??President Biden just called Tyre Nichols' parents. He talked to them for more than 10 minutes.
"He actually tattooed my name on his arm," his mom told Biden."That's what you call something special," Biden replied.
We were in the room for the call. Here's a snippet. pic.twitter.com/0gpfU1wmv6
— Emily Davies (@ELaserDavies) January 27, 2023
Civil rights lawyer Benjamin Crump is threatening to sue Ron DeSantis over his administration's decision to block the new Advanced Placement course on African American studies from being taught in high schools.
— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) January 27, 2023
Leader Schumer on proposed House GOP spending cuts: "The House GOP is threatening spending cuts: well, what are they? Why the evasion? Why is your conference hiding from the American people? House Republicans: where are your cards?"
— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) January 27, 2023
My two cents is that the DC press corps would rather report on the ~wacky shenanigans of George Santos because otherwise they’d have to learn what a debt ceiling is. They loved the spectacle of the Trump admin, and now they get to channel that energy again! https://t.co/bejjpR5PiH
— Dhaaruni ??? (@dhaaruni) January 27, 2023
Baud
I don’t know. If the media didn’t cover Santos, I think people would be complaining that they were ignoring him to help the Republicans.
OzarkHillbilly
@Baud: Somebody is always complaining.
Kay
the criminal lying Republican being in the news every day is good for Democrats.
It’s just so funny though- political media are once again a day late and a dollar short. The time to cover this flamboyant conman was when he was running in their backyard and right under their noses. It’s not true that it can’t be done in a timely manner or that investigating candidates is solely up to political parties- the AP looked into Marcy Kaptur’s opponents claims and found fraud. They did this BEFORE the election so it is possible to report “news” in time for the public to use the news to inform decisions.
eclare
That cartoon is a great take on the famous painting.
Baud
@Kay:
But then, as with Trump, he might not have gotten elected.
eclare
https://twitter.com/TheDailyShow/status/1619094774677397504?s=20&t=9Ha_PCE7BBo6YnErepair.
Hilarious Daily Show bit with Wanda Sykes and Roy Wood, Jr. on MO’s proposed ban on teaching CRT.
Kay
The story of the AP course on African American studies is interesting. It’s new – a pilot program.
Of course it terrifies conservatives so they want to ban and silence and shut it down. It’s progress. It’ll go forward eventually anyway, I think. The current public school population (nationally, as a whole) is much more diverse than the middle aged centrists and conservatives pols and pundits and opinion shouters who are insisting we return to 1956. The courses will probably reflect the people taking the courses, as they should.
Betty Cracker
I think the focus on Santos helps Democrats, and so did the humiliating McCarthy spectacle. Appearing ridiculous is more politically damaging than coming across as evil.
The political press needs to cover the debt ceiling too, but they’ll wait until the drama ramps up at the last minute as usual and then insist that both sides need to come together to agree to pay the bills we’ve already racked up.
NotMax
@Kay
Outing Santos’s roster of lies in advance of the election would have diminished the unstoppable juggernaut Red Wave the MSM has already communally agreed upon and played up hourly for months beforehand as a foregone conclusion.
Amir Khalid
I’m old enough to remember a few previous debt-ceiling showdowns between a Republican Congress and a Democratic POTUS, where the Rs forced a shutdown of the Government and then (as I recall) paid dearly for it at the next election. I’m wondering why they still think these blatantly partisan confrontations are a winner for them.
Princess
Coverage of Santos is good especially if it focuses on the financial issues (rather than the biographical lies) because there’s a good chance the broader GOP will be implicated. They’ve found now that many of his donors are fake — addresses and names don’t match up. So where did the money come from and what were they promised?
Kay
@Baud:
How they got away with disconnecting the value of the their work from whether it is timely and therefore useful is just amazing to me.
“We will now report on this massive scandal that occurred three years ago”. Oh, okay, thanks. They’re not news people, they’re some kind of half ass “recent historians” or something. They have to be quicker! The campaigns go on fucking forever, too. Like, 18 months isn’t enough time?
oatler
The ghost of Chris Matthews feels tingle in its thigh.
OzarkHillbilly
@eclare: Why am I not surprised? I can’t helpbut wonder what might possibly be in the patriotism re-education course.
NotMax
@Amir Khalid
Their slim, tattered playbook makes any Cliff’s Notes look like War and Peace.
Baud
@Kay: Conservatives have their own media and liberals don’t. That skews everything.
Although right-wing media is mostly lies and propaganda, the fact that they exist means that when there is a legitimate scandalous story involving Dems, they are ready to pounce on it. NYT reporters, by contrast, save it for the book.
oatler
@oatler:
My mistake, he’s not dead.
Layer8Problem
@oatler: He’s certainly not talking up his existence or his current hot takes. He’s doing us a favor.
Kay
This conservative agenda was unpopular in the swing states that Democrats need in both 2020 and 2022. Keep that in mind when political media all promote it as proof of DeSantis and Trump genuis. It worked in Florida. It failed everywhere else, including MI, PA and WI, states that no one would describe as super “woke”.
I for one think they should definitely run on CRT/trans panic again :)
Baud
@Kay: And this forces the rest of the GOP field to compete with him on that front.
Honus
@oatler: Chris is still alive, he can feel the tingling himself.
ETA: sorry, see you caught that yourself. The tingling is still the point though!
sdhays
@Amir Khalid: Well, I guess I’m not old enough because I’m not aware of that ever happening. The polls always show that people are very upset with Republicans, Republicans fold, and people forget about it by the time the next election comes around. That’s why they never do it right before an election.
They have never been truly punished for these antics.
Matt McIrvin
@Amir Khalid: In the first debt-ceiling confrontation with Obama in 2011, they extracted concessions that did serious economic damage and, I think, probably helped Mitt Romney on balance in 2012. It wasn’t enough for him to win. But I think it was a net gain for Republicans, though a loss for the country.
In 2013, Obama was taking none of that crap and there was not a repeat. But the Republicans still did well in the 2014 midterm, so there wasn’t a huge penalty for them.
I think that this time around, the Republicans’ right wing actually want to drop the bomb and force a default, for accelerationist, burn-it-all-down reasons. They imagine a total collapse of the economy will be the crisis they need to remake the world. The rest of the caucus probably doesn’t want to do it, but they had to concede a lot in the Speaker election.
lowtechcyclist
@Amir Khalid:
The shutdown at the end of 2018 and beginning of 2019 lasted five weeks, but it was all but forgotten by the beginning of the next year, even before the pandemic blew it away.
The shutdown of October 2013 lasted over two weeks. Again, i doubt it made any difference the following year, and certainly the 2014 midterms outcome didn’t give the GOP any reason to shy away from future shutdowns.
I’m sure that if the GOP shut down the government just a few months before an election, it would harm their chances, but they’re not dumb enough to do that.
Kay
Conservatives do what conservatives do but I also blame middle aged allegedly “liberal” centrists for the CRT/woke panic. Conservatives want to take us back to the 1950s, that’s true, but there’s a whole group of influential centrists who want to take us back to the 1990s so eagerly promoted these panics. The high school students who would be taking this pilot AP course were born beginning in about 2007.
eclare
@Kay: Paraphrasing Obama, please proceed TFG.
NotMax
@Oatler
In an undisclosed location watching well-worn tapes of Tip and Ronnie yucking it up, fingers crossed that darn putty tat won’t find him.
//
Baud
People are confusing the government shutdown with a debt default. Different animals.
Princess
@Kay: I don’t even know if it worked in Florida. It just failed to not work.
Please proceed, Trump. And by all means make this a litmus test for all the candidates.
rikyrah
Good Morning, Everyone😊😊😊
Baud
@Kay: It wasn’t just centrists. Noam Chomsky and Dahlia Lithwick signed that infamous letter, among others.
A Letter on Justice and Open Debate | Harper’s Magazine (harpers.org)
Baud
@rikyrah: Good morning.
