So far, the Biden-Harris Administration has protected more than 26 million acres of lands and waters. @POTUS is delivering on the most ambitious land and water conservation agenda in American history. pic.twitter.com/DC8YEy74jp
— The White House (@WhiteHouse) December 26, 2023
it's not just the economy ?? https://t.co/ZuFTfiVePO
— John Harwood (@JohnJHarwood) December 28, 2023
'Stunning Diversity': How Joe Biden Reshaped The Courts In 2023.The president’s pace of judicial confirmations slowed, but he put historic numbers of women, people of color and public defenders on the federal bench | @jbendery HuffPost Latest News https://t.co/8LEZ8bYTVy
— Patsy Cline (@chompie97) December 29, 2023
Extreme MAGA Republicans plan to spend the next year attacking the President.
Our job is to solve problems for hardworking American taxpayers.
That’s what Democrats will continue to do.
— Hakeem Jeffries (@RepJeffries) December 28, 2023
People whose political opinions were forged in the late 1960s, still pining for the late 1860s…
What… year is it. pic.twitter.com/FbGeQJMUpg
— Louis Peitzman (@LouisPeitzman) December 28, 2023
(Yesterday was Jane Fonda’s birthday. I don’t care as much about my own loved ones’ birthdays as some people do about the people they claim to hate.)
Remember, folks — sharing is caring:
Biden isn't in an ideal position heading into 2024. But on the economy, he's in great shape, and really doesn't get the credit he deserves when one considers the shambles he inherited in January 2021. https://t.co/7ugOcfsvqf
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) December 28, 2023
On The Road – Redshift – Baltimore’s Miracle on 34th Street
NotMax
Weekend watch.
Modest little documentary exploring reclaiming fallen urban trees, Felled, available on both the Roku channel and on YouTube.
NotMax
Sigh. Fix for linky.
Weekend watch.
Modest little documentary exploring reclaiming fallen urban trees, Felled, available on both the Roku channel and on YouTube.
OzarkHillbilly
I applaud Joe’s judicial philosophy.
Kay
Homicides did go up briefly during the pandemic though so media crime coverage was probably LESS bad than their coverage of the economy, but still not accurate. They wildly exaggerated the crime wave.
We have a bunch of ninnies in media and pundity who are rigidly conventional, stodgy people and they freak out at the slightest deviation from what they consider acceptable norms. They need to hire more oddballs and weirdos who came to the job from diverse backgrounds and with diverse work/life experiences.
HinTN
@NotMax: Not sure why you got ther ads in the song last night. I had none. I really like that whole Flatlands album.
Geminid
Hakeem Jeffries keeps pounding the description, “Extreme MAGA Republicans” to define the opposition. The opposition’s favorite phrase is “Woke Liberal Democrats.”
One difference here is that Jeffries can back up his framing with plenty of concrete examples, but Republicans cannot back theirs up.
rikyrah
Good Morning Everyone 😊😊😊
Baud
@Kay:
I’d rather the economy actually crash than see Biden lose because of this economy. What an embarrassment to liberals that would be. I’d have to come up with something else to call myself.
Baud
@rikyrah:
Good morning.
Betty Cracker
I’m still mad at Biden for not changing Fort Bragg’s name to Fort Jane Fonda.
Kay
The retail theft panic was the worst of the many, many panics since covid I think, because it was entirely based on one fake expert who works for a retail trade group:
I mean, come on. Why did all these news companies parrot one bogus expert who works for the retail lobby?
The panic worked too. I live in a rural county with a low crime rate and people are panicked over the supposed “increase” in crime. They’re terrified. So good job, everyone!
Scout211
Some local election legal news yesterday affecting national elections.
Trump stays on the California ballot. That was expected.
But the controversy with the GOP candidate running for Kevin McCarthy’s seat in the House has taken a curious turn. The expected candidate dropped out at the last minute and Vince Fong then declared he would run after he already declared for his assembly seat. The SOS declared him ineligible to run for both seats by state law. Fong filed suit and a superior court judge made a strange ruling. (IANAL)
. . .
NotMax
@HinTN
I honestly haven’t the slightest idea as to what you refer.
Jay
@Betty Cracker:
Fort Bragg is too close to the beaches,
Fort Barbarella was in consideration for a while.
Kay
@Baud:
I’ve lost respect for so many of them. To not SEE that he’s dismantling the Reagan Revolution- to not RECOGNIZE what a more progressive economy looks like – it’s unforgiveable. They’re looking at rising wages for low and middle (especially racial minorities) increased labor activity and “onshoring”
of US manufacturing and they don’t see it!
The “onshoring” of US manufacturing is the great untold story of the Biden economy. Every liberal who bitched about NAFTA for 25 years should be thrilled, but they’re not. Is it because it’s happening in the places they don’t live so they don’t see it?
