Vice President Harris responds to Kevin McCarthy criticizing President Biden’s negotiating skills: With all due respect, when anyone who has had the experience McCarthy just had, I don’t think he’s a judge of negotiations pic.twitter.com/jfZHl1NJ5z
— Biden-Harris HQ (@BidenHQ) November 29, 2023
LOL The real time reaction from President Biden seeing video of an unhinged outburst from Lauren Boebert is definitely worth watching pic.twitter.com/bBYX7KNQV4
— Acyn (@Acyn) December 1, 2023
This comment needs to be directed at the media. *THEY* are sleep walking into a potential dictatorship. The rest of us have our eyes wide open and see exactly what's happening. https://t.co/UwLzy02qMP
— scary lawyerguy (@scarylawyerguy) December 1, 2023
It is nice that reporters show who they are: the economic recovery from COVID, record low unemployment, wage growth & infrastructure investment don't matter b/c Joe Biden didn't come up with a catchy advertising slogan. WHERE IS DON DRAPER WHEN YOU NEED HIM ?? https://t.co/lLVu8W6UqY
— scary lawyerguy (@scarylawyerguy) December 1, 2023
Sad trombone coda…
Just a reminder that Maggie is likely holding back significant, incriminating information about Trump b/c she just got a major book deal and must maintain access to him in order for the publisher to justify what it is paying her. https://t.co/3YrOX5yCbN
— scary lawyerguy (@scarylawyerguy) December 1, 2023
Jeffro
It’s a little weird to realize that we need actual reporters to report on other reporters, so that the public can find out what the other reporters aren’t reporting.
Baud
Harris is awesome.
I’m sorry, but telling even many libs that the economy is good and getting better is a bust. They’ll get mad at you for suggesting it.
Labor is screwed if Biden loses.
OzarkHillbilly
I love it. “With all due respect…” Smiles broadly…
pluky
“but then, I probably shouldn’t waste my time trying to.” mic-drop!
Ten Bears
*THEY* are not sleep walking us into a potential dictatorship
*THEY* are in the bag …
NotMax
Weekend music respite.
Erika Fox, “Creole Woman.”
Derelict
Have to admit the Susan Glasser complaint about “Bidenomics” not being catchy enough is perhaps one of the most clueless statements of the year. It was, after all, REPUBLICANS who came up with Bidenomics as a derogatory term.
But I guess when you’re a highly paid top-drawer political reporter writing for The New Yorker, actually knowing anything about the subject at hand is not a requirement.
zhena gogolia
@Baud: I love the way she skewers that prick from the NYT.
Where’s Don Draper? Let’s call it “the Carousel”!
lowtechcyclist
I don’t know about “the rest of us,” but certainly more of us than you’d expect, given the dearth of attention to it given by the punditry.
Sure, there’ve been a few stories and op-eds about it, but the media give the impression that they’re WAY more concerned about the fact that Biden’s old.
JMG
It is my opinion that the overwhelming sentiment that the econmy is bad is a means of expressing the trauma created by the pandemic. Time is money, as they say, except it’s money you can never get back, and even those whose families or social circles did not suffer serious illeness or deaths due to covid suffered at lot of lost life events in 2020-21. My son and his wife had their wedding postponed three times. Think of all those canceled high school and college graduations.There’s got to be a great deal of suppressed pain and anger left over and it comes out as “the economy sucks” not because people have less money (most do not) but because they know they have lost time.
Kay
@Baud:
It’s maddening. They keep droning “manufacturing is gone and wages are stagnant” and it just is no longer true. Ask anyone who lives in an area that relies on manufacturing! I don’t think they can analyze this from Brooklyn!
If labor doesn’t come all out for Biden they deserve to lose. Best labor president since FDR. It’s not close. They have an opportuity to make real gains- not just hold what they have (small precentage of private sector) but actually grow in a meaningful way. All they have to do is come out and vote for Biden. They don’t even need control of Congress.
NotMax
@zhena gogolia
Did someone say carousel?
;)
OzarkHillbilly
@Kay: I know too too many who will say, “But but but muh guns…”
Kay
@OzarkHillbilly:
Absolutely. They DO seem to know Biden is responsible for infrastructure spending booming in construction trades though.
BellyCat
@Derelict: Next up: Dark Brandon is also a bad marketing idea for President Biden.
Meanwhile, back on planet earth, embracing both insults was brilliant. If Biden can similarly embrace the “too old” bullshit as a “wise elder” thing, that will be a winning trifecta. Maybe a Yoda outfit with Joe’s head in green (with huge ears, of course)?
ETA: VOTE THE FORCE
teezyskeezy
It really doesn’t make sense to say the media is sleepwalking into a dictatorship while the rest of us have our eyes open. I guess if “the rest of us” is just the chronically online followers of progressive voices, fine, but but the only way “the media” can sleepwalk us into a dictatorship is to keep most of the public asleep too.
Chief Oshkosh
I keep running into people (idiots, of course) who whine that Obama and Biden gave away our energy independence, whatever that is. Sometimes it turns out that they are whining about the demise of the coal energy industry, sometimes it’s some argle-bargle about oil, which can be about drilling permits being pulled, or more often, about the Demonrats just not letting us use our own oil. I thought this topic for whinging was long dead. Has anyone other than me experienced a resurgence, and if so, do you have an opinion on why its floated back up to the surface of the toilet bowl water?
sab
My dad is 99 years old. When he turned 80 we didn’t have candles on his cake. Instead we rented plastic flamingoes for the yard. There were a lot of them.
That was almost twenty years ago and dad is still with us. He has dementia now, but he didn’t at eighty. So I am fine with Biden’s age.