Kay
@Baud:
Democrats, however, need their own education policy. They can’t just react to Rufo. They really are in disarray on that. The Bush/Obama focus or plan is outdated – parts of it have been discredited- and there isn’t a broad consensus on where they go next. Obviously I think they should go big on the “public” in public schools – I think that’s the best policy and also a proven winner politically at the state level for Ds – but right now they’re just kind of milling around deciding.
Matt McIrvin
@Baud: A lot of self-described left radicals are surprisingly centrist or reactionary on the race ‘n’ sex ‘n’ gender stuff.
OzarkHillbilly
@Baud: Thank you.
rikyrah
Thanks to NBC News, I was able to print out the AP African-American History curriculum guide. The nerd in me would have loved this class in High School.
I know the Governor of Illinois stepped up to defend it, but it’s time other Blue State Governors did too.
rikyrah
@Baud:
Completely different
Anyway
Is DeSantis going to cancel Black History month in FL? Feb is almost here…
Kay
@Baud:
You’re right and I knew that.
It’s bad – kind of mean spirited- but I can’t help just scoffing at this letter because they take themselves so seriously and in my view it was never NEARLY as much of a threat as they made it out to be. I think they’re ninnies- scared of things that aren’t scary.
It’s like “oh, fuck you as the self proclaimed official keepers of ‘liberalism’ – maybe the Oberlin student council are the official keepers- I don’t know”
It would have sorted itself out without The Gatekeepers building the gate a little higher. It’s like they went into this big, showy battle against a tiny foe. They were guaranteed to win! That’s why they chose such a lame battle.
Another Scott
@Baud: Plus, over time, the list of parts of the government that are actually shut down becomes shorter.
I wouldn’t be shocked if there is a short default this time, say, over a weekend and a few days the following week. The monsters want to keep poking the leopards and driving up the costs for the federal government (more wasted work, higher interest costs going forward) is actually a “win” for them. It’s a loss for the GQP, but they don’t care about the party really – they care about themselves and their personal power and personal brand. And a loss for the USA and the world (setting money on fire for no good reason), but VVP will be happy.
Qevin has a big problem. Whether he lets that problem come to fruition is his problem alone. It’s too early to know – June is too far off.
We’ll see!
:-/
Grr…,
Scott.
eclare
Has anyone watched 1619 on Hulu? I plan to. I think it’s six episodes, not sure if all were released at once.
Kay
@rikyrah:
I thnk I would have liked it too. I’ve said this before but I got no real civil rights history until law school, when I took a 3rd year elective on it. The idea that public schools are obsessed with this and are teaching it to the exclusion of other subjects is just nonsense. They BARELY teach it, which might be why public school parents in just about every poll are evenly divided on whether schools are teaching TOO MUCH AA history or NOT ENOUGH. Half think “not enough”. Why aren’t THAT half important? Why is only the white, Right leaning half counted?
Frankensteinbeck
@Amir Khalid:
A big chunk of elected Republicans are insane ideologues who want to pull the trigger and destroy everything, convinced that liberals are evil and doing the opposite of what liberals want is heroism that will result in a white utopia.
Another big chunk are mean, stupid, and cowardly. They hear that huge budget cuts and not raising the debt ceiling will hurt people, and that sounds like a good idea. They’re not totally into it because they also hear they themselves would get hurt.
Another big chunk are mean, not as stupid, and cowardly. Winning re-election in a party whose primaries operate on “Who is the most extreme?” is more important than anything else.
A small chunk are kinda mean, not stupid, cowardly, and completely in touch with reality. They are terrified of their constituents physically and electorally and really, really don’t want to stick their necks out and be noticed as pro-lib, but they really, really don’t want an economic collapse. “Please, Dems, won’t you save us from ourselves???”
The latter can and will cross over, but they’ll drag their feet first.
@Kay:
They’re not journalists. They’re a high school clique gossiping with their friends, whose major job skills are stretching little or no information into 24 hour coverage and convincing the clique leaders they’re cool and smart. This even stains liberal voices. Like NotMax said, the clique narrative was a Red Wave, and until that narrative was over, any juicy story that conflicts is untouchable, unimportant.
kalakal
@Princess:
Proceed indeed. One of the reasons the GOP get away with their crap is a lot of it happens in Congress where everything is always the incumbents fault. With the CRT garbage people get it on their local tv, swivel eyed loons screeching at their local school board. It’s one thing to vaguely hear about some arcane sounding bill going nowhere in congress, it’s quite another when you see some frothing at the mouth headcase wanting to run your kid’s school. Unlike Congress where the MSM somehow never mentions why bills fail but puts the blame on Biden, normies get to the see the GOP’s toerags screwing up their school, their kids.
This puts the blame directly where it belongs
Matt McIrvin
@Kay: Some of this is an outraged reaction to white liberals getting very slightly more educated about race due to the efforts of people like Ta-Nehisi Coates and Eric Foner and Ibrahim X. Kendi. As long as most white liberals had a sort of anodyne, “Martin Luther King fixed everything/the election of Obama proved racism is over” attitude to the subject, they could coexist with white conservatives, and Black people, well, they could go fuck themselves I guess. But the liberal consensus actually shifted a little in the 2010s, and that was scary.
Starfish
@Kay: It is peak culture wars stuff to be banning stuff that is likely not even available in your state.
Starfish
I liked it when the George Santos scam tied into the FTX scam.
Starfish
It pleases me deeply that people are suing their racist school districts that ban Black Lives Matter things but allow Confederate nonsense.
Layer8Problem
@Matt McIrvin: I still don’t see where the win is in the “blow it all up, let God sort it out” caucus’ debt ceiling plays. Republican officeholder nutbars might believe in apocalyptic porn stories or think the Democrats don’t mean it when they say “we’re not rewarding terrorists and hostage-takers”, but not all of their donors do. Some of them actually care about the economy, at least how it affects their assets. I fail to see how this doesn’t end with pointed threats from the Republican one-percent paymasters and ideology-definers to their bought-and-paid-for minions in the House if they don’t stop their nonsense. I’m not in the oh-noes, hand-wringing camp. I think it’s performative bullshit and a vague belief that the craven libs will blink, because we RWNJs are so darned smart.
Spanky
@oatler:
He’s still on MSNBC, and upon hearing him I’m not sure which side of the veil he’s on.
Starfish
@Layer8Problem: The “blow it all up, let God sort it out” crowd is not very bright. They are either agents of chaos who find politics to be boring or rugged individualists who are confident that in unconstrained capitalism they would win, as opposed to be under the thumb of some monopoly that would kill us all for a dollar.
sab
@Kay: My high school will be offering it. When I graduated in 1972 we had six black students out of 250. when my step-granddaughter graduated in 2019 they had 150 black students out of 250. It’s still the premier high school in the city, but white flight has had an impact.
I think the place has improved. The arts and music offerimgs are much much better. Test scores are still high. There is now an International Baccalaureate program. No more National Merit finalists, but that is because the school doesn’t have guidance counsellors trained to write those reference letters any more.
Jim Appleton
One of the most telling moments of the Tyre videos is, in the first one, the tasing.
The crux is that the tasing failed. He didn’t go down, instantly immobilized, like you’ve seen if you’ve watched video of people being tased.
The tell is that the officers are clearly expecting Tyre to drop, waiting without moving for him to go down. They’re stationary, clearly anticipating him falling limp. When he doesn’t and runs away, they react with surprise and aggression.
That anticipation of him going down — the fact that they don’t pursue him, but wait for the taser to do its job — shows they’ve all done this before.
sdhays
@Kay: Yeah, we didn’t cover much of slavery before the Civil War or anything regarding Reconstruction in my American history courses in Illinois public school. And after WWII we were almost out of time, so a bunch of things got compressed. And those things aren’t “just” AA history – they’re major, fundamental aspects of American history that happen to be uncomfortable for some people to talk about.
