Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

The Supreme Court cannot be allowed to become the ultimate, unaccountable arbiter of everything.

SCOTUS: It’s not “bribery” unless it comes from the Bribery region of France. Otherwise, it’s merely “sparkling malfeasance”.

Fight them, without becoming them!

Our job is not to persuade republicans but to defeat them.

We are builders in a constant struggle with destroyers. keep building.

Make the republican party small enough to drown in a bathtub.

Fuck these fucking interesting times.

Roe is not about choice. It is about freedom.

Proof that we need a blogger ethics panel.

When you’re a Republican, they let you do it.

Republicans choose power over democracy, every day.

He wakes up lying, and he lies all day.

He really is that stupid.

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

A thin legal pretext to veneer over their personal religious and political desires.

Celebrate the fucking wins.

You don’t get rid of your umbrella while it’s still raining.

Peak wingnut was a lie.

The line between political reporting and fan fiction continues to blur.

Never entrust democracy to any process that requires Republicans to act in good faith.

Do we throw up our hands or do we roll up our sleeves? (hint, door #2)

Republicans cannot even be trusted with their own money.

Dear Washington Post, you are the darkness now.

Republicans do not trust women.

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Monday Morning Open Thread: Rise and… Feed the Beast!

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  1. 1.

    Baud

    Looking forward to the mea culpa from political reporters who declared Biden’s response a failure on the grounds that the public couldn’t make a distinction between Trump’s behavior & Biden’s.

    Unlikely. I heard a reporter yesterday portray the opposite, that Biden was in trouble because voters thought Biden and Trump engaged in equally bad conduct.

  3. 3.

    Baud

    The dilemma for the GOP is that if they use the debt ceiling to crash the economy, Biden has a good response to any economic downturn.

    Also too, I don’t recall ever seeing the news report on the anticipated future recession for so long.

    If I were king, I’d ban the news from reporting on polls or making predictions.

  5. 5.

    Kay

    @NotMax:

    It isn’t even that entertaining. Trump’s an ignorant, rude country club bore. There are tens of thousands just like him.

  7. 7.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Baud: Lemieux on LGM highlighted some other poll number that seemed to show that the public no longer made any distinction between Trump’s behavior and Biden’s. And then complained that that was the effect of a self-fulfilling media prophecy. The contrast with here is… interesting.

    The claim that the whole thing didn’t affect Biden’s approval rating is untrue; you can see the hit in the 538 aggregate. It’s just not huge, and would probably be swamped by noise in individual polls.

  9. 9.

    Baud

    @Matt McIrvin:

    It depends on how the poll is worded, I think.  Too easy to manipulate.

    I learned gas prices have been going back up over the last month.  Probably has more to do with the poll numbers than the documents.

  10. 10.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Baud: There’s been a rash of layoffs and a hiring downturn in the tech sector, and stocks have been struggling for a year. So if you’re that kind of worker or investor you feel like it’s already a mild recession.

  14. 14.

    Frank Wilhoit

    @Kay: The key word is not “voters”.  The key word is “thought”.  Voters only “think” what the propaganda tells them to.  Until we have raised several successive generations of voters who are absolutely impervious to propaganda, nothing can change.

  16. 16.

    eclare

    Memphis DA coming up on Morning Joe.  This election was the most bitterly fought here last year, the prior DA was a total lackey to the police and her approach to fight crime was to prosecute every juvenile she could as an adult.  I even got a robo-text from John Legend about it.

    All elections have consequences.

    ETA I’m on the DVR, he may have already appeared.

  17. 17.

    Kay

    Just three months ago, Rep. Elissa Slotkin was one of the most vulnerable Democrats in Washington, fighting an expensive campaign for reelection in a Michigan district that Republicans were sure they could retake.
    That was all a distant memory recently as Slotkin sat beaming next to Sen. Debbie Stabenow at a Lansing luncheon commemorating Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. Fresh off a surprisingly comfortable 5 percentage-point victory, Slotkin was eager to praise Stabenow, the dean of Michigan Democrats, whose Senate seat is suddenly open after the four-term senator announced her plans to retire.
    “She knows what it takes to win and she is not going to let her seat flip when she leaves,” Slotkin said of Stabenow in an interview. “She feels, I think, very connected to making sure her legacy is upheld by passing the torch to someone who can win it.”

    The article is (crazily) written as if the Red Wave Swept Michigan (*did not actually happen) but I have followed Slotkin and although she’s to the Right of me she does win in a swing district, she works really hard and I think she would win a senate seat.
    Especially if they run on litter boxes in schools, “cancel culture” and tracking pregnant women on federal websites and then having creepy, obsessive religious volunteers call them, which I think we can assume they will since the lack of a red wave has not changed their behavior at all.

  21. 21.

    Matt McIrvin

    @NotMax: I saw some story fretting about how investors seemed to be rewarding the layoffs–a company that did one would rally the next day. But investors ALWAYS reward layoffs, as far back as I can remember. I can’t think of a time when they didn’t.

  22. 22.

    Baud

    @Matt McIrvin:

    Yeah, I don’t get it.  No matter how pro-labor you are, the reality is that labor is a business expense, and usually a big one.  If you can shed an expense without shedding revenue, the value of your stock will increase.

  28. 28.

    Butter Emails!

    @Matt McIrvin:

    A lot of the stock market and tech sector woes can be placed at the feet of the economists and CEOs who have been trumpeting the imminent demise of the economy for the last 18 months. They sort of remind me of the antivaxxers who predicted everyone who got the vaccine would drop dead any time now, except antivaxxers can’t cause the vaccine to be harmful no matter how loudly and forcefully they froth. CEOs and economists make and inform investment decisions that impact the broader economy and the narrative they put out gets spread in the media influencing consumer and investor sentiment so they can harm the economy.

  29. 29.

    Betty Cracker

    Am I alone in thinking it was a creepy invasion of privacy when news outlets published the police video of the attack on Paul Pelosi? The media orgs sued to get it released and seemed proud of that in the articles about it. If you’re an online news consumer, you likely could not avoid seeing a screen cap from the video because it was splashed all over the front pages. Even if you chose not to click through, you saw Mr. Pelosi in his boxer shorts standing in the foyer of his house with the lunatic who attacked him. Maybe Pelosi doesn’t mind, but it seems like a grotesque invasion of his privacy and a revictimization. How is this in the public interest?

  30. 30.

    Kay

    Sam Hoadley-Brill 🙏 READ CHARLES MILLS. RIP 🐐
    @deonteleologist
    BREAKING: Eddie Speir, whom Gov. DeSantis recently appointed (alongside Chris Rufo) to the
    @NewCollegeofFL
    Board of Trustees, publicly announces intention to seek legal approval to immediately terminate the contracts of all faculty, staff, and administration at the university.

    Free speech/anti cancel culture warriots are a joke, Example 3,2871.
    DeSantis is cancelling every liberal in the state and not a peep out of any of our brave contrarians who were so tough when battling 22 year old social workers.
    They encounter a real speech threat in a powerful state actor and they run away.

  31. 31.

    comrade scotts agenda of rage

    When have US political reporters ever issued a mea culpa?

    Oh, that’s right, they never have.

  32. 32.

    Butter Emails

    @Baud:

    If you can shed an expense without negatively impacting current or future profits and growth is a huge caveat.

  34. 34.

    mrmoshpotato

    @comrade scotts agenda of rage:

    When have US political reporters ever issued a mea culpa? 

    Oh, that’s right, they never have.

    Whole bunch of slapdicks would have to spend the rest of their lives asking most of the public for forgiveness for 2016’s head-up-ass syndrome that so many “reporters” “suffered” from.

  36. 36.

    PBK

    @Baud

    @NotMax:

    Yes, Goku was here sometime last week.  I was thinking the other day that I haven’t seen germy shoemangler in a while.  Always liked that nym.

  38. 38.

    Soprano2

    @Baud: Yep, the O’Bros said they could track Obama’s approval numbers with the price of gasoline. It’s crazy but true. It was down to $2.59/gal here before Christmas, then suddenly jumped up $0.30 due to the cold weather shutting down refineries in TX. Now it’s up to $3.29/gal, and I have no idea why because the price of oil isn’t up that much.

  40. 40.

    WaterGirl

    @Baud: @Soprano2:

    Interesting!  I always felt that gas prices reflected how well Obama was doing.  But I believed it was a different kind of cause and effect.

    To me it seemed like when Obama was doing really well and accomplishing something important, the invisible hand of the Obama-hating money people would raise the price of gas to handicap his approval.

  41. 41.

    Soprano2

    @Matt McIrvin: Which is dumb, because studies have shown that in the end they usually don’t save much money, and you end up having to hire back a lot of people when things get better again.