Also too Biden has Kamala Harris as his youngish, healthy, highly competent VP. George Bush had Cheney, already on a waiting list for a heart transplant. Trump had Mike Dense.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@OzarkHillbilly:
Just like the Southern “Well bless your heart…” :)
Ohio Mom
Boebert might have accidentally walked into something her constituents in Aspen care about, not having the IRS go after the 1% of the 1%.
Although maybe those are just vacation homes and they vote elsewhere.
I love the way Biden just laughs at her, everything she says is ridiculous, why not laugh.
Chief Oshkosh
@NotMax: My preferred carousel:
youtu.be/5XRjp7vClT8?si=O6nUmn-uU0CdINIc
YMMV. :)
Chief Oshkosh
Boy, The New Yorker sure has fallen far, publishing Glasser and her ilk. Compare and contrast with this New Yorker piece by E.B. White, circa 1943:
Nukular Biskits
Good mornin’, y’all.
Raining here. Looks like today’s gonna be a totally inside day.
Ohio Mom
@Kay: Brooklyn used to have lots of manufacturing and a navy yard. Things were built in Brooklyn. All gone now.
New Deal democrat
@Baud: The economy is good if you are looking for a job or getting a new job. It is okay if you are staying in the same job (wage increases go to job-switchers more than job stayers).
The economy is not good if you are trying to buy a house (near record unaffordability) or a new car (non-negotiable prices at or *over* MSRP are still common).
“The economy is getting better.”
Projecting a current economic trend forward is the best way to have your head handed to you. There are some good signs and some not so good ones. In particular, the best near term leading indicator for job gains is current inflation adjusted consumer spending, and that has been accurately forecasting decelerating job gains for about two years – and is still doing so.
Popular sentiment about the economy correlates really closely with (the inverse of) gas prices. Here’s a link to a very good graph showing that correlation:
realeconomy.rsmus.com/chart-of-the-day-consumer-sentiment-drops-to-record-low/
With gas prices near 2 year lows, sentiment should continue to improve.
The best thing Biden and Congressional Democrats can do is lean on the Fed to start lowering interest rates now – or at least soon. Excluding housing, almost all other measures of inflation are already at or near the Fed’s 2% target.
Eunicecycle
@Chief Oshkosh: there’s a guy that owns an empty lot near me and put up an electronic sign with advertisements on it, with RWNJ screeds in between. “American oil from American soil!” “Millions of illegals coming through open borders!” etc. About the oil, I think it’s just ignorance about how oil is sold on the world market. About the illegals it’s just so ingrained in people’s consciousness by the RWNJ that I don’t know how you dislodge it.
NotMax
@Chief Oshkosh
And then there’s Eddy Duchin.
;)
OzarkHillbilly
@Kay: Back when I was going to meetings my business rep always made a point of saying, “DEMs are doing this for us. DEMs are doing that for us.” but I know a majority of my rural local walked out saying, “So the F what? They are also trying to take my guns. Making me associate with gays. Making giveaways for blacks….” etc etc etc to every GOP talking point.
It’s why we have a filibuster proof GOP majority in the state Senate*, guaranteed veto override majority in the state house*, and a GOP gov who got 57% in 2020, but Right to work went down with over 67% against it.
*yes, gerrymandering contributed to these majorities, but even w/o it the GOP would still control state governance.
Kay
@OzarkHillbilly:
True. However. Democrats stick with labor (despite the fact that it’s 55D 45R in Ohio, for example, so just a majority D) because of where labor voters are located. They need MI, WI, IL, PA. It’s not nostalgia or “we love white working class men”. It’s hardheaded and tactical.
They actually need a new state or two. GA turning blue is great but not if they consistently lose FL. They need to add. NC is the obvious next sourthern state but they had a bad run of luck there and now it seems out of reach. What they really need is Florida. It’s huge.
Nukular Biskits
LOL’d at that second tweett.
@comrade scotts agenda of rage:
Was thinkin’ the same thing.
Frankensteinbeck
@Eunicecycle:
Very difficult, because it’s what Colbert calls Truthiness, conservatives call common sense, and psychologists call rationalization. It’s what they feel must be true, so it’s obviously true. It’s self-evidently true. So they’ll grab at the tiniest confirmation and then shut down all willingness to consider other facts. In many cases they will angrily demand to be told it’s true, and hate anyone who tries to contradict them, because they’re invested in what their feelings say is true.
It’s very hard to break people out of. It takes a major emotional hit, not a logical one.
NotMax
@Ohio Mom
Weekend mid-length watch.
Remembering Brooklyn’s sugar refinery.
rikyrah
Walter M. Kimbrough (@HipHopPrez) posted at 0:22 PM on Fri, Dec 01, 2023:
Presidential searches are SUPER subjective. Successful small college presidents often can’t move to larger schools as folks question their ability to “scale up.”
Meanwhile, someone with no higher ed experience nor terminal degree lands a 9,000 student, research university.
(https://x.com/HipHopPrez/status/1730653606418788467?t=PKpG5GHp9qphvYNXA0GXWg&s=03)
Inside Higher Ed (@insidehighered) posted at 7:00 AM on Wed, Nov 29, 2023:
.@YoungstownState Taps Controversial Congressman as President
Faculty and students are concerned about the confidential process used to hire Representative Bill Johnson, who has disputed the outcome of the 2020 presidential election. #HigherEd
Percysowner
For some sweet news A chicken was missing toes. People sent him over 60 tiny pairs of shoes.
Chief Oshkosh
@Frankensteinbeck:
As others have said, they didn’t reason they’re way into this; you’re not going to help them reason their way out.
sab
OT Our house has only 1 1/2 baths and the basement half probably isn’t functional. Our upstairs tub/shower blew up a couple of days ago. Luddite here. Something about the diverter malfunctioning. I think that is the thingie that transfers water from the tub to to the shower. Anyway, whatever it was was raining water into our basement. We called the plumber, and they said we can fix that, plus insurance will fix the water damage.