Maybe it’s changed, but I sincerely doubt it.
topclimber
@Layer8Problem: Maybe Biden should negotiate for concessions from McCarthy as the price for allowing his Wall Street caucus to vote on a clean debt bill.
Make that BJ: Biden and Jeffries.
sab
@Kay: Do you think DeWime will get his State School Board structural changes through? Interesting that there was no discussion of the proposed changes before the election.
sab
@sdhays: History classes below college level have always been a joke in public schools.
My sister went to a fancy prep school, and she had American history twice, once with a standard American textbook in the history class, and the second time with an imported French textbook in French class. She said you would have thought they were studying two different countries.
Layer8Problem
@Starfish: Full-figured gents with goatees, mail-order camouflage ensembles, and automatic weapons they blast as much ammo as they can afford at the range, who are convinced that they and their loved ones will be top of the heap in their bunkers with their gold and their MREs when the big one drops, and undeservedly rich (in a just world) assholes deeply concerned whether their security team with all the guns and special forces training will stay loyal if the same big one drops.
Princess
I’ll confess: I’m not from around here and the only American history I find remotely interesting is Black American history, which I find fascinating. I think it’s a great idea for an AP course that could have huge positive spin-off effects in all kinds of directions.
Ken
Maybe they’re all history majors who couldn’t get a job in that field, so went into journalism?
Ken
“Definitely the work of the same killer. And like the others, the business card of the CEO of Goldman-Sachs was left on top of the body.”
UncleEbeneezer
@Baud: I know a lot of Progressives of the hold-their-nose to vote for Hillary variety. Organizers, activists etc. None of them are putting much of their energy into figuring out how to fight this onslaught on public school curricula. I don’t see the loudest and most celebrated Progressive politicians doing much either. I’m not sure exactly what can be done. It’s a very difficult problem given our SCOTUS and the difficulty of stopping these loons in deep-red, mostly-white districts. White Rage/Panic, Fear of a Black/Brown Planet, are problems that have plagued this country forever. But I think it is extremely selective to say that this is only the fault of Centrist Dems, The Dem Party etc. I’m all for leaning into the value of public schools, but after a 40 year smear campaign that a whole lot of people on the Left bought into as well, it’s going to be tough. I know Bernie-bro Lefties who practiced White Flight in order to go to “better schools” which they define based on having more arts programs and lenient vaccine requirements. Those schools are also charters/magnets in mostly-white zip codes, of course.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Kay: Sort of takes the “new” out of “news.”
UncleEbeneezer
@Starfish: I hope Black parents in FL find a way to sue about the law on the justification that curricula that excludes their history makes them feel “ashamed” of their race. I hope someone finds a way to weaponize the vague wording to bring down these shitty laws.
eclare
@UncleEbeneezer: Ben Crump, the same attorney representing Tyre’s family, said that he intends to sue.
Nelle
What gives it away is that no one is required to take an AP course. Such courses are well beyond a required history course. These eager morons are not for parental choice. They are for “My choice” imposed on everyone. Authoritarians bent on thought and information control.
Layer8Problem
@UncleEbeneezer: I have been wondering where are the state boycotts and demands for divestment in response to this curricula crap and anti-trans militancy.
MomSense
I can’t remember when I first noticed the Portland protest about the war in Ukraine. I think it was before Christmas. At the beginning the signs were mostly things like Negotiations Not Nuclear War and I thought it was misguided. The protests have now changed in their message and it is all anti NATO pro Russian propaganda signs now.
It’s a good thing I was on my way to my first physical therapy appointment or you might be reading about an altercation in monument square.
I just found out that the organization sponsoring this is Peace Action Maine and I’m so goddamned pissed.
OzarkHillbilly
Hence Republicans desire to deep six it.
UncleEbeneezer
@eclare: Problem is, Crump doesn’t have a very good track record of winning. As one of my fave black podcasters joked “Welp, now we know this shit is staying banned!”
eclare
@UncleEbeneezer: Well that’s disappointing.
UncleEbeneezer
@Layer8Problem: Yup. Where’s all that M4A, GND, StudentLoan energy?…
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@eclare: Haven’t watched it yet, but in general I’ve liked what I’ve seen of Wanda Sykes in that desk better than Leslie Jones last week. Not sure why, I loved everything Jones did on SNL, but she just grated on me.
Just found an article with all the upcoming substitutes . Very excited about all of them, especially to see Al Franken back on camera!
Layer8Problem
@Ken: This is what I’m thinking. “Two minds but with one single memory.” 🤣
Starfish
@UncleEbeneezer: I know I didn’t explain it well and left it behind a link, but suing racist school districts is a thing that is happening now.
When it comes to public K-12 education, there are a lot of people without kids or whose kids are grown who don’t have kids who don’t feel like they have the standing to work on such issues.
JML
It’s small comfort when we keep having police murders like Tyre Nichols, but I’m glad it’s Joe Biden trying to lend comfort to the family. Biden understands grief and has deep wells of compassion. Can you imagine TFG even considering making that call?
I want the President to give a damn about people. TFG hates, fears, and has contempt for most people. More and more that’s what we see from GOP leaders: people who have contempt & hatred for people.
Geminid
@Frankensteinbeck: Steve Israel used to represent most of what is now the NY 3rd. In an article for the Atlantic be said that Mr. Zimmerman, Santos’s opponent, told him that when he and his campaign staff pressed journalists to cover Santos’s bogus life history they were told that Santos wasn’t going to win anyway, and so it wasn’t a big enough story.
Some have speculated that Santos himself did not expect to win, and was just running a lucrative scam that he thought would remain unreported because it wasn’t successful in its ostensible purpose. Santos may have been a vehicle for others using their money to build influence in the party. Andrew Intrater, owner of the Columbus Nova investment company, and his cousin, the Russian oligarch Viktor Vekselberg come to mind here.
But no matter his motivation, an unexpected red wave in New York left Santos stranded on a Long Island beach, exposed for all to see. Republican gains statewide last year were a surprise. That certainly does not excuse the media’s former inattention but may explain part of it.
Santos is surely making up for his obscurity now, and the drag he is on McCarthy’s enterprise outweighs his lone vote, I think. McCarthy cannot make Santos quit, but the way he doesn’t even try makes me think that Santos might be able to implicate other New York Republicans in his crimes.
That may be the reason the heading for Santos’s Twitter account has a picture of himself and Elise Stefanik, or did as of two weeks ago.
eclare
@Ceci n est pas mon nym: I’ve liked Wanda Sykes ever since she did some spots on the Chris Rock show, so a long time! She and Roy Wood, Jr. have a great comedic chemistry.
Starfish
@UncleEbeneezer: Yes. I am hoping this happens too. Families need to start suing. These children are going to be entirely unprepared for the AP English exam if their state is banning “The Bluest Eyes” by Toni Morrison. When I took the AP English exam many years ago, I believe they included works we were familiar with but also works that we were not familiar with. Pretty sure there was something by Omar Khayyam in the readings on the test, and it stuck with me that “Hey, they included a Persian poet, and we never had any exposure to that in school.”
UncleEbeneezer
@MomSense: These people had pre-determined that Nato/US were the Real Imperialists™ from the get-go. Even before the invasion when we all knew it was imminent, I don’t remember any of them calling out Russia/Putin or putting their energy towards stopping it. It was all about how NATO was the problem and arguing that nobody should respond when Russia invades.
Betty Cracker
@Kay: There’s definitely a kernel of truth to the complaints in that letter, but the mistake — the tragedy, really, considering how things turned out — was framing “cancel culture” as an existential threat to democracy and intellectual freedom. It isn’t and never was, and like you said, it likely would have sorted itself out without the wild overreaction from people with huge megaphones and outsized influence, who were not coincidentally those who felt most at risk of a career-derailing “offense.” Great job everybody!
kalakal
@UncleEbeneezer: That’s been the narrative for years. I had to really restrain myself a couple of years agowhen some git was explaining how Crimea had “always been part of Russia”. I pointed out that if 19th April 1783 was to be the official start point for which nations “owned” which patches of ground he was now a UK subject
OzarkHillbilly
@Starfish:
“Ah, fill the cup.
