Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Israel is using food as a weapon of war. Unforgivable.

Dear media: perhaps we ought to let Donald Trump speak for himself!

Can we lighten up on the doomsday scenarios?

Let’s show the world that autocracy can be defeated.

White supremacy is terrorism.

Trump makes a mockery of the legal system and cowardly judges just sit back and let him.

Republicans don’t lie to be believed, they lie to be repeated.

A consequence of cucumbers

An unpunished coup is a training exercise.

It’s pointless to bring up problems that can only be solved with a time machine.

We need to vote them all out and restore sane Democratic government.

The arc of history bends toward the same old fuckery.

It’s easy to sit in safety and prescribe what other people should be doing.

Donald Trump, welcome to your everything, everywhere, all at once.

It’s easier to kill a dangerous animal than a man who just happens to have different thoughts/values than one’s own.

There’s always a light at the end of the frog.

Maybe you would prefer that we take Joelle’s side in ALL CAPS?

Take hopelessness and turn it into resilience.

Following reporting rules is only for the little people, apparently.

ha ha ha! Nice try weird people.

They love authoritarianism, but only when they get to be the authoritarians.

Dear Washington Post, you are the darkness now.

Republicans are the party of chaos and catastrophe.

Ah, the different things are different argument.

You are here: Home / Politics / Biden Administration in Action / TGIFriday Morning Open Thread: Shamelessness, the GOP Superpower

TGIFriday Morning Open Thread: Shamelessness, the GOP Superpower

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The Biden campaign has released a really good ad contrasting Biden’s Wednesday priorities with TFG’s, which you can see at the bottom of the last post or by clicking the link above. (Never say I don’t care about some peoples’ tender sensibilities.)


Reader Interactions

170Comments

  1. 1.

    MazeDancer

    NY State has wonderful people in Congress l- Jeffries, Goldman, my guy Pat Ryan.

    And too many terrible ones – Santos, Stefanik, and all those GOP that Hochul and Maloney let get elected.

    NY is going to have to fight hard next year.

  4. 4.

    Sanjeevs

    Media looks likely to be significantly worse in 2024 compared to 2020. CNN will be worse, secondary outlets like Vice have shut down or cut back and Twitter will be a giant troll farm.
    I expect the new AI chatbots will be very active on social media too.

  5. 5.

    NotMax

    Media note. Me likey thus far.

    On MHz Choice, Homicide Hills, a German police procedural with a gently comedic overlay about a maverick detective in line for promotion who in its stead is reassigned to become chief of a three-person department in, on its face, the sleepiest corner of the country.

  6. 6.

    MomSense

    I love how Anderson Cooper is  saying that the criticism of their decision to host TFG is just people not willing to leave their information silos and listen to opposing viewpoints. Fuck you very much Anderson. Making news by allowing a racist criminal to lie and spread propaganda is not fucking journalism. It’s not reporting or informing or any other legitimate function of journalism.

  8. 8.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @Sanjeevs:

    I expect the new AI chatbots will be very active on social media too.

    They won’t be any different than the old chatbots.  Twitter threads that get conservative attention drown in near-verbatim repetitions of the same bad faith arguments.  AI chatbots either do that or spout incoherent off-topic gibberish.

    Seriously, guys, there is no chatbot yet that passes a Turing Test.  The one that trolled Alex Jones was going on about licking each other’s nipples, which somehow the dumbass fell for.  The trolls will just use the old repetitive bots, whose choking spam at least sticks to talking points.

  9. 9.

    Amir Khalid

    @MomSense:

    I don’t watch a lot of Anderson Cooper, but it’s been my impression that he’s usually much better than this. Not that it would be any excuse, but is he toeing the CNN corporate line on orders from above?

  11. 11.

    Jeffro

    Nickel bet that Rep. Jeffries calls the House GOP caucus “a reeking cage full of poo-flinging monkeys” before May is out.

  13. 13.

    Kay

    @MomSense:

    You have to watch their Trump campaign commercial or you’re close-minded. They’re planning on scolding us into buying the garbage they churn out.

  16. 16.

    Frankensteinbeck

    A town hall format with questions from his supporters is actually better than a rally for Trump.  It keeps him on the topics his base wants to hear, the red meat, rather than him focusing on whining.  This really was a blatant attempt to normalize the hardest right politics.

  17. 17.

    mrmoshpotato

    Chris Licht and Les Moonves can go fuck themselves on the Sun.

    ETA – and take Van Jones with you.

    (He’s still on TV?  WTF?)

  18. 18.

    Ken

    @Frankensteinbeck: That’s an interesting aspect of the Turing test which I’d not considered. What are the expectations of the human evaluator? Does the machine pass the test if it can fool un-intelligent people?