So we went for the whole program. It went great, but the insurance repair guys are dehumidifying the water damage. That equipment is VERY EXTREMELY LOUD. And it is here for 48 hours.
In my bedroom with the door shut it sounds like being a passenger on a transatlantic plane flight.
With the door open, my upstairs hall sounds like the plane is parked inside our house.
The pitbull is in my bedroom with me. The cats are alternating between frantic and catatonic. Mostly in the basement, but even that is messed up. They have nowhere to hide. Might take weeks to calm those guys down. Our new cat has already packed her bags and is waiting for any outside door to open.
What is the best cat comfort food? Canned? Or scrambled eggs?
BellyCat
@Kay: Credit where credit is due: DeSantis is working REALLY HARD to turn Florida blue!
Baud
@OzarkHillbilly:
Classic economic anxiety.
Eunicecycle
@rikyrah: the selection of Bill Johnson, with no experience of any kind at any level of education, is the first shot at destroying Ohio’s higher education system. I have no connection to YSU but it upsets me so I can imagine how the students and alumni are feeling.
Nukular Biskits
@Chief Oshkosh:
This is what I call “belligerent ignorance”, an absolute refusal to accept any evidence, any fact, any reality that contradicts one’s beliefs … and then demand everyone else do the same.
Ignorance in and of itself can be addressed via education, experience , etc. But belligerent ignorance, short of a major life-changing event, is damned near immortal because it’s self-reinforcing.
Nukular Biskits
@Baud:
Does it still count if it isn’t said at a Midwest diner?
BellyCat
Upvoted.
Eunicecycle
@sab: my cats always love canned food when offered! We also had the jet-engine loud fans and dehumidifiers in our basement for a flood from a broken pipe. The insurance company even gave us money for the electric bill increase, because they use a lot of electricity. Make sure your insurance company does that, too!
New Deal democrat
@Baud: In a contest between economic issues and social (which for most people means ‘moral’) issues, except in dire emergencies social issues always win. Which is why bodily autonomy is now such a strong winning issue for Dems.
Kay
@BellyCat:
Political media completely missed the biggest political story of the last 3 years – pro choice voters. Pro choice voters didn’t really show up in polling either (polling on races, not referendums) That gives me some hope that the Biden polling is off too. They’re undercounting some group and I suspect it’s pro choice voters.
sab
Our granddaughter just moved from Akron Ohio to Richmond Virginia.
My husband was worried that she was moving South. She is black with a white boyfriend.
Akron is about 150,000 population. Richmond is 950,000!
She didn’t just move South. She moved from a smallish midwestern city to a big city. She might have a future! I am excited for her but my husband is just worried.
Another Scott
@Chief Oshkosh: I keep waiting for Manchin to demand that WV declare war on Wyoming for stealing all the great coal jerbs.
Yay coal! :-/
(Graph of coal production in top 5 states in the USA.)
UCSUSA.org – Bring back crunchy coal air!!:
My workplace is near an old coal-fired plant that was finally, finally shut down a few years ago.
Progress is good. Crunchy air is bad.
Cheers,
Scott.
Professor Bigfoot
@OzarkHillbilly: and it’s long past time for us as Democrats to just say “fuck those people, they’re unreachable— they are going to vote for white supremacy no matter what,” and go for EVERYONE ELSE.
Another Scott
@New Deal democrat:
FRED – Yield on 10-year Treasuries peaked on October 19.
30 year fixed mortgage rates show a similar trend.
Things are heading in the right direction.
Fingers crossed.
Cheers,
Scott.
sab
@Eunicecycle: YSU has been a good school. Akron employers get a lot of YSU grads because the wages are higher in Akron ( because the cost of living is higher.)
I cannot even guess as to what Republicans think they are doing to our state in a positive way. All I see is destruction of everything.
At least when they win, I very much hope they will have to ride around in actual uncomfortable metal armour to protect their gains.
OzarkHillbilly
@Professor Bigfoot: Feel the need to say most of them are not white supremacists even if they are aggrieved white males who in their hearts feel like their status in society is slipping. They just can’t put it into words.
BritinChicago
@Ohio Mom: “maybe those are just vacation homes and they vote elsewhere”
How to gin up suspicion from nothing:
Or maybe they vote both places. I heard people saying those rich Coloradans in Boebert’s district vote twice. I have no evidence, but honest Americans are saying it, and that makes it important to investigate it. I’m hearing her election was rigged….
Professor Bigfoot
@OzarkHillbilly: I have to disagree with that.
WHY do they hump their guns so desperately?
Their fear of Black people.
Thus they will always vote for white supremacy.
OzarkHillbilly
Plato, pilates and pubs: has an Irish town found the secret to the good life?
And thus begins the ruination of Skerries, Co Dublin, Ireland.
Eyeroller
@sab: I can’t imagine why there would be any concern, especially after the last Virginia election. Richmond proper has a plurality of Black residents and significant Latino and Asian populations. It’s quite diverse. All of the Confederate statues have been removed from Monument Avenue, leaving just Arthur Ashe.
jonas
This is a disturbing story because this Johnson guy will certainly see it as his brief to basically dismantle anything of real value at the institution until it’s reduced to being a third-rate Bible college with a baseball team. But it’s fairly routine for presidential searches to be confidential across higher ed. Candidates are generally head-hunted by executive recruiting firms and expect that their expressions of interest will not be publicized. In my experience, students, faculty and staff are represented on the search committee (not the case at all institutions), but the committee’s business and who they interview is not disclosed until an offer has been made and accepted.
eclare
@Nukular Biskits:
Very good definition.
New Deal democrat
@Another Scott:
Agreed. (For now!)
Chief Oshkosh
@Chief Oshkosh: Doh! “they’re” = “their”
Stupid brain cells!