What boots it to repeat
How time is slipping ‘neath our feet.
Unborn tomorrow and dead yesterday,
What matter they if today be sweet?”
eta: from the Rubaiyat
Steeplejack
@Amir Khalid:
I was late back to the daytime thread yesterday. You might be surprised to find that your laptop DVD drive possibly is region-coded. Some info here.
Steeplejack
This was the best thing I saw on the Tyre Nichols case last night. Excellent three-minute analysis by Goff. Highly recommended. (No triggering video shown.)
Suzanne
@Matt McIrvin:
Yeah, it’s true, and I don’t get it.
The lowercase-L libertarian position is the correct one here, which is to remove constraints to people living their lives as they see fit, and those constraints may be legal, economic, cultural, etc etc etc.
I just will never genuinely understand why some people are so invested in other people’s business. It’s a thing I can observe but I don’t relate to it, at all.
Spanky
@Starfish:
I pay thousands of dollars a year into my school district. You’re goddamn right I have standing, kids or not.
NotMax
Flash flood warning was supposed to be lifted at 4 a.m.. Now after 5 and if anything the rain is coming down harder and the thunder more intense.
High enough above sea level not to be much concerned about flooding (and on a sloping lot). Intersections in town at sea level must be awash. Friday was day 2 of this mishegas.
Mentioned in an earlier thread it’s low temperature enough at this location to have broken out the space heater. Most houses have no insulation, including this cottage (which also has jalousie windows through which the wind whistles and a driving rain sprinkles in, so while it’s not toasty it’s sufficient to take the edge off the chill and chase the damp away.
Geminid
@UncleEbeneezer: People are also substituting “Hegemony” for “Imperialism” now as a descriptor for American misdeeds.
There is a “Rage Against the War Machine” rally planned for DC on February 19. Its list of promised speakers is a who’s who of the Red-Brown alliance. I won’t name them so soon after breakfast, but I noticed that one is an affiliate of the Schiller Institute, who ran for Senate in New York last year. The Institute is the successor to Lyndon LaRouche’s outfit.
The “Von Mises Caucus” that now controls the Libertarian Party is listed as a Silver Sponsor of the event.
Downpuppy
Just to restate the obvious:
White people in the US have lots more money & power than Blacks.
History & CRT explain why.
Cutting out that knowledge lets people think that it’s the Blacks fault.
Pure enabling of racism.
UncleEbeneezer
@Starfish: Look, I was assured for the last six years that Progressives (unlike Dems) had all the answers and were always willing to fight on behalf of others. Even on issues that largely don’t directly impact them (like Immigration, Defund, Abolish etc.). I’m still waiting for them to put their magical powers into the CRT and Trans Panic fights because we could sure use them right now. Meanwhile they continue their incessant whining about Student Loans and Merrick Garland. Compared to the non-stop screaming about GND, M4A and StudentLoans, it’s nothing but the sound of crickets on these current and very important fights. I’m on email lists from a million Progressive orgs and I haven’t seen almost ANY calls to action, marches, proposed legislation etc. on this stuff. I’m just pointing that out for the next time someone pulls the “If only we let Progressives lead” and “the real problem is the Dem Party” arguments.
Matt McIrvin
@Suzanne: Part of it is, I think, a nostalgia for the New Deal coalition that we were talking about in the other thread–which was, among many other things, a Faustian deal with racist, reactionary Dixiecrats. They imagine that they could get that back and achieve a broad democratic-socialist consensus if the left could somehow shed the remnants of hippie cultural radicalism. That the salt-of-the-earth white masses are eager to embrace economic leftism if we could somehow get past that.
And you can squint at some policy polling and kind of convince yourself that it’s possible, if you ignore almost everything about the political history of the past few decades. Liberals can’t actually turn off the culture wars like flipping a switch. We’re not in control.
NotMax
@Steeplejack
Jeepers, does anyone include an optical drive on laptops anymore? Thought those went sayonara like a decade ago.
Same thing for CD players in automobiles. Ancient tech no longer factory installed (with a few exceptions in luxury models). Word on the street is AM radio will be the next to go in new vehicles.
oldgold
Many, too many, Americans were not ready for a black President. And, of course, some will never be.
Much of the destructive and perverse politics of the recent past is rooted in the race induced fear of being governed by “them.” As this fear has marinated and been exploited by the GOP, its manifestations have gone from dog whistles, easily audible murmurs to the current overt and loud racist acts. And, seemingly, at little cost, perhaps even delivering political profits, to its purveyors.
It may take a generation before the arc of the moral universe, Martin Luther King spoke of, resumes bending toward justice.
Steeplejack
@NotMax:
Well, apparently Amir’s laptop has a DVD drive, or he wouldn’t have brought up playing region-coded discs.
Spanky
@oldgold: The arc of the moral universe doesn’t bend towards jack shit unless there’s something pushing it
ETA left unsaid was the fact that there are forces pushing contrary to where you and I want it. Too often that is left unsaid.
Matt McIrvin
@oldgold: On my bad days I believe the only way through is a baptism in blood. That the only solutions left are eliminationist ones and what we’re heading for is a civil war of extermination. But also that in such a war, what’s most likely by far is that we lose; they will eliminate us. And that even if we won, we’d really lose, because we would have to become the monsters we fear.
On the bad days.
Downpuppy
Santos strikes me as a bit Max Bialystock. He pocketed most of the campaign money, but once he won his troubles started.
eclare
LATimes reporting another mass shooting in CA. Three dead, four wounded.
oldgold
@Spanky: I do not dispute that.
NotMax
@Steeplejack
“Stone knives and bearskins.”
— Spock
:)
More seriously, good freestanding optical drives one can plug into the ‘puter are inexpensive. Caveat is to go with a known brand. The knock-offs are concentrated crap in a flat plastic box. Have had luck with one sold by LG purchased in the past.
Amir Khalid
@Steeplejack:
Yes, my used laptop does indeed have an optical drive. I have had several such laptops, and on all of them I’ve been able to play DVDs I purchased from the US. Ditto with standalone optical disc (CD/DVD) players I’ve purchased here.
Mai Naem mobile
The George Santos story is completely crazy. If its not even his name how the hell did he end up on a ballot. The State of NY has some explaining to do. The NYT, RNC, RCCC and the DNC+DCCC. It makes you wonder if there’s other people currently in Congress with maybe lesser level lying but still outright lying beyond embellishment. I keep on expecting it to be some kind of crazy long skit. I had a coworker who lied kind of like Santos but on a lesser scale. Its like they live in their own delusional fantasy land.
NotMax
@Amir Khalid
Stab in the dark but that sounds more like a missing codec problem.
narya
I think the 1619 project on Hulu will be the thing that tips me into subscribing. I was already leaning, so I could see the Bear and Reservation Dogs, so now I’m up to three things. I’ve really avoided things in addition to Netflix, but I think Hulu and Apple TV are going to be additions, unless I can figure out some way to combine everything into one. How egregious are the ads on Hulu?
sab
@Princess: I wonder how many of the disgruntled parents have kids who even qualified for AP? In my day it was only a tiny segment of the students that were even allowed to take those courses.
Amir Khalid
@UncleEbeneezer:
I’ve come across Malaysian tankies who apparently believe The West is framing Russia over the shooting down of MH17.
Spanky
@oldgold: Yeah, sorry that I made it look like it was directed at you. It was intended as a reminder to all.
Circular reasoning
I’m glad protests didn’t get violent/destructive last night. I was feeling conflicted about the build up coverage. I get that some serious shit went down after similar events in recent years so it was legit to prepare for that. But the framing had an undertone of “those people” being inherently destructive and violent that felt pretty disgusting.