Jay
@Kay:
Corporate price gouging get’s a pass,
Corporate wage theft get’s a pass,
Well,………….
Betty Cracker
@Kay: Yep, that bullshit panic was inexcusable, and it sucked in most of the national media outlets. They should all run front-page corrections, but that’s not how it works.
I don’t think the fake panic would have been as successful without a single video played on loop of a coordinated smash-and-grab at a mall in a California city. The clip I saw (on my father’s TV — Fox News) hit all the wingnut panic buttons: city chaos, unarmed white victims, etc.
The retail security consultant who was repeatedly quoted must have made a mint!
Baud
@Kay:
Contra Ronald Reagan, the actual nine most terrifying words in the English language are: I’m a liberal Democrat, and I’ve made things better.
People do not want progress, because progress never looks exactly like they envision it. People prefer the status quo.
Jay
@Kay:
If’ it’s not in the news, it doesn’t exist.
Kay
If we just had 4 more years of a Biden labor dept and NLRB you would see a positive change for the next 30 years. That ALONE is worth reelecting him if your issue is working people. This is your President. You will not get a better labor President.
Soprano2
@Kay: I honestly think “crime is higher” is code for “I see more of those people” and “I see more homeless people begging for money”. It’s also influenced by that poor coverage you cite. There is no way most people can actually know whether crime is up or down unless the press tells them so. Around here, the police chief gave an interview in early fall where he told the press that crime in this city is down an average of 17%, and the most common response on FB was “That’s because people don’t report crime anymore because the police don’t do anything about it” (in a city where the population is 85% white!). Crime is still way, way up”. I don’t know what can be done when white people don’t even believe the white chief of police in a city that’s 85% white people. They all want to live in the fictional Mayberry in a city of almost 170,000 with a metro area that probably brings it closer to 250,000. I think some of them honestly believe that if only there were no more homeless people and no black or brown people crime would magically disappear.
I just spent 10 minutes in the bathroom at work desperately trying to figure out how to pin the V neckline of the new top I wore today so it won’t show my bra! Sheesh……time for some stitches. This is why I like petite sizes – a petite sized top wouldn’t do that to me.
Baud
@Kay:
I’m not sure they deserve a better labor president.
OzarkHillbilly
@Kay: Saying crime is out of control has been said since forever. Telling people to “be afraid, be very afraid,” nearly always works. It seems to be innate in the human psyche. And it always gets overblown.
Soprano2
Because they had dramatic footage of a “smash and grab” robbery in San Francisco that they could show over and over again. Remember the stories about the massive theft of Amazon packages from trains? Same thing. Plus, it feeds into the expectations that the press has built about large cities, that they’re lawless crime-ridden places no one actually wants to live in.
Kay
@Soprano2:
I think a combination of covid, BLM and Me Too genuinely rattled people (especially people in our stodgy, traditional press corps) – they felt like everything they knew was changing and in a direction that might take away some of their unearned standing in society. They’e just not resilient, flexible people. They’re brittle. They broke.
I think the next decades are going to require resilience and adaptability and people who don’t have those traits are just going to be on this endless cycle of panic(s) – terrified of everything, constantly. They’re sort of dropping like flies – into far Right belief systems or paranoid conspiracy theories or imaging everyone is a criminal and they are constantly threatened or the kind of exaggerated hopelessness where they make 100k a year but believe they are poverty stricken. They weren’t strong people to begin with and that set of stressors broke them.
SFAW
@Geminid:
You’re obviously a Woke Liberal Democrat, trying to peddle that “we have/need evidence” BS.
Soprano2
I think the answer to this is “yes”. A lot of the places where it’s happening are places where Biden already isn’t popular, so they aren’t giving him any credit, and liberals in the big cities are bitching about the recession in the tech industry. They don’t see the resurgence in manufacturing, and the press mostly isn’t reporting on it. It’s malpractice that the press isn’t reporting on it, but they aren’t. Republicans were long the party of “Buy American”, but now that a Democratic president is actually bringing jobs back to America they can’t bear to give him credit for it, so they just don’t talk about it.
OzarkHillbilly
Yep, they’re used to it. Change is scary because it’s unpredictable.
Geminid
@Betty Cracker: I was a little surprised when Fort Bragg was renamed Fort Liberty. Fort Ridgway seemed like the obvious choice, seeing as Matthew Ridgway commanded the 82nd Airborne Division in the Normandy invasion and then went on to compile an excellent fighting record in Europe and Korea. I guess the Army had its reasons.
SFAW
@Soprano2:
Didn’t that occur during the ANTIFA!!!!!OMFG!!!! riots which burned
PortlandIndianapolisNew York CitySan Francisco to the ground, creating a vast wasteland?Joey Maloney
@Geminid: Another unfortunate difference here is that the Republicans don’t have to back theirs up, because the facts don’t matter to their voters.