  19. 19.

    MomSense

    @Kay:

    Our media betters loved what trump did for their bottom line. That’s all they care about.

  21. 21.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @Ken:

    It didn’t even fool Jones for long.  After the nipples thing – which Jones enthusiastically agreed to – it started repeating itself and he figured out he was being trolled.  But you’re right, “Can you fool an idiot?” is an interesting twist on the question.  Right now “Only briefly.”

  23. 23.

    Ken

    @MazeDancer: “The FBI’s been going through Rep. Santos’ emails and phone messages, and — how shall I put this, Kevin? — did you keep those boxes after you moved into the Speaker’s office?”

  24. 24.

    Kay

    @MomSense:

    No one is obligated to listen to a barrage of lies in the interest of “fairness”. I don’t “disagree” with Donald Trump on the issue of abortion. Donald Trump lies about abortion. He lied about it on CNN and no one on CNN corrected him. How does this ridiculous dance between Donald Trump and multimillionaire media personalties benefit me? Not at all.

  25. 25.

    Baud

    Imagine his newsworthy the town hall would have been if Trump had shot somebody.

  26. 26.

    HeartlandLiberal

    In other news, we moved last week to a flat house in a local retirement community. We are exhausted. My bizness class Comcast account was down for 12 days, because when the first tech came Monday a week ago to make the transfer, he discovered the cable run where I wanted my equipment and servers was dead. By Wed, the maintenance crew here had run a new line where I wanted. I called Comcast, and they had CANCELLED MY ACCOUNT, instead of holding the transfer open. It took Thurs, Fri, and Monday, to straighten out and reopen the transfer with same five IP numbers I use for email server, web server, and other services. But as of this morning, my primary domain controller on my Windows LAN, the LINUX Fedora email server, and the web server are up and running, and the wireless access  point is letting me type this on my laptop. I am about to set up my wife’s iMac for her. At least she has a work table. My study is still strewn with computers and monitors where I want the tables to go.

    Needless to say, the past six weeks has been exhausting, sometimes to the  point of tears and collapse. The good news is, the food here is FANTASTIC, gourmet quality, healthy and nutritious. You can show up for lunch, but you have to make reservations in the dining room for dinner. The other good news? I have lost 5 pounds. I can see my toes again.

  31. 31.

    Kay

    Alex Thompson
    @AlexThomp
    ·May 10
    Biden’s reelection campaign has dropped New York City Mayor Eric Adams as a national surrogate following his public criticism of the White House’s approach to the migrant crisis.

    Good. I don’t know why Mayor Adams believes that telling people the city he runs is a dangerous shithole is the work of a mayor, but we certainly don’t need him nationally. You can keep him, NYC. I only wish you had kept Donald Trump and Rudy Giuliani too.

  33. 33.

    Sanjeevs

    @Frankensteinbeck: Troll farms mainly work by using the bandwagon effect. It’s not about the quality of argument it’s the volume. And Ai chatbots are already more than good enough for that.

  34. 34.

    mrmoshpotato

    @Kay:

    Mayor Adams believes…the city he runs is a dangerous shithole 

    Wow.  The stupidity, it burns.

  35. 35.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @Kay:

    Letting a candidate talk about exactly what they want and ensuring they get nothing but applause isn’t ‘fair’, it’s picking sides.  I think ‘hour long campaign commercial’ is the perfect description, and if Trump fucked it up, that’s on him.  The crowd instructions really seal it.  CNN did their level best to make him and his politics look good.

  38. 38.

    Baud

    I’m pleased the ratings were low.  Some decent people need to watch it so they’re not completely unaccountable but average folks not being interested is good news.

  39. 39.

    eversor

    Most of twitter and facebook has been bots, but not AI bots, for a long time anyways.

  40. 40.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @Baud:

    To only cheer and not boo or heckle.  They not only let him lie on his politically best topics, they made sure the public saw only positive reactions.  They really sat down and thought about how to make this coverage as biased as possible.

  41. 41.

    narya

    @Frankensteinbeck: And the interesting thing to me is in the thread below, where they note there were a LOT of people in the audience, especially women, who were not enchanted by TFG. While of course I wish CNN hadn’t done it, I wouldn’t be surprised if this did even more damage than giving us material for commercials. You know some of the women in the audience are gonna talk to their friends, or their friends were watching. Still was a bullshit move by CNN, but sure, convince republican women that “their” candidate has nothing but contempt for women. Some of those women have had abortions; some have been assaulted.

  43. 43.

    SFAW

    @NotMax:

    chief of a three-person department in, on its face, the sleepiest corner of the country.

    Named (the German equivalent of) Cabot Cove? Which just happens to have a “mystery writer” as one of its residents?

