My politics is getting so contorted but it's basically this:
Vote like hell for Biden in 2024 so we don't lose the right to protest Biden vigorously in 2025 or the freedom to replace him with somebody far better in 2028
My New Year's Resolution is to explain this to voters
— Will Bunch (@Will_Bunch) January 1, 2024
Happy 2024. pic.twitter.com/xWF0MChPjF
— A.R. Moxon (juliusgoat.bsky.social) (@JuliusGoat) January 1, 2024
We want to ban assault weapons. Republicans want to ban books.
We are fighting for working people. Republicans are fighting to cut taxes for our country's wealthiest people.
We are investing to fight the climate crisis. Republicans are denying climate change.
Elections matter.
— Kamala Harris (@KamalaHarris) December 29, 2023
No better way to ring in the new year than Biden campaign co chair Rep. @ClyburnSC06 laying out President Biden’s historic record:
“Joe Biden has kept his promises to the American people and he has been an incredibly good president — the best producer since LBJ.” pic.twitter.com/9bkMQfxljY
— Julia Hamelburg (@juliahamelburg) January 1, 2024
In 2023, @Interior directed billions in funding from @POTUS' Investing in America agenda into communities to clean up legacy pollution, address the climate crisis, and restore the ecosystems we all depend on. I'm thrilled with our progress and where we're headed together. pic.twitter.com/ciX68CBtbc
— Secretary Deb Haaland (@SecDebHaaland) December 30, 2023
Minimum-wage workers in 22 states will be getting raises today.https://t.co/GjhP7tHVP4
— Ted Corcoran (RedTRaccoon) (@RedTRaccoon) January 1, 2024
Honoring Tribal sovereignty and self-determination is foundational to @Interior’s mission. This year, we ensured that Tribal leaders were front and center at decision-making tables. Together, we can strengthen Indian Country for a brighter future. pic.twitter.com/T6ZMJv4l0X
— Secretary Deb Haaland (@SecDebHaaland) December 30, 2023
From us to you, thank you for standing with us in 2023. Let’s bring that energy into 2024! pic.twitter.com/ng7CsNq02d
— VoteVets (@votevets) December 31, 2023
Well, I am not sure it can be stated more concisely than this. Do not FAFO; let's save our fragile democracy. #BidenHarris2024 https://t.co/8Z9Xl8TeNv
— HawaiiDelilah™ ?? #MauiStrong ?????????? (@HawaiiDelilah) January 1, 2024
Anyone demanding you convince them to vote for Biden is not going to vote for Biden. They just want you to fall all over yourself giving them attention. Move on to swaying people who can be swayed.
— Jean-Michel Connard (@torriangray) December 30, 2023
On The Road – Captain C – Amsterdam, October 2023, Part 4
Baud
I agree with that last tweet in particular. Too often, libs chase the noise.
Matt McIrvin
Either Biden or Trump, if elected in 2024, will come in constitutionally limited to a single additional term.
Of the two, I only trust Joe Biden to honor that.
(Trump has ALREADY floated the idea that it does not apply to him.)
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
I fully expect an NYT op/ed to argue that the only way to stop the Trump threat is to elect him so he’s term limited.
Matt McIrvin
@Baud: Not electing him does mean we’ll probably have to deal with him again in 2028. But I think his pull as a candidate probably diminishes the longer he’s out and the older and more crazed he gets.
Matt McIrvin
(But I don’t think there’s been a single major election in my lifetime where I haven’t seen someone write the galaxy-brain hot take that “actually, it would be better for the Democrats in the long term to LOSE this one.”)
Nukular Biskits
@Baud:
Are you trying to move into DougJ’s territory?
;>)
Marmot
@Baud: Me too.
And I think we often forget that you probably won’t sway whoever you’re debating, but anybody listening in.
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
Agreed. I’m so old the patterns are familiar now. If not altogether formulaic.
Trivia Man
@Marmot: Exactly right
In social media spaces, we cant let the BS just stand unchallenged. Its lijely no use debating them or going back and forth – but if you say nothing then all the normies will just assme the BS is accepted fact.
Chris Johnson
I mean, all politicians lie some, don’t tell you what they’re really up to some, and have bad intentions some. ‘cos there is no one north star of ‘what everybody wants’, even if you find politicians who are really clear on their intentions and sincere.
It’s a question of how much, and a question of taking people at their word, some. The idea that you can throw a bunch of mud and go in on the opposition while saying ‘Oh I’m sure they’re actually way better than what they’re openly saying they are’ is stark nanners pants-on-head r-word. (or, simple intentional lying for advantage)
Baud
@Trivia Man:
Agreed. It’s just important for the debator to recognize that the goal is performative for the audience, rather than a serious attempt to persuade the interlocutor.
Sanjeevs
Schumer should table a bill to amend the Constitution to allow insurrectionists to become President and invite the Republican Senators to vote on it.
lowtechcyclist
Which is incredibly overdue for a major increase. And I’m sure the minimum wage for tipped workers is still an appalling $2.13/hour in all of those states.
If the lower minimum for tipped workers can’t be abolished altogether, then at least it needs to be fixed at a much higher percentage of the regular minimum, like 70-80% of the regular minimum.
And what a tipped worker is needs to be narrowly defined, too: I’ve got to wonder whether all those tip jars on counters, and places you never thought of tipping at that automatically ask you whether you want to add a X% tip to your check, aren’t trying to get around the regular minimum and reclassify a broad swath of their workers as tipped workers.
Baud
Two things.
rikyrah
Good Morning Everyone 😊😊😊
Central Planning
@Baud:
You’re trying to apply logic to voters? Foolish mortal!
Baud
@rikyrah:
Good morning.
Hildebrand
Jeez, Will Bunch needs to go sit in a corner for a long while. I mean, swell, he will vote for Biden, but good lord, his attitude is just the worst. ‘Somebody far better…’, that’s some weapon’s grade knavery right there.
Kay
@Baud:
They don’t believe democracy really is at stake. You can’t blame them really – major media and most of our institutions don’t either. There’s a kind of complacency in this country that is really something to behold. You say “they called 300 state legislators and tried to get them to overturn the results!” and they say “well, the 300 state legislators didn’t do it, did they? System worked! Everything is great and normal!”
Baud
@Kay:
Yeah, that makes sense. I think people like to call the GOP fascist, but they either don’t mean it or they don’t understand what fascism is, or they are more comfortable with fascism than they let on.
Kay
@Hildebrand:
I do think the “too old” is silly in the case of the President though. He gets two terms and he’s done. The next batch of candidates will all be much younger. This “problem” is already solved. It’s a legit objection for federal courts (lifetime) and Congress (term after term) but the “President is too old” problem solves itself in 4 years.
Baud
@Hildebrand:
It’s annoying, but we need to market to all types of folks.
lowtechcyclist
I don’t run into anyone demanding I convince them to vote for Biden. But if I did, I think my approach would be a simple response like MVP’s tweet above, or something similar. Followed by, “if that isn’t enough for you, I don’t know what would be.” And walk away.
I’d probably just keep it to climate change. The Dems have already put some serious money towards reducing the amount of carbon we put in the air, and they’ll do more if they hold the White House and retake Congress. The Rethugs won’t do jack shit about global warming. Any lefty who isn’t willing to vote Dem on the basis of that alone, I don’t have the time for. Nice knowing you, bye.
NotMax
Media matters
For the month of January only, first season of the fine Scandinavian P.I. thriller Varg Veum is available on Prime.
Also noting that The City and the City is back on Prime, via Freevee.