  43. 43.

    Soprano2

    @Butter Emails!: When I took Finance in college I had to write a paper about the relationship between long-term and short-term interest rates in 1982. What I found out from my research was that there was a small number of “influencers” on Wall Street, and when they said something was going to happen it almost always happened. I bet it’s still the same today. Many of these things are self-fulfilling prophecies, although I’m sure the people involved would tell you they’re just great at predicting things.

  45. 45.

    JML

    @Kay: that’s not even a right-wing play, though: that’s just management. They always want to be able to run people out on their bare word, and hate it when workers have things like contracts that protect them from being terminated because a supervisor doesn’t like their face or wants to hire their buddy for that job. That kind of shit goes on everywhere that management thinks that they’re the most important part of the organization. (I’m bracing for management coming after my union’s version of tenure in contract negotiations again, and trying to reduce our notice periods down to 30 days or less if anyone loses their job…while claiming it’s actually in our best interests)

    The part that makes these bastards somewhat unique is they’re doing it so they can overtly fire people for not believing what they believe.

  46. 46.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Soprano2: I’m sure there are companies that hire too many people and genuinely need to shed some. But it’s generally very short-term thinking: layoffs make the balance sheet for the next quarter look better, by simple arithmetic.

  49. 49.

    Soprano2

    @WaterGirl: You could be right too. I find myself wondering if that kind of thing is happening now. I don’t know why the price of gas is up now, I think those refineries in TX are back up and running.

  50. 50.

    John S.

    @Soprano2:

    Gas prices are more affected by refinery capacity than the price of oil. Which makes it even more disgusting that Chevron is spending $75B on stock buybacks instead of increasing their production capacity.

    Total price manipulation by the industry.

  51. 51.

    Betty Cracker

    @Kay: Speir and Rufo met with students and faculty last week, and I think they set the college administrators up for firing related to that event, like a real-life trolling incident. Speir and Rufo dramatically declared they’d received death threats before the meeting due to liberal intolerance. The administrator wanted to cancel the event because of potential risk to attendees, including students, but Rufo and Speir pushed back, saying that gave the intolerant left veto power. Coincidentally, this was all captured on video. Maybe they’ll use that excuse.

  53. 53.

    Matt McIrvin

    @WaterGirl: The price of gasoline was artificially depressed by the 2008 global financial catastrophe, and the day Obama was inaugurated it was close to a spectacular decades-long low. (A year earlier it’d been quite high and people were moaning about it.)

    I remember a lot of memes on the right that tried to take advantage of that temporary low in gasoline prices to blame Obama for the subsequent rise, and it always struck me how you could only believe them if you didn’t remember or didn’t care what things had been like just a couple of years earlier. And if you could persuade yourself that the 2008 crash corresponded to some kind of better halcyon days. There was this sort of tendentious selective memory.

  54. 54.

    Baud

    @Betty Cracker:

    Speir and Rufo dramatically declared they’d received death threat before the meeting due to liberal intolerance

    Probably emails from FalseFlagforDeSantis at gmail dot com.

  56. 56.

    Chief Oshkosh

    @Betty Cracker: I agree that ‘the media’ – the people in that industry – have very strange values. How they think it’s especially important that the Pelosi attack video be shown publicly, and the pride they take in making that happen, is outside of my understanding.

  57. 57.

    Kay

    @Dorothy A. Winsor:

    Oh, God no. Replacing all the current employees with people who support Governor DeSantis and Chris Rufo. They want the college and the budget and the jobs for DeSantis and Rufo fellow ideological travelers- they just want to purge all the liberals.

    It’s the same thing they’re doing with the Crisis Pregnancy Centers. They’re putting every religious anti abortion activist on a government-funded payroll. Texas is pouring public money into the centers- they’re completely unregulated with no oversight because of course they are not really “clinics” but instead religious indoctrination centers for pregnant women. There’s already been a multi million dollar fraud scandal.

    Big Government won’t be any Smaller. It’ll just be contracted out to cronies and ideologues and churches.

  58. 58.

    RandomMonster

    @Baud: If they opposed the release of the video, they would be “covering it up”.

    “What’s Nancy trying to hide?!?!11!?”

  59. 59.

    Chief Oshkosh

    @WaterGirl: Possibly “when Obama was doing well” meant that overall the country was doing well, which meant all types of industry and leisure was doing well, which meant more people were doing more things, which meant more gas was being bought and used, which, of course, would increase prices.

  60. 60.

    Kay

    @Betty Cracker:

    Of course! Using state power to purge all the liberals in a public entity is ITSELF liberal cancel culture!

    It was a dumb fucking theory – it falls apart any time you apply it to any world situation because it’s not coherent or thought through. It’s garbage work.

    I don’t care about Noam Chomsky but I do like Dalia Lithwick and I couldn’t be more disappointed she signed on to this sloppy, junk “thinking”. It changes my estimation of her.

  61. 61.

    jonas

    @Baud: I heard a reporter yesterday portray the opposite, that Biden was in trouble because voters thought Biden and Trump engaged in equally bad conduct.

    Probably going to be sorry I asked, but did the reporter then *do* anything to explain why the two cases are in fact quite different?

  63. 63.

    WaterGirl

    @Kay: Do the faculty not have tenure at Florida universities?  Of course, that doesn’t help the staff or the administration, but surely people have contracts?

  64. 64.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Baud: I think people should at least WANT to have some suspicion of what they personally want to believe. But it seems to be a rare thing. Politically it can be a handicap.

  65. 65.

    Betty Cracker

    This is a random and pointless observation, but Speir and Rufo have uniquely horrible beards. Their beards are unalike. Rufo’s is of the trashy dirt-squirrel hipster variety, whereas Speir’s is a poor attempt at replicating an Old Testament patriarch look. Yuck.

    I like beards! My husband currently has a beard and has had one ever since I met him except for a period of approximately one week while we were engaged. He shaved it off (with no prior notice!) because he thought it was important that I see him clean-shaven before making a lifelong commitment. I told him he has a lovely chin, and he grew a beard again.

    Anyway, the Speir-Rufo beards are failures of hirsuteness. Just saying.

  66. 66.

    Chief Oshkosh

    @Kay: In my little part of the universe, DeSatan’s cunning plan may be working. I know two tenured UFL faculty who’ve just moved to “blue” state universities and another who took early retirement. Such moves happen all the time, of course, but getting away from DeSatan and that ilk was a part of their decision-making process, especially for the two mid-career profs as they wanted to get their kids the heck out of Florida. Really sad.

  68. 68.

    kalakal

    Hmm, I’m not really up on faux left “journalists” but I just read an article by some pustule called Chris Hedges about Russia’s reinvasion of Ukraine. According to Hedges it’s all the US’ fault.

    The war in Ukraine, another bungled attempt to reassert U.S. global hegemony, fits this pattern

    and carries on in the same vein

    I’m not going to link to this crap. I’m spitting mad, can anyone enlighten me as to this jerks previous form? Has he always been this stupidly poisonous or has a big cheque just arrived in the post from Uncle Vlad?

  69. 69.

    Kay

    @WaterGirl:

    I don’t know anything about their contract situation or tenure. But anyone who is suprised that the Right immediately weaponized “anti cancel culture” to purge all the liberals from state entities using state power is a fool. Too stupid and easily led to be trusted with important issues or peoples lives.

    The liberals who signed on to this are foolish, unserious people who have obviously never been vulnerable or at risk.

    How was this half-baked, sloppy “free speech!” theory supposed to work? It’s a mess. It is a contradiction. It’s not even connected to the 1st Amendment.- the law They just pulled it out of their ass.

  72. 72.

    Baud

    @kalakal: I only know of Hedges based on what people here have posted about him, but I believe he is an well recognized faux left journalist. I wouldn’t get mad about it because people like him exist the same way the GOP exists, and we just have to deal with it.

  79. 79.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Betty Cracker: When I started dating my spouse I had just grown my beard back after a period of not having one. She dug it–she likes beards–so I stuck with it, and I don’t think she’s ever seen me beardless in person. There are times when I think about shaving it off just because the bald-bearded-guy look I’ve got seems to be increasingly associated with horrible, horrible people. But I do wonder how she’d react.

  80. 80.

    frosty

    @Betty Cracker: Random and pointless… it’s the Balloon Juice way!

    I’ve had a variety of facial hair most of my life. Started with Duane Allman muttonchops, cut it back to a Fu Manchu for awhile, expanded to a Van Dyke then noticed that was a marker for being An Old and shaved.

    Went from there to the hipster 3-day stubble thing. Guess what! When you’ve gone gray you don’t look like a hipster, you look like a homeless guy.

    Currently clean shaven, but only every 3 days or so.