Professor Bigfoot
@OzarkHillbilly: I was still working then, and I well remember the day after the 2008 election.
White men where I worked were somber that day.
The tea-party followed on quickly.
It’s a fear, a phobia of a Black person being “over” them in any way whatsoever.
It’s blatant in their reaction to Kamala Harris.
Chief Oshkosh
@Nukular Biskits: I used to work with a guy who called it “aggressive stupidity.”
Kay
FWIW I also think political media overestimated and continue to overestimate the importance of “wokeness” to voters. The NYTimes ran TWO glowing articles about Christopher Rufo as if Christoper Rufo was winning elections – he wasn’t. Ron DeSantis gained no traction at all nationally with anti wokeness – it’s why they’ve all but dropped it.
Political media were obsessed with cancel culture and wokeness – I don’t think voters ever were.
I’m hoping they’re out of touch with the real electorate and it’s not a bad bet. They’ve made some real blunders the last 5 years as far as knowing where the electorate is.
So I’m not a poll denier. Biden’s polling is bad. I’m a narrative denier.
New Deal democrat
@sab: I second what eyeroller said.
Yes, Richmond is still Southern, but it has turned the corner towards being a “cool” place for the youngs to relocate.
sab
@Eyeroller: Husband has spent his life in Akron. The rest of the world is scary.
But we had the Jayland Walker murder where one cop fired 45 rounds into an unarmed young man, and is now back on the street unidentified.
I think grand-daughter is well out of here, although we will miss her a lot.
OzarkHillbilly
If that were the case they would not carry their guns in Sullivan, MO or Salem, MO or Ellington, MO, but they do. They carry their guns because it makes them feel manly. It’s toxic masculinity.
And must also point out that a majority of them don’t carry, even when they go to STL or KC.
Nukular Biskits
@Professor Bigfoot:
Have to disagree somewhat on that.
Having been born, raised here in the Deep South, I’ll concede that does motivate many white males … not all.
My observation is that most white males cling to their guns because of the American myth about guns; i.e., owning/using a gun for “defense” and to provide for your family (hunt) makes you a REAL man. In other words, penis extenders.
Baud
@New Deal democrat:
Agreed.
sab
@New Deal democrat: Husband has spent his life in Akron. My family is here, but I grew up all over the South. I think she will be safe and I am very excited for her.
Nukular Biskits
@Chief Oshkosh:
I’ve heard another variation on that with respect to work-related expertise: “Aggressive Incompetence”.
To me, ignorance isn’t the same as stupidity. Belligerent ignorance, on the other hand, …
Professor Bigfoot
@Nukular Biskits: It’s not so much a fear of individual Black people (thus not expressed in the number of white men who carry guns around other white people) but in a fear of Black people as a group, and especially a fear of Black people gaining political power.
The whole thing about how they need their guns to overthrow tyranny?
How do you think they define tyranny?
Black people VOTING and GETTING ELECTED over them.
The exact same thing that drove the death of Reconstruction in 1876.
Have a look at the Wilmington Coup, as one example.
OzarkHillbilly
No more than usual on the job site where I was working.
Look, you have your lived experience and I have mine. Is it so surprising that they are very different? I am talking about the people I know and worked with. You are painting them with a very broad brush that doesn’t even begin to color their nuances. I am NOT saying there isn’t an elevated level of racism among them, just that they are far far away from marching in uniform in Charlottesville.
Maybe that is a distinction w/o a difference to you.
Another Scott
Meanwhile, … TheHill tries to put a brave face on the oh so statemanly House GQP:
Just look at all those things that they look to do! How unfortunate that all of these legislative landmines and undeniable new challenges keep happening to them!!
(groucho-roll-eyes.gif)
Forward!!
Cheers,
Scott.
Geminid
@Kay: I think North Carolina is within reach. Governor Roy Cooper increase his winning margin of 10,000 votes in 2016 to 248,000 votes in 2020.While Hilary Clinton lost the state by 136,000 in 2016, Joe Biden lost by 74,000 four years later.
North Carolina has many of the same demographic trends that helped Virginia go from red in 2000 to a light blue in 2023.
One thing’s for sure: Joe Biden’s campaign is reaching for North Carolina now. Last time, they did not have very much money until Labor Day and had to play catch-up in more critical states. Now the campaign is already putting advertising and organizing resources into the Old North State.
lowtechcyclist
@Kay:
Florida seems to have been moving away from Dems for awhile now; it’s hard to see how we win it back soon.
Biden lost NC by 74,000 votes out of 5.5 million in 2020. I think it’s much more winnable than Florida. It’s also a state that gets a lot of cachet from the quality of its universities, and AFAIK the GOP there hasn’t set about trying to destroy them.
Frankensteinbeck
@OzarkHillbilly:
I feel like we’re slipping into semantics of exactly where someone is on a scale of bigotry. What you described sounds to me like an almost textbook definition of a bigot, particular a racist bigot. Not on the scale of the KKK or neo-Nazis, but at a point where they feel more comfortable with those groups than with people who want equality and tolerance.
@Professor Bigfoot:
Very well put. I saw it in the difference between reactions to Obama, Hillary, and Biden. Conservatives were terrified of Obama. They focused on the most insane conspiracy theories. Death panels, concentration camps, lunatic stuff. As shitty as elected Republicans are to Biden, they were worse against Obama. It was an all-hands-on-deck “He must be stopped!”
Hillary they utterly vented their spleen at. Raged, insulted, she’s a crook, untrustworthy, she’ll leap the country into violent foreign policy to prove how manly she is. Hell, I heard that last one on this blog. One pillar of misogyny is seeing women as inherently victims, and thus defenseless against attack, so misogynists are aggressive about it.