JMG
Political reporter Dave Weigel gave the reason people always think crime is up. “Ever watch local TV news?” A half-century of “if it bleeds, it leads” has an impact on people, and despite the Internet and social media, local TV news is still the leading source of what can loosely be termed information.
Kay
@Baud:
I got an email from a labor person I have worked with here. He recounted this experience he had in a convenience store in Indiana, where the guy ahead of him took a bag of candy up to the register and when he found out it was 6.99 he said “I’m not paying that” and took it back. This was supposed to show me it’s a bad economy for working people.
This fucking idiot is only “working in Indiana” because manufacturing construction is booming and he’s making 5000 a week working 7 10 hour days with 2x overtime. But the guy in front of him is upset about paying 7 dollars for a huge bag of candy so I’m supposed to apologize for not considering the plight of the working man. Seven dollars for a huge bag of candy is still too cheap, IMO. It should be ten.
Soprano2
@Kay: I think about how my mother in her 80’s reacted to the past several years; it was to get more conservative. She said things like “why are there so many black people in commercials now? If you watch TV you’d think they were the majority of the population” and “why are there so many gay people on TV now?”. She didn’t understand that advertisers are looking at the people who are in their teens and 20’s right now, and seeing that they aren’t majority white. You’re right, big changes are happening in our country as a result of demographic change and climate change, and conservative white people are struggling mightily with it. I think that’s why they’re fascist-curious, because it holds the promise of dialing back all the changes and making things the way they were when conservative white people were comfortable.
Soprano2
@OzarkHillbilly: Here’s what’s funny – I had a co-worker tell me the other day that I’m always resistant to change. I told her no I’m not, and cited example “x” of a change I was enthusiastic about. I told her what I object to is a) trying to make a change I’ve already seen fail before because I’ve been here 30 years, b) change for the sake of change because you’re bored with how we do things and c) change that no one tells you about until you encounter it in the course of doing your job. That’s happened to me four times in the past month, and every time it was unpleasant.
Soprano2
@JMG: Or look at FB or Nextdoor, it’s full of stories about crime. Look how popular true-crime shows and podcasts are. People are fascinated by it, and the news people know that.
Kay
@Soprano2:
I was one of the people who sort of dismissed the focus on “representation” of diversity in media (advertising and all the rest) but boy I could not have been more wrong. It matters a lot judging by how many white people get upset about it. I was 100% wrong.
Geminid
@Jay: In this case, the many “onshored” factories are reported by state and local media. People who depend on nationally focused news sites rarely hear about a groundbreaking ceremony that gets plenty of attention from local TV stations and state newspapers.
I noticed that when Cummins Engines commenced production an electrolyser assembly line at its Fridley, Minnesota plant. Governor Walz, Senator Smith, and Reps. Craig and Omar attended and spoke at the ceremony. This did not make national news, but it was extensively reported by state and local news sites. It was also reported by many news sites that focus on the clean energy industry in general or on its hydrogen sector in particular.
RevRick
It’s becoming more and more apparent that COVID caused all sorts of dislocations which disrupted the normal flow of things. And Republicans will try to make political hay out of them, just as sure as the sun rises in the East. And the news media will abet them in this effort, because the news, generally, is about what’s out of the ordinary.
And given that the general public thinks that the United States pretty much runs the show worldwide and that the President possesses king like powers, when things get out of kilter, the blame falls on the shoulders of the President.
The spikes in inflation and crime, clearly effects of COVID dislocations, fell largely on Biden’s watch, and so we’ve been treated to ridiculous hysteria about gasoline prices and crime in Democrat run cities. And the thing is that our pointing out that these things were due to COVID will only sound like self pity and whining.
Our task is to tell about the successes over an over again and to attack the growing fascism of the GOP, over and over again.
Kay
@Geminid:
That helps, because a lot of people still watch local news (I do) but we still need national coverage of onshoring if for no other reason than it is reality and they shoud be covering reality.
Imagine if they took some of the coverage of the president of Harvard and redirected that to the incredible bulding boom that is occurring in the upper midwest. They can still cover their favorite subject! They can still cover wokeness at Ivy League universities! We could just ADD coverage of the manufacturing boom.
OzarkHillbilly
That always sets me off. “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!”
OzarkHillbilly
@Kay: Oh Kay, reality is sooooooo boring.
Kay
@Geminid:
Chris Hayes is supposedly this big Lefty who loves the working man. He covers it when “the rustbelt” is struggling. They all love poverty porn. “Here’s some arty photos of abandoned factories in Detroit”
He should ALSO cover it when “the rustbelt” is booming. Detroit is a good story! It’s chock full of hardworking immigrants. I think liberal and Left media people prefer poverty porn to working people being successful.