  45. 45.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Baud: CNN had someone come out beforehand and tell the crowd to be respectful: applause was explicitly allowed but not booing.

  47. 47.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Jeffro: ​
      I cut $2.3 trillion from the debt and I didn’t touch defense (FWIW I would rejigger where the money went). I expanded the same things you did.

  48. 48.

    Baud

    @Matt McIrvin:

    Applause is a little different than cheering. But I recall that they usually tell them to be completely quiet when they don’t want an audience reaction.

  49. 49.

    Kay

    @Baud:

    They do. I think it’s a good sign the Biden team will impose some discipline. We don’t really need “eccentric” self promoters and loudmouths.

    Between Santos, Trump, Giuliani and this clown NYC is really living up to their reputation as ultra shrewd, I must say. They’re looking like easy marks for every GOP grifter who comes along.

    The “media center of the world” supposedly hyper competitive but ONE tiny local paper broke the Santos story?

  51. 51.

    Kay

    @Matt McIrvin:

    They had to have written guidelines or rules for picking the attendees. If they’re proud of their work they should release those. People need the whole story.

  52. 52.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @narya:

    I wouldn’t be surprised if this did even more damage than giving us material for commercials.

    That is an interesting point, but if this wasn’t good for Trump, hoo boy, it’s not for lack of trying in CNN’s part.

  53. 53.

    Soprano2

    @MomSense: It’s so funny that they pretend TFG might have something new or different to say that we haven’t already heard 100 times! They would be doing a service to everyone to do one of those for DeSantis, because most people don’t know much or even anything about him.

  56. 56.

    Soprano2

    @MomSense:  Our media betters loved what trump did for their bottom line. That’s all they care about.

    No matter how much they deny it, I think they really really really miss him. They loved that there was the “outrage of the day”, because none of their panelists had to actually know anything about anything – they just had to have an opinion about the “outrage of the day”. I think they dislike Biden as president mostly because now they actually have to do research and learn things, and they think that’s so boring. Les Moonves articulated their true position – they know TFG is bad for the country, but he’s great for their industry.

    Look at the CNN town all – even though we all hate it and are critical, everyone is talking about CNN, which in the end is what they want more than anything.

  57. 57.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Kay: If I recall correctly, they were all Republicans or Republican-voting Independents. So that meant they were likely to be a Trump-sympathetic crowd to begin with, and still, many of them were apparently not pleased (but remained quiet).

    I’m sure CNN would justify that choice on the grounds that this is in theory an event about the Republican primary campaign. But with the situation we’re in, it seems like Trump is going to romp to the Republican nomination without serious competition, so it functioned as effectively a general-election-campaign rally.

  58. 58.

    Soprano2

    @Kay: I don’t think he’s a Democrat, I think he ran as a Democrat because he knew that was the only way he could win. He mostly talks like a Republican.

  59. 59.

    Ken

    @Baud: Hmm, that might work. I’ve been trying to imagine how SNL could use this, and having trouble — no parody can really top it, even if they set it in 1930 and interview Hitler.

    But a scene where the producers are trying to set the rules, and being overridden at every turn (“We’ll have a mix of voters.” “No, only my supporters. And tell them they can applaud, but can’t boo.”), that could work.

  60. 60.

    SFAW

    @Jeffro:

    I am, apparently, a “Big Tax and Spender.”

    The other “classifications” are called such “let’s show who we REALLY prefer over YOU, libtard!!” anodyne names as “Classic Conservative,” “Mindful Moderate,” and “Diligent Deficit Hawk.”

    Interesting how the non-RWMF groups are given insulting or inflammatory names. I would have expected to see that from the FTFTFNYT more than the WaPo.

  61. 61.

    Cameron

    @Kay: I lived a long time in Philly before I moved to Florida, and Adams reminds me way too much of Frank Rizzo.

  62. 62.

    Scout211

    Yesterday, SCOTUS released the decision on our long national nightmare—the price of bacon.  Supreme Court backs California law for more space for pigs.

    It was challenged by Midwestern pork producers as another California regulatory overreach.  Bacon prices would soar nationwide and pigs are, you know, just animals!

    WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Thursday backed a California animal cruelty law that requires more space for breeding pigs, a ruling the pork industry says will lead to higher costs nationwide for pork chops and bacon.

    “While the Constitution addresses many weighty issues, the type of pork chops California merchants may sell is not on that list,” Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote in an opinion for the court.

    Industry groups have said the law would mean expensive, industry-wide changes even though a majority of the farms where pigs are raised are not in California, the nation’s most populous state, but instead in the Midwest and North Carolina.

    A majority of the high court agreed that lower courts had correctly dismissed pork producers’ challenge to the law. Both liberal and conservative justices were a part of the majority, though they were not united in their reasoning.

