacement within Mozilla’s wheelhouse? I would trust them to do it right and without ill intentions, but guessing it’s a capital-intensive thing to get into.
StringOnAStick
@Matt McIrvin: I’ve been boycotting FaceBook since the 2016 election when it became obvious how they put their thumbs on the scales; Cambridge Analytica was a huge wakeup call for me. My husband still uses it to look at what friends are doing but he never posts and as an experiment he started looking at cat videos and nothing else. His feed now is 100% just his friends, and cute cat videos, so there is a lesson there. I need to keep in better touch with friends especially since we moved several states away, so I plan to look more. Eventually…
🐾BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud: IR cameras can see though some types of fabrics.
StringOnAStick
@trollhattan: I think the costs issues has a lot to do with servers, etc, but mostly with having enough people monitoring things (by person or by code) so that it doesn’t become 4Chan. That’s a lot of bodies, as Elmo is finding out now that he fired all his content moderation staff.
Matt McIrvin
@JoyceH: “They’re laughing at us” and “they’re laughing at you” are among Trump’s favorite phrases. His loathsome and ridiculous behavior actually helps here because he does get laughed at a lot, and he’s leveraging that into making himself a stand-in for every inadequate white man who ever felt somebody was laughing at him when he needed to be acknowledged as King.
JoyceH
Not sure where I’ll go post-Twitter, but I’ll probably go wherever Jorts the Cat goes.
Paul in KY
@Kay: Democratic women politicians have it harder, Kay. No doubt.
Baud
@Matt McIrvin: In all honesty, I wish more Dems would feel a little more insulted — and motivated — by the way we are treated.
Qrop Non Sequitur
Isn’t that what fools are there for?
Seriously, they don’t respond well to reasoned argumentation or mockery or moral or emotional appeals.
This ties in with charges of elitism too. Sure, they’re the ones constantly disparaging their enemies and, sure, they exercise power well beyond their numbers because they have the money players and the media on their side.
The only thing that makes us elitist is that we don’t acknowledge our place beneath them.
Baud
@Qrop Non Sequitur:
I think there are people on our side that are elitist, but there are an equal or greater number on their side that are as well. I agree the slur sticks to us because we don’t accept our place in their hierarchy.
Matt McIrvin
@Baud: The Democratic coalition includes dozens of marginalized groups that universally used to be (and still often are) ridiculed on a regular basis as core elements of pop culture, and the pushback to that is the entire thing that gets conservatives worked up about “wokeness” or “social justice warriors” or “political correctness” or whatever they’re calling it at any given time.
Cishet white straight liberal guys who are not in any of those groups… eh, I can take it. I’m manifestly one of the luckiest people in the world. I’ve been laughed at for my whole life; it doesn’t pick my pocket or break my leg.
cain
@StringOnAStick:
I don’t really agree that it is silo’d. Unless you’re looking for people to disagree with you – which is fine. It doesn’t have a lot of homophobic, transhobic and people who are in a GOP cult. Reasonable people can argue quite sanely – it’s when you are arguing with a bot or cultist that conversations goes nuts.
What we are seeing in Mastodon is harking back to back when the internet was first coming out. I think it is really refreshing that we have any algorithms that get exploited by bots. They gotta work it the old fashion way.
Matt McIrvin
@cain: Isn’t Gab (one of the various fascist/asshole-right Twitter alternatives) just an instance of Mastodon?
lowtechcyclist
@Matt McIrvin:
Was that Arglebargle IV, or someone else?
Dorothy A. Winsor
I’m apparently waiting for twitter to disappear from underneath me. I suppose I’ll see where the people I like talking to wind up. Then, to make my editor happy, I’ll have to amp up what I do on Instagram and start posting on tumblr and, god help me, tiktok. What a pain
ETA: Alternatively, I could use my dormant blog as a place to post what I used to tweet and share that link around.
Eolirin
@Matt McIrvin: It wasn’t just a transphobic joke it was a depiction of violence towards trans people played up for laughs. It’s a pretty serious stain on an otherwise great show.
Steeplejack
@cain:
I haven’t studied Mastodon much (yet), but I think the “siloed” thing refers to the fact that it’s not yet clear whether if you sign up on one server you see everything on all the servers. I don’t think you do, but, like I said, I haven’t delved into it yet. 🧐
lowtechcyclist
@Matt McIrvin:
It’ll take the least bit of contentiousness and elevate it to the top of your feed, trying to feed the flames. I never got political on Facebook because I always had other places for that, but I remember one time when I got in a back-and-forth with a friend of a friend over, of all things, the song “Manic Monday.” Facebook kept it up at the top of my feed where I couldn’t ignore it even if I let a day or two pass, and I’m sure the same thing was happening with the other guy, and so we kept on arguing.
That’s the sort of inane shit that soured me on FB. I didn’t go there to argue, but that’s not what FB thought. So I walked away. I still have a FB account, but I’m never there. My stomach still churns when I think about the place.
Comparing that to Twitter, I get into back-and-forths much more infrequently there, and it’s much easier to let it drop after a couple of rounds. If necessary, I just mute notifications for that conversation, and that’s the last I see of it.
Eolirin
@Steeplejack: The answer is… it’s complicated. I think that complexity won’t be as big of an issue as it seems, to the direct user experience, but all of the issues around site reliability, content moderation, misinformation checking, etc, are going to be huge issues as things start to scale. Because there’s no central responsibility for those things, it’s going to be a fucking shitshow. The siloing will help in some respects and make things much worse in others.
Sean
@Citizen Alan: I certainly hope it isn’t quite that high, although even 35% would be pretty bad for us all long term. The malaise is real. I combat it with repeated assurances that we can’t predict the future. Doesn’t make enduring this world any easier.