    So there’s my contribution to this morning’s Random and Pointless. (This is an Open Thread, right?)

    Should add that Ms F prefers clean shaven.

  81. 81.

    Soprano2

    @Kay: They’re not running away Kay, they agree with what DeSantis is doing, that’s why they aren’t saying anything. Free speech is only threatened when it’s kids on a college campus who don’t want the college to endorse having a white supremacist as a speaker. Suppressing the speech of the “woke” is OK with them.

    I listened to Bill Maher’s first podcast of the new year this weekend. Andrew Sullivan is quite a piece of work, isn’t he? He seems to be terrified of trans people for some reason. I guess it doesn’t occur to him that he has the same attitude toward them as conservatives have toward people like him. The trans panic on that panel was palpable. He had Nancy Mace (R) on the panel as a “reasonable” Republican. She said that puberty blockers aren’t reversible, which sounds nutty to me because if it’s just drugs that suppress hormones don’t the effects stop if you quit taking the drugs? The lies these people tell are breathtaking. They talked about a 15-year-old who had breast removal surgery and then a year later regretted it. If that happened it’s indeed terrible, but it’s certainly not representative of what’s happened with children who are trans. They take these one-off situations and act like they’re the norm.

  82. 82.

    Kay

    @WaterGirl:

    I keep thinking of 2010, when we lost so many state seats, and then Republicans wildly overreached (on education at the state level) and there was a backlash (eventually) in WI and PA and MI and even OH to some extent but then I don’t know-maybe Ohio and Florida are just far Right now.

  83. 83.

    Betty Cracker

    @Kay: NYT columnist Michelle Goldberg, whom I also admire, refused to sign the letter at first because the original contained the phrase “cancel culture,” but when they took that out, she did sign it. I wonder if she, Lithwick and other signees who generally display better judgment regret that now?

    I think there’s a kernel of truth to the complaints in the letter. Social media pile-ons are terrible and can morph into baying mobs that target people who don’t deserve abuse. That sort of thing doesn’t help and may actively cause harm to the cause ostensibly being championed. And people have been harmed professionally due to mob mentality taking over and defensiveness and cowardice on the part of decision makers.

    The problem isn’t that the complaints are baseless; it’s that the reaction to the issue is exponentially more harmful — the cure is worse than the disease and has enabled the very worst people. The good people who were caught up in the anti-cancel-culture movement should say so. Own it.

  84. 84.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Baud: Hedges is one of those “antiwar” guys who came to understandable prominence during the George W. Bush era opposing Bush’s wars, and whose brand is to oppose the American foreign-policy consensus any way he can. So if the US is supplying arms to Ukraine he has to be agin it.

  85. 85.

    jonas

    @kalakal: ​
      Ugh. I’d blissfully forgotten about that guy. He was a former war correspondent who wrote an interesting book back (iirc) in the 90s called War is a Force that Gives us Meaning. It got a lot of attention in the runup to the Iraq War and all that. In subsequent years, however, Hedges himself moved from the anti-war left further and further left until he found himself in the company of the likes of Chomsky, Greenwald, Assange and that crowd, and then further left to where he’s now objectively on the side of genocidal fascists as long as they’re against “US hegemony.”

  87. 87.

    Baud

    @Matt McIrvin:

    whose brand is to oppose the American foreign-policy consensus any way he can

    We call the GOP unprincipled when they adopt a policy of “owning the libs” instead of maintaining a principled stand on issues.  I don’t see how this is any different.

  88. 88.

    Kay

    @Soprano2:

    He had Nancy Mace (R) on the panel as a “reasonable” Republican.

    So lazy. Does he read anything? I mean Jesus Christ- he must have a huge staff and they’re just phoning it on the jokes (McRib jokes! Hysterical!) so one would think they could vet guests.

    Nancy Mace is the liberty-lov’in gal who wants federal legislation to track pregnant women on a government run website and refer them to be haragued by religious fanatics into becoming “tradwives” – helpfully, conservatives already have a term for what they hope to force women to become.

    That Bill Maher! He sure “gets” freedom! Is he “allowed” to make trans jokes yet? Those are super funny and clever. Wouldn’t want to ban the stale, cranky middle aged man joke industry!

  89. 89.

    Soprano2

    @Matt McIrvin: I’m sure that’s true, but I think the thing that usually happens is that they shed a bunch of people, and then quietly have to hire new people in a year or so. There’s a cost to having to train new people, too, that they never seem to think about when they’re laying people off. A lot of people say this, but there’s way too much short-term thinking in business now. During the 2008/2009 recession I really appreciated how our city government did everything they could not to lay people off, and they ended up not laying off anyone. They didn’t want to have to hire back when things got better. It was the smart move.

  90. 90.

    Soprano2

    @John S.: I heard a Planet Money podcast where they said the opposite, that the biggest factor in the price of gasoline is the price of oil. They said refinery capacity was the #2 factor.

  91. 91.

    Kay

    @Soprano2:

    I’m glad you watch him. I can’t. I just read his Twitter because I’m constantly amazed at how bad his jokes are. Unfucking believable he makes a living at this.

    “Pronouns! Ha Ha Ha!”

  92. 92.

    Betty Cracker

    @Matt McIrvin: My dad has had a full beard since the 1970s. He shaved it once about 30 years ago. When my stepmother saw him, she started sobbing, and when he asked her why, she said, “You’re so ugly!” He started growing it back immediately. LOL!

  93. 93.

    WaterGirl

    @Kay: They are too far gone, until they aren’t.

    When states shift from left to right or right to left, is that all population shifts between states?  Or is some of it backlash, or just the pendulum swinging over time?

  94. 94.

    gvg

    @mrmoshpotato: We have published a few here. I think I saw one this weekend. Mind you it was one, and there were many who didn’t and we were not particularly satisfied with whomever it was, but there HAVE been some, so don’t overstate things. Now, precisely, the few mea culpas have not undone the damage the initial completely wrong over reactions caused, so it is therefore far more important to get it right in the first place, AND it’s it editors and owners that need to make the apologies. They determined that the excessive wrong takes got published and then that corrections get printed in small type on page 52 where readers or TV watchers never find out. Ownerships and the complete money stream of both the reporting sources and all owners needs to become available. So exact owners of say NYT and every penny from all sources of those people (find the shell companies if any) and then the same thing for each editor and reporter. You can’t be sure of them without knowing this. Of course I think the same thing about each member of Congress and the President. Still want Trump traced for the record.

  95. 95.

    jonas

    @Soprano2: ​
     

    They talked about a 15-year-old who had breast removal surgery and then a year later regretted it. If that happened it’s indeed terrible, but it’s certainly not representative of what’s happened with children who are trans.

    Yeah, there’s this one woman who now claims she was questioning her gender identity as a teenager and that her family was coerced by evil therapists and doctors into having gender transition surgery, which she later decided she wanted to reverse. These cases of detransitioning are extremely rare, but get recycled over and over by assholes like Sullivan and the rightwing noise machine as if they’re the tip of some huge iceberg of innocent children who have been kidnapped and forcibly given mastectomies. What they don’t talk about is the thousands of teens who are alive and thriving because they could get gender-affirming care. We can have a conversation about how early is too early for something like a mastectomy, but naturally these people aren’t interested in having that conversation in good faith.

  96. 96.

    WaterGirl

    @Betty Cracker:  I can’t believe she actually said “you’re so ugly!”  Yikes, I might think that but I don’t believe I would actually say it.

    No wonder your husband wanted you to see him before you were married!  :-)

  97. 97.

    MomSense

    @kalakal:

    Yup.  We’ve got that same bullshit happening locally -a long standing peace and Justice organization is now holding regular Anti NATO rallies blaming the US and the West for the war in Ukraine.  They have been holding zoom calls (saw one posted to YouTube) with Colonel Wilkinson who blames NATO expansion starting with the Clinton Administration.  Seriously considering going to their next protest with my own sign.  Open to  suggestions from the jackaltariat. My mood wants to write fuck these assholes over a large arrow pointing to the “peace” protesters but I don’t think that would be the most educational option.

  99. 99.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Betty Cracker: LGM recently talked about what seemed to be a genuine case of campus cancel culture run amok: a college student got an adjunct fired (or not renewed) by complaining that she showed a centuries-old piece containing a visual depiction of Muhammad in a class on historical Islamic art, despite the depiction being accompanied with repeated content warnings, and offers to let students who would be offended leave the classroom and refrain from participating in the exercise without penalty. Student organizations and the administration supported the student in what seemed to be a knee-jerk fashion, as if she were showing anti-Muslim hate propaganda in the classroom rather than historical Muslim art. This stuff does happen. It’s just that it’s hard to even talk about because the obnoxious right weaponizes the complaints so effectively.