Suzanne
@Matt McIrvin: I think that’s part of it, but I think there’s something deeper at work. I’m not sure if it’s a status threat thing, or projection, or what…..but some people just demand conformity. Then some of them dress it up in the language of unity, and I don’t find that convincing. I know that it is intrinsically human to be social and want to relate….but it feels like there’s always some way, even if it’s very shallow, to find something relatable about others.
Like, I get it if you don’t “approve” of your transgender neighbor’s “lifestyle”…. but you can’t put that aside and find common cause around trash pickup?
Steeplejack
@Amir Khalid:
Your question yesterday was about Region 2 and PAL discs, not U.S. ones. I guess you’ll get it sorted out.
NotMax
Just finished The Great War of Archimedes on Prime. about the planning for construction of the battleship Yamato.
Sounded as if it would be interesting on first blush. Has its moments, however mostly trite. Don’t bother unless the video well has run dry.
eclare
@narya: I have the ad-free version, so I don’t know. If you do subscribe, also check out Dopesick. Michael Keaton in an award-winning role.
Matt McIrvin
@Amir Khalid: Were you here for the days of “Bob in Portland”? That was one of his major claims.
eclare
@Amir Khalid: Wow. Words fail.
tam1MI
Just got done reading the Eve of Destruction thread, and I’m sitting here shocked that, out of 202 comments, not one mentioned the music of Phil Ochs. Almost every one of his songs are as timely today as they were when they were written (sadly). If you’ve never heard of him, go check him out, you won’t regret it!
kalakal
@NotMax: Thanks for the warning. You’ve saved me a disappointment
Amir Khalid
@Matt McIrvin:
I was indeed. He directed a lot of that stuff at me, for the obvious reason.
Matt McIrvin
@Suzanne: There’s been a lot of left criticism of America’s pathological hyper-individualism over the past couple of decades, the spirit that rejects all collective action and sees rolling coal or refusing to get vaccinations as a legitimate expression of individual choice, and I suppose some may see cultural conservatism as opposed to that. Similar to the “communitarian” attitude of people like Amitai Etzioni. If the collective should be able to force you to get vaccinated or get your car fixed, maybe it should also be able to force you to act cishet and go to church and pull up your pants and get a damn haircut, if we collectively decide that is the optimal way to be.
(Nostalgia for postwar Leave It To Beaver world, then, maybe?)
Starfish
@UncleEbeneezer: What organizations are you considering progressive here, and why have you not unsubscribed from lists that don’t align with your values?
topclimber
@UncleEbeneezer: Who are the “almost any”?
Suzanne
@Matt McIrvin: There’s plenty of right-wing criticism of the same individualistic strain of thought, but they cite gay marriage and no-fault divorce and abortion as the negative externalities.
I will note that, in the case of germ- and pollution-spreading, one is actually failing at the “keeping it to yourself” part, which is the necessary condition.
narya
@eclare: Thanks for the rec! I like Michael Keaton–he’s done some really interesting things. Even the ones I didn’t like (waving to Birdman . . .) were interesting.
NotMax
@narya
Murdoch Mysteries Quasi-tongue in cheek police detective series set in sleepy late Victorian era Toronto . Innocent pleasure. 13 seasons on Huilu (also on Hoopla). That is not the whole kit and kaboodle,BTW, season 16 currently airing new episodes in Canada..
Chris T.
@Honus:
No, he just smells that way.
Matt McIrvin
@Suzanne: Thinking back now to that (possibly flawed but intuitively appealing) work some years ago about the distinction between conservative vs. liberal morality, and about how liberals tend to prioritize care/harm and fairness as primary among their moral motivations, whereas conservatives assign at least equal importance to authority, purity and ingroup/outgroup identity. Maybe some of the leftists who aren’t sympathetic to the liberal mindset are really just leftists who have more of a “conservative” moral outlook. We tend to think that if people aren’t doing any harm or behaving unfairly, they can do what they want–that harm and fairness are the key things. But this is not obvious to everyone.
NotMax
@NotMax
Neglected to state that in some of the earliest episodes of the first season the acting skill of non-primary characters is, shall we say, noticeably sub-par. Once over that speed bump it’s smooth sailing.
SFAW
@oatler:
Hysterium : [Dressed in women’s clothing] My father will turn over his grave if he saw me like this.
Pseudolus : Your father is alive.
Hysterium : Well… this will kill him.
topclimber
@topclimber: Not snark. Curious to listen to whoever has sense on the Socialist side of the tent.
Steeplejack
@UncleEbeneezer:
What is GND—Green New Deal?
Suzanne
@Matt McIrvin: Oh, agree.
And I also separate my views about “who I want to spend my time with and have my kids around and where I want to spend my money” and “how we have to operate a government and use force of law and violence”. But many people on both the left and right don’t do that.
NotMax
@SFAW
Rul3 #!: Do not do anything which might piss off Miles Gloriosus.
Rule #2: See rule #1.
NotMax
@NotMax
Crap crap crap.
Rul3 #! = Rule #1
Starfish
@Matt McIrvin: That sounds like a John Haidt book. Probably, The Righteous Mind.
Omnes Omnibus
@Kay:
I was in seventh grade when Roots aired. My lily white Connecticut middle school made the show required viewing with discussions in social studies the next day.
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
I think so. Hence the “horseshoe.”
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: Agreed Baud. The weirdness that is Santos makes normies cringe. It is a good thing for us
In other news, I scored a barely used box of Kohinoor Magic pencils for $20 less than their Amazon price on ebay. They should be delivered this Monday. I bought a pack of 5 and I am hooked!
Omnes Omnibus
@sab:
National Merit semifinals and finalists come out of the PSAT and SAT. The scholarships do require a letters of recommendation, etc., but that’s a level above.
Baud
The “do what you want as long as it doesn’t hurt others” principle is a decent rule of thumb but it’s harder to put into practice in the real world IMHO.
kalakal
@Baud: It would help if more people could distinguish between morals and ethics. That and develop a sense of proportion
Omnes Omnibus
@Baud: I’ve always liked this version, “it doesn’t matter what you do in the bedroom as long as you don’t do it in the street and frighten the horses.”
tam1MI
It’s also worth checking out THE DROPOUT, about the George Santos-like Elizabeth Holmes and the Theranos scam.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I have no idea what Normies think of Santos. trump increased his vote by ten million after telling us to inject lysol and drink bleach, and DeSantis went from winning by ~.5% 2018 to 15 in ’22. I do think those NY Rs who want him gone now are thinking about criminal trials, that they just might have an inkling will reach up to the Zeldin campaign and others in the financial structure of the state party, will be making local headlines in the spring or summer of ’24. But I don’t think His Kevin is a long-term thinker, and may even be writing a couple of those seats off already. In spite of his reputation for stupid, I think it might have been Kinzinger who said, “he comes to you and knows the numbers in your district”, might’ve been the same interview when AK said McCarthy, once a close friend, was a piece of shit
gwangung
@Amir Khalid: That’s common among US Progressives as well.
Shakes my head….
Baud
@Omnes Omnibus:
Bedroom issues is a good example. Unregulated consensual sex among adults does have the potential to hurt third parties in a variety of ways, but no liberal worth his salt thinks that’s something the government should regulate.
mrmoshpotato
@oatler:
I thought you were making some absurd joke there.
Omnes Omnibus
@Matt McIrvin: And on the good days?
Baud
@Omnes Omnibus:
Earth destroying asteroid.
ETA: Or supervolcano.
Matt McIrvin
@Starfish: Yeah, it was Haidt.
Matt McIrvin
@Omnes Omnibus: On the good days I think maybe we can hold off the bloodbath long enough that the worst of them die off. But of course there are always conservatives since what is conservative is a moving target.
Omnes Omnibus
@Baud:
Well, at least the fascists wouldn’t win.
Chris T.
@NotMax:NZ (Auckland-ish) got huge flooding recently too. Saw video of a bridge with the creek running over it followed by the bridge itself breaking off and going downstream…
Baud
@Omnes Omnibus:
👍
suzanne
@Baud: Agreed. It especially gets thorny if we want to use shared resources to help people recover from the negative consequences of their autonomy. I believe in that, usually, but I agree that it. crimes more difficult to manage.