Matt McIrvin
@Kay: In 2016 there was a lot of conservatives making these bullying, totalitarian threats of “when Trump gets in you’ll have to change your tune!” and I think one thing that freaked them out about #MeToo and BLM was that even though Trump was in, the liberals and minorities weren’t shutting up. They actually got louder.
This time around, seems like they’re saying much more explicitly, we’re gonna murder you when Trump gets back in. You’re gonna die.
If it happens, I bet we don’t shut up. But they’ll try it.
Ksmiami
@Kay: and yet the idiots in the UAW will probably vote for Trump because of toxic masculinity and racism. Good luck to them
Ksmiami
@Matt McIrvin: they can try but they bleed too.
Soprano2
@Kay: Yep, my mother isn’t the only person I’ve heard complaining about it. “Why are there so many black people in TV ads?” seems to be a kind of common complaint around here. They don’t see the country’s demographic changes because where I live is 85% white, with the surrounding towns being almost 100% white. It’s a very white place. So to them the ads don’t look like their reality, so they can’t understand why they’re like that.
Geminid
@Joey Maloney: This is true of the Republican base, but Republicans cannot win purple states and districts if they don’t attract voters outside their base. That’s where the “Woke Liberal Democrat” framing could fall flat, because it is so lacking in substance to back it up.
Kay
@Ksmiami:
I’m interested in them because we were always told they’re about 50/50 D/R and I wonder if their new leader will change that – push them further D. But you’re right- the UAW are not a particularly progessive union, which is sad because they were at one time. They were much better on race in the 50s and 60s than some of the other industrial unions.
OzarkHillbilly
My response is always, “Why do you care?”
Kay
@Matt McIrvin:
I watched a documentary about the pedophiles who were allowed to prey on little girls for years in US (elite) gymnastics and the whistleblower girls were treated as extraordinary – girls who for “some reason” were listened to when other girls were ignored. I don’t think that’s what it was at all. I think society changed and molesting girls became unacceptable so the later whistleblowers were listened to. The 2004 whistleblower was ignored but the 2015 whistleblower wasn’t. That’s the progress.
AWOL
@Kay: Hayes? I stopped watching that clown when he said on MSNBC that the US needs a strong Republican Party so that they can check the excesses of the Democratic Party.
Plus that cowardly network is just for giving Republicans in Exile a place to yammer on.
satby
@JMG: This. People are surrounded by it. And a cottage industry of TV true crime shows/ cop ride along shows/ fake court shows making it seem like crime is pervasive, instead of the reality that it’s being promoted for profit. One was playing in the background on boxing day in the hotel where I was trying to eat breakfast. I asked them to change it, so they put on Good Morning America.
Geminid
@Kay: I feel like there’s an upper-middle class bubble that Chris Hayes inhabits, and that he is representative of many national journalists in this respect. It’s an insular group that is oblivious to its insularity.
Kay
I watched the Nikki Haley clip. Oof. It’s not the substance that bothers me – I know Nikki Haley knows slavery was the cause of the Civil War. It’s the complete debasement that makes me cringe. They pay such a high price for the GOP base. You have to give up your whole soul and self respect in the Republican Party. I just died a little watching her doing it.
Kay
@Geminid:
But he makes a big show of getting out of it! I didn’t watch it – poverty porn repulses me- but he did a whole series on unemployed coal miners. If you spent the last 25 years moaning that NAFTA killed Ohio and Michigan I think you have a duty to revisit those issues when we’re making moneydue to PROGRESSIVE economic policy. Or do Lefties just want to pity us? Because if so they can fuck off. No one needs that.
Nukular Biskits
Good mornin’, y’all!
Speaking of the economy, had a strange, but otherwise friendly, interaction with one of my neighbors yesterday.
A little background: Neighbors A moved in across the street about 6 months ago, but still haven’t been able to sell their house over in LA (can’t remember where, exactly).
Yesterday, when delivering a present to the Neighbors B on the other side of Neighbors A, stopped to chat for a moment with Mrs. Neighbors A and asked about whether they’d had any bites on their LA house. She answered that they had not, the reason probably being the high interest rates but with the 2024 elections coming up, that “Democrats probably would do everything they could to make the economy look better to win in November” (I’m greatly paraphrasing here). I let it slide and we chatted for a few more minutes before I continued on my gift delivery mission.
The interesting thing here, to me anyway, is that some folks hold Democrats accountable for a “bad” economy (however that’s defined) but are eager to credit Republicans for a “good” economy. Also, that Democrats somehow control the levers of the US economy and will deliberately improve the economy for the sole purpose of winning elections.
Neighbors A aren’t rightwing nuts, as far as I know, but that small conversation showed me that even the otherwise sane “conservatives” are likely to believe in conspiracy theories.