Looking ahead, Australian mini-series Boy Swallows Universe, coming to Netflix January 11th, look interesting.
Kay
@lowtechcyclist:
I just listen to them. People mostly just want to be heard.
NotMax
@Kay
Then there’s the faction who mostly just want to be herded.
lowtechcyclist
@Baud:
Makes sense to me!
While I’m an AOC fan, I wouldn’t want her as President for a while yet. I’m a Biden stan because Biden’s not only on the right side of practically every issue I can think of, but he’s been around and knows WTF he’s doing. (In retrospect, I think Obama’s relative inexperience in Washington made him a less effective President than he might have been. I still love the guy, but still.)
But that’s just me. What I’d tell some lefty bozo is that we’re not going to have someone like AOC as President until AOC is more normalized, that is, not until Congress looks a lot more like AOC than it does now. That means more, better Democrats, as Kos used to say. (And probably still does, I just haven’t spent any time at Daily Kos in eons.)
Kay
@NotMax:
I never thought I really persuaded anyone. I think it’s more making a connection with them and then hoping they follow thru. You have to let them get there themselves. They’re always sort of flattered you’re asking, which is 90% of campaigning, I think, asking.
Princess
@lowtechcyclist: I hate to say it but I agree with you about Obama. I see it in some of the people he chose — I was thinking of this when I saw Summers talking about how awful it was that people were suffering in this terrible economy— the same Summers who said we shouldn’t do much during the 2008 recession and should be indifferent to people suffering. Clearly Summers is a bad guy but who persuaded Obama to choose him?
Robin Goodfellow
@Central Planning:
Oh what fools these voters be!
Chris
@Matt McIrvin:
I don’t know, actually.
I absolutely believed in 2020 that we’d see him again in 2024 unless he was dead, medically incapacitated, or in jail. This time I’m not sure. At some point, loser stink starts to settle in, and you stop being an unjustly robbed avatar of Real America and start being just a fucking loser who can’t close the deal. (It’s equally important with swing voters; if it’s 2028 and the GOP is still trying to serve up Trump, the average low-key moron who once thought Trump was fun and transgressive is going to start going “stop trying to make fetch happen! It’s not going to happen!”)
All of which is putting the cart before the horse, of course, since at this point it’s very much an open question how 2024 shakes out.
Chief Oshkosh
@Baud: In my experience, it’s that they don’t know what fascism is AND they don’t mean it — it’s all just blather for most normies.
Of course, I don’t care, as long as they don’t vote for any Republican anywhere ever.
NotMax
FYI.
The long wait is over. We can have Peter Pan sing “Let’s Do It” with impunity.
;)
zhena gogolia
@Baud: I couldn’t get past the first tweet. Good luck finding “somebody far better” than Biden. I guess that’s Bernie.
Spanky
Coincidentally (or not), WaPo’s top o’ the virtual page article is titled:
The question, of course, is how many people now identify as Republicans? Has the old GOP been distilled down to hard-core believers?
Chris
@lowtechcyclist:
Honestly, I don’t want people like AOC to be president because I think they’re effective voices for the left* in a way that the president, who has to work hard to be all things to all people, can never be, and I think these voices are important to have and to keep in Congress. I thought the same thing about Elizabeth Warren a decade ago. (I also just really dislike the impulse of people jumping straight from “I like this politician” to “they should be president!”)
* “The left” in the sense of “the most progressive grouping of people who are meaningfully on the political spectrum,” not in the sense of “three guys on Twitter with Che Guevara avatars” that so many people today seem to use the term as.
dmsilev
@Matt McIrvin: If Trump loses this year, he’ll be much much weaker in 2028. He’ll be a two-time loser. He’ll be four years older and further down the mental deterioration road. There’s a pretty reasonable chance that he’ll have ‘convicted felon’ on his resume.
He’d still probably be the favorite to win the GOP nomination though…
NotMax
@Kay
Planting the seed of persuasion oft more fruitful in the long term.
Baud
Jeez
Kay
@dmsilev:
I hope they also nominate him in 2028.
I read this story about how he rips off his fans with hist stupid fucking fake currency and coins and I was struck by what I’m always struck by when people come in to the law office with tales of woe of being ripped off by conmen – there’s always an angle where the con tells them they will get something “special”- something no one else gets. These people play a role in this con dance- they’re not blameless.
In the case of Trump currency it’s that “Trump Patriots” will get a special deal from Trump (once he’s in power again) where he will quadruple their investment. You know, I want to feel bad for them but they kind of suck as people, which is how they get bamboozled like this. They think it’s ok for the government to hand out special favors to “patriots”?
Baud
different-church-lady
“Why should I vote for Biden?”
”Because HE’S NOT A BAD PRESIDENT AND HE BELIEVES IN THE RIGHT THINGS AND THE OTHER GUY IS A FASCIST AND YOU’RE A FUCKING MORON FOR EVEN ASKING!!!”
NotMax
@Kay
“Not my fault you misread it. It’s clearly labeled BOG0, not BOGO.”
//
different-church-lady
@dmsilev:
three time.
JPL
@dmsilev: I just wish MSM would call him the loser he is.
brendancalling
@Hildebrand: I know Will personally, and I like him, but he can be dour, pessimistic, and prone to overstating the case. His columns that relate directly to Philly are typically better and more grounded in reality than his columns that deal with national politics, when he goes full Chicken Little. That’s probably a side-effect of being an opinion journalist is these times, but it’s not helpful when he goes that route.
Like many of us, I’m back to the workday world, sitting in a professional development session, counting down the months til June. I’m also solidifying my resolution to not only get back to stagehand work this summer, but to never leave that field again. God willing, I will never step into a classroom again, ever.
narya
While I have many, many good things to say about Biden–I’m especially enamored of all of the infrastructural investments of various sorts–the one that truly warms my heart is Deb Haaland. It’s very powerful to me to see a Native woman in that position; I can only imagine what it’s like for someone of Native ancestry.
Another Scott
@lowtechcyclist: @Princess:
IMO, Obama did a great job with the hand he was dealt.
Obamacare was, and is, a huge, huge deal.
Too many fuddy-duddies in the Senate were deathly afraid of “ONE TRILLION DOLLARS” (rather than looking at it as a fraction of the economy and the need), so the rescue plan was too small. That was the big mistake that Democrats made (and they paid in the mid-terms), but that wasn’t on Obama – the GQP and “centrist Democrats” were fighting him all the way.
Summers had a relatively small part in Obama’s administration (Director of the White House National Economic Council for a year or so). Geithner and Bernanke and the folks slow-walking the programs to help people caught up in the housing bubble bursting were a big drag on the recovery as well. “Yeah, but he appointed them.” True, but it was a different time and people like AOC and SPW weren’t going to get those positions.
Counter-factuals are fun. ;-)
Cheers,
Scott.
Chris
@Kay:
Reminds me vaguely of the “Christian health insurance” scam my Baptist cousin was peddling a decade ago as the “good” alternative to Obamacare. The deal was that you paid $250.00 a month to be part of some “Christian” online commune, you paid your expenses up-front, and then you sent around a letter asking everybody else in the network to donate some money to help pay your expenses. But that wasn’t all; you had to promise not to do drugs, not to smoke, not to drink, not to be on birth control, etc, and you had to make all your medical records available so that everyone could confirm you were living a “Christian” life. If you breached any of these rules, you were out of the network. Oh, and you had to promise never to sue anyone if you didn’t get enough money to cover your expenses, of course.
To all of which I could only say this;
1) I can’t even call this a scam. They’re explicitly telling you that they demand your money, that they demand to have your life under a microscope, and that in exchange for this they promise you nothing. You can’t say you weren’t warned; if you still signed the paperwork, well, some people are just too dumb to keep themselves alive.