    . . .

    The case before the court involved California’s Proposition 12, which voters passed in 2018. It said that pork sold in the state needs to come from pigs whose mothers were raised with at least 24 square feet of space, with the ability to lie down and turn around. That rules out confined “gestation crates,” metal enclosures that are common in the pork industry.

    The American Farm Bureau Federation and the Iowa-based National Pork Producers Council sued. They said that while Californians consume 13% of the pork eaten in the United States, nearly 100% of it comes from hogs raised outside the state, including in Iowa, Minnesota, Illinois, Indiana and North Carolina. The vast majority of sows, meanwhile, are not raised under conditions that would meet Proposition 12′s standards.

  66. 66.

    narya

    @Scout211: Part of the reason the Strict Scrutiny folks were following this one, and, I suspect, part of the reason the decision was so weirdly split, is that (they speculated) some justices may want to apply the thinking to abortion, in terms of how one state’s laws affect other states. Looking forward to their Monday podcast . . . The decision really was all over the place.

  67. 67.

    satby

    @Scout211: This is wonderful. I lived several miles down the road from one of those horrifically crowded pig gestational farms in MI, and the stench was overwhelming. You just knew the animals were kept in horrid conditions.

  68. 68.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Baud: NH is semi-open: undeclared voters can vote in either primary but Democrats can’t vote in the Republican primary. So this audience was people who would in theory be Republican primary voters.

  69. 69.

    Anyway

    @MomSense:

    Our media betters loved what trump did for their bottom line. That’s all they care about.

    I think in addition they also look down on D constituencies- those who showed up for the women’s rally, BLM protests, Dobbs protests – plus their steadfast insistence that they do not consider policy and it’s all about the optics  means Dem issues don’t get a fair hearing. It’s an uphill climb for us.

  70. 70.

    Jeffro

    @Omnes Omnibus: No cuts to defense?  I think it was like $900B over 10 years…chump change!  (j/k)

     

    @SFAW: yes…when my “arch nemesis” is the “classic conservative” and other categories get called moderate, etc, it’s pretty clear where they’re coming from.  (eye roll)

     

    I feel like there was a piece (maybe something that accompanied the Times budget calculator?) a while back that showed how a significant majority of Americans who used this kind of calculator landed in pretty much the same general area: tax the rich, trim defense a bit, and preserve (maybe even expand) Social Security, Medicare, etc.  But that may just be wishful thinking.

  72. 72.

    Jeffro

    I just clicked through it again, going with every revenue raiser, every budget cutting item, and saying no to every last bit of new spending (but did NOT go along with the House GOP bill) and managed to get “diligent deficit hawk”.

    So at least the calculator’s not completely rigged – someone could be a “deficit hawk” without going along with their nonsense.

  74. 74.

    Soprano2

    I heard an interview with Nancy Mace on NPR this morning about the debt ceiling. She kept saying that the government takes in 11 times the amount of interest on our debt, so there would be no reason to default because the government could just keep paying the interest on our debt. I wish the interviewer had asked her if she prefers we pay foreign bondholders over taking care of our own citizens, but of course she didn’t. She did say to Mace, after about the 3rd time Mace talked over her, “Please let me ask you this question”, to which Mace replied something like “I’m answering your question”, even though she hadn’t allowed the interviewer to finish a sentence.  It was a good lesson that some Democrats could learn from – Mace didn’t accept the framing of any of the interviewer’s questions, instead changing it to a question she wanted to answer. She kept insisting, over and over, that there was no reason to default, that if we did it would be Biden’s fault for not paying the interest on the debt, and that it was all Democrat’s fault for not wanting to cut bad spending. I also wished the interviewer had asked her how it felt to get a fluff profile in the NY Times.

  75. 75.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @satby: The city of Washington, MO has a CAFO on the north side of the Missouri River. You can always tell when they are spreading manure on the fields, and the winds are from the north.

  76. 76.

    Jeffro

    @satby:These are not good people, even if they believe their religious beliefs make them inherently good. This is a movement centered on grievances and vengeance against enemies of the herrenvolk. What we saw are the true believers Milton Mayer wrote about.

    1,110% true.

  77. 77.

    Jeffro

    @Baud: ??  Sure they do.  (Not just because they used a national debt calculator, though. =)

    It’s definitely not the only reason, or even the main reason, for some/most folks.  But lots of people vote, at least partially, based on their economic stances.

  79. 79.

    rikyrah

    @Kay:

    You have to watch their Trump campaign commercial or you’re close-minded. They’re planning on scolding us into buying the garbage they churn out.

     

    Absoutely not.

  80. 80.