Princess
One thing that has fed into our perceptions of rising crime is a general sense of lawlessness that people living in cities are sending. Our police have all quiet-quit, people drive like maniacs, and downtowns still feel a bit boarded-up with lots of empty storefronts. So you see all that and then see a news story reporting massive casual and organized theft, and it seems to track even if it’s not true.
JML
I am thrilled with Joe Biden’s work on the Judiciary. I’m not surprised; he’s been engaged in this area for a long time, but it’s still a really big deal. People really underestimate the importance of putting public defenders on the bench, both in terms of what it means for the course of criminal law, but also what it does for the legal profession as a whole. For decades the path to becoming a judge was: work as a junior prosecutor, go get a job in a big law firm, make partner and make your connections, get a nomination to the bench. But it almost always required a stop in the prosecutor’s office, which frequently makes people less sympathetic to the rights of criminals and more willing to overlook police abuses of power. The PD’s office has been more of a dead-ender, the home of a small core of the dedicated, those who could survive with a spouse’s earnings (PDs get less than prosecutors), and people with nowhere else to go. The burnout rate is massive, and you’d never get touched for a judicial appointment of any kind.
The judiciary has also been staggeringly white and male, and Biden is doing important work to change it. Judges reinforce each other’s attitudes and ideas (who do you think they hang out with?) and they desperately need more diversity for their own good.
One more thing needs to happen in the judiciary, especially the federal: stop picking everybody from Yale & Harvard. Way too many Ivy Leaguers in the judiciary, especially from those two schools. A law degree from those schools isn’t a magic ticket that makes you better and smarter and two schools shouldn’t control the intellectual heart of the federal judiciary. We need more grads from UVA & Georgetown, any Big Ten school, University of Chicago, UNLV, etc. Going to Yale or Harvard should not be a pre-requisite to the federal bench, but take a look at the Appellate Division some time. (and the same applies to SCOTUS: some of the best justices didn’t come from the federal judiciary, and some of the worst have. that shouldn’t be a pre-req either).
Mousebumples
Slightly OT, but I’m looking to make an end of year donation to a Ukraine-focused charity. Any favorites? World Central Kitchen comes to mind – and I can try to ask in Adam’s thread, too, but I’m usually asleep by the time those come up, so I thought I’d try here.
Thanks!
Geminid
@Kay: Hayes and his ilk might argue that these new factories are merely the successes of “Late Stage Capitalism ” and so are not really successes at all. All those people getting better jobs only think they’re better off for it.
Another Scott
@Kay: Biden’s slowly, and smartly, rolling back TIFG’s protectionism on aluminum and steel, also too, so that’s going to (eventually) reduce costs to manufacturers, so they’ll be less upward pressure on new car prices and the like going forward.
Competence matters.
Cheers,
Scott.
Matt McIrvin
@JMG: This is the one time I ever went into great nodding agreement with Bill Fucking Maher. He was actually on this early–saying that local TV news was the bane of rational thought, that it was basically designed to prey on the anxieties of, he said, young parents (though really it goes far beyond young parents).
Matt McIrvin
@Princess: My town’s downtown actually looks booming and vibrant compared to how it was 10 years ago. There’s been a lot of progress and I’m kind of impressed.
Matt McIrvin
@Ksmiami: I don’t know about you, but I’m really bad at this. If it comes to a shooting war my plan is basically to die.
narya
@Kay: He did a whole show the other night on how good the economy under Biden is, and he’s been bringing receipts on this.
Princess
@Kay: “I think liberal and Left media people prefer poverty porn to working people being successful.”
This, 100%. It messes with their/our sense of superiority.
Geminid
@narya: I’m glad to hear that. I hope Hayes keeps it up.
I’ve noticed some other people like Hayes coming around to the sensible view that Biden and the Democrats aren’t that bad after all.
Princess
@Matt McIrvin: Chicago downtown when I left this summer was night and day compared to when I moved there in 1996. But it is worn compared to, say 2019 to pick a year at random (not). And that’s what people remember.
Kay
@Geminid:
Lol. I think they are doing a real number on young people. It is fine to point to structural issues on housing and other problems and tell them, no, not buying a latte won’t matter much if there is no affordable housing but I think we take it too far. People have SOME control over their financial futures. They can make good decisions or bad decisions. Now, if young people make a bad decision (tons of student loans) we should give them an out and they shouldn’t be tied down to that bad decision forever, but we also shouldn’t tell them nothing they do matters. It’s not true. They can improve their financial future quite a bit solely thru their own efforts. There is no reason a young white man in Ohio should be underemployed. There is LOADS of (no college) trades training available at little to no cost other than effort and time. They really can make 26 an hour with not too much prep or cost. That’s 50k a year. One can live quite well here on 50k a year.
They need to stop telling young people it’s all hopeless and they’re doomed. It’s not true.