2) As you say, you pretty much have to suck as a person to sign up for this scam. The entire thing is constructed to appeal to HOA-type busybodies who demand to control their neighbors’ lives in the most intrusive ways imaginable and punish them biblically if they deviate from it even once. These people are deeply shitty people, and if they end up impaled upon their own sword, well… now you know what it’s like to be on the other end! Not that I think you’ll learn anything from it, of course.
Chris
@Another Scott:
Not that comparing reality to fiction is the healthiest way to look at this, but I remember some point during Obama’s last year in office when I was looking back on his accomplishments, remembering when The West Wing was so many liberals’ fantasy presidency, and realizing that Obama’s record of liberal accomplishments pisses on Bartlett’s from a very great height in pretty much every way imaginable.
Caveatimperator
@Matt McIrvin:
This is probably a bit of a hot take on my part, but I believe we already had that year in 2016.
We had a really unfavorable Senate map in 2018, and held or flipped most of the borderline seats. We lost IN, MO, and ND, but those were on borrowed time even without Trump.
We’ve been doing better in downballot elections ever since 2016 because it’s been so obvious to more and more voters that the GOP is the party of Trump and people like him.
Whether this is really a good thing in the long term is not fully clear, considering how much damage SCOTUS has been doing. Among other things.
But do we need to elect him a second time in 2024 to convince the American people that he’s dangerous? Fuck no.
Matt McIrvin
@dmsilev: His followers don’t believe he ever loses, though, just that he gets cheated out of his landslide wins. And so far they’ve gotten most of the Republican Party to go along with that blatant lie. That helps remove the loser stink–he’s not a loser if he really won. The question is just how long they can keep that up.
OzarkHillbilly
If that’s what they want they should join the Army.* Oh wait a minute, you’re too old now? Sucks to be you.
*or Navy or Air Force or Marines or Coast Guard
lowtechcyclist
@Kay:
If they tell me that they’re going to vote for Biden, but they’re disappointed that he and the Dems haven’t already done X,Y,Z,A,B,C,D,E…., I’ll listen to them.
If they say they want all that, but they still need to be talked into voting Dem even though Rethugs in power means global warming will make most of America uninhabitable during my son’s lifetime, I’m not gonna waste my time. Fuck ’em.
Any so-called liberal or lefty who isn’t going to vote to forestall the genuinely existential crisis of global warming is an enemy of the human race, AFAIAC. What’s their excuse? Even the worst regimes eventually fall, but global warming will persist for centuries. At least the Christianist crazies have the bullshit excuse that the Rapture will happen first.
Suzanne
@Matt McIrvin:
I was thinking about this yesterday. I think there’s a whole lot of non-MAGA GOP politicians who are lying in wait, hoping that the GOP drifts away from Trumpism in order to make a return. Jeff Flake, Paul Ryan, etc. I would have put Mitt Romney in this bucket, but he’s old and wants to retire. I’m sure that, if he loses this year (and I predict he will), he’ll rattle his chains from time to time. But I think he’ll be a spent force.
NotMax
@brendancalling
Last play I directed* involved the building of a bunch of crates which could be stacked or positioned to suggest almost any scenery or furnishing.
Myself and a friend slapped together a dozen of them in the time it took a fellow stagehand who was a stickler for design to carefully measure, cut, re-cut and construct …. one. And his was the only crate which consistently wobbled when set out.
;)
*Jeeze, that was 40 years ago now.
NotMax
@OzarkHillbilly
Spa-a-a-ace, For-r-r-ce!
//
Chief Oshkosh
@Spanky:
Another question is: Is the pollster a Republican shill, given that the polling question apparently was something like “were the people who stormed the Capitol mostly violent?”
Hell, I think every single one of the J6 mooks should have been arrested, tried, and convicted for breaking various laws, but even I don’t think that, as a group, they were mostly violent. I think a subset of them were extremely violent, a somewhat larger subset were violent against property, but that the majority were just a bunch doofuses who broke the law and need to answer for that.
OzarkHillbilly
@Suzanne: Mitt says he’s not running in ’24.
NotMax
Damnation. Finger fumble fix.
@brendancalling
Last play I directed* involved the building of a bunch of crates which could be stacked or positioned to suggest almost any scenery or furnishing.
Myself and a friend slapped together a dozen of them in the time it took a fellow stagehand who was a stickler for design to carefully measure, cut, re-cut and construct …. one. And his was the only crate which consistently wobbled when set out.
;)
*Jeeze, that was 40 years ago now.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@different-church-lady:
I’m so stealing that.
OzarkHillbilly
@NotMax: Gaaaaack aaaack…. I refuse to acknowledge that bit of ego stroking.
Kathleen
Deleted.
Kathleen
@Baud: Eff Will Bunch.
Suzanne
@OzarkHillbilly: I know. If he was younger, I think he would retire and then maybe try to make a return at a more auspicious (for him) time. But why would anyone want to spend their waning years in that pit of fucken vipers?!
My Kevin is another one who, I think, wants to come back.
PAM Dirac
@Matt McIrvin:
The problem with that is that he is supposed to be so powerful that he can vanquish the awful people who cheated him. He still hates the right people but he’s proving to be no more powerful than the drunk at the end of the bar who rants about how unfair everything, but can’t do a damn thing about it. The enthusiasm for drumpf was that he was a brilliant business man who not only hated the right people, but COULD do something about the unfairness. There will always be die hards who will refuse to acknowledge reality, but the more he shows that he can’t back up any of his ranting, the smaller his bandwagon will be.
lowtechcyclist
@Chris:
THANK YOU. I don’t think we need to waste a lot of thought or energy on people who aren’t “meaningfully on the political spectrum” to use your apt phrase, so we don’t need to take good labels and waste them on those folks.
Ken
@Suzanne: I’m trying to imagine how such a comeback would work. They might get the press to jump up and down cheering them as saviors of the Republican party, but I’m not seeing any of the party factions doing so.
Kathleen
@zhena gogolia: Bunch is a Bernie stan.
NotMax
So if the day after Christmas is Boxing Day, what’s the day after New Year’s?
Greco-Roman Wrestling Day?
:)
JML
I have a few lefty friends that every time Biden comes up they have to discount anything he’s done as president. He’s been the best president for Labor in over 50 years: “yeah, but he could have been better.” It’s always the refrain: he could have/should have done more. The goalposts are always moving, perfect is always the enemy of good/great, and there’s always one more thing that didn’t happen.
I just don’t have the patience for it any longer, so it’s probably good I don’t work in politics these days.
NotMax
JML
Purity left.
Geminid
I see Jeff Flake is still heading up the U.S. Embassy in Turkiye. I think he’s been Ambassador there for two years now.
Now Flake is probably sweating out Sweden’s Nato accession. Turkiye’s National Assembly will vote on it some time after their new session begins January 18.
They may be waiting to see if US Congressional leaders show signs of approving F-16 sales to Turkiye. That seems to be the sticking point, as Turkiye and Sweden have apparently resolved their bilateral issues.
lowtechcyclist
@Another Scott:
Sure they were. And plenty of us were saying in real time, when it wasn’t a counterfactual yet, that Obama shouldn’t be negotiating with himself, as the phrase went back then, but should make a large enough proposal (well over a trillion) and let IT be chopped down to $975B, instead of starting there and seeing it be cut another $200B in order to win the votes of Susan Collins and others.
I’m not changing my mind on this fifteen years later without somebody showing me something significant that I missed at the time.