I am pragmatic, essentially, by nature.
Geminid
@Matt McIrvin: This strain of “Left” thought may be situational, based on antipathy towards the Democratic Party, its liberal tenets, and its diverse coalition. The dismissal of “identity politics” dates back to Mr. Sanders’ campaigning as a white male advocating a coalition based on economic class, and the anger when he did not prevail.
I see a lot of implicit anti-Black sentiment expressed by some folks on the left. These people, it seems, will never get over the 2020 South Carolina Democratic primary, and their sore loser mentality focuses their animus towards Black Democrats in general and figures like Kamala Harris and Hakeem Jeffries in particular. Similarly, their abuse of Transportation Secretary Buttegieg reflects vindictiveness over the Iowa primary. But most Sanders supporters moved on from their disappointments long ago.
Looking forward and in practical terms, I think that pragmatic progressives and democratic socialists have opted to work within the Democratic Party’s coalition. The ones left criticizing from outside are maddening, but not numerous. One reason they are so bitter is because they know they have lost the political argument.
schrodingers_cat
@Matt McIrvin: I have lived through a bloodbath unleashed by the RWNJs in India in the late 80s and early 90s and no we are not close to that. Not by far. That wave is what bought Modi to power in the mid teens.
ETA: Yes there are elements on the right that want that but they don’t the institutional power to pull it off. Yet.
Another Scott
@Baud: Yup. People should learn the importance of staying in their lane.
Someone here a day or few ago said something like, “THIS is what they’re all outraged about? Don’t they have anything actually important going on in their lives??”
I get it. Culture is important. Community is important. Having agreed-upon baseline standards is important. Respecting and having pride in history is important.
But those are not the only important things, and they’re not the most important things.
It’s also important to be humble. And to recognize that we’re not all the same. And to recognize that our brains are organic organs that are not perfect machines and that evolutionary structures (being afraid / startled / wary of shadows and falling and sudden movements, etc.) affects how we react (sometimes with deadly consequences). And to recognize that our fears get in the way of thinking clearly. And to recognize that there are many bad things about the dominant culture that are holding us all back. And to recognize that humans don’t like change, so change is always hard. And to recognize that change is essential because technology is changing, the economy is changing, the environment is changing because of the choices we make as humans.
I would guess that at least 90% of the RWNJs screaming about public libraries had not been in one in the decades prior to being all het-up about these books. :-/ It doesn’t actually affect them. AP History curriculum doesn’t actually affect them. A few trans kids participating in school sports doesn’t actually affect them. And they need to recognize that there isn’t actually a scary vast woke conspiracy that only RWNJ politicians can protect them from.
People need to stay in their lane, recognize when they’re being manipulated by cynical politicians, pay attention to what’s important, and do the work to understand how they’re being manipulated.
And next week, I’d like my own personal electric helicopter.
Thanks.
Cheers,
Scott.
Matt McIrvin
@Geminid: I saw it in Ralph Nader’s dismissal of “gonadal politics” in 2000. And some recent discussion of Murray Bookchin over on LGM suggests to me that he was concerned about Bernie Sanders blithely dismissing these concerns as far back as the 1970s.
Matt McIrvin
@schrodingers_cat: It does seem to me like there’s a broad dismissal of democratic politics on the US right and on our furthest left that is highly disturbing. Maybe it’s just because these are factions that lose the argument in a straight-up democratic fight, whereas the right knew they could win broad popular majorities back when I was young. And since the USSR broke up and the right decided they like Russia, they don’t associate autocracy with Communism or Godlessness any more. It’s just, “I’d welcome a dictatorship as long as it was a good dictator.”
The one thing I do find reassuring is that, despite having a large share of reactionaries, our military has an antipathy to the idea of themselves ruling civil society that has been drilled into them for generations, and it seems to be holding. Our cops, not so great.
Uncle Cosmo
@OzarkHillbilly: In fact Project Guttenberg has quatrain XXXVII as
I suspected that Fitzgerald wouldn’t have truncated a perfectly good pentametric line when there was no need to, and viola…
(FTR I scribbled a shitload of pentameter in my salad days [when I was a green vegetable swimming in oil and vinegar]; scansion was my specialty.) /pedant
kalakal
@Geminid: To a full blown fan of
anything that gets in the way of the pure blinding light that all the worlds ills are caused by economic inequalities is an irrelevance. Worse it is a dangerous irrelevance deliberately encouraged & promoted by the evil elites as part of a policy of divide & rule. Racism/ mysogyny/ homophobia/ trans hatred etc etc are irrelevant as determinants of peoples lived experience, or rather a superstructure over the base, their economic class, and any who give such things weight are knaves and/or fools impeding the glorious onward march of the proletariat. The fact that most of those subscribing to this view are middle class tossers with no sense of history living in a very narrow circle and who don’t really like the horny handed sons of toil is a significant contribution to the fact that their world view is, as Douglas Adams put it, a load of dingoes kidneys
Jackie
Some possible good news from Political Wire:
“The GOP effort to remove Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) from the House Foreign Affairs Committee took another blow Friday, with Rep. Ken Buck (R-CO) pledging to oppose it, NBC News reports.
Said Buck: “I think that we should not engage in this tit for tat. I am opposed to the selection — or the removal — of Congresswoman Omar from committees.””
Matt McIrvin
@Geminid: …There also seem to be a lot of people on the left who sniff out the obvious insincerity in corporate diversity initiatives and conclude from that that diversity itself is some kind of corporatist distraction, a thing the bourgeois make you think about so you won’t rebel against them. And there’s a certain amount of complaint along the lines of “if this is just about making sure minorities and women participate equally in an unjust, exploitative system, what’s the point?”
But that’s never just the point, unless you get your messaging entirely from the Fortune 500.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Jackie: Wow. That’s a surprise. IIRC Buck is an anti-immigrant Tea Bagger with a serious case of foot-in-mouth disease who helped turn Colorado blue.
J R in WV
deleted
Baud
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
As I said last night, if you’re a Republican, why would you want someone you can demonize for their foreign policy views off the Foreign Relations committee?
Qrop Non Sequitur
So I just went to the store and saw an op-ed advertised on the front page of the local right-wing rag (Boston Herald) suggesting our newly elected governor, who has been in the job 3 weeks, is now the sole person responsible for the current state of the MBTA, our regional public transportation.
I didn’t spend the dollar to read it, so the article may be more nuanced than the headline suggests, but gross.
Baud
@J R in WV:
Best segue ever.
Matt McIrvin
@Starfish: …I remember thinking that liberal preoccupation with alternative medicine, “natural” foods, antivaxxerism etc. seemed like it was a “purity” motivation manifesting itself on the left… and it’s very interesting that in the years since I thought that, the right has been increasingly taking ownership of this stuff.
marklar
@Downpuppy: What a wonderfully concise way of summing up the issue.
@Matt McIrvin: Haidt’s work is infuriating in that it treats moral foundations that are primarily outer-directed (e.g., harm/care) as being equivalent to moral foundations that are inner-directed (e.g., purity/sanctity). He then uses that to create false equivalences between the morality of conservatives and progressives. Ugh.
J R in WV
@Baud:
In retrospect I deleted it — was trying to say scaring horses in the street is harder than you might think…
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
I think there’s a certain secular spiritualism among certain liberals, but that gets harder to sustain when the right appropriates it and then takes it to extremes like they do with old fashioned religion.
@marklar: Both sides!
Baud
@J R in WV:
Dammit. That was a beauty.
Matt McIrvin
@Baud: The degree to which right-wing evangelical religion is bound up with alt-medicine quackery via MLM schemes is, I think, under-appreciated.
Matt McIrvin
@marklar: I think the framework is interesting but there’s nothing wrong with saying that the conservatives’ mix of motivations is just wrong. I am a liberal, after all, and of course I’m going to regard liberal morality as the right one; it’s mine.