Biden… it took awhile. He’s on the side of the Other, but mostly they were incredibly pissed their champion lost when they were sure they were about to win forever and grind the Other into the mud. They eventually latched onto an assumed “He’s old,” and the feverest of fever swamps have wild ideas that have no traction elsewhere and amount to “Come on, there has to be proof he’s evil somewhere, right?”
Chief Oshkosh
@Another Scott:
Ha! You, too, eh? I work off-and-on with a guy who earlier in life was in the boiler industry (= mainly coal-fired plants). Smart guy, never graduated high school but has dozens of patents, serial entrepreneur with several companies under his belt, etc., still runs two of them “in retirement.”
At one point he was whinging about all the evil that the Demonrats were visiting upon the coal industry, so I asked him who was benefitting from coal use these days. He said that there’s really only Wyoming coal extraction that still makes sense for the owners, which had been true for a long time, and so there was really no appreciable number of people outside of Wyoming and the coal company owners who benefitted financially.
Having no idea how WY coal is extracted, I asked him if that represents a lot jobs in WY. No, he says, that type of extraction requires very few workers. So I pointed out that it sounds like maybe a few thousand Americans out of 340 million and a handful of already-super-rich families benefit from jobs and profits of this industry.
Then he trotted out the “But we have lots of coal! We could be energy independent!” When I pointed out that we actually already are energy independent, that we’re a net energy exporter, and that we could do even better than that by expanding renewable sources, he just could not re-align his neurons.
So close.
Nukular Biskits
@Professor Bigfoot:
Again, disagree, but there’s a lot of nuance here.
Basically, it’s more about maintaining white male privilege (and, by extension, opposing extension of that privilege to any/all else) than it is about core bigotry.
Ask one and you’ll probably get some version of the following:
White conservative Christian males are supposed to be at the top of the heap because … uh … er …SHADDUP, STUPID LIBTARD! THAT’S WHY! GAWD BLESS MURKA!
Your mileage may vary.
Nukular Biskits
@Chief Oshkosh:
Textbook example of belligerent ignorance.
Shana
Not sure if anyone has linked to it but National Treasure Alexandra Petri has another great column entitled The Passion of George Santos. Enjoy
Geminid
@sab: I think Richmond is a good place for young people to move. It’s kind of like a smaller version of Atlanta now. Snd racial relations might be better than in Ohio.
I guess it would be tough for you and your husband to visit. But I would suggest encouragung your granddaughter to send pictures of her environs and activities. And then to send more. That kind of contact might lessen your husband’s worries.
MomSense
@Chief Oshkosh:
I’ve had several experiences where they finally get it after a painfully long and patient process – but they go right back once they resume their regular intake of bullshit news.
Kay
@lowtechcyclist:
I’m fine with NC! It just seems that there was a window there and it’s narrowed now. You can’t really let them get to the point where they have all the courts and gerrymander both the state leg and the US House. There’s a window and everything has to go right.
That’s where Ohio is. GOP owned. It may be impossible to come back from.
I don’t think Ds should give up on FL. It’s a huge diverse state and it’s growing. There’s a level of unpredictability there that shouldn’t be ignored, unlike in places like Missouri or Ohio where they aren’t growing and the electorate is aging and kind of stuck. They should look for an opening in FL. It’s a weird place! All kinds of things can happen there.
Alison Rose
That pause and smile from the Veep after “with all due respect” made me cackle so hard I started the cat. God, I love her.
rikyrah
Haberman is a phucking stenographer.
Dolt45 is her gravy train.
rikyrah
@Kay:
Truth.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
“Sleepwalking” is about right. It sure seems like the MSM is just phoning it in. Just about any topic one can name it feels like someone does an actual report, a half dozen other reporters simply use that report for the bases of their “brilliant” deep take, and then another half dozen more do “contrarian” articles.
Betty
@Chief Oshkosh: The fact is that it is wrong. The,US is producing more oil than ever, a concern of environmentalists.
jonas
I suppose you also have to count jobs in support industries around coal operations as well, but that still doesn’t come close to offsetting the millions of lives and vast swaths of the economy impacted negatively by climate change. Of course they never acknowledge that.
Professor Bigfoot
@OzarkHillbilly: Here’s the thing— YOU, and this place, and the Blogfather are proof positive that it’s not all white men, not at all.’
But enough of you that I’m only rational to assume it of any one of you that I run across until proven otherwise.
That’s all. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Professor Bigfoot
@Nukular Biskits: Exactly so.
Of course, there’s an obligatory “not all” and certainly “not every,” but again, so very many that one is only rational to assume it of any that one runs across, until proven otherwise.
This place and the Blogfather have long since proven otherwise.
Brachiator
It is crazy that Haberman is viewed as a Trump expert and regularly appears on pundit roundtable panels and asked to deliver pearls of journalistic wisdom about the Orange Beast.
schrodingers_cat
@zhena gogolia: I thought of you when I saw this from DDLJ. The movie that launched Shahrukh into the stratosphere of Hindi film industry. This is from the early 90s
@FilmHistoryPics shared it on the occassion of Udit Narayan’s (SRK’s voice) 68th birthday
Professor Bigfoot
Surely I’m not the only one who flat out guffawed as Dark Brandon watched the Screeching Congresswoman.
Woke my dog up.
rikyrah
@Percysowner:
That was so cute :)
rikyrah
@Brachiator:
No lie told. Just a phucking stenographer.
jonas
@rikyrah: I wouldn’t call Haberman a “stenographer” in the sense that she certainly doesn’t take whatever Trump or his people tell her at face value or fail to critique what he’s saying. It’s that she approaches her subject with almost *too much* of a sense of ironic detachment. To her, she’s covering a batshit crazy politician who gives her all kinds of great dramatic shit to report, not an existential threat to America or the world. It’s kind of like sending someone to cover a deadly pandemic that is killing thousands every day and the reports are all about how the spike proteins on the virus are “hauntingly beautiful” under a microscope.