NotMax
@Another Scott
“You go with the fuddy-duddies you have, not the fuddy-duddies you wish you had.”
//
jonas
@lowtechcyclist: Employers are trying to raise the compensation of the workers in order to keep them happy in a competitive labor market, but passing that cost on to the consumer directly rather than manning up themselves and just paying a higher wage with all the payroll taxes, etc.
rikyrah
@Kay:
You can read phucking Project 2025, and still not think that these people are serious. It’s absolutely insane.
They don’t want to admit that one political party isn’t actually a real political party. They are an authoritarian party. To admit that would mean that they would have to actually tell the truth as to what the Republicans are actually doing in the states.
The intentional cruelty of Republicans in states.
The complete disregarding of women’s medical health in those Republican States.
That so many of those Republican states are fast becoming maternal deserts, and what this means to overall women’s health.
They don’t want to report on this. They don’t want to be honest about this.
schrodingers_cat
@zhena gogolia: Shitting on Ds is what the cool kids of the MSM do. Saying that Ds are good without caveats is frowned upon in their cohort. Criticizing Ds from the left is what they do
This journo bro (and sis) code works to maintain the structural white privilege just as much as the Fox News complex does. Its just more subtle.
Suzanne
@Ken:
Well, the point is that the circumstances on the ground for those party factions needs to change. As of this morning, I would agree with you…. there’s no place in the party for the non-MAGA types. But I think a 2024 loss will clarify the GOP mind a bit. (Of course, I said that about a 2020 loss, so take that FWIW.)
I don’t think Trump himself will bother in 2028. He’ll be in prison, or totally demented, or completely ensconced at Mar-a-Lago eating steak with ketchup. And that leaves space for someone(s) else. There’s no shortage of people who might want to come back, if they see an opening.
Jackie
@dmsilev: I don’t see TIFG re-running in ‘28, BUT I do see him appointing his MAGA successor to run. MAGA isn’t going to end with TIFG. It’s going to take multiple cycles of (hopefully) failed elections to push the MAGA movement into the dust pile.
Chris
@rikyrah:
What they really don’t want is to admit that the Republican Party, the one they’ve all hitched their horse to for their entire life, is the one that’s turned into an authoritarian political party.
All those years of “but what if in our rush to battle racism, things like affirmative action and political correctness become their own form of injustice?” “but what if in our rush to help the poor, we find that we’ve inadvertently given the government powers that it might use to create a dictatorship?” and patting themselves on the back that they were doing the hard but necessary work of vigilantly standing guard against any potential government abuse that might one day open the door to fascism. Then one day actual fascism in all its characteristic crudity knocks on their door, and they’re just utterly incapable of responding.
Suzanne
@Jackie:
See, this is what I don’t see. I cannot imagine Trump doing anyone a solid. He doesn’t genuinely care about “the MAGA agenda” past himself. It’s not even really an agenda, it’s a personal brand. It’s designer sunglasses with a logo stamped on the side for dudes with Punisher T-shirts.
brendancalling
@NotMax: Probably didn’t have training as a stage/scenic carpenter, which is my specialty.
Me, I mainly do conventions, trade shows, and the occasional concert. Most of the stuff I build is what I call “Ikea carpentry”—props or sets that were designed at the shop, and which we put together with basic tools like drills, screwdrivers, etc.
You probably had a dipshit on crew.
FastEdD
I know all of us here listened in Civics class, but you aren’t just voting for a President, you are voting for an entire branch of the Federal government. The personality of the prez is not the issue. Do you want a stable, experienced group of people in that role, or do you really want total chaos, high turnover, and complete dysfunction in 1/3 of the Federal government?
Too many look at this as a personality matter. It isn’t, or at least it shouldn’t be.
catclub
Did Lyndon LaRouche get less popular with his followers as he got older? How about Pope Benedict?
NotMax
@brendancalling
In his defense, he was a whiz at the light board.
Ain’t community theater fun?
Subsole
@NotMax:
Escrima day, homie.
Grab your sticks and start swingin’.
WaterGirl
@Baud: That was almost the first thing they told us when I went to Iowa for the Obama campaign for 2 weeks before the caucus on Jan 3, 2008.
Do not waste your time in those conversations. It’s either a waste of your time, or it’s a deliberate waste of your time by the person on the other end.
NotMax
@Subsole
Thread needs moar Buddy Rich.
;)
Another Scott
@lowtechcyclist: We can all use Google. ;-)
My recollection is that much of the response to the housing bubble bursting (and the rest of the “financial crisis”) was baked in while W was still president.
January 25, 2009:
The numbers were basically already decided by Congress before he got there.
Another problem, of course, is that the data lags a lot and too many people refused to believe that it was going to be as bad as it was. (IIRC, the initial recovery plan under W was for something like $350B.)
A while ago I reviewed Krugman’s OpEds at the time about how big he thought the recovery plan should be. He was actually kinda wishy-washy about it, ending with something like “I hope it’s big enough because we won’t get a second chance ” rather than sticking his neck out and saying “the numbers say we need $1.5-$2.0T and we have to go big because we won’t get a 2nd chance”…
YMMV. FWIW.
Cheers,
Scott.
Barbara
@Chris: Your cousin might have been a willing mark, but many of these plans are sold by brokers and agents to people who do not know that they are not actually buying insurance, and thus, why they are so much cheaper than marketplace plans. Some states require brokers and agents to put in large bold type on anything the person signs that they are not buying insurance. To me, it’s outrageous that these unregulated plans can pay commissions to licensed brokers and agents to sell their plans. So yes, your cousin was stupid but these plans really shouldn’t be available to anyone. They are an out and out scam.
rikyrah
@lowtechcyclist:
If I did, I’d be like..
You’re alive because of Joe Biden. Isn’t that enough?
You really think Trump would have gotten the COVID vaccine available on practically every corner in America?
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@Matt McIrvin:
Plus, the Dems will have a younger candidate in 2028. It would be so refreshing if the too old candidate was finally Trump.
Citizen Alan
@lowtechcyclist: This. The reason I will hate Bernie Sanders forever is that everything he pretends to want for America has been put out of reach for generations if not forevmver because at crunch time he was unable or unwilling to persuade his own most devoted followers to vote for a woman who agreed with him on a mere 75% or more of all issues.
catclub
@rikyrah:
yes. If Trump had won in November then in Jan 2021 when the first vaccines arrived, the Trump admin would have been pushing them like crazy. They would have been very willing to lie about how good the vaccine was [not necessary] in order to get the economy spinning again.
What evidence? The vaccines were developed on fast track under Trump.
Baud
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony:
LOL. In that world, premium will be placed on experience.
Chris T.
@Spanky:
Yes. SATSQ
Future polls will show that The Republican believes Trump was the best president ever. Since there’s only one Republican in the world, it won’t really matter, but the NYT will trumpet it. Along with pointing out that Biden is old and has been dead for 35 years.
Yarrow
@Jackie:
Good heavens, no. He won’t do that. He’s a malignant narcissist. Everything he does is about him. MAGA is his and his alone, in his narcissistic world view. Appointing a successor would center the “MAGA movement” outside of him. Not going to happen.
Elizabelle
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony: Trump will be in prison, or dead.
I don’t know why people postulate on Trump’s electoral chances in 2028.
Not getting after you, personally, but I keep seeing that here, and it rather amazes me.
Chris T.
@dmsilev:
I actually, seriously think that he’ll have keeled over from something, perhaps a stroke, within another three years. Sure, his genetic lifespan runs about 80-90 years, but his lifestyle pushes him to the lowest end of that.