    Ken

    @OzarkHillbilly: Washington, MO has a CAFO

    For a moment I thought this was a new “Find Out” acronym.

    Then I realized, why shouldn’t it be?  Perhaps “Crap Around, Find Out”.

  81. 81.

    Eolirin

    @MazeDancer: Eyyy, high-five fellow NY-18er.

    That was much closer than I was comfortable with but at least we pulled it out.

    The maps are being challenged btw. With the new makeup of the court they may end up back in front of the assembly for another go. That’ll help

  83. 83.

    rikyrah

    @Jeffro:

    I clicked through it and cut the national debt by $3.3T while STILL adding universal child care, preK, student loan forgiveness, free public college tuition, and expanding Social Security & Medicare!  (not too shabby for a Friday morning!)

     

    I cut 1.5T

  86. 86.

    rikyrah

    @Kay:

    They had to have written guidelines or rules for picking the attendees. If they’re proud of their work they should release those. People need the whole story.

     

    ICAM.

    ALL a  complete setup and scam.

  87. 87.

    Eolirin

    @Kay: He was a cop. It’s what they do. They need to justify their existence despite doing very little to improve their communities.

  88. 88.

    rikyrah

    @Soprano2:

    No matter how much they deny it, I think they really really really miss him. They loved that there was the “outrage of the day”, because none of their panelists had to actually know anything about anything – they just had to have an opinion about the “outrage of the day”.

     

    They enjoyed being stenographers.

    They didn’t have to actually know anything about POLICY and POLICY positions, because they spent their screentime talking about the outrage of the day from his Twitter account.

    They didn’t actually have to know anything. Policy? What is that?

  89. 89.

    Another Scott

    @Jeffro: I haven’t played with it, but getting and keeping Federal tax receipts at ~ 20% of GDP would probably solve a lot of problems with the federal budget. The federal government was strangled for too long with too little resources. (Compare the Clinton years with the early Obama years.)

    As societies advance, governments do (and need to do) more and they need money to pay for it.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  91. 91.

    sdhays

    Any “news” value generated by the CNN Nuremberg rally is meta. CNN ran an experiment to see if they could rustle up the old Trump ratings magic, and it failed. People aren’t interested in watching Donald Trump anymore, whether for enjoyment (vomit) or hate-watching.

    The focus group results were interesting too. Apparently, no matter how hard they were pushed, even these Republicans mostly weren’t enthused by him. They’re Republicans, so they’ll almost certainly vote for him, but the energy isn’t going to be there.

  92. 92.

    Eolirin

    @sdhays: Well, only one of the eight was willing to commit to voting for him, so maybe a lot of them stay home. That works out better for us if we can turn out our side.

  93. 93.

    satby

    @Frank Wilhoit: Not the interpretation a majority of us came to. And it’s a bit bogus for Cooper to pontificate at this point that many (most, according to the last elections) are somehow unaware of the danger. That’s the gist of the Threadreader I shared at comment #50.

  94. 94.

    Betty

    @Jeffro: I am guessing you either raised taxes on the wealthy or cut defense spending, two things Republicans, and probably Manchin and Sinema, would never agree to.

  98. 98.

    evodevo

    @Scout211: Well, there’s a reason for “farrowing crates” – and any hog farmer, big or small, can explain it.  The main contributor in the death rate of piglets is…mom rolling over or lying down on them.  A farrowing crate, used only for the period of time when the piglets are small and vulnerable, is a life saver.  Now confining the moms any longer than a month, IS cruel.  But otherwise it’s a life saver, if you are a piglet.

  99. 99.

    Another Scott

    @Jeffro: I supported every expanded program, opposed every cut, supported all the new taxes on the above $400k except the 5% sales tax.

    You are…

    The Big Tax and Spender

    Unlike your archnemesis, the Classic Conservative, you believe in dramatically expanding the size of the federal government with trillions of dollars in new programs to make life better for your fellow Americans

    The national debt is expected to hit $51.8 trillion in 10 years. Your policy choices would cut $860 billion from the debt over the next decade — that is 1 percent of the projected figure.

    Yes, I want to tax and spend our way to lower deficits and lower debt.

    Somehow, I don’t think the labels mean that much anymore (if they ever did…).

    I hope Dean Baker takes them to task. BIG SCARY NUMBER $51.8T means nothing without context. Nominal annual GDP is roughly $26T. Assuming 2.5% nominal growth a year, that would be $31-32T at the end of 10 years. GDP would total $291T after 10 years. 51.8/291 = 18%. It’s not a scary number.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  100. 100.

    Jeffro

    @Betty: oh of course!  Trying to come up with something that our current Congress would approve would be a waste of time.