  101. 101.

    Kay

    @Soprano2:

    This is refreshing, that it’s now just a cranky old middle aged former “edgy contrarian” support group:

    Real Time with Bill Maher@RealTimersJan 23

    “I grew up when no one said the word ‘homosexual,’ because it was too disgusting to even mention. And it sometimes get to me when the younger ones tell me…’You’re an old has-been. You need to just go away.’” Watch@sullydish respond to his critics on #RealTime:

    Can’t they just meet for coffee or drinks and talk about how young people have contempt for them which is hurtful? It is! I too am old and they are quite mean to me sometimes. I don’t start a national panic though- I just mope around for a while until something distracts me.

  102. 102.

    Kay

    Have they thought about maybe they do need to go away? Make room for some other people?

    Consider it. That’s all I’m saying.

  103. 103.

    JMG

    @Dorothy A. Winsor: I would think that a student who woke up one morning to a college without faculty or staff would have very good grounds for a breach of contract suit, better yet, a class-action one on grounds of fraud. The Trump University students collected.

  105. 105.

    gvg

    @WaterGirl: Some do some don’t. All Universities in the country have been getting stingy with tenure for decades because of money. Tenure locks in budgets for decades and has better benefits, so gradually over time Universities and Colleges have been getting cheaper instruction by having a few more and then a few more temporary visiting or adjunct professors until the usual percentage is only 1/3 have tenure. Seriously, 1/3! My mother taught at Valencia CC in Florida for over 10 years without tenure and her boss enjoyed the power.  Anyway, I expect the ones with tenure will fight and they were probably the ones that spoke up in the first place. DeSantis has a lot of lackeys that don’t seem to respect the law or know it. I hope the courts do and act swiftly but the students are in for chaos for a time.

  106. 106.

    Geminid

    @kalakal: “Hegemony” is the new “Imperialism.” It’s harder to claim that US actions overseas are imperialistic, but they can still be maligned as hegemony.

    When I started to follow the protests in Iran last fall, I noticed a minority on Twitter taking the regime’s side. When I looked at their accounts, every one was in Russia’s corner in its war on Ukraine. Those two country’s were valued as centers of “Anti-Hegemonic” resistance, regardless of their treatment of their own people or others.

    This war has really polarized the “Left” along a democratic/authoritarian line. The greater part seems to be drawn towards the democratic pole, and the smaller part towards the authoritarians. There are few left in the middle, at least on this question.

  107. 107.

    Soprano2

    @Kay: To him she’s “reasonable” because she’s not a big TFG supporter, full stop. That’s as far as his thinking goes. He doesn’t realize that there are very few non-nutty R’s in Congress anymore.

    I know what Maher is, but I listen because I think it’s important to know what they’re saying on his show. My biggest fault with him is that he doesn’t have anyone on anymore who would challenge him about his embrace of the “woke panic”. He used to make a big deal about how he had “all sides” on his show, but now he doesn’t have the side that disagrees with him about that issue. He also doesn’t talk about the school book bannings although he claims to be a “free speech warrior”. It’s dumb that they’re worried about the Oberlin student council but not about book bannings in schools all across America. His guests on last week’s show were Frances Haugen, Bari Weiss (he just loves her!), and Tim Ryan. All people who I am sure would nod sagely when he started railing about some “woke” thing that happened last week.

  109. 109.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    @Betty Cracker: I used to try to change my facial hair at least every couple of years, just to avoid getting in a rut. Went clean-shaven one year and only one year. I hated it, the kids hated it, my wife probably hated it. But I stuck it out for the year, determined to see if we all ever got used to it. We didn’t.

    This conversation made me ask my wife about my current beard shape, which hasn’t changed in many years now. She said she likes it. So I guess I’ll stick with it. I’m in that rut I used to try to avoid.

  110. 110.

    frosty

    @Soprano2: When I worked for a County government I had a boss who was so expert at managing his staff budget that when he had to do a layoff he could always give them an unfilled FTE. None of us ever lost our jobs.

  111. 111.

    Matt McIrvin

    @WaterGirl: I think a lot of it is selective turnout: there are a small number of thermostatic voters who will switch sides to “throw the bastards out” when they’re mad, but there’s also a larger population of marginally attached partisan voters who will vote or not vote depending on how energized they are. Especially in midterm and off-year elections.

  112. 112.

    Kay

    @Soprano2:

    The visual on Twitter of the empty bookshelves in Florida public schools is powerful, I think.

    Americans don’t like book banners and they like public schools and remember– this anti-woke agenda failed in swing states. We can hit douchebag DeSantis on it. It will help us hold WI, MI and PA.

    The Substack crowd and the NYTimes love anti cancel culture. Normal people don’t give a shit.

  113. 113.

    Soprano2

    @Kay: I’m constantly amazed at how bad his jokes are

    That’s why he’s so mad about “woke culture”, he can’t tell jokes from 20 years ago because young people don’t laugh at them. He rails about how no one can do comedy on college campuses anymore, but what he really means is that kids don’t find his jokes funny anymore and he doesn’t want to do the work to find new material. He’s still bitching about how long it took him to get solar panels for his house!

  115. 115.

    Betty Cracker

    @WaterGirl: I know, right? If you knew her it would be doubly shocking because she’s one of the sweetest people you could ever meet, and she truly adores and is selflessly devoted to my father. We still laugh about it because it was so out of character for her to say that. She was just shocked into saying it aloud, I guess.

  116. 116.

    SiubhanDuinne

    Biden says Willow the Cat has “no limits”

    “Especially in the middle of the night when she climbs up and lays on top of my head”

    SHUTTER.

    Dammit, Joe.

  118. 118.

    tobie

    @Soprano2: you’ve got the Republican strategy nailed. Take one isolated incident and act like it’s the norm. Generate outrage on FOX. Make your audience rage-addicted so they’re no longer capable of thinking in general terms about anything.

  119. 119.

    zhena gogolia

    @Betty Cracker: This makes me steaming mad. I had a close relative murdered, and another close relative had to make sure another close relative never saw the local news, because they kept running footage of the scene for months afterwards.

  120. 120.

    Soprano2

    @Kay: They could always come to Branson, there are some empty theaters down there and they’d have a receptive audience for their whining. LOL

  121. 121.

    MisterDancer

    @Matt McIrvin: I have a post in the hopper here about it; 2 Muslim orgs pushed for the professor’s re-hire, saying that the “it was Islamphobic” arguments were bullshit (and they are, if you know anything about the complexities of the “don’t depict Mohammad” situation.)

    They even noted the vast different between this incident, and the infamous Charlie Hebro cartoon situation in France.

    I didn’t pull trigger because I didn’t have the spoons for the potential debate in the comments. (I also screwed up the post in our backend!) I’ll reconsider.

  122. 122.

    kalakal

    Thanks to all who gave me info on the odious Chris Hedges. It’s not that I haven’t seen that sort of drivel before, I think the article caught me at a weak moment.

    It would seem he is what I thought he is.

  123. 123.

    Kay

    @Soprano2:

    Louis CK just seems SOUR to me now. They’re all so bitter. Talk about not aging gracefully. Jesus. SO bad at it.

    “But..but WE’RE the cool contrarians! Who are these UPSTARTS!” OMFG, get a therapist.

    They need to hang around/hire more Zoomers. THat thing they do where they just look at you with their blank, neutral OPEN faces while you’re sputtering to explain is quite humbling :)

  124. 124.

    Betty Cracker

    @Kay: LOL! That made me wonder if any of the media anti-cancel culture people have ever raised a teenager. They can be really mean!  

  125. 125.

    OverTwistWillie

    @JMG:

    If this was a Carl Hiaasen novel, some West Palm Beach type would be funding the yo-yo’s so he could bulldoze the campus and build condos.

  128. 128.

    Kay

    @Betty Cracker:

    OMG. I asked my youngest’s GF when her birthday is (because she mentioned it) and my son later told me “well, THAT was manipulative!”

    WTF. I will just stay silent at meals. Or maybe stop going to see him. Would he like that? :)

  129. 129.

    Geminid

    @Kay: There was a backlash in Kansas also last decade, to Governor Brownback’s cutbacks in education and other programs. That seems to have led to Governor Laura Kelly’s election in 2018. It wasn’t too strong a trend though, because her reelection last year was close.

    Sharice Davids did well in the Kansas City area 3rd CD, which may show that the trend of Democratic gains in suburbs that was so pronounced nationwide in 2018 is still strong. Also, Davids seems like a good, hardworking retail politician.