Kay
@lowtechcyclist:
Democrats can’t really be the party of Latinos if they hold only one of the big three Latino states – California (out of CA, TX and FL). They can’t just cede both Texas and Florida to the GOP. i guess you could add NY (4th) and that’s D but still. If they intend to be the majority Party of Latinos they have to compete where most Latinos are.
I don’t have a clue about FL. I haven’t even vacationed there since my children were small but someone must be an expert on it. They have to crack the FL code.
zhena gogolia
@schrodingers_cat: He doesn’t do his own singing???
schrodingers_cat
@jonas: She is a courtier.
zhena gogolia
@jonas: Bingo.
RaflW
Glasner’s husband is the execrable Peter Baker.
They’ll still get rounded up by Trump’s petty gestapo if he wins (Haberman, too, and more). They think they’re immune, but they’re just idiots.
Kay
@rikyrah:
I’m actually to the point where I consider beating the NYTimes political team a real motivator. They’re opponents. I will never get over their weird, unprofessional hatred of both Al Gore and Hillary Clinton and how they led the ridiculous weeks long hissy fit over Biden leaving Afghanistan (and then never mentioned Afghanistan again).
jonas
@Kay: The problem is that CA, TX, and FL all have very different kinds of Latino/Hispanic constituencies, from the large number of Chicanos in CA to the old Tejanos in TX and Cubans in FL, many of whom don’t see eye-to-eye on a lot of issues, including immigration.
OzarkHillbilly
First off, I am speaking of a group in general, among that group are a wide variety of individuals, all of whom have different levels of bigotry, from 0 to 100, most of whom would score below a 40. I am not excusing them but I am also not making a blanket condemnation of them. People are complicated, I know nuance is the bane of arguments, but I lived and breathed, sweat and froze and bled with them. I can’t look at them without nuance.
Most would not feel comfortable with those groups and as I said, people are complicated.
And when it comes to the issue of guns and open or concealed carry, it is flat out wrong. That is purely a toxic masculinity issue. As far as in general, none of the guys I worked with had a phobia about a black man being over them tho I would say 30-40% had a dislike of it, some more than others.
I have to note that I had to retire in 2015 because too many parts of my body stopped participating and I was no longer capable of that kind of work. That puts all my observation in the pre-trump era. He no doubt had a deleterious effect on some of the guys I worked with, but not having been on a job site since then I could not say how much things changed. I do know there are more black men on job sites now than there were 10 or 15 years ago.
rikyrah
@sab:
As long as he is cool, I do not foresee issues for her. It’s Richmond.
Not small town Alabama.
rikyrah
@OzarkHillbilly:
They long for the days when all you had to be was White, in order to get a solid middle class life.
Not White and Educated, just White.
cmorenc
@Kay:
North Carolina has had a small (one to three %), but maddingly persistent R advantage in federal elections for 20 years.
– Romney v Obama in 2012 (Romney won NC by 2.2%)
– Budd v Beasley for Senate in 2020 (Budd won by 3%)
– Biden v Trump in 2020 (Trump won by 1.3%)
– Trump v Clinton in 2016 (Trump won by 1.6%
North Carolina seems always on the cusp of turning blue (like Georgia and Virginia seem to be) – but seems stuck in the running joke about US soccer in the “Men in Blazers” show: “Soccer: America’s sport of the future since 1972…”
rikyrah
@Kay:
I dunno.
I would rather concentrate on NC, GA, Arizona.
Florida is expensive.
Professor Bigfoot
@OzarkHillbilly: The American obsession with guns was born in fear of Indian uprising or slave revolt.
That history is real.
Again, I point to the Wilmington Coup.
They will do what they want to do; and they have the guns to enforce it; and *they do not like Black people.
Professor Bigfoot
@OzarkHillbilly: I put the additional Black men on jobsites down to Bidenomics.
Believe me, I *watch* every jobsite I pass by and I almost NEVER saw a Black face among them until very recently.
Last hired and all that; but it’s better than before.
Another Scott
@rikyrah: Agreed.
But lightning does strike in unexpected places occasionally – Obama won Indiana once. Weird things have happened.
I kinda expect TX to flip before FL, but whichever one it is, it’s going to depend on good people in the state doing the hard work. National organizations aren’t going to jump in if it looks hopeless.
Thanks.
Cheers,
Scott.
Ksmiami
@rikyrah: Florida has also had an in migration of the worst racist midwesterners ever. I won’t set foot in the state until they get sane again. I’d focus on all the western states excluding Idaho and Utah, GA, AZ and NC. Plus shore up the rust belt aside from Ohio but still advertise in OH because it’s cheap and eventually the GOP government there will fail so hard, the citizens will have no choice.
New Deal democrat
@rikyrah: Or my favorite hobbyhorse, Kansas.
Its urban/rural split is #26 in the nation, right in between MN and NC, it has elected Dems in the past, has a Dem governor now, and comes cheap. You only have to advertise in KC, Topeka, and Wichita.
RaflW
@rikyrah: There’s some place between giving up and behaving/spending like FL is winable this cycle that is worth investing in, I think.
It’s similar to what I believe is happening in Texas. long game on-the-ground organizing, so that as the demographics shift a bit more, wins come into reach and we’re not starting from scratch then.
@New Deal democrat: Yes. Kansas is worth some money and time. Johnson County is becoming a dominant force in the state, and is pretty ‘centrist’ (though I tend to loathe that word). I think there’s more to come, as people on the Missouri side of the metro look around at the utterly stuck-in-mud GOP over there is making the state a mess, and continue the shift to the Kansas side.
sab
@Ksmiami: Sob.