    P.J. O’Rourke had a funny take on the budget in Parliament of Whores.  (I mean, he approached it as a mostly-heartless fiscal conservative, but he took a whack at DoD’s budget among many other things.)  The best part was his insistence early on that any cuts below $1B weren’t even worth worrying about, which is pretty much true.

  103. 103.

    Jeffro

    @Another Scott:I hope Dean Baker takes them to task. BIG SCARY NUMBER $51.8T means nothing without context. Nominal annual GDP is roughly $26T. Assuming 2.5% nominal growth a year, that would be $31-32T at the end of 10 years. GDP would total $291T after 10 years. 51.8/291 = 18%. It’s not a scary number.

    This is a really good point.

    Whew we have a LOT of edumacating to do…

  104. 104.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Jeffro: That was always one of the big problems with the “Golden Fleece Awards” approach to budget-hawkery: that kind of criticism spent most of its time ginning up outrage over penny-ante spending that sounded absurd, but might amount to less than a million dollars, let alone a billion. Much of the time these kinds of attacks would concentrate on scientific grants, because it’s so easy to make them sound absurd (you put a shrimp on a treadmill?? That’s just CRAZY).

  105. 105.

    rikyrah

    @Another Scott:

     

    I hadn’t even paid attention to it:

     

    Unlike your archnemesis, the Classic Conservative, you believe in dramatically expanding the size of the federal government with trillions of dollars in new programs to make life better for your fellow Americans
    Unlike the Diligent Deficit Hawk or the Mindful Moderate, you’d back major new initiatives on health care, education, climate and other social programs.
    And yet unlike the Money-Printing Maverick, you largely believe these programs should be paid for with broad and extensive new taxes aimed at reducing the deficit.

  106. 106.

    geg6

    @Cameron: ​

    Damn, you just articulated what I couldn’t figure out about Adams that seemed so familiar to me. Even here in the ‘Burgh, we had a very good sense of exactly who and what Frank Rizzo was. And that’s exactly who he reminds me of.

  107. 107.

    WaterGirl

    @Baud: They are saying it’s a win for CNN because even with “only” 3 million, that’s still 7-8 times morethan their usual 400k audience. ugh.  fuck these people.

  108. 108.

    Ivan X

    @Kay: no thanks. We are psyched to be rid of them. Let Florida be a ghetto for the very worst people, like Times Square is for the tourists.

    Adams has been a major disappointment. I think we were hoping for something good after eight years of De B’s mediocrity, arrogance, and stupidity. And NYC has some major problems to address. Fortunately the indomitable spirit of its denizens triumphs over shitty mayors. The city just keeps going. And even manages to eject a couple of its most egregious scumbags!

  110. 110.

    Jeffro

    The  slanted labels thing is reminding me of a ‘policy calculator’ thing that the Times ran a year or two ago...it really frosted me because it was clearly aimed at assuaging the trump enablers’ consciences.  You ended up on a grid that measured your social and fiscal conservatism (itself, a tell).  I was way down in the bottom left corner manning the Progressive Party voter registration booth.  =)

    Of course two of the six possible “parties” people could end up in were the ‘Patriot Party’ and the ‘Christian Conservative Party’

    (I may have ranted a time or two about this already, my bad)

     

    After taking the quiz for myself, I took it again answering as if I were my RWNJ (but not religious) dad and bro.  Here’s what it basically told them:

    “Oh so after voting for trumpov TWICE, here, we’re happy to tell you that you’re really a member of the Growth and Opportunity Party, and certainly not some ‘deplorable’ or something…keep your head high!”

    blech

  112. 112.

    Soprano2

    @Baud: It is yet another example of how they have internalized the idea that Republicans and Republican policies are the “good, normal” way for people to be because they’re supported by white men. They could call it something like “Fair Sharer”, meaning you want everyone to pay their fair share, but calling it “Big Tax and Spender” is an overtly Republican frame

  114. 114.

    Ken

    @Baud: They’d do better, ratings-wise, to start their own “CNN After Dark” with investigative reporting of strippers, escort services, singles clubs, and so forth.

  115. 115.

    WaterGirl

    @Amir Khalid:

    A 95-second video clip that has gone viral on Facebook appears to show the boys sitting on the driver’s seat, wearing casual shirts and red pants.

    They can be heard telling passersby that they want to go to a toy store to buy a model car. “Mama is at home and we are going to the store,” the elder boy says in Malay. “We want to buy a black car,” the younger one adds.

    “Dammit, son, I told you to always wear a dress shirt when you are heading out to buy a car with your brother!”

    On a more serious note, imagine being the mom and coming out of the bathroom and finding that your sons were both missing.

  116. 116.

    Eolirin

    @Kristine: VAT has worked out okay for Europe. If it’s coupled with a large improvement in baseline conditions for lower income folk (and you keep high marginal tax rates) it kinda evens out even being regressive.