  130. 130.

    kalakal

    Regarding the vexed question of facial hair I’ve always been in a bind, don’t like shaving, don’t like beards.  Historically have mostly had a policy of letting it grow for a few weeks, then shaving it all off*

    However Mrs Kalakal is not a fan of beards so these days I bare my chin to the elements.

    * No I’m not lazy, why do you ask?

  132. 132.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Matt McIrvin: ​
      It’s a huge country and someone somewhere is doing something stupid at any given time. What’s the saying? Oh, yeah, anecdotes are not data.

  133. 133.

    Betty Cracker

    @eclare: Ugh, that odious thumb! Theoretically, a voluminous beard can camouflage a weak chin, but a contoured goatee can’t construct an entire chin on a sphere.

  135. 135.

    eclare

    @Kay:   That is kind of the plot of Hacks on HBOMax.  Jean Smart plays the Joan Rivers-ey type Las Vegas comedian who hires a millennial to freshen up her act.  Very funny.

  136. 136.

    Kay

    @Baud:

    I like mine but I admit I’m still navigating new waters. She reads paperbacks on her breaks which is interesting and against “type”, right?

    One of my horrible clients did an stereotypical Asian accent up there at the window and she sighed and said ‘that’s mean” – so disappointed.

    She’s right though-he is horrible and also disappointing. I had low expectations for him but still.

  138. 138.

    Kay

    @eclare:

    Betty C recommended it here and I watched the first one and didn’t like it btu stuck with it for a few more and really liked it. I love the older woman/younger woman dialogue back and forth.

  139. 139.

    Baud

    @Kay:

    Yeah, that’s pretty rude.  Seems like something out of the 70s or 80s. But at least he didn’t ask her when her birthday was.

  140. 140.

    Kay

    @eclare:

    I THINK it was making the assumption they would be together in April? Because I like her a lot and he knows it so he probably thinks I am promoting the relationship, which of course is true. I’m allowed to prefer people over other people! I have FEELINGS :)

  141. 141.

    Dorothy A. Winsor

    @JMG: I don’t know about students suing. That’s above my pay grade. But if I had a kid there right now, we’d be talking about where to transfer to. I don’t want them to waste a year while the “adults” play games

  142. 142.

    jonas

    @gvg: ​
      A university’s faculty has two jobs: to undertake original research that creates new knowledge in their field and to teach students in their subject. You can’t expect researchers and scholars to be bold and creative and take chances if they think their contracts may be on the line if they ask questions or produce results that rock the boat for some department chair or university administrator. Tenure isn’t so much about benefits or permanent employment — though it often amounts to that. It’s about ensuring the intellectual and political independence of the expert/scholar class. Take a look at countries where universities are under some form of political patronage/control and count up the patents, Nobel prizes, and other innovations or discoveries. Or the quality of their students. It’s not there. What’s discouraging about the growing adjunctification of American higher ed, as well as the kinds of political shenanigans going on in Florida, is that it stifles creativity and intellectual energy. If college teachers aren’t given the support the tenure track provides to do research, travel, attend conferences, etc., they’re eventually not going to be teaching the most current state of knowledge and that’s to the disadvantage of students and society as a whole. And teaching increasingly becomes a “be fun and make the students happy with high grades” business because at a lot of places, end of semester evals are used to decide whether your contract is re-upped. It ends up being a vicious race-to-the-bottom circle.

  143. 143.

    SteveinPHX

    @Betty Cracker: ​
     
    My wife has never seen me w/o a beard, Many years ago I showed her an old photo of me, beardless. Her reply, “Keep the beard.”
    I have.

  144. 144.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Soprano2:

    I listened to Bill Maher’s first podcast of the new year this weekend. Andrew Sullivan is quite a piece of work, isn’t he? He seems to be terrified of trans people for some reason. I guess it doesn’t occur to him that he has the same attitude toward them as conservatives have toward people like him.

    A pattern I notice with conservatives–and I guess it’s part of the conservative mindset–is that they just don’t make this kind of historical analogy, where you think of attitudes as continuously changing over time and compare the plight of some marginalized group today to a different marginalized group that had similar troubles in the past, but is somewhat more accepted now. They don’t and maybe cannot think that way (except maybe if the “marginalized group” is fetuses).

    With conservatives, their ideal is static–they’ll admit that there was bad prejudice far in the past and that change from that situation was good, but they think there was some point in the past where our degree of tolerance was “just right” and they think we should stop there and go no further. Because if we don’t, if there’s no end to it, there will be chaos! We’ll have legalized pedophilia and cannibalism and people marrying box turtles, etc.

  145. 145.

    Geminid

    @Matt McIrvin: That case at Hamline University had an interesting consquence. The national CAIR organization disavowed their local affiliate’s position calling for the firing, and said it did not view the professor’s conduct as objectionabe.

    The adjuct professor is now suing the university.

  146. 146.

    Omnes Omnibus

    I know that I just made a comment about anecdotes not being data, but the number of bearded commenters/spouses of commenters in this thread seems unusually high to me.

  147. 147.

    artem1s

    @Matt McIrvin: ​

    The price of gasoline was artificially depressed by the 2008 global financial catastrophe

    There were a lot of things going on around that time. The first time I ever saw four and a half dollars a gallon was during W’s administration – 9/11, Afghanistan, and then Iraq all led to rampant speculation and price gouging.
    Then the Houston/BP refineries started to fail inspections and then blow up. Of course TX answer to that was no more regulations or oversight. And finally Halliburton literally blew capping Deepwater Horizon. Consumers paid for that clean up and those lawsuits.
    Real spikes in gas prices can be traced to demand, refinery issues or supply chain issues. Speculation has become a real problem due to stock market and political manipulators. The GOP and oil industry learned that they could affect the outcome of elections way back with Carter. The best thing Biden did last year was to bring pressure on the industry to reign in price gouging at the pump. There doesn’t seem to be supply or refinery issues for these latest increases. Looks like it’s time to bring out that big Executive Order stick again. This constant manipulation of gas prices is a national security issue.

  149. 149.

    Mai Naem mobile

    @Betty Cracker: yes, its an invasion of privacy and BTW it didn’t some people from thinking there was still something going on between the two. Honestly, we don’t need to see and hear everything. Its just this TMZfication of the media. The mainstream media really needs to step up and just not show a lot of this stuff but they won’t because eyeballs.

  150. 150.

    Chief Oshkosh

    @gvg:

    Anyway, I expect the ones with tenure will fight and they were probably the ones that spoke up in the first place.

    Sometimes that’s true. However, if you’re tenured and mid-career, often making a move not only gets you away from problems, but gets you much better pay in the new digs (and of course, new problems start growing at the new place).

    Upshot is that during bad times, some tenured faculty stay because moving doesn’t fit their goals. Some move because the bad times are an opportunity or motivator to move. The untenured take it on the chin.

  152. 152.

    Matt McIrvin

    @MisterDancer: Maybe it’s not worth it just because, as others have said, an anecdote can all too easy get blown up into a trend that really isn’t there.

    But I notice the problem in, say, social-media pile-ons too: I’ve seen cases that really did seem like “political correctness run amok” (like, say, the impossibly complicated trainwreck that drove Lindsay Ellis off of YouTube) but any complaint of this sort turns into a right-wing grievance so easily, and in some cases, definitely including that one, there are even right-wingers joining in the pile-on to help it along so they can gloat/complain about it later.

  153. 153.

    sab

    @Omnes Omnibus: My spouse shaved off his white goatee because he was tired of looking like a MAGAt. Now he just has a mustache.

    I think a lot of the older jackals had beards as a mark of retirement.

  156. 156.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Kay: I remember hearing predictions that, because we were cranky cusses to begin with and were never catered to as a giant youth demographic, Gen X wouldn’t have the anguished crisis response to aging and obsolescence that the Boomers did, but it’s clearly happening anyway.

  158. 158.

    Math Guy

    @kalakal: Ditto: I hate shaving, but (usually) don’t want a beard. I have had a mustache for the past 40 years: when I suggested to my wife that I shave it off just for a change she responded with shock and asked me not to.

  160. 160.

    Princess

    @Kay: the University of Chicago is behind a lot of this — the former President brought some fools on the faculty on board with the “free speech” stuff and done of them are close to Lithwick. It all sounded good in theory but it was basically a branding exercise for the university which wanted to attract right wing donors. Ken Griffin basically owns that university now. He’s on the board of trustees. Anyway, google Zimmer and free speech and you’ll see it all. The liberals who bought it are fools.

  161. 161.

    mrmoshpotato

    @Kay: These miserable busybodies could also look into getting a hobby that they enjoy that doesn’t involve getting into other people’s business.

  162. 162.

    OverTwistWillie

    @artem1s:

    Better margins with fewer, but higher capacity crackers. So when a refinery goes down it reflects a larger chunk of the market.