(What do I win if it turns out I’m right?)
Chris T.
@Another Scott:
Oh yeah, big time. It’s what lets people over 35 quit crappy jobs (and, if necessary, move) even if they don’t necessarily have a better job lined up already. (“Over 35” because that’s when the manufacturer’s warranty on the human body runs out….)
artem1s
@lowtechcyclist:
I don’t bother with convincing them. They don’t want to be convinced. They want an excuse to vote for the GOP candidate or not vote at all or just so they can be a know-it-all scold.
Nothing has changed – anyone who isn’t fully aligned with the Democratic Party’s platform isn’t a Democrat and isn’t going to vote for a Dem no matter what argument you use.
They don’t have a realistic set of policy goals they want their candidates to move toward anymore than the GOP does. Instead of trying to convince them, challenge them to convince you that they aren’t Nazis or MAGAts or ‘fuck you I got mine GOPers’ who want to see the world burn because they can’t get their rainbow pony.
brendancalling
@NotMax: That’s your problem right there, job mismatch! When I got put in a lighting role, I was about as useful as tits on a bull because I don’t have much skill doing lighting. I mean, I could do the basics, but not much beyond that.
I never did community theatre. Mostly tradeshows, conventions, and the occasional concert.
RaflW
I sure as hell want Biden-Harris to win this November. I do wonder what happens if our shit-sandwich of a political system + electoral college were to deliver, say, a Dem House by maybe a dozen seats, and we manage to hang on to a 50 seat Senate (less Manchin, more new blood), how horrible it can get if the Orange Outrage man threads the needle again.
Again, no clamoring for FAFO. But it is conceivable that this is the outcome. Voters do weird shit.
We know he has ‘great’ plans for Day One. But Congress would swing into session about 2 week before the inaugural. We’ve had decades of accreting Presidential power, coupled with successive Congresses that have become less productive (and more obstructed by Repubs). Is there a potential snap-back here? The school-age notion of the three-legged stool has seemed to have had the legislative leg trimmed, whittled, and sometimes self-edited to be perhaps the wobbliest.
Is that irreversible?
Chris
@Chris T.:
My twenties were an incredibly shitty decade from the point of view of job prospects and personal income. The ACA is what let me stay on my parents’ insurance and not have to worry about that until I was 26. When I turned 26, the ACA wasn’t there for me, but that’s because I was in Florida. Soon as I moved back to Maryland, I could get Medicaid, which was helpful as hell because my job situation remained shitty for a couple more years. In the meantime, I’d also seen a coworker in Florida die from what should have been an eminently treatable condition, except the job didn’t offer health insurance and the local charity clinic was only open one day a week, so he wasn’t getting proper treatment.
All of which made me acutely aware of not only what a godsend the ACA was, but how important the Supreme Court was (being that it would have been available in Florida as well if not for the pieces of shit handling the ACA decision).
Suzanne
@Chris T.:
Oh my God, the world’s biggest fucken party. Seriously. I will be gleeful and insufferable and it will be such a great day,
UncleEbeneezer
@lowtechcyclist: I’m with you. I’ve known (and do know) a lot of these types of people. They don’t want to be heard. Meaning: they don’t have some unique position/perspective that none of us have considered five million times over. They want attention. It’s a childish “maybe I should just run away from home” threat used to make them the center of attention. And if it’s not Gaza, then it’s M4All, or Emailz, or Goldman-Sachs, or the Crime Bill, or Dronez!!1!, or the DeporterInChief™ etc. There’s always another reason to refuse to vote for the Dem.
It’s an obvious passive-aggressive attempt to use the fragility of the Dem Coalition and the fact that we need every vote we can get, to get everyone to gather around them and treat them like they are serious thinkers acting in good faith. The fact that they usually put their little tantrum on social media to maximize views is not coincidental and speaks volumes of the performative nature of what they are doing. And it’s especially gross when these are the same people who will often declare the importance of standing with Black People, Women, Transgender People, Muslims, Immigrants etc. Pulling this bullshit that they are pulling is the exact opposite of standing with those marginalized groups. This is holding those groups out over a ledge and threatening to let go if everyone doesn’t coddle me and treat me like some very serious thinker…no thanks, I’ll let other people do that work. I already spend enough of my time managing toddler tantrums in my work.
Marcopolo
@Baud: Actually this has already been floating around amongst some folks in the never never Trumposphere. It’s like that situation where if you put enough monkeys banging away at enough typewriters for a long enough period of time they will produce all the works of Shakespeare. Wait, no, I think that’s AI now, lol.
Also, good morning all.
Marcopolo
@lowtechcyclist: On the other hand, I heard on NPR the minimum wage in Seattle will be going up to $20/hr for companies over a certain size…which is still hard to live on there because, also according to this story, the average cost for an apartment in Seattle is $2000/month!
Hopefully we’ll make some progress on building a lot of affordable housing in 2024. Would def help if folks who rented voted at the same level of homeowners.
TheTruffle
Dear Will Bunch,
Biden can’t run again in 2028. Someone new will be running no matter what.
Sincerely,
Someone who knows about term limits.
satby
@Elizabelle: Battered wife syndrome
Matt McIrvin
@catclub: Once LaRouche had been in prison for several years his appeal seemed to fade.
Another Scott
@RaflW:
January would be awfully late.
Remember November 2016. He, his minions, and the press were more than happy to anoint him God Emperor at 2:29 AM on Wednesday November 9 (when the AP made the call). They would be doing everything they can to stampede the country into a fascist turn immediately – well before January.
We don’t want to go there again, obviously.
I’m very optimistic about the November elections. But the future is not written and we have to do the work. And we really, really don’t want some nutjob taking the future into their own hands via an assassination attempt and the like.
🤞
Cheers,
Scott.
Soprano2
@Matt McIrvin: Can you imagine him running against Gretchen Whitmer? He’s already an old washed-up loser, imagine how that will look after 4 more years of him whining incessantly about how unfair everything is.
Matt McIrvin
@rikyrah: Trump’s attitude toward COVID vaccines is morbidly fascinating to me. He’s never been technically antivax and he really wanted credit for developing them but once they existed, he was completely uninterested in distributing them.
Largely because of a coincidence of timing: Pfizer announced that they were ready to ship theirs, I think, the day after Election Day 2020. Which of course Trump the narcissist interpreted as a deliberate personal slight against him. And for the next couple of months, he was of course far more interested in trying to orchestrate a coup d’état than in public health.
Dorothy A. Winsor
I see Trump is accusing Liz Cheney of destroying evidence that he ordered or wanted to order 10K National Guard to be there on Jan 6.
Baud
@TheTruffle:
Biden can run in 2028 if he loses this year.
Soprano2
@lowtechcyclist: Looks like whether they can do that or not depends on the state and what minimum of tips they set for you to be defined as a tipped worker. Federal standards are found here. I think right now if they tried to do that there would be a mass exodus of employees, because the tips wouldn’t be nearly enough to make up for the loss. Plus, at least in MO we are required to supplement tips up to minimum wage if the employee doesn’t report enough tips to be paid at least the regular minimum wage, which in MO is $12/hr. I agree that the federal minimum is atrocious, but what too many people don’t understand is that many states have higher minimum wages than that.
Bupalos
I really hate that Will Bunch framing there. I mean, if that’s the best some of our friends on the progressive left can do, I guess I’ll take it. But that is a really immature personalized version of politics that seems to exist in total ignorance of how and why the Biden Administratio is worlds better than the Clinton or Obama administrations and how we actually make progress.
Bupalos
@Baud: I spat my coffee!