Librarian
Has Biden said anything about what’s going on in Florida? Maybe it would be nice if he did.
Starfish
@Matt McIrvin: Here, let me share this Business Insider article with you to ruin leftist purity. The article is about conspiracy theories and who they appeal to, so it is relevant to our discussion.
Baud
@Starfish:
That’s just what the Establishment wants you to think.
Matt McIrvin
@Starfish: Has anyone tried to get ChatGPT to generate conspiracy theories? It might have specific safeguards against that but from everything I’ve seen, one thing that machine possesses is boundless confidence in its own bullshit.
Another Scott
@Matt McIrvin: Made me look.
They want my cell phone number for verification to sign up for an account.
Nope.
Oh well.
Cheers,
Scott.
Matt McIrvin
@Another Scott: Yeah, I balk at that too.
Geminid
@Matt McIrvin: Yes, I would better to have said “to Sanders’ presidential campaigns and before.”
In August of 2018, a journalist tagged along on a plane flight to Kansas City with Sanders and Ms. Ocasio-Cortez, who had just beaten Joe Crowley in the New York CD. Their mission was to boost former Sanders campaign worker Brent Welder, who was running in the Kansas 3rd CD primary.
While interviewing Ocasio-Cortez campaign manager Saikat Chakrabarti, the journalist pointed out that Welder’s leading opponent, Sharice Davids, was a Native Amerian and a lesbian. It’s time we get over identity politics, Chakrabarti responded (this of course was situational; the Justice Democrats outfit that Mr. Charkrabarti co-founded leans into identity when their candidate is a “person of color” challenging a white male incumbent).
I picked up on this at the time because I was intently researching the Justice Democrats. I was not alone it seems, because the circumstances of that primary are frequently raised by critics of the JDs and their sister organization, Brand New Congress.
Davids ended up beating Welder, and went on to unseat the Republican incumbent and win reelection twice.
Some people point out that Sanders and company could have really helped Marie Newman, who was trying to beat Rep. Lipinski, one of the party’s most conservative members of Congress. Newman lost by just a few hundred votes, and Sanders and newly famous Ocasio-Cortez might have put her over the top. Newman had supported Clinton in 2016 though, so that plane flew right on by.
*My research on the Justice Democrats led me to the oddly named blog, “Balloon Juice.”
opiejeanne
@MomSense: I’m glad you identified the city as the Portland in Maine, because there’s another Portland on the Left Coast that has had a lot of protests by a lot of idiots, some so bad that a hospital had to move the maternity ward to another building: Violence was being threatened against the facility for performing sex-change operations on little children.
Starfish
@Matt McIrvin:
Me: Explain leftists who do not understand racial justice
ChatGPT:
It is not accurate to say that all leftists do not understand racial justice. Many left-leaning individuals and organizations are actively working towards racial justice and advocating for policies that aim to address systemic inequalities and discrimination. However, it is possible that some individuals who identify as leftist may not have a full understanding of the complexities of racial justice, and may not be aware of the ways in which their own beliefs and actions may contribute to or perpetuate racial disparities.
It is important for individuals to educate themselves about the history and ongoing impact of racism, as well as actively engage in anti-racist practices and supporting marginalized communities. It is also important for individuals to recognize that understanding and working towards racial justice is an ongoing process that requires constant learning, self-reflection, and collaboration with others.
schrodingers_cat
I think this was a point made by commenter rikyrah that Obama upset many white people even the ones who thought of themselves as having enlightened views on race. Not only was he as good as they were, he was better. Case in point, Clint Eastwood.
To make up for that they had to punish all those who voted for Obama by choosing the worst possible specimen of a white male to run for Presidency.
BlueGuitarist
@tam1MI:
Yay for Phil Ochs
in here’s to the state of Mississippi, verses address:
racism and hypocrisy of
schools, churches, cops, judges, laws, government
(Name is pronounced Oaks, not ox)
https://youtu.be/KrrOY0vwuPE
Baud
@Geminid:
No wonder you don’t like them.
Matt McIrvin
@BlueGuitarist: Ochs’ “Love Me, I’m A Liberal” is both (1) a terrific skewering of the hypocrisies of many liberals, from a more radical-left perspective and (2) often exploited for purposes of liberal-bashing by people who themselves have awful goals. I guess most of the best political rhetoric is like that.
I first learned about him in my youth from an early They Might Be Giants song, “The Day”:
“The day Marvin Gaye and Phil Ochs got married
the trees all waved their giant arms
And happiness bled from every streetcorner
And biplanes bombed with fluffy pillows.”
Both, of course, tragically dead singer/songwriters who had tried to promote a better and more peaceful world through their art.
Miss Bianca
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I know, it’s a little weird seeing Buck look like one of the *sane* ones in the CO coalition, as he and Doug Lamborn always seemed like the benchmark for right-wing assholery.
Then along came Lauren Boobert…
Matt McIrvin
@schrodingers_cat: There were the people who went “A black man as President, OK, I can live with that, I guess it’s been too long… but a black man AND THEN A WOMAN? That’s too much! That’s going too far! When are they going to be satisfied??”
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@marklar: What’s all the head scratching about; there was real effort to push creationism as an alternative science in the 90s and 00s in Fundamentalist Church and main stream science is EVIL. Now these kids are adults thinking the Flintstones and the mini series V from the ’70s are documentaries.
Take Harry Turtledove for example, I follow him on twitter and the number of wingnuts who are outraged when they discover that his book about time traveling pro-apartheid Boers, arming the Confederacy with AK47s isn’t actual history is hilarious. These people literally don’t understand the concept of fiction because they were taught all their lives that books are magical devices that God talks to us with.
Citizen Alan
@oatler: How dare you get my hopes up only for me to learn the sumbitch is still alive!
Another Scott
@schrodingers_cat: All respect to you and rikyrah, but I think there’s a good counterpoint.
TFG briefly ran for President in 2012. If the primary motivation for people turning out to vote for him was anti-Obama sentiment, then I would think he would have had a stronger case then (e.g. the desire to make him a one-term President).
I continue to think that it was mainly the anti-Hillary, Anybody But Clinton, people who came out of the woodwork and elected him (in the Electoral College).
Yes, of course, it was both, but there’s a huge pathology in the USA against Hillary that isn’t anywhere near as strong against Obama. IMHO.
FWIW.
Cheers,
Scott.
Citizen Alan
@Starfish: This. They want America to be Somalia for white folx because they all think that they’ll end up the local warlord instead of the poor schlub who dances when bandits shoot at his feet.
Citizen Alan
@sab:
I would dearly love for someone to research the issue and determine what percentage of US high school history teachers are not also coaches of one athletic program or another.
patrick II
@Kay:
It is not a required part of the normal curriculum. That puts a much different slant on it. It is not just that they don’t want their children to learn about black history (with the excuse that it would be too emotionally distressing for their babies) but they don’t want anyone else’s children to learn about black history either.
Citizen Alan
@Starfish: JFC!! According to the article, a teacher authorized a white student to dress as HITLER for spirit week!
Omnes Omnibus
@Another Scott:
I think that you are right. If it was a strong anti-Obama sentiment, the candidate most closely associated, by service and by campaign strategy, with Obama would not have won the Democratic primary or the general election.
Another Scott
@sab: My limited experience with history classes in school was always less than satisfying. US history seemed to end around WWI , IIRC, because we ran out of time (snow days and the like).
I still vaguely remember a “mini-course” in high school called “Flicks” on important movies, taught by a young Black woman. One we saw was “The Birth of a Nation”. It was obviously important from a history-of-film perspective, but what got me was that the teacher told us (and I took it that it was her informed opinion, and was surprised by it at the time) that the KKK was misunderstood and was actually a beneficial group… (!!!) It was so long ago that I may have mixed things up, but one needs to make things clear for those who aren’t paying attention!!
Cheers,
Scott.