    The mid-tier players have all been closed and shipped to somewhere else. Trump was trying to prop up the what was left of the small producers (by pulling the ethanol blending requirements) but this has been happening since the 80’s.

  163. 163.

    jonas

    @Geminid: And a lot of the school’s Muslim students came out in support of the professor as well, demanding her contract be renewed. Colossally stupid response by the administration who was basically folding for one outraged fundamentalist Muslim student who couldn’t even be assed to read the course syllabus beforehand. They deserve to get sued and sued hard.

    But this is exactly why we need people with tenure job protections teaching courses like this — experts who aren’t afraid they’ll lose their jobs if they, for example, explain that traditions about visual depictions of Muhammad (and many other things) varied among Islamic schools and traditions and across historical periods. This is key because students have to understand Islam is not, and has never been, monolithic, which, ironically, is the outdated, Orientalist view the Hamiline administration wanted to embrace, for some reason.

  164. 164.

    evodevo

    @WaterGirl: ​
      By the time the contract lawsuits make their way through the court system (if it even does, due to Trumpy appointees), the educators will be long gone…

  165. 165.

    Betty Cracker

    @Matt McIrvin: I think the cancel culture trend mostly blew up because the people who felt most threatened by it had prestigious academic jobs and media perches, i.e., big megaphones. So a problem that shouldn’t have made the top 10K scourges in cultural life was blown out of all proportion, and wingnuts pounced on it to amplify their own cultural grievances.

    It seems like an injustice to ignore cases where something genuinely unfair like the Hamline firing occurs for fear of giving ammo to wingnuts. But pointing out that the overwhelming majority of actual censorship and cancelling is being done by people like Rufo, Speir, DeSantis & Co., etc., should be part of the conversation for sure, IMO

    ETA: In the case of New College of FL, Speir’s latest trolling move was to request that all board meetings start with a prayer to Jesus Christ so he (Speir, not Jesus) can screech that Jesus is being cancelled when other board members at the secular college object. It’s trolling, all the way down.

  166. 166.

    eclare

    @sab:   A former coworker grew one every winter to keep his face warm.  To be fair, he biked/jogged outdoors alot.

  168. 168.

    Betty Cracker

    @Princess: The same Ken Griffin who deposits truckloads of cash in DeSantis’s PACs and underwrites the FL lawmakers who are crafting trust tax evasion strategies that will benefit himself, no doubt. I think we’ve identified the problem, and it starts with a “b.”

  169. 169.

    Miss Bianca

    @Soprano2: Out here in CO the jump in gas prices is due primarily – so I understand – to a refinery in-state, Suncor, shutting down for some months for equipment maintenance and repairs.

  170. 170.

    evodevo

    @Kay: I quit watching a few years ago…I could overlook his assholishness when he was bashing W, but the last few years it just made me grit my teeth.  I can imagine no one on his writing staff would dare to bring up any factual reporting, once he intimated what his viewpoint on a subject was.  He is nasty enough when onstage…I can’t imagine what it’s like for staff behind the scenes…

  171. 171.

    Anyway

    @schrodingers_cat:

     Just like I am the only one in this thread that cares about India  descending into a fascist state led by people who admire Hitler.

    This is prolly a case of the infamous “Internet-nod”  – in agreement but nothing meaningful to add.

  172. 172.

    Burnspbesq

    @Soprano2:

    I have no idea why because the price of oil isn’t up that much.

    That’s normal behavior for gasoline prices. They shoot up instantly when the price of crude goes up, but are very slow to respond to decreases in crude prices. If I were a cynic, I might think it’s the whole supply chain extracting windfall profits whenever it can.

     

     

    @Soprano2:

  175. 175.

    OverTwistWillie

    @Betty Cracker:

    His GOP primary candidate for IL governor got trounced by Dick Uihlein’s, so he got mad and moved to Florida.

    Governor Dull’s ambitious wife is jonesing to be First Lady, so the big money will be greenlit to try all kinds of crazy shit in Florida over the next couple of years.

  176. 176.

    dww44

    @Matt McIrvin:

    As one who worked in that industry for the last 28 years of my working life, I can confirm the truth of your statement.  I remember once when Delta Airlines announced a major layoff around 1980 or so, the brokers on the sales floor at the retail office I worked in, cheered in unison. Stock markets, investors, and those who sell to the latter, have always cheered layoffs.  Even then, when I wasn’t nearly as politically informed, I kinda always felt that was wrong, or bad, or just plain unkind.

  177. 177.

    eclare

    @schrodingers_cat:   I certainly care, and I read about the situation, but I don’t know enough to comment thoughtfully.  And while I know that is definitely not a requirement for comments on the internet, I don’t want to mispeak.

  178. 178.

    Mike in NC

    Thanks to the network news last night I was forced to see about 15 seconds of Fat Bastard whining about everything he hated, including “Gyna” and globalists. We all know what that last dog whistle refers to. (So no love for Jared.) Is Steve Bannon still writing his speeches or did he just commit that phrase to memory?

  179. 179.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Miss Bianca: Local or regional events can affect national averages in ways that people don’t see everywhere. I recall that in fall 2022, running up to the election, there was a second big spike in gasoline prices, but unlike the one in the summer, that one was mostly on the West Coast–we didn’t see it to anything like the same degree in the Northeast. And of course gas prices on the West Coast are far higher to begin with.

  181. 181.

    Hoodie

    @Betty Cracker: Republican politics has always fed off of othering and scapegoating, going back at least as far back as McCarthy and extending through Nixon, Reagan and Trump.  It’s the old Paranoid style recognized by Hofstadter.  DeSantis and crew seem to be trying to find a new paranoia because DeSantis understands the demographic changes that ultimately doom Trump’s very 1980’s style racism.  He’s still dabbling in  some classic tropes like immigration hysteria because they can play cross-culturally in a place like South Florida.  He’s also trying out new scapegoats such as nonbinary people and college professors because he believes these may have cross-demographic appeal.

  182. 182.

    Betty Cracker

    @OverTwistWillie: My impression is the wife has all the media savvy between the two. What do I know, but I wonder if the crazy shit that is tolerated in Florida will repel voters outside the former Confederacy and the square states. Kind of hard to tack to the middle when you’re doing the high-profile performative wingnut stuff like DeSantis is, but as we know, many voters have the attention span of a fruit fly, so maybe it’ll work.

  184. 184.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Omnes Omnibus: Beards go in and out of fashion and the last time they were out, it seemed like this media/memetic/pop-culture consensus had suddenly developed that women universally found beards gross and it was only the guys who really liked having them. And it was weird to me since it didn’t square with what I was seeing in real life.

    My mom never liked them though. My dad tried growing one once and she issued a veto.

  185. 185.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @OverTwistWillie:

    Governor Dull’s ambitious wife is jonesing to be First Lady, so the big money will be greenlit to try all kinds of crazy shit in Florida over the next couple of years.

    The media campaign to make Casey DeSantis into equal parts Jackie Kennedy and quasi-co-governor/candidate is one of the strangest things I’ve seen in a while. I’m guessing that Pushaw person is pushing it at the behest of the couple most concerned.

  186. 186.

    leeleeFL

    @schrodingers_cat:  No, you’re not!  It’s not my most pressing worry, but Modi’s rise has worried me as well as Erdogan’s.  I imagine Bapu in tears and Ataturk fuming on a fairly regular schedule.  I am fast approaching 72, and the world I live in makes me angry, or sad, or worried, rather constantly.

    Insult to injury, I live in Florida, where every fucking thing pisses me off.

    It’s exhausting!

  187. 187.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Hoodie: The thing is, though, they tried hammering at anti-trans paranoia in 2018 and 2020 already (pushing “bathroom bills”) and it didn’t really work then either. They may think the time has come now. Maybe they’re right. But it seems like it’s mostly the people who are already bigots making more noise and being more scary and awful, rather than the center shifting their way.

    I think maybe there’s some kind of idea that they can do with trans people what Bush did with the reaction to expanded gay rights and same-sex marriage in 2004. But surely they can also see that was a doomed reaction that ultimately failed to drive policy, though it might have helped reelect Bush.

  189. 189.

    Baud

    @Matt McIrvin:

    The trans stuff and the cancel culture stuff is mostly about energizing their base and to prove to them that they are committed to hate if elected.  Those won’t be the issues they will focus on in the general election during the few minutes the normies are paying attention.

  191. 191.

    Mr. Bemused Senior

    @Matt McIrvin:

    I’m hip, but not weird
    Like you notice I don’t wear a beard
    Beards were in but now they’re out
    They had their day, now they’re passe
    Just ask me if you’re in doubt
    ‘Cause I’m hip

  193. 193.

    eclare

    @schrodingers_cat:   Let me know when you do.  I can also send it to at least one person I know who will be interested.  A few years ago he was planning to move back to Kerala, now who knows?