  118. 118.

    OverTwistWillie

    In other ’90s media news Paramount finally took MTV News to a farm upstate. That was once a well regarded industry news outlet.

    This is the death rattle of CableTV. The big money has followed viewers to streaming, and unloaded their assets onto overleveraged marks trying to monetize the shitpiles.

  120. 120.

    Eolirin

    @Soprano2: I have a creeping suspicion, though I don’t have data to back this up, that tax and spend as a slur hasn’t really penetrated through to the younger generations; Gen Z is likely to see that and go, “Yeah, why wouldn’t you do that?”

  122. 122.

    The Thin Black Duke

    @satby: More to the point, Cooper and his brethren in the news didn’t do enough to warn Americans how dangerous Trump was back in 2016. Mainstream journalists treated Trump like he was Harold Hill, a charming scoundrel.

  123. 123.

    Geminid

    @Betty: TIm Kaine and Mark Warner are two other Democratic Senators who would oppose cuts to the Defense budget, and they’re not the only ones. I don’t that will change for the rest of this decade, either.

  125. 125.

    Layer8Problem

    @Jeffro:  He was mean-spirited a lot of the time but when P.J. O’Rourke died so did the last (only?) funny conservative.

  126. 126.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Eolirin: It’s always been my view.  Holmes’s quote that “[t]axes are what we pay for civilized society” rings true to me.

  129. 129.

    oldgold

    This morning I watched coverage of the border troubles. It seemed a lot of the refugees were from Venezuela. I know next to nothing about Venezuela, except that it has the largest proven oil reserves in the world. You would think that might result in the Venezuela being something other than an economic  basket case.  How damn bad is that government?

    Now, they have oil. We need oil. They need money. We have money. Can’t something be worked out that would be beneficial to them and to us?

  130. 130.

    Betty Cracker

    @Ivan X: The one good thing that may come from climate change is if trash from the boroughs and midwestern states repatriates itself when this peninsula finally sinks beneath the waves.

  131. 131.

    Layer8Problem

    @Jeffro, @Omnes Omnibus:  I remember that!  “Dry cleaning can be expensive but you can do it yourself at home with just your bathtub and gasoline.”  As best as I recollect.

  132. 132.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Jeffro: ​
      The list of things that can and cannot go into spaghetti sauce. Then the list for chili that just says add all the cannots from the spaghetti list.

  134. 134.

    Eolirin

    @Omnes Omnibus: Yes, and I get that. It’s just not a mistake to be for them, when coupled with large social program expansion and maintaining high taxes on rich people is all. There is a value to it and the cost benefit to lower income folk is pretty complicated.

    It’s always wrong if there’s no expansion of social programs to benefit low income people, and especially if it’s being used to offset lowering marginal tax rates. But that wasn’t the case in the hypothetical budget.

  137. 137.

    Citizen Alan

    @Jeffro:  One thing that bugged me about this is the reminder of how the media perpetuates public ignorance about these issues by conflating “budget deficit” and “national debt.”

  138. 138.

    Eolirin

    @oldgold: The government has the oil; the money doesn’t flow down at all. And we’re trying to slash our usage not increase it.

    Short of regime change and some significant foreign investment to build functional institutions and infrastructure, I don’t see how Venezuela recovers enough.

  139. 139.

    SFAW

    @Omnes Omnibus: ​
     
    “It’s the price you pay … for being rich, free and alive all at the same time.”
    Although it related to something somewhat different, I always liked Lord John Marbury’s comment re: foreign aid (sort of) to India.

  140. 140.

    Eolirin

    @Omnes Omnibus: Sure but I meant more that there’s a general obliviousness to the idea that the phrase “tax and spend” has any negative connotations to begin with, regardless of how idiotic those connotations were.

    It’s got an antiquated feel to it as an attack line. I feel like its cultural relevance peaked with Clinton.

  141. 141.

    tam1MI

    @sdhays: Any “news” value generated by the CNN Nuremberg rally is meta. CNN ran an experiment to see if they could rustle up the old Trump ratings magic, and it failed.

    Not that I doubt you, but if you could post a source for the ratings gs failure assertion, that would be awesome. I could use it to show other people.

  142. 142.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Eolirin: That’s the thing, it never resonated as an attack with me.  We are a rich country.  Let’s use our wealth to improve the world.

  146. 146.

    Jeffro

    @Citizen Alan: they do conflate those two at times.

    I’m tempted to excuse them – it feels like we’re just a hair above Idiocracy most days here in ‘Murrika – but it’s a vital part of what they should be doing.  Inform.  Educate.

  147. 147.