Zzyzx
I’m late but:
1) Omar’s problem wasn’t that she used the slang phrase but the implication that there was a secret cabal of Jews who were controlling the world because they were rich. It was the idea behind it, not the phrase.
2) My Twitter feed looked like it was going away this weekend but it’s pretty back today. Musk caused some damage but he hasn’t destroyed the place yet. Amusingly his knee jerk allow everything tendency might have been destroyed because he got so mocked over the weekend and that was the only reason he was able to get why it sucks.
3) Mastodon sketches me out. It turns out that admins of your small server can read your messages and if a group of women got together to warn about someone, if they mentioned his handle, he’d be able to see the messages. It feels like solution made by people who didn’t think about those kind of issues.
Betty Cracker
I tried to set up a Mastodon account as a Twitter lifeboat and struck out twice. I don’t think I’m particularly technically inept. Maybe they’re just overloaded, but I never got a confirmation details email, which is annoying, so I don’t know if I should try again or just say fuck it — one less time suck.
Qrop Non Sequitur
This is not, in fact, what Omar did. It is what she was accused of. However, as often needs noting, the government of Israel does not equate to “Jewish cabal.”
Zzyzx
@Qrop Non Sequitur: OK she wrote a sentence that could be interpreted in that way without it being an intentional bad reading.
I read it that way but then I read the apology and took it as just not knowing the history and I got over it. The point is that it’s not that the phrase itself would be antisemitic.
Qrop Non Sequitur
@Zzyzx: Right. “Benjamins” was not the problem.
Zzyzx
@Betty Cracker:
Same thing happened to me. I tried 4 times, got no email, got a bunch of early Linux flashbacks, moved on.
I do have a potential cohost account.
Central Planning
@Betty Cracker: I signed up on mastodon.coffee yesterday because the main mastodon site wasn’t taking new registrations. And I like coffee.
I guess you can follow people on other servers. I think that is what will limit its usefulness – I would have no idea how to track down @johngcole if he was on a different server (except hope his twitter profile has it. Spoiler: it does)
Zzyzx
@Central Planning: yeah, the inability to easily follow others is an issue, especially because the person in charge of your group could decide that they don’t know the wacky people on Cole’s and remove the connection between the instances.
I thought about creating a Phish instance because I’d miss Phish Twitter, but I don’t know if I trust myself with that power.
Chris T.
@Matt McIrvin:
Isn’t that more of a “I could put one finger on it, but there’s no way I could wrap my whole hand around it” response?
Geminid
@Qrop Non Sequitur: I think the issue Omar was talking about was not the government of Israel’s actions but rather what she believes is the American government’s uncritical support. I think that is a valid issue although I do not share her view. I thought her statement was harmful because she attributed a financial motivation to fellow Democrats who see the issue differently. But she walked her statement back and I think she has since advocated forthrightly for the Palestinian side in ways that are less divisive.
Baud
@Zzyzx: I’d imagine some company will create a huge instance that will become the go-to alternative Twitter that most people gravitate to. Assuming no other service is created to replace Twitter.
Zzyzx
@Baud: my theory about social media is that you can’t create one that’s both big enough to have a critical mass of people but still ethical in how it makes its money. I’d love to be proven wrong though.
Paul in KY
@Brachiator: That’s what I thought too.
Matt McIrvin
@Eolirin: Thanks for the correction–I never actually watched the episode in question, just know it got criticized as transphobic and Linehan could. not. deal with that.
Paul in KY
@Qrop Non Sequitur: They can afford space lasers, dontchaknow…
Ruckus
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony:
“Its been a lot of change in a short period of time and they can not handle it.”
Humans often do not accept change well at all. Especially rapid and/or massive change. Some types of people are far worse at this. It’s one reason why the world normally doesn’t change as fast as some want, no matter their direction. And most humans are followers. Look at politics, religion, acceptable life styles. Those take a long time to change, if change is even possible. And it’s because most people take a long time to actually change. Their behavior, their ideals, etc. How long will someone stay in an unreasonable relationship, one that isn’t dangerous, just no good reason to stay. Humans find excuses to not change a lot easier than they do actually change.
CaseyL
I signed onto Mastodon using the “find a regional instance” (where instance = server). Decided to sign on the New Zealand server. It went swimmingly. The only downside is my “local” feed is all NZ folk.
Everyone has been wonderful and friendly. No bots or trolls. I don’t know if that’s specific to NZ, but I can say the moderators are present and active. It’s been small enough for them to stay on top of things, but now that Mastodon is mushrooming, I’m not sure how well they’ll be able to keep up. They are fighting the good fight, though, announcing additional tools, modifications, and expanded capacity to absorb newcomers.
It’s not exactly like Twitter, and there are some tools I still haven’t figured out. But for just seeing conversations, following people, and making comments, it’s easy. The one thing Mastodon doesn’t do (or does and I haven’t figured out how to turn on) is show comment threads. If someone responds to your comment, you need to open your comment to see it. If you respond to someone else, and they answer back… it’s in the ether somewhere.
Betty Cracker
@CaseyL: One of the things that I found useful on Twitter was the ability to post and embed video on other platforms (here and elsewhere). Is that possible on Mastodon? Trying to figure out if I should bother to try to set up an account again.
CaseyL
@Betty Cracker: That I do not know, so sorry!
Betty Cracker
@CaseyL: No worries — I haven’t seen it mentioned in the Mastodon primers I’ve read, so my guess is it doesn’t.
Ruckus
@Kay:
LITERALLY ANYONE can be a GOP
Senatoroffice holder. There are no standards at all.FFY
rikyrah
@TaMara:
me too :)
Another Scott
@Betty Cracker: It looks like embeds can be done, but I don’t know the details.
This thread talks about it on the Mastodon side.
This talks about it on the WordPress side.
HTH a little.
Cheers,
Scott.