  194. 194.

    UncleEbeneezer

    @Soprano2: Fuck Bill Maher.  He’s been helping spreading casual racism, Misogyny, Islamophobia and Transphobia for years and giving cover to others on the Left (or at least, outside of the GOP) for over a decade.  

  196. 196.

    UncleEbeneezer

    The most recent Jack podcast episode had a great rundown of the Biden/Pence vs. Trump documents cases:

    Crime depends on active knowledge and intent.  You’d have to prove that Trump, Biden, Pence 1.) KNEW they had the documents and 2.) had them on purpose.

    Both can be easily shown with what me know for Trump.  Not for Biden or Pence.  It’s really that simple.  Then there’s the most likely charge of Obstruction.  Mountains of evidence that Trump has obstructed the investigation, none for Biden/Pence.

  197. 197.

    UncleEbeneezer

    @Matt McIrvin: All they care about is feeding their grotesque MAGA base.  They are willing to risk losing elections in order to do that.  And the MAGA base is obsessed with the mythical threat of “Groomers” and using it to bash Trans people.  I suspect Russia has helped fuel the fire, but the MAGA choads are all-in on Transphobia right now, sadly.

  198. 198.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @UncleEbeneezer: I was very interested in McCabe’s reaction to the NYT story about Barr and Durham. He said (IIRC) he was reluctant to comment because what he knew about that story was still classified, and I got the impression that somebody spilled some beans there.

  199. 199.

    Cameron

    @Kay: I think a lot of people figured this was coming.  Appalling – taking what I consider one of the best public university systems in the country and turning it into a joke.  Because you know they won’t stop at New College.

    I find it a bit disconcerting to live in Florida yet tell any of my friends who are thinking of moving here not to come if they have kids.  Unless, of course, your dream for your offspring is to have them as proud graduates of Forty-five Caliber Jesus University.

  200. 200.

    Betty Cracker

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: Rumor has it that Pushaw’s “promotion” to campaign rapid response director from press secretary was actually a demotion. The explanation I’ve read from local pol watchers is that Pushaw’s tweets were attracting unwanted attention, but that doesn’t ring true to me. Maybe Dollar Tree Jackie K was behind it — who knows?

  204. 204.

    Cameron

    @Kay: He’s having a life crisis – I think he needs to find a diner in America’s Heartland where he can mingle with the regulars and shake his head along with them over the betrayals of Woke Culture.

  205. 205.

    mrmoshpotato

    @Betty Cracker:

    Ugh, that odious thumb! Theoretically, a voluminous beard can camouflage a weak chin, but a contoured goatee can’t construct an entire chin on a sphere. 

    I’ve always found the term “weak chin” to be hilarious.

  206. 206.

    dave319

    @Kay: “We savvy reporters tell voters that Joe Biden is trouble with voters. Then we use that as proof that Joe Biden is in trouble with voters. See? Right? Wrong? Pffff.”

  210. 210.

    Betty Cracker

    @Cameron: It’s sickening on all kinds of levels. As a graduate of the state’s flagship university, I’m thankful I’m established in my career (such as it is) because it’s hard to see how the value of a UF degree doesn’t plummet like a fucking rock thanks to these malevolent clowns.

    Martin (I think) said something the other day about how universities in California pushed back on some other state’s interference in high school curricula by threatening to stop accepting graduates of that state’s public high schools. It might take action like that from sane states to curtail DeSantis’s reign of academic terror.

    Also, where the fuck are the NCAA, NFL, NBA, MLB, etc., on all of this? I know these are amoral organizations, but they have stepped up in the past (due to fan/donor pressure, I suppose) to oppose wingnut overreach. IIRC, MLB threatened to yank an All Star game and got Georgia to back off some odious piece of legislation. Similar measures need to happen in FL, but I see no signs that they will.

  212. 212.

    gvg

    @schrodingers_cat: Not exactly. You are almost the only one who is qualified to comment though. The rest of us just listen. It does influence into how I think about the rest of the world, that particular region, and calculations about various crisis as they come up. It makes fascistic movements in Turkey and Israel and even Europe seem more concerning and especially here in America. But America has over confidently meddled in the past. All I can say is I really want more watchfulness on the worlds money flows. I think the shell corperations and illicit tax havens are disguising some really dangerous violent things we should not be allowing to hide, not to mention evade taxes. So anyway, I listen but don’t say much.

  215. 215.

    Suburban Mom

    @Kay:  I asked my son if it was appropriate for me to give his gf a holiday gift and he said I was passive/aggressive and if I wanted details on the nature of their relationship I should ask.  Double ouch.  Really I just wanted to know if I should get her a present.

  216. 216.

    Cameron

    @Betty Cracker: It also disturbs me that I think he doesn’t actually even believe any of this shit.  His sole interest is furthering his political ambitions, and he’ll say or do anything that the knuckle-walking Eaters of Feces howl for.  Never imagined that I’d live to see the day when “E Pluribus Unum” was replaced/cancelled in favor of “Pwned Again, Libtard.”

  218. 218.

    Brachiator

    @schrodingers_cat:

    Just like I am the only one in this thread that cares about India  descending into a fascist state led by people who admire Hitler.

    That’s not true. The rise of authoritarianism and religious nationalism in India is a great tragedy. It is another warning of how fragile democracy can be.

  220. 220.

    Cameron

    @Cameron: Should add that he also seems to have skin so thin he makes Trump seem like a rhinoceros.  Insanely vindictive, power-mad, totally amoral – what’s not to like?

  221. 221.

    MisterDancer

    @gvg: You are almost the only one who is qualified to comment though. The rest of us just listen.

    Absolutely this. And I say this as someone who’s actually involved in researching history in this region right now.

    I’ve been commenting online for 30+ years, now. And I’ve been a layperson researching what we’ll call Indian history (understanding that modern areas like Pakistan, of course, have importance!) for a while.

    And I just don’t talk much about it. There are things, like the American Civil War or Founders, that I have researched in order to better understand modern politics and/or defend myself in an online fight. This topic, like my research into pre-European influence Ottoman culture, isn’t one of them. As a layperson, I’m pretty sure I have holes in my research that someone can drive a truck of cultural ignorance  accusations thru, utterly disrupting the clarity and potency of my words.

    Given my near-screaming about how people have mis-treated a number of concepts from Black and Brown people here in America, I hope you can understand that I stand ready to ally around denouncing Modi, yet want to be an ALLY — not the main voice in this. Not out of fear itself, but out of respect for those already deep in that fight, people I do not yet know how to boost.

    If there are people/institutions you can point us to to do that work, I’ll take that in and under advisement. If nothing else, I will certainly look upon whatever blog work you do with great interest.

  222. 222.

    Soprano2

    @dww44: Yeah, that seems nutty to me because it indicates a bad economy. That isn’t good for investments. I think they’re thinking only of the short-term gain.

  223. 223.

    MisterDancer

    @Cameron: It also disturbs me that I think he doesn’t actually even believe any of this shit. His sole interest is furthering his political ambitions

    There’s not enough of a line between the “White Moderates” Dr. King denounced, and the George Wallaces and DeSantises who chose power over empathy.

    For reference:

    I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action”; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a “more convenient season.” Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.

  224. 224.

    J R in WV

    @sab:

    I stopped shaving, which I have always hated, at my high school graduation. It was mandatory in HS back in the 60s.

    Then when I about to be drafted and joined the Navy, I had to shave through boot camp and in tech school. Then the boss of the Navy, Adm Zumwalt decided that since sailors in the Navy back in the days of sailing ships had beards, he would allow well maintained beards on his sailors. I haven’t been clean shaven since then, since 1971 or so.

    I have a nearly all white full beard, and in the wintertime it gets pretty bushy. I usually cut it back as the weather warms up in the spring, but just a little bit. Still a full beard. Hate shaving. I bleed when I shave…

  225. 225.

    Brachiator

    @UncleEbeneezer:

    Both can be easily shown with what me know for Trump.  Not for Biden or Pence.  It’s really that simple.  Then there’s the most likely charge of Obstruction.  Mountains of evidence that Trump has obstructed the investigation, none for Biden/Pence.

    Yeah, Trump is the problem. Biden and Pence are, relatively, non-issues.

  226. 226.

    scav

    As a geographer — and one that actually worked for a bit as a cartographer — it is somehow comforting to see the outline of the state of ignorance so definitely established as Florida shaped.  There were Kansas proponents for a long time and a few Alabama supporters, but the evidence is piling up.  And they said the Age of Discovery is past!

    Do hope my grad school officemates have made it out of Tampa though.