    Miss Bianca

    @Eolirin: Whenever I hear that phrase, I remember Poppy Bush chanting it as a sneering mantra meant to denigrate Dukakis. I just hear his nasally WASP-y voice in my head. Ugh.

    (This from the guy who rightly stigmatized his then-rival Reagan’s “voodoo economics.” And who, if I recall correctly, presided over a tax increase himself during his stint as POTUS.)

  149. 149.

    BlueGuitarist

    @MazeDancer:

    What do you think of Democratic candidates so far?
    Looks like a lot of recent announcements, I’ve probably missed some

    NY-17 (Hudson Valley, Lawler) don’t think Mondaire Jones has announced plans yet; Liz Gereghty school board member, Gretchen Whitmer’s sister running.
    NY-19 (Hudson Valley to Ithaca: Molinaro) Josh Riley running again, got 49% last time.
    NY-22 (Syracuse) Sarah Klee Hood, came close in primary, running again.
    NY-03 (Long Island) state senator Anna Kaplan announced run against Santos
    NY-04 (Long island, D’Esposito) Laura Gilles running again (48% last time)
    there might be other candidates already announced or announcing soon.

    i’m still mostly focused on super swing districts, but NY has a lot of flippable seats, good to have good candidates early, Will be lots of postcards to write….

  150. 150.

    Jeffro

    @Omnes Omnibus: “Genuine Texas Six-Gun Double Toilet Chili” – I’m dying

    (and yes I had to go look it up!)

    Here’s one for the folks who might not (yet) have a copy:

    “Precooked foods require faith.  If you doubt that Franco-American spaghetti is spaghetti, you’ll be unhappy.  But if you believe that it’s extra-thick tomato soup with noodles, you’ll be okay.”

    Last one:

    “Salt keeps your blood pressure up to the pitch of modern life and improves all foods.  Without salt, pretzels would be nothing but breadsticks with bad posture and potato chips would be potatoes.  Use salt in everything.

    Incidentally, it’s the salt in an olive that gives a martini its snap.  You can use a tiny pinch of table salt to make an emergency martini when you’re out of olives and cocktail onions.  Be careful, though.  If you add too much salt, you’ll wind up with a Margaritatini, which is awful.”

  157. 157.

    The Lodger

    @SFAW: The town’s name is actually the German equivalent of “Hanging Ass.” This is close to Pennsylvania Dutch humor, only less sophisticated.

  158. 158.

    taumaturgo

    I’m happy that CNN invited us to witness what turned out to be a KKK meeting. No place to hide know folks. It is all out here for those who wish to see.

  163. 163.

    Another Scott

    @oldgold: I’m no expert, but it’s my understanding that while Venezuela has lots of oil in the ground, it’s expensive to turn it into anything useful because it is “heavy, sour” crude (lots of sulfur and metals and other contaminants that are expensive to remove).  It’s not like the “light, sweet” crude that is easy to pump and refine and made KSA so rich.

    TheOilDrum has more (from 2011).

    Venezuela needs a lot of investment to upgrade their production techniques and refineries, and they’re not going to get that as long as their government is so repressive and unstable. (And that’s probably a good thing for the atmosphere, while an econmoically bad thing for the people there.)

    Having a lot of “proven reserves” is only part of the story. The Athabaska oil sands are a similarly huge oil deposit, but those are even more expensive to produce (especially when the surrounding countryside is on fire…).

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  164. 164.

    sab

    There are those elsewhere who say that Chris Licht is a genius because Colbert’s ratings went up when he came on board. Nonsense. Colbert’s ratings went up when Jimmy Fallon had Trump on and rummpled his hair. The audience said “ewwww” and changed the channel for good.

  165. 165.

    No One You Know

    @rikyrah:

    I had exactly this reaction to an MS-NBC ghost last night. It was Alex Wagner or Stephanie Ruhle. The question was, “What could the media do differently?”

    “Drop the horse race mentality and talk about the issues. ”

    (I would have framed it as “Forget personalities and talk policies.”)

    She tried again, and he said, “That’s still house-racey.” He re-explained it with more detail.

    She had a Tucker Carlson expression. Blank incomprehension. She had no idea what it would mean to have to talk about Trump’s politics instead of his personality.

  167. 167.

    billcinsd

    @Kay: Isn’t Trump’s abortion stance that it is OK for women he knocked up and some of his relatives, but that’s it?

  168. 168.

    billcinsd

    @Matt McIrvin: I remember a scientific grant one, where the researchers were using ketchup as a model Bingham plastic fluid. Ketchup is easily the cheapest of such fluids and if you know how to use the science as long as the behavior is similar the fluid used doesn’t actually matter. Proxmire thought it was a waste of taxpayer money when it was in fact a savings of taxpayer money

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