Spanky
It concerns me that so many supposedly smart people continue to do … questionable things.
tam1MI
I posted this downstairs, but it is too delicious not to post again…
Mutiny Erupts in a Michigan GOP Overtaken by Chaos
Brachiator
I don’t have a problem with making a case for Biden. It’s early.
I don’t even mind hearing supposed liberals making their case against Biden.
Discussion is not a rare substance that will evaporate if used to talk to potential opponents.
As we get closer to the election, then you have to focus your efforts.
Baud
@Bupalos:
My own belief is that progress is not welcomed by people who seek revolutionary change. In fact, the two are inconsistent with each other. No one undertakes a revolution if they seek progress being made.
Baud
@Spanky:
People want EVs, and Tesla made them cheaper. Normies don’t care about or think about Musk.
mrmoshpotato
@Dorothy A. Winsor: 🙄
And RawStory is suggesting a Van Jones story to me. Oh RawStory…
Kay
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
She already responded wth a link to every doc he claims she destroyed. Not that it matters.
He’s such a liar. If he wanted 10k National Guard there then why was he instructing people to take the metal detectors down?
We all saw the video of the whole Trump family celebrating the insurrection.
Spanky
@Baud:
Or self-igniting batteries. Or self-driving cars that kill people. Or even just generally shittily built cars.
RaflW
@Another Scott: Agreed, alas.
But baring a miracle, we won’t have the House until Jan 3, 2025, more or less.
Baud
@Spanky:
I’m not sure how widespread knowledge of Tesla’s poor build quality is.
mrmoshpotato
@Baud:
I would argue that gradual progress isn’t welcomed by that crowd. But guess what, children, even Sears houses aren’t built overnight.
RaflW
@Baud: Just saw a headline that a Chinese EV maker BYD did eclipse Muskmobiles as the # in unit sales, 525,409 in the three-month period to December 31.
Bupalos
@Citizen Alan: This is a ridiculous standard, and it’s way past time to retire the idea that the way individual elections flow and turn out create eternal results. Or that individual politicians contol the political forces and movements behind their candidacies. Or that there was one weird trick that was going to cut the legs out of Trumpism before it flowered like a skunk cabbage, whether that was Bernie making better speeches sooner or Clinton “going to Michigan.”
Sure Lurkalot
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
Trump’s followers will believe anything but how does this claim support his case? Why did he want 10K troops at the capitol? What did he know, what did he expect, what/who would the troops be defending and protecting? The claim he’s making today will be followed by more contradictory and less convincing bullshit that the MSM will treat with undeserved and ridiculous seriousness.
Ruckus
@Matt McIrvin:
I wonder if he will be able to run in 2028. He’s extremely useless now and given his personality, health, and likely legal issues, I doubt he’ll be able to even feed himself in 4-5 yrs. He has backed himself into a very small legal corner and I’d bet because of his personality has pretty much admitted to having committed the crimes he’s being charged with. He may not be considered senile at this moment but he’s heading that way at a rather brisk pace and he is up there into the age of it’s more than possible. And yes, not everyone gets there at his age range, but many do, especially those who take such good care of themselves as he does.
Citizen Alan
@Chris:
It’s a fascist impulse to which the Left is not immune. In 2016, I watched the Green Party Youtube Debate for laughs. Twenty minutes in, I wasn’t laughing any more, because I’d realized that those nuts want to live in a dictatorship just as much as the MAGA crowd. They just disagree on what they want the absolute dictator to do.
Bupalos
@Spanky: buying an electric car is questionable?
There’s no question there are both political and practical complications involved in buying a Tesla. I think they still pale in comparison to the ethical complication of continuing to burn fossil fuels.
I wish to god someone would make a “shittier” and far cheaper ev, like really strip it down. I think you’d find like with the old Beetle there’s a huge class of people that would embrace the idea of sacrificing numbing luxury for something related to social purpose.
Kay
That last is such a common complaint with Democrats I could recite it by heart. There is a real belief among our base that our campaigns can’t communicate, are bad at campaigning. I don’t know if it’s true but it is SO widespread across all demos and all parts of the coalition I tend to think there is SOME truth to it.
Baud
@Kay:
I tend to think the opposite. Every faction wants to hear a message tailored to them, which results in them all thinking the problem is poor messaging.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Bupalos
@WaterGirl: there’s a difference between campaigning to win an election and doing the basic work of engaging our fellow citizens politically.
Absolutely don’t waste GOTV time talking to Trumpers. But absolutely don’t confuse that disengagement with general political disengagement. Trumpism thrives on isolation.
brendancalling
@mrmoshpotato: I worked for RS. It’s a nest of vipers. The stories I could tell…
Paul in KY
@Baud: Seems logical, given that paper’s standards.
Paul in KY
@Hildebrand: I was thinking/hoping that he might be a little tongue-in-cheek there. Said for the dipshits he’s trying to convince.
StringOnAStick
@brendancalling: I quit reading RS because it was short on info but going way long in generating outrage and despair, with a side order of hopelessness. Thank you for providing another useful reason to be ok with my decision.
Jackie
According to a report from Time Magazine, the House Impeachment inquiry is planning shenanigans to justify formally impeaching Biden:
How does Biden extract himself from this type of BS?
Paul in KY
@different-church-lady: That’s where I am. Calmly and soberly stated for the stupid-impaired.
Old School
@Kay:
I know nothing about the radio business, but Google tells me the show airs in 90 markets. Is 4 million listeners in a month considered that large? That’s an average of 45,000 per market. (I assume streaming is in that figure as well.)
Ruckus
@Baud:
It likely isn’t the poor build quality that people think about but the cost of gas for someone that drives a lot. Or sits in traffic with the motor running, burning some of that gas they are paying $4-5/gal (or more) dollars for.
And yes I think the build quality of a tesla is quite a bit less than what a lot of cars achieve these days. I’ve seen panel mismatch of more than I’ve seen in decades in any other manufacture’s products, even of cars costing far less. But in this country, if you want an electric car, what else is there? Not all that much. That’s changing, and rapidly, but the reality is what and how many other electric cars are there to purchase today? For someone who a car is just an individual transport device, that doesn’t want to pay the (for US gasoline customers) current price level, is Tesla all that bad? I’d bet the answer is no.
Citizen Alan
@Bupalos: Normally, I would agree. But this was a unique moment in history where the next President would determine immediately whether we had the first Liberal SCOTUS in 50 years or a reactionary ultraconservative SCOTUS that will almost certainly outlive me. And Bernie Sanders fucking knew that! Shit, can you imagine the future we’d be looking at if Hillary had put 3 Justices on the court?!? Or, hell, if there had been no other openings during her time but the GOP had simply let Merrick Garland through rather than risk her later putting in someone more liberal?
zhena gogolia
@Citizen Alan: I agree with you totally.
ETA: There was no “one weird trick” about this situation. Clinton needed to win, but Bernie couldn’t bother to help. I’ll never forget him scowling through the convention. And I’ll never forgive.
Kathleen
@zhena gogolia: I agree with you.
Brachiator
@Kay:
The Biden administration is doing this, communicating, and doing it better than before, but people like to complain even when the complaints are invalid.
The Tech Hub announcement at the White House website clearly spells out each program by state and provides all kinds of links and additional information. The information is laid out very clearly.
Obviously, though, you need computer access to get here. I don’t know if this information is on paper at libraries and employment offices.
I don’t know how much the Biden administration is using social media and other sources to publicize the programs and to point people to them.
Another problem is that newspapers and newspaper websites are dying or are captured by right wing moguls. In the past you might find information on government programs in the classified ad section of the newspaper. This doesn’t exist anymore.