  230. 230.

    Miss Bianca

    @rikyrah: Bobby Hull and Bobby Orr were two of the first two big names of hockey that I learned as a young’un, probably because I kept mixing them up for a while.

    But Gordie Howe was the first, because he was always The Main Man of Detroit hockey.

  231. 231.

    Kay

    @Suburban Mom:

     he said I was passive/aggressive and if I wanted details on the nature of their relationship I should ask

    Lol. They are SO MEAN TO US :)

    I think he was mad because he says he hates the midwest and can’t wait to move to Portland, blah blah and his GF is from Wisconsin and she told me “I love the midwest” and also “I’m a Wisconsin girl at heart” at this same meal and I looked at him like “ha! – you might have to stay!”

  232. 232.

    Steeplejack

    @sab:

    My spouse shaved off his white goatee because he was tired of looking like a MAGAt. Now he just has a mustache.

    Same here.

  234. 234.

    UncleEbeneezer

    @Brachiator: They also talked about derivative classification.  Meaning, when a President/VP looks at a classified document and then writes something based off of it (memo, email, whatever) that result is ALSO classified at the same level.  So it’s easy to see how classified documents can pile up for anyone with high level security clearance.

  235. 235.

    Sister Golden Bear

    @Matt McIrvin: Gotta make those quarterly numbers since only shareholder value matters, and keep shareholders happy by showing you’re doing something.

    Plus layoffs are a way to put fear back into the hearts of those pesky serfs employees wanting better pay and working conditions.

  236. 236.

    satby

    @schrodingers_cat: I think lots of people care, but as most of the readers if this blog are US citizens unable to vote in elections in India, and the people who can vote there have voted for Modi, I don’t know what you’re hoping for here.

  237. 237.

    Sister Golden Bear

    @Soprano2: Silicon Valley is extremely ageist, so mass layoffs are a way for them to purge older workers, who are usually more experienced and/or have been at the company longer, and thus more expensive.

    When the inevitable rehiring begins, company will invariably try to hire younger, less, experienced, and less expensive workers, to fill the positions. Already seeing “senior” level jobs in my field — typically ~5 years of experience — that are really higher-level jobs requiring more experience.

  238. 238.

    schrodingers_cat

    @satby: People here are not Ukranian citizens either but there are several discussions on Ukraine everyday.

    BJP was actively promoting the Orange Error in 2020. So far Indian Americans have voted for Ds by 70% or more. But disinfo about Biden and the Democrats is eagerly circulated in BJP friendly whatsapp groups. This affects US citizens too.

    Also, Hitler was an elected leader as well. World needs to pay attention to what is happening in India. They are preparing for a genocide. A repeat of 1947 but this time over all of India. This may seem hyperbolic to you and does to me when I see it in black and white. But the eliminationist rhetoric from BJP approved “holy men” has been escalating over the last year.  BJP won the last general election with less than 50% of the vote. They are not that popular, they rule through intimidation and fear.

    All I am asking for is awareness. Also BJP cares about what the world thinks of them. So there could be pressure bought from our elected reps.

    Many Hindutva groups operate here as non-profits. HSS the overseas offshoot of the RSS got PPP funds  IIRC. There is a lot we as Americans can do to.

  244. 244.

    Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony

    @Kay: @Soprano2:

    Louis CK just seems SOUR to me now. They’re all so bitter. Talk about not aging gracefully. Jesus. SO bad at it.

    Its the misogyny. That is what freaks them out so much about the transgendered. It blurs the lines between genders and therefore gender roles. #MeToo also freaked them all out. Louis CK & Mauer liked being the famous cool kids because it got them laid with younger women. That isn’t working so well anymore. Sullivan has always been a misogynist. Weiss is just an apologist.

  245. 245.

    Kay

    One point on the NAEP scale represents roughly three weeks of an academic school year, according to Andrew Ho, a Harvard professor who served on the board that administers the assessments.1 By that calculation, students in 2022 were on average about 15 to 24 weeks behind in math and nine weeks behind in reading compared with 2019, or a quarter to half a school year behind.2
    If student performance improvement follows historical prepandemic trends, it could take decades for students to fully catch up.

    Oh, no. This is McKinsey and it’s just nonsense.
    Student performance wouldn’t follow “prepandemic trends” because the whole argument is students LOST LEARNING because of the pandemic. If you’re a 3 year old right now you didn’t “lose any learning” due to the pandemic.
    When the pandemic group moves through they’re gone. Done. No decades of fully catching up. The future students are entirely different people.
    I;m concerned about learning loss at McKinsey.

  246. 246.

    Kay

    @Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony:

    I agree about Louis CK. I liked him because I felt like he had this good understanding of children-how funny and weird they are – he saw them as people -but now it just sounds like he’s whining about his daughters like “women! You can’t live with em and you can’t live without them!”

    Sorry. Gross and also not funny. They’re just girls trying toget along like everyone else. They’re not scheming or anything.

  247. 247.

    Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony

    @Kay:

    When I see quotes like this from Maher, I have to wonder.

    “I’m the last of my guy friends to have never gotten married, and their wives—they don’t want them playing with me. I’m like the escaped slave—I bring news of freedom.”

  251. 251.

    schrodingers_cat

    @eclare: Vinayak Damodar Savarkar the intellectual father of  Hindutva (Fascism in saffron robes) and hierarchy of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). BJP is its political arm. In British India it was the Hindu Mahasabha (Hindu Grand Meeting). This their third iteration.

    *The man in the round glasses in the back row. He was indicted but not convicted.

  253. 253.

    Kay

    @Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony:

    “Take my wife- please!”

    So imaginative and edgy! Next they’ll roll out “to the moon Alice!”

    Maybe they think the Zoomers don’t know that these are old and stale fucking jokes so the plan was to just recycle them. As I said, they need the unnerving, steely gaze of a “disappointed” Zoomer in their lives. Terrifying.

  254. 254.

    Origuy

    @schrodingers_cat: I follow you on Twitter. I’m interested in what’s happening and I appreciate you trying to keep us informed. Some of the tweets in response to the things I get are in Indian languages or are in English filled with references I don’t get. I’ve read some Indian history and I am dismayed by India’s descent into fascism.

  255. 255.

    Bill Arnold

    @danielx:

    Critical thinking does not appear to be a priority these days.

    The most important skill, IMO, is the ability to recognize when one is being emotionally manipulated. That’s a basic human skill that can be taught even to people who have trouble with logic or clear critical thinking, or thinking with probabilities.
    (My father taught his kids at a young age (<10 YO) to habitually/always attempt to estimate the probability that a belief was true, and to always be willing to correct one's beliefs. Very useful skill, and cultures that promote it probably do better.)

  256. 256.

    Bill Arnold

    @jonas:

    He was a former war correspondent who wrote an interesting book back (iirc) in the 90s called War is a Force that Gives us Meaning.

    I enjoyed that book at the time, and was distressed to see that Hedges had aged into rigid anti-Americanism to the point of being a supporter of an imperialistic genocidal invasion by a nuclear armed petro-kleptocracy.
    I had to hold myself in check a bit over the weekend on hearing casual mention of Nazis in Ukraine. Kept it to mmmm look carefully at the Wikipedia page on the 2019 parliamentary election in Ukraine., where the 6 rightmost parties combined on a single ticket to see if they could break the 5 percent proportional representation threshold and they failed at 2.15 percent. With 1 constituency seat (first past the post) win.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Ukrainian_parliamentary_election
    This one was just casually repeating tankie diatribes from somebody he works for, so I’m now a little worried I’ve stirred up trouble. Basically, if one is looking for Fascists in Europe, there are other countries to be worried about. France. Italy. Hungary. Maybe (maybe not) Poland. Etc. Further East, Russia.

  257. 257.

    Ruckus

    @Betty Cracker:

    How is this in the public interest?

    As you easily determined – it isn’t.

    But then “news” outfits are not there to sell you the news, they are there to sell air time to advertisers. Some do a better time of selling information that may be news between the commercials, some do a far better time selling bullshit. I’m thinking of one vendor who sells approximately 95% bullshit. That of course would be faux news.

  259. 259.

    Ruckus

    @Matt McIrvin:

    I’ve had a beard for going on 50 yrs and am not shaving it off any time soon because I hate shaving as much now as I did then. And it does not look the same as it did decades ago because it is now white because I’m an old fart. But it is still full because all the hair on top my noggin needed somewhere to go and gravity and so on.

  260. 260.

    sab

    @Origuy: I don’t want to trivialize this with emoticons but I’d do a like if I could. I don’t know enough to comment but I am following. India was a shining star for democracy in Asia. Currently beyond disturbing.

    ETA Meant to link schroedinger’s #151

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