Soprano2
@Kay: Plus, she claimed it was a hard question. No it’s not! That’s an easy question if you’re willing to answer it honestly. “People in the Southern states wanted to continue to have slaves, and wanted to expand slavery to the West. People in the North and the national government didn’t want slavery to expand to the West, so they wouldn’t allow it. Lincoln was in the party that didn’t want to allow slavery to expand, and he won the 1860 presidential election, so the Southern states all wrote documents declaring that they wanted to continue having slavery and thus were going to secede from the Union”. Or something like that. People often forget that the straw that broke the camel’s back was when the Southern states wanted to allow slavery to expand into the new Western states, and the North said “No, we’re drawing the line there”.
Joey Maloney
@Geminid: Which is pretty funny because Hayes wrote an entire book examining exactly that phenomenon.
Kay
@Geminid:
But if you’re a young white man in rural Ohio and you can’t get ahead (or out of your parents house) because you bought an 80k truck or you were paying child support for 3 kids at 22, then I think some of that is decisions you made, NOT structural or “politicians ignore young white men in the rustbelt”.
I could have told them child support would make it impossible for them to move out of their parents house. This is like adding up 4 numbers and then subtracting. It’s not magic.
Soprano2
@Kay: This is why I love to listen to Michelle Singletary. She’s on this a lot to young people, that there are all kinds of things you can do to help yourself if you’re willing to do them. She talks about how she lived with her parents in order to be able to pay off her student loans. She advocates for a lot of these programs that help young people with financial things. More of them should listen to her.
Soprano2
@Kay: Ugh, this is how I feel when I read some of those “Share your Christmas” stories in the local paper. There was one I saw last night (I’m behind in my paper reading). It was a young family where the father works long hours at a fast food place as a manager. They have THREE kids under the age of 3 and another on the way! I think one item they need is for someone to explain the concept of family planning to them. If they had one or two kids they’d be a lot better off! No one is making you have 4 kids under the age of 4!
Another Scott
@Mousebumples: The “Balloon Juice for Ukraine” sidebar thermometer has Razom and WCK. Razom is highly rated and recommended by Gin & Tonic, IIRC.
HTH!
Cheers,
Scott.
MomSense
@NotMax:
I’ll check it out. So many fallen trees all around after the storms last week.
Kay
@Soprano2:
It’s EXACTLY wrong too. The fact is slave states wanted free states to enforce their “property rights”. When free states wouldn’t do that slave states demanded the federal government do it. She’s just as wrong as she can be. They didn’t want to be left alone! They demanded all government power go toward enforcing and propogating enslaving people as a system. They weren’t waving bye bye to slaves at the border to the North. They came after them, into free states. They happily trampled all over the rights of free states to shelter enslaved people.
Mousebumples
@Another Scott: Ah, right! Thanks for the reminder. 😊
Kay
@Soprano2:
After decades of practice in juvenile courts I’ll tell you the truth is the people who succeed as very young single parents are the people who limit to one child. It’s pretty much impossible to get ahead with three children and one parent when that parents starts far behind (in poverty). They won’t make it. It’s nearly impossible. You can do one child at 17 or 18 or 19 and still get ahead. You probably can’t do more than that unless you can combine incomes/households with someone else.
Chief Oshkosh
@JML: You make excellent points. Getting more people with Public Defender experience onto the bench is critical, and the inroads that Biden has made here are already impacting outcomes for the better.
satby
@Mousebumples: I’ve been donating to WCK too, and United 24, the official Ukrainian government site to help support Ukraine’s people against the invaders. Either puts the donations to good use. I’ve also donated to a few others, but the two above seem like they accomplish so much.
OzarkHillbilly
The cartel replies: Mexico: 14 kidnapped from village that rose up and killed cartel members
Mousebumples
@satby: Thanks for the suggestions! 😊
Anyway
@Mousebumples:
I donated to United24 (U24 Humanitarian Aid) – satby mentioned it in a morning thread last week
ETA – thanks for the link, satby
MomSense
@Kay:
Personal Responsibility is only for THOSE people.
OzarkHillbilly
Also too, some good news on the climate change front: Uruguay’s green power revolution: rapid shift to wind shows the world how it’s done
Here I thought Americans were the “can do” people.
Geminid
@Joey Maloney: I guess you are talking about Hayes’ book The Twilight of the Elites (2012). Have you read it? Is it any good?
I must admit that I haven’t watched Hayes’ TV show for several years, and am mainly extrapolating from stuff of his I’ve seen on Twitter. Also, I still hold a grudge at Hayes for his conduct in concerning Tara Reade’s allegations in June, 2020 and I am extra sceptical of him because of this.
satby
@Mousebumples: @Anyway: You’re welcome.
There are several projects under United 24: Defense, Humanitarian, Medical, Education (restoration), and Rebuilding; so even people who lean pacifist can support the Ukrainian nation without contributing to any offensive weapons if that’s a concern. It’s not for me, I contribute to the defense projects primarily.