The complaint here seems to be that the radio personality wants to know exactly how much money the tech Hub program will put in his pocket and if it will also brush his teeth.
That’s not how life works.
Baud
@Old School:
Large enough that he needs to start caring about tax cuts for the rich.*
*I don’t know anything about this person.
Spanky
@Jackie:
By ignoring it, assume he’s going to get impeached, and work like hell to maintain control of at least one branch of congress.
Bupalos
The positive way to “protest biden” is to bring specific criticism of specific governance issues, and these days never missing the disclaimer that Trump and the republicans would be so much worse.
But in that spirit, this admin has badly fucked up two public-facing nuts-and-bolts governance issues that will help entrench the “government is hopeless” zeitgeist. The federal student aid application (FAFSA) reform, which is becomming a slow-motion rolling disaster, and the HEERA rebates of the IRA. Both are inexplicably late and starting to intrude into lives. HEERA should have been a major 2024 campaign win and instead it’s just frustration.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@Citizen Alan:
I learned that in the lead up to 2016. The crazy part is they don’t seem to understand they are a minority. If there was a dictatorship, they would be some of the first people imprisoned or executed. It amazes me just how many people are not living in the real world. I don’t know how we bring them out of that.
Old School
@Baud:
I didn’t make it through either week he guest hosted The Daily Show last year. The first week it was the “Biden is old” comments that turned me off. The second time, I stuck it out through the age jokes, but when he got to “The Democrats hate democracy because they aren’t supporting RFK Jr.’s primary effort.”, that’s when I knew I had better options for spending my time.
Barbara
@Brachiator: To me these complaints also underscore how lazy media types are. If Kid Tha Charlemagne had followed a single link he could have communicated on top of what the White House did about the benefits for individuals. In my opinion, the need to be spoon fed information rather than to dig in even minimally and figure things out is a big difference between being a “journalist” and just being a “program host.”
Soprano2
@lowtechcyclist: I know I was saying that, you never start with what you actually want but with what you’d like to have. They started where they wanted to end up, it was a strategic mistake that I think showed Obama didn’t understand how Congress works that well. You have to be able to give them something.
Manyakitty
@zhena gogolia: same same same. Crusty, grumpy, misogynistic old man.
Brachiator
@lowtechcyclist:
But here’s another way of looking at it.
This is progress and we might even be able to better compare high and low minimum wage states in terms of economic performance.
And one year the Biden administration was able to boost the earned income tax credit and other tax credits to help lower income workers.
This is all good and broad efforts to help lower income people must continue. But we don’t have to focus solely on the minimum wage.
Another Scott
@Spanky: Remember that those are worldwide number, and lots of them are in China.
Reuters: BYD sold 3.02M EV and hybrids vehicles in 2023.
Melon is running hard to stay in place…
Cheers,
Scott.
Bupalos
@Citizen Alan: political movements just aren’t as malleable as all that. I think it’s a kind of green lanternism to think that Bernie switching up the whole neoliberal critique on a dime and learning how to be a cheerful cheerleader for the first time in his life was possible or would have mattered. I think like everyone else, he thought she’d win and was seeking to maintain leverage down the line.
And the flip-side of this reality is that the Democratic party has moved further left. There are silver linings, even as we recognize leftist intransigence in 2016 was part of the mix that lost us so much.
RevRick
@Kay: Messaging is the opposite of giving details. Coca Cola doesn’t tell us their ingredients. It’s the same thing repeated over and over. Coke refreshes. Coke tastes great. Coke makes people happy.
The problem for Democrats isn’t messaging. It’s that a lot of our stories aren’t suitable for messaging. And even when they are there are so many possible messages that they just become so much noise. The only way to get heard is to offer a few simple messages and repeat them endlessly.
So, Democrats messaging needs to focus on just a couple of things: freedom and opportunity. And then simply illustrate what that means.
tam1MI
@zhena gogolia: I will not only never forget or forgive bernie, I will never forget or forgive his voters who refused to vote for Hillary.
trollhattan
@Baud:
The landing video is horrifying–with the airliner enveloped in flame while it was still moving down the runway. That everybody aboard got off safe is a miracle, and boggling. All had to exit via the front slides, the others couldn’t open.
Also boggling, at least to me, an A350 can carry 379 people?!? Had no idea.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-67865132
Subsole
@Bupalos:
I also have a very hard time forgiving him for the people he platformed, most of whom are now fixtures in the Dirtbag Left-to-TruCon pipeline.
All those influence ops and wedge issues we’re dealing with? Bernie platformed the people hammering away at the wedges. Handed megaphones to grifters and let them build a web of disinformation networks in our tent.
Personally, in both ’16 and ’20, the biggest strike against that man was who he kept hiring to speak for him.
The second biggest was the fact he could not, or would not, haul their asses in when they became a threat to party unity in the face of actual, no-bullshit, wrapped-in-the-flag-and-carrying-a-cross fascism. Assholes are sitting there sieg-hieling away, and he’s shitting on Planned Parenthood as ‘The Establishment’.
Absolute cornball shit, from an absolute cornball.
MazeDancer
Claudine Gay out at Harvard.
Two high-profile Presidential searches in academia at once.
Jewish women encouraged to apply.
The applications from the recent Harvard one probably not even put away yet
geg6
@Bupalos:
As much as I hate the new FAFSA rollout, the administration cannot be blamed. They had no choice in the matter and have done what they can. It was passed on 12/27/20 (and amended again in 2021), so they have had to scramble to try to make the massive, major changes to the form so as to have it ready for 1/1/24. It could have been delayed, but Congress had to okay that. How was the administration supposed to get the current House to do that? Especially when they know it will be blamed on Biden? Which is exactly what you have done. Congratulations on falling for it.
emmyelle
@MazeDancer: Of ALL Harvard presidents in history, only Drew Gilpin Faust had no Harvard degree. She was, however, affiliated with Harvard prior to becoming President. This right there is their freaking problem. I have absolutely zero problem with wanting the president to be of a specific gender identity or race. But they could have picked a more qualified person if thy just…..looked…..outside…..of….their…..fucking…..gates
Brachiator
@Barbara:
Yep. You’re right. He also could have provided the link to the White House website where the Tech Hub is mentioned.
I also note that some newspaper and media websites will, for example, have an article about the Tech Hub, but not provide a useful link. They only want you leaving their website for an advertisement, not for anything helpful.
Joseph Patrick Lurker
@MazeDancer:
Good Riddance to Claudine Gay!
Bupalos
@Subsole: I guess my point is to gesture away from the politics of personality. This “I will never forgive HIM (or THEM)” and then kind of casting a character in stone from a dynamic situation within which they acted. Remembering that these people are basically operating on “I WILL NEVER FORGIVE BIDEN FOR THE BANKRUPTCY BILL” or “I WILL NEVER FORGIVE CLINTON FOR PUSHING FRACKING.”
There was a reason in 2015 to have become an anti-neoliberal crusader. There was a reason to associate characters like Clinton and Obama with that “progress happens when you sit and wait for magic forces of progress to operate” mindset, and with the disasters that followed. There is not a reason to think crusaders are going to be able to switch it off like a light, even when it’s obvious.
Paul in KY
@Suzanne: Maybe if it was Ivana or TFG Jr? Ivana would have to shag him. Don’t know what Donnito would have to do.
emmyelle
@Joseph Patrick Lurker: I’m a leftish academic, and I am really mad at leftish academia for a)making it so easy for Elise Stefanik to collect some scalps and b) refusing to engage with the substances of the plagiarism allegations against Gay.