“Ohio because it’s cheap and eventually the GOP government will fail so hard, the citizens will have no choice”
Yikes. Twenty years ago we were a bellwhether. Now we are a failed state.
rikyrah
@jonas:
There are those chasing White Adjacency, and those who are not.
You all can beg those chasing White Adjacency…I’m not in the mood for it.
Professor Bigfoot
@sab: the level of pure corruption in the Ohio Statehouse is astonishing.
But their recent pronouncements on Issues 1 and 2 seem to have gotten people angry enough that even their gerrymandered districts won’t protect them.
One surely hopes.
rikyrah
@Ksmiami:
I will not disagree on OH, mainly because I see OH as a Climate Refugee State. They will begin to gain population again because of Climate Change.
Scout211
In the “things you might have missed/proud to be a Democrat” category, at the top of the memeorandum page is a story that I can get behind.
Pelosi calls Santos a ‘coward’ for leaving chamber before expulsion vote closed
My goodness, that Pelosi woman is so shrill. 😉
I love her!
Ohio Mom
@NotMax: Oh yeah, a junior high school friend’s dad was mechanical engineer at the Domino Sugar plant.
Gretchen
I found this to be a good explainer of the difference in sexual ethics between evangelicals and others. For evangelicals, marital sex is right, while all other (no marital, homosexual, pedophilia) all is wrong because it’s non-marital.
for progressives, its consent/non-consent. So marital rape and pedophilia are wrong for non consent, and consensual out-of-wedlock is fine.
patheos.com/blogs/lovejoyfeminism/2012/08/a-tale-of-two-boxes-contrastin-sexual-ethics.html
Geminid
@RaflW: If you don’t like “Centrist” you can always use “Moderate,” perhaps a less loaded word. Or if you are focused on partisan trend, “Purple” might also work.
Johnson County is a good example of a national trend. When Sharice Davids flipped the Kansas 3rd in 2018, she was one of 40 Democrats winning Republican districts that year. These districts were geographically disparate, in states including New Jersey and Virginia, Pennsylvania and Georgia, Michigan and Texas, and Kansas and California. Many shared a common element: they contained large suburban populations, and tended to be economically dynamic.
Gretchen
@New Deal democrat: Kansas is having a license plate controversy – they proposed one that everyone hates. Republicans say it looks like NY and since the Dem governor is originally from NY, she’s trying to impose NY on us. The Dems all hate it just because it’s ugly. Gov. Kelly says her goal has always been to be bipartisan and bring people together and she’s succeeded in getting everyone to hate the proposed plate. They’re going to start over.
Gretchen
@Geminid: when we got involved with Johnson County KS Democrats 25 years ago the leader at the meeting said « a Democrat CAN win in Johnson County! » we thought sure, we have to run someone but they won’t win. Now Sharice is considered the favorite for re-election. Her last race was against a vocal pro-lifer who got badly beaten. I don’t think anyone has even announced against her this time. She’s a solid workhorse.
Nukular Biskits
@Geminid:
Not trying to be a wiseass here, but what do those terms even mean these days?
Sure Lurkalot
@Kay: Having been saved from choking by Rand Paul (blech), Joni had a clever:
The woke thing might be a bust, but some will never let it go.
Kay
@jonas:
Right. But 50% of non Cuban FL Latinos still voted for Biden. Democrats have to compete there or they will lose those voters for good. It’s 55% in Texas. In Arizona and Texas there’s a ten point gap between Latino men and women – men are 10 points more GOP than the women. That’s probably worth looking at, what’s going on there.
Everyone always says “they’re not a cohesive or uniform bloc” of voters and then the discussion ends there. But Democrats know that and have known that. They know exactly what groups of Latinos back them in Florida. It’s time to move on from who are our voters (we already know) to how to get more of them. Treat them like white voters and do appeals to the various factions. White voters aren’t a cohesive bloc either – no one raises that as a reason not to try to get more of them.
Miss Bianca
@OzarkHillbilly: Since one of the local gun-humpers who open-carries his AR-15 in crowded downtown areas has objected to being identified as a “gunman”, I am making a modest proposal: fine, we stop calling your gun a “gun.” We will now refer to it as your “emotional support weapon. “
Kay
@Sure Lurkalot:
The NYTimes has one whole columnist devoted to it and of course middle aged male comedians who are aging ungracefully would literally have no material at all without “wokeness”, so there’s that.
But it never really caught on with voters.
There go two miscreants
@Gretchen: I don’t live in Kansas but I just did an image search on it and I think it’s really ugly. Readable, but ugly. Hard to blame people for rejecting it.
Miss Bianca
@Nukular Biskits: Y’know, the more you try to explain how “retaining white male privilege” somehow doesn’t equate to racism and bigotry, the less convincing I find the explanations. Hmm. Whether the deficiency lies in my understanding or in your arguments, I leave it to yourself to determine.
Nukular Biskits
@Miss Bianca:
LOL! Nice. Bless his little heart.
Although for the really belligerent ones, I still think it’s funny to call their guns “penis extenders”.
Nukular Biskits
@Miss Bianca:
Usually, the fault is with the transmitter, not the receiver. IOW, I’m probably not being very clear.
lowtechcyclist
@Kay:
I do think NC is in a very different place than Ohio. Ohio’s been gradually moving more red now for a generation. Other than Sherrod Brown, it’s hard to see any Dem winning a statewide race there.
North Carolina unfortunately was one of the states that got gerrymandered within an inch of its life after the 2010 disaster, but they’ve got a Dem governor, so they can win statewide. No reason why Biden can’t win there; the gerrymandered state legislature can’t stop that.
And given the bit of trickiness that made the legislature veto-proof (the Dem nominee in one district switched parties after being elected), even that should be possible to undo in the next legislative elections.
RaflW
@Nukular Biskits: Moderate has been used on Republicans who, while not actually Attila the Hun, would grudgingly vote for him for supreme leader as needed.