Soprano2
@Kay: Well, they were married but still a young married couple who are going to have 4 kids under the age of 4 and don’t seem to know how to use birth control are going to have a rough time of it no matter what. It’s nuts, why do they have so many kids? I come at this as a young woman from a small town who was PARANOID about not getting pregnant. I knew if that happened my life as I knew it was probably over, and I would have been in a world of hurt although I could have gotten an abortion. I knew that getting pregnant in my teens or early 20’s would have been a terrible thing for my life. I can’t understand the people who are so blase about something that’s going to change the rest of their lives forever.
narya
@Geminid: He’s pretty much the only “news” I watch with any regularity (nearly every night he’s on). Of course I don’t agree with everything he or his guests say, but I also appreciate how he has been going hammer and tongs against Faux News and the right in general. I remember that Reade thing and had/have the same reaction as you; OTOH, during the first year of Covid, he had some really good people on regularly (Hotez and Fauci in particular) and he made an effort to provide useful facts.
zhena gogolia
@Mousebumples: Razom is a good one, and I believe it’s G&T approved.
Matt McIrvin
@Princess: Several local restaurants did shut down since 2020 more or less because of COVID and the aftermath. One has been replaced by another beloved local restaurant whose previous location was destroyed in a flood.
Another Scott
ICYMI, … TBogg at RawStory says Turnip may soon end up in jail:
Turnip will never be impeached.Turnip will never be impeached again.
Turnip will never leave the White House.
Turnip will never be tried for sexual assault in a civil case.
Turnip will never be indicted in a criminal case.
Turnip will never go to jail…
Lots of nevers keep falling…
Cheers,
Scott.
Matt McIrvin
@Geminid: I get him mixed up with Chris Hedges, who I am way MORE skeptical of (Hedges went straight off the deep end into horseshoe-left land as far as I’m concerned).
twbrandt
@Kay:
I’m also interested in seeing what happens with the UAW. My impression is that it is moving left – the new leadership seems much more militant than the old leadership was.
Gvg
@Soprano2: Don Henley ‘s song Dirty Laundry….the press NEVER reports crime is down. They always report crimes. there always are crimes in a country with our population. They did report crimes during the Trump administration, mostly about him, which I guess made them have less time to get to other lesser ordinary thieves? They can’t sell news of good things happening. We have to deal with that. I guess it’s more of a problem for us than republicans because we actually cause good things to happen. They just lie.
evodevo
@OzarkHillbilly: My response is “Why do you hate capitalism?” Companies aren’t stoopid…they are targeting what their marketing depts. have outlined as a big potential customer base for their product – whatever that may be – and they are going for it. They recognize demographic changes as reality, and they don’t want to be left out, so POCs are portrayed in their ads. The complainers usually shut up and look confused LOL
Another Scott
@Matt McIrvin: +1
J and I saw Hedges give a talk once maybe 20 years ago. Very ivory-tower kinda stuff that I was not persuaded by at all.
But in looking around now, he may have been prescient about at least one thing – someone didn’t like his 2007 book – American Fascists – The Christian Right and the War on America.
I think the reviewer doth protest too much, especially in view of the way things evolved… Hmm…
;-)
Cheers,
Scott.
Geminid
@Matt McIrvin: Hayes and Hedges are examples of a separation that seems to have occurred on the Left. Seven years ago, the two were more or less “on the same page,” but their paths have diverged since then. One of the big turning points was Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
catclub
What? No love for the ashes of Seattle?
narya
@twbrandt: @Geminid: To bring together two pieces of the thread, Hayes had Fain on the show to go into the strategy that got the UAW their wins; Fain was wearing his “eat the rich” t-shirt. I’ve heard a couple of interviews w/ Fain, and I’ve been impressed by him in multiple ways. First, he fought internally so that the UAW was more representative of members, rather than a “company union,” as he put it. Second, they developed the strike strategy specifically so the industry as a whole would be affected, further solidifying the union’s power. Third, IMHO the strategy of saying, hey, the execs got theirs, and the shareholders got theirs, we now want our piece of that success, which is just a winning message. The whole campaign made me hopeful, TBH.
catclub
@Nukular Biskits: My answer would be: “If they know how to make the economy better? Let them do it more often!”
Jackie
@AWOL:
You forget John Cole started this very blog as a conservative Republican. He slowly opened his eyes and realized that while many of his views hadn’t necessarily changed, the Party he identified with had, and he realized they, for the most part, no longer represented who HE was.
The former republicans who frequent MSNBC are just as anti-Trump and anti-MAGA as we are. Their viewpoints aren’t welcome on RW news. They may not be rabid progressives, but neither are all of us.
I, for one, welcome their viewpoint and prospectives, because sometimes we need reminding not ALL republicans or former republicans are the enemy and we ALL SHARE A COMMON GOAL: Preserving and protecting our democracy!
I assume they, individually, bring some of their supporters to watch MSNBC, and maybe, just maybe will vote D in 2024, rather than vote for a third party or not vote at all.
I welcome ex-communicated republicans to share their viewpoints and am thrilled they are encouraging their friends and colleagues to support the Democratic Party – if not forever, at least long enough to irradiate TIFG and the MAGA movement.
I don’t want to live in a LW bubble – I want to be “WOKE” and aware of the many degrees of opinions, knowing in the end we all have a common goal: Defeat Trump and those who support autocracy.
DougL
@Kay:
“I think the next decades are going to require resilience and adaptability and people who don’t have those traits are just going to be on this endless cycle of panic(s) – terrified of everything, constantly. They’re sort of dropping like flies – into far Right belief systems or paranoid conspiracy theories or imaging everyone is a criminal and they are constantly threatened or the kind of exaggerated hopelessness where they make 100k a year but believe they are poverty stricken. They weren’t strong people to begin with and that set of stressors broke them.“
This is such a great point. These are weak people who’ve been raised to revel in their weakness and think of it as being strong. Describes about 75% of the white people I know.
Matt McIrvin
@Geminid: Like Naomi Klein and Naomi Wolf!
Geminid
@narya: And now the UAW is trying to organize some non-union auto plants in the South. I guess they’ll go after some of the new battery plants as well.
Which reminds me: the Teamsters announced plans to organize Amazon workers a year or so ago. I wonder how that is working. I think they intended to start in Canada and then work on US operations, both drivers and warehouses.
Another Scott
@Geminid: My mom was a Teamster at the U of Chicago business school (a prof’s secretary). Unions are smart when they organize everyone, everywhere.
Cheers,
Scott.
twbrandt
@narya: An anecdote: I was having pizza and a beer at my favorite neighborhood bar in Dearborn, MI a few weeks ago when the strike was ongoing, and there a couple of younger guys there in UAW shirts discussing the origins of the phrase “Eat the rich” from the French Revolution. I about fell off my barstool.
narya
@twbrandt: Hah! I love it! It sure sounds like Fain is doing his damnedest to educate union members in accessible ways–and it sounds like that’s because he had to educate himself to do what he’s done. But your anecdote is priceless!
Bill Arnold
@OzarkHillbilly:
Thanks. That piece is mood-improving.
dirge
Umm… yes?
So bizarre how people contort this into a bad thing. It’s a sooper sekret conspiracy to trick voters into supporting candidates who, umm, diligently work to improve the lives of their constituents, I guess?
The flip side is how you’re supposed to support the tough guy who’s willing to make the hard choices, which seem to usually involve making life harder for (almost) everyone.
It’s like they think that enacting popular, successful policies is a form of cheating.
dr. luba
@Soprano2: I’m lucky, I guess; my mom and her BFF (who passed away 2 years ago) both became raging liberals in their old age. Mom, who is 91, would call me every day during the Trump administration to bitch about what he’d done now…
Some things she’s had more trouble adjusting to (unmarried people living together, gay couples), but she manages.
opiejeanne
@SFAW: You left out Seattle.
My cousin who lives in Evanston, Wyoming called to ask if our daughters were safe, since they live in the burnt-out shell of Seattle. It was because of coverage of the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone (CHAZ), that caused the cops to abandon one of their police stations, during which a bum set a fire in a trash can. The fire was promptly put out by the “rioters”. Trump threatened to send troops to deal with the “anarchists”, and our governor, Jay Inslee told him this: “A man who is totally incapable of governing should stay out of Washington state’s business.”
Ruckus
@Geminid:
One difference here is that Jeffries can back up his framing with plenty of concrete examples, but Republicans cannot back theirs up.
In my very nearly 3/4 of a century I cannot remember when rethuglicans could back their bullshit up. It has, at least in my lifetime always been a concept idealization. And their ideal doesn’t ring true to how either humanity overall or how rethuglicans actually are. But they are closer than the general population to the worst of their concepts. IOW, it’s projection of the road they are on and have been for decades.
Kathleen
@Kay: I don’t trust that their “ignorance” is “good faith agree to disagree”. I think they hate “centrist” Democrats.
Matt McIrvin
@OzarkHillbilly: Honestly… the United States has also done quite a bit of this! Often in red red states!
Ruckus
@OzarkHillbilly:
That country is 1/3 the population of Los Angeles County. It is 100th of the size of the US. We may be more can do, but it’s a lot easier to get a majority, even if they didn’t need one in a population that size. Especially if 1/3 the country isn’t rabid batshit insane.
The Lodger
@Geminid: They could have renamed the fort after Alvin Bragg. Or Billy Bragg.