Brachiator
@geg6:
I saw a news story about the new FAFSA,but didn’t pay a lot of attention to it. In the past I had some tax clients who had to deal with this form.
Thanks for the background info on the new form.
Paul in KY
@Soprano2: Or running against Sen. Fetterman or VP Harris!
Brachiator
@MazeDancer:
Unfortunate. I don’t understand why the various college presidents set themselves up for a stupid Congressional stunt and witch-hunt.
Soprano2
@Citizen Alan: I will never forgive them for the way they acted at the 2016 Democratic convention. I wonder if any of them look back at that with regret knowing what happened afterwards.
Paul in KY
@Citizen Alan: Lot of them probably luv Comrade Trotsky. Lev Bronstein was many things, but was completely opposed to ‘Democratic Principles’ in just about any form.
RevRick
@geg6: FAFSA is a problem for high school guidance counselors and college bursar offices. They have vested interests in making it work. It’s their headache now. But they’re being paid to deal with it.
Bupalos
@geg6: that’s ridiculous. The requirements the form has to capture has been known for a long time. It was slated to be ready in October, then November, then December. All anounced. Then they were really mandated to release it so they’ve now “soft launched” a form that does not work, and won’t be releasing the data received to schools before “late January.” No wingers I have seen are even aware of this, so no, it’s not a pushed narrative. It’s many future voters first real brush with governance and it’s a flub and they need to make sure it ends here.
The HEERA rebates were supposed to be available in early 2023 then mid, then late, then limited availability early 24, now limited availability June 24. It takes the electoral resonance of something BIG passed in ’22 completely off the board for the ’24 election. I have no doubt on that one there’s some ratfucking going on from the right, but they needed to know that and commit resources to get it through. All that’s going to matter is “Biden said this was happening and it’s not. Government can’t get its act together so I can’t make plans.”
MazeDancer
@Brachiator: Getting advised by lawyers, not a PR firm was their first mistake.
Soprano2
@Kay: I think they want every message to communicate everything they believe is important, and a lot of the time that’s impossible. I was reading on Twitter about a controversy over Bernie Sanders saying he was working from home while he had Covid. A bunch of people with long Covid were raking him over the coals for not using his platform to message about long Covid in the exact way they would prefer, and when Jon Favreau said he thought the controversy was stupid they swarmed all over him, calling him an ablest and saying he was a eugenics sympathizer! I understand their frustration, but they aren’t going to convince anyone when they act like that.
I see both “why can’t our message be short and succinct” and “why don’t they say everything I think is important in every message they put out”. I agree that sometimes there’s something there, but often I think the criticism is incoherent. Why didn’t Charlemagne invite an official from the administration on his show so that they can spend some time communicating the things he believes are important, instead of just hollering about how he didn’t like the messaging
ETA – I see Baud said what I said, only shorter.
Hoodie
@Kay: If Trump is his example, seems like this guy thinks effective communicating is lying your ass off and offering people simplistic explanations, telling them what they want to hear. He’s got an audience, is he volunteering to do messaging? Or is he content to be “giving his endorsement” while he rides around in his Escalade?
cain
@Caveatimperator:
I remember reading something maybe it was on the front page here – but it might be on mastodon. But before 2018 or anything like that – Dems controlled most of the state legislatures – when they all flipped in 2010 – it basically woke up the racist element and this country with the tea party has made the country way worse.
I also believe that a lot of the progressives spent more time working on federal lobbying and the democratic party as a whole did not focus on local races as much as they could have.
Now of course, we need to fight like hell to get back because we are in deep shit otherwise. The GOP still have the majority of local legislatures and we need to focus on that.
With Dobbs gone – it is now paramount for women issues.
Alison Rose
@Brachiator: You think it’s fine for a college president to plagiarize?
cain
@rikyrah: That’s what makes Dobbs a real wake up call.
Yet.. the media is still doing horse race. It’s how they make money – they have no loyalty to this country whatsoever.
geg6
@Brachiator:
It’s required, by law, to be available as of 1/1 every year. In the past three years or so, it was available as of 10/1. Big announcements went out saying it would be delayed because of the big lift the new form, system changes, training for DoE staff and school staffs, public education on the changes and to allow for schools’ system changes to be implemented. Congress could have allowed an extra month (which is what it’s going to end up being anyway), but chose not to address it. So it’s “available” for a soft launch as of now, but it’s only available a few hours every day.
I expect it will be a major improvement over the past and no one will need help with it. And to be honest, we have never recommended that tax professionals do anything to help people completing the form because that tends to cause more errors than the general public doing it themselves. Asking for FAFSA help or advice from a tax accountant is like asking me for help or advice in filing a 1040. Two different animals with only a glancing and misleading resemblance to one another.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@MazeDancer:
I thought Harvard made a statement recently that it was standing behind her 100%?
Brachiator
@RevRick:
Fundamentally disagree with you here. And I think that Biden has been pretty good in getting his message out. But I have also seen that some of the media don’t give him credit or give more time to opponents.
It’s easy to concentrate on a few key points.
geg6
@RevRick:
Dude. I’m a financial aid officer at a major university and have been for the last 21 years. It’s not the Bursar’s headache. It’s mine. And the headache is that the form is not ready for primetime because Congress didn’t allow enough time to implement. The only thing I can tell students and parents is that I don’t know and don’t know when I will.
Soprano2
@MazeDancer: Oh God I hate that they gave in to that mob, it just encourages them to do it more. Look for more of it until every university president is a conservative white person.
UncleEbeneezer
@Kay: Do you have any idea how much of a Misogynist and Transphobic piece of shit Charlamagne is? Like Bill Maher and Joe Rogan, he is one of the absolute last people on Earth that Dems should listen to about anything. He’s good at going viral because he does what Trump does by shamelessly punching down at marginalized groups (or allowing his guests to do so). Nothing more. That doesn’t make him an expert on messaging.
geg6
@Bupalos:
Thanks for telling me stuff I already know all about and for not knowing how things actually work. Congress was told at least 6 months ago that it was problematic and it would be great if they give them a pass until end of January for the launch. But sure, tell me I don’t know anything at all about the job I’ve been doing for many, many years. And I know Congress was told because the head of our main Office of Student Aid (my boss’ boss’ boss) was in the room.
Bupalos
@RevRick: This really could not be more wrong. Federal aid decisions now coming AT THE EARLIEST in February for students who are able to navigate the (broken) process now is going to create a domino effect on following state aid unless something drastic happens that is in no way in the hands of counselors.
We’re almost sure to see some kids not going to college in ’24 because of this, and that effect will come down where you would expect – the more marginal kids with higher need.
https://edtrust.org/the-equity-line/how-fafsa-delays-will-impact-college-going-decisions-of-low-income-students-and-students-of-color/
cain
@Spanky: I think before Elon lost his goddam marbles – Tesla was delivering a pretty good product. The p60 that I had was pretty rad and innovative compared any of the cars around 2015. Most cars were just experimenting with sensor networks (I was involved in one of car manufacturer) Tesla delivered and it showed what EVs could do -0-60 in 3 seconds which normally was a 300k car but less than $100k for them?
It was also from an insurance point of view one of the safest cars you can drive because there was no engine in the front so your crunch zones was more. My insurance premiums were lower than it was for a gas powered car.
In those days, Elon was not even in the picture much. You never heard much about him – but the culture from what I understand was that great – but I think it has gotten much worse now.
But Tesla changed the game and made people look at cars in a whole new way. The downsides is that we have now looking at cars as gigantic cell phones.
Somebody posted on linkedin about his Ford Truck getting bricked and having