Omnes Omnibus
@Citizen Alan:
No, I think you exaggerate. They want their imagined US of the 1950 back. The problem is that it never existed, and all weirdos who so scare them aren’t going to go away.
Citizen Alan
@Starfish: JFC!! According to the article, a teacher authorized a white student to dress as HITLER for spirit week!
Kay
@Betty Cracker:
I think it would have sorted itself out because these things do. They get more sensible because people actually have to use them.
I was on a public school committee when “anti bullying” went into effect. I knew it would be a little rigid and ridiculous at first and it was – minor incidents were BULLYING because a lot of people just can’t handle nuance at all but it moderated. The rules become workable. That would have happened with “cancel culture” too but the Entitled Middle Aged Guardians of the Liberal Order couldn’t back the fuck off for a while and just allow that to happen. They had to start a panic. Just sit down and listen for a bit – is some of it over the top? Yes! But that’s okay- when it’s widely adopted it will be move toward the center. They would have been FINE. We just didn’t need them policing us. It wasn’t important they do that and it’s had a HUGE unintended consequences downside!
Reckless. Which to me is the real risk of having exclusively entitled people in power. They’re reckless. They don’t think.
HumboldtBlue
@eclare:
That’s hilarious.
Citizen Alan
@Matt McIrvin: My personal hope is that science somehow develops a shot that cures sociopathy. We could eliminate the GOP overnight just by forcing them all to have empathy and compassion for their fellow man.
Kay
@Betty Cracker:
There’s something grasping about it- an inability to let go and just let a debate play out. To me it just reeked of people perceiving they were losing some kind of power or control and grabbing it BACK. It’s why I never bought that it was “about” speech or debate. If it WAS about those things it would be an expansion, not a narrowing. “An expansion” is The 1619 Project or the pilot AA history AP course PLUS all the other history, but that’s not what they want- they want a narrowing. They want the world to remain the same as when they were young and it just won’t because it can’t.
Omnes Omnibus
@sab:
My high school history classes were any but a joke. My Am Hist 2 teacher made a point of talking about Social Darwinism and how it was simply cover for people who wanted to mistreat “Icky brown people” (his term). We talked about Wounded Knee and saw slides of the liberation of a concentration camp. My last two years of high school history were in an IB world history course. You could have come out of that program ignorant, but you would have had to work at it.
Baud
@Citizen Alan:
You think they’re opposed to jabs now….
Omnes Omnibus
@Baud:
What about you?
Citizen Alan
@Starfish: The South Sea Bubble (which I just had to look up because other than its existence I knew nothing about it) was about the overvalued stock of a company that had a monopoly on shipping gold and precious metals from South America to Europe. For those who know what I just said about it or less, it is comprehensible that stockholders would overestimate the value and drive up bubble. The Tulip Mania has more salience because it has the added factor of “Why tulips?!? What sane person could possibly believe that tulip bulbs could appreciate in value to that degree?!?” That’s why I think the latter is a better comparison to crypto and especially NFTs; because to anyone not a part of the cult, it’s all so transparently a bubble waiting to happen.
Citizen Alan
@eclare: I’ve loved Wanda Sykes ever since Limbaugh responded to Obama’s 2008 election by saying he hoped America failed, and she responded very loudly that she hoped Limbaugh’s kidneys failed.
Baud
@Omnes Omnibus:
I’d take one for the team.
jonas
@Citizen Alan:
Just FYI, *the* book on the South Sea bubble and its role in creating the modern global economy (after nearly destroying it) was written by none other than our own Tom Levenson: Money for Nothing: The Scientists, Fraudsters, and Corrupt Politicians who Reinvented Money, Panicked a Nation, and Made the World Rich (New York, 2020). Fabulous read.
Omnes Omnibus
@Baud:
Who knows, maybe you’ll finally grow that prehensile tail everyone’s been talking about.
Suzanne
@Citizen Alan:
The power of FOMO is real.
Steve in the ATL
@Citizen Alan: when people ask me why I became a lawyer, I tell them that I was a history major in college so my options were going to law school or coaching high school football
schrodingers_cat
@Another Scott: Actually IIRC she said that electing Obama in 2008 was like grabbing a lifeline, something most but out and proud bigots could except. It was his reelection that made them upset.
(I am paraphrasing, of course)
And to your point, when they found out that the Ds were going to replace President Obama with a woman they lost their shit. Especially the one who they had been fed to despise since the 90s.
sab
@Omnes Omnibus: Ahah! IB!
schrodingers_cat
@schrodingers_cat: * It should be accept not expect!
sab
Akron just tried rhe first of the protesters from the killing of Jayland Walker last summer. The Ohio AG’s office is still investigating the eight cops, who are back on the job.
The city prosecutor’s osffice is planning to try dozens of protestors. The first to be tried on five misdemeanor charges would not take a plea down to jaywalking. The defendant claimed he was exercising his first amendment rights. The police said he was resisting arrest. The jury was out for half an hour and came back with aquittals. They said the body cams didn’t show what the cops said had happened.
Princess
@Geminid: Interestingly enough, when Newman finally beat Lipinski, it was the districts that voted Hillary in the 2016 primary that went for Newman (more suburban areas). The districts that went for the very conservative Dem, Lipinski, had gone for Sanders back in the primary.
Geminid
@Princess: That is interesting. I won’t speculate as to why except to say that in 2016, a lot of different kinds of people voted for Sanders for a lot of different reasons.
I’d be curious to know in general what Sanders’ 2016 voters did in 2020, but I don’t know how that information could be developed even if someone wanted to.
Omnes Omnibus
@sab:
???
Matt McIrvin
@schrodingers_cat: I also think that when Black Lives Matter rose to prominence after various prominent killings of black people, it upset a lot of whites who imagined that electing and even reelecting Obama ought to be enough for “them” to be satisfied already.
JPL
@Steve in the ATL: haha That is so true!
sab
@Omnes Omnibus: We didn’ t even have IB in my high high school in the 1970s, and if you wanted to be tracked as AP in the 1970s you had to be identified as such in Junior high or perhaps earlier. My mom frantically shuffling me because they moved and my grades tanked with every cold season between schools closed off every option. I couldn’t take AP because I got into the school system too late.
My History teacher, in charge of National Honor Society, was stunned by grades and test results. I shouldn’t have been eligible, although I was a good student. But there I was.
TerryC
@Omnes Omnibus: I had the highest SAT in my large high school and was one of three semifinalists in 1965. I think it was my 2.35 GPA that kicked me out of the finals.
El Muneco
@Layer8Problem: The ones who Scalzi famously noted that within two weeks after full societal collapse would be “Objectivist Jerky”
schrodingers_cat
@Matt McIrvin: Completely. Agrees with my anecdata of Obama to Orange and Obama to BS or bust voters.
El Muneco
@Matt McIrvin: Captain Cassidy’s blog has been pounding that drum for years upon years now. It’s a pity that readership is only a fraction since Patheos became hostile to non-extreme-RW blogs.
El Muneco
@Citizen Alan: Extra History has an excellent video series on the South Sea Bubble. It’s about an hour in length and it’s on The Tube Of You.
Of course, they have excellent video series about close to 100 different topics…
One thing I particularly like about them is that (similar to VaatiVidya in video game lore content) they have a video at the end of each series where they name their sources and go over some of the choices they made and the things they got wrong during production).
evodevo
@J R in WV:
Yep…if they are “traffic broke”, unless you do it right under their feet, while blasting with an air horn, they could care less lol
evodevo
@Matt McIrvin: Yes. Sucker born every minute, combined with women who are submissive and stuck at home with the kids, but needing some extra income (which, because MLMs, is illusory).
Omnes Omnibus
@TerryC:
My high school class of around 250 had 12 semifinalists, 11 of whom became finalists, and 7 of whom got scholarships. This was in central Wisconsin. It was an anomaly. The high school had also just started the IB program. My year was the second year where we had people who were diploma candidates. It was a very good public school. Terrible football team though.