Nominally on our side, Dean Phillips considers himself a moderate. I consider him an arrogant turncoat.
So, yeah, moderate is out.
Baud
@Sure Lurkalot:
“I choked on the woke and my ribs broke cuz a bloke gave me a poke to dislodge the artichoke in my throak.”
Gretchen
@There go two miscreants: It was just funny how loudly and immediately everyone across the political spectrum hated it.
Citizen Alan
@teezyskeezy: I don’t even think the media is “sleepwalking into dictatorship.” I think their eyes are wide awake and they are striding boldly forward. The myth of the “liberal media” has blinded us for more than thirty years (since Whitewater at least if not since Morning In America) to the reality that our entire media establishment has become a propagenda agency for fascist white supremacists.
Citizen Alan
@Eunicecycle: Conservatives have chosen complete ignorance as a lifestyle choice, and they want to destroy education to drag everyone down to their cognitive level.
Chief Oshkosh
@NotMax: Cool! Never knew that that went beyond Looney Tunes!
Geminid
@Nukular Biskits: “Centrist” and “Moderate” mean a lot of things to a lot of people. Centrist seems to be used in a stigmatizing way; my Representative, Abigail Spanberger is sometimes called a Centrist by people who dislike moderates and want other Democrats (or Left Independents) to dislike her too.
Within the Democratic House Caucus, Spanberger is in the more moderate wing. I say “more,” because there is not that great a difference on policy between most Democrats in the “Moderate” New Democrat Caucus and most of those in the “Liberal” Progressive Caucus.
Ideologically, Democratic House members would graph out as a fat Bell curve as opposed to a more polarized barbell, I think.
Within the Class of 2018, for instance, Texas New Democrat Caucus member Colin Allred and Texas Progressive Caucus member Veronica Escobar are aligned for the most part on policy. One difference: Allred flipped a Republican district near Dallas and Escobar won a safe Democratic seat centered on El Paso.
Jason Crow and Joe Neguse of Colorado are similar. Crow flipped a Republican seat while Neguse won a safer blue district. But New Democrat Crow and Progressive Neguse pretty much vote the same. Both Caucuses have nice expressions of principles in their self-descriptions, and these differ. But in practical terms, this is a more matter of branding, I think.
I am not big on definitions, and I try to look at these matters in practice and not in theory. But personally, I see Centrism as more of a dubious general political strategy, which is why I dislike Centrist as a label for individual Democrats; it is loaded with negative stereotyping.
This came up yesterday when NY 3rd CD hopeful Tom Suozzi was described in a news article as a “Centrist.” I might apply that label to Kyrsten Sinema, but I would call Suozzi a Moderate.
“Purple” is easy. A Purple state or district is one that could go either way. For instance there are 18 Republicans who represent Congressional districts Joe Biden won in 2020- or actually, would have won in their redrawn form. Those are often called “Purple” districts. I might also call my 7th Va CD, where Spanberger won by less than 5 points, and others like it Purple.
catclub
ummmm, the economy is TOO good if you are trying to buy those. There are more people, with more money, competing to buy those things. That is not a bad economy.
Citizen Alan
@Gretchen: I will only add that to a disturbing percentage of evangelical’s, pedophilia, or at least hebephilia, is “wrong” because it involves sexy young teenaged girl seducing godly men and leading them into temptation. I’m aware of many incidents in which a teen accused a youth minister of sexual abuse and was then forced to stand in front of the church assembly next to him so that they could “forgive each other.”
catclub
FTFY
They still want to go to Harvard – preferably as a legacy.
Ksmiami
@rikyrah: it’s not hopeless. There are good universities and dense liberal cities-
Geminid
@RaflW: A lot of people really get hung up on the word “moderate” because journalists misapply it to Republicans who are actually moderate conservatives at best. I consider this a journalist problem, and it does not affect my own understanding of the word.
Subsole
@MomSense:
Oh God, welcome to the last decade and a half of my life. Batter your head against a wall of propaganda, get them to agree, and heeeeeere comes Rush. Then the dance starts over again from square negative 1…
Hell is one reason I have trouble accepting the concept of a merciful God. But man, do most of the fuckers on AM radio deserve to roast in it for a bit…
Subsole
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
Behold, the enTwitterfication of news.
Subsole
@Kay:
I think a lot of that was Bill. Call it “Long Clinton Derangement Syndrome”.
Here’s this trailer-park hillbilly from nowhere, Dixielandia. He wasn’t supposed to win. The American dream isn’t supposed to work like that. AND he’s cool with blacks?
They wanted him gone the moment he defied their conventional wisdom and won the primary. And worse, when America steadfastly refused to turn on him over The Blowjob Heard ‘Round the World??
He repeatedly defied their narratives. About America, and about Americans. And since they derive all their worth as setters of narratives…well, clearly punishment was in order.
I think a lot of their animus started there and just kind of congealed into a generalized contempt for Dems.
Subsole
@Miss Bianca:
I guarantee you they will put that on a shirt and consider it an Owning of the Libs.
Bill Arnold
@Derelict:
Was curious, so I did a google time window search for the term, and the earliest I found was a Aug 16 2020 Financial Times (UK) piece:
Bidenomics and America’s new New Deal – It is always better to have a plan than none, a lesson Republicans seem to have forgotten (Edward Luce, AUGUST 16 2020, Financial Times)
Does anyone know of any usage prior to that?
Miss Bianca
@Subsole: I dunno…you think so? To me, I would imagine that putting their Preciouses into those terms would be too repellent to them to be embraced, even “ironically”, hor, hor…
but you know…I’ve been wrong before.
evodevo
@Citizen Alan: Yep…really happens in the toxic fundie churches…happened to the daughter of a co-worker … she had to hug her abuser (her mother was dating him!!) and “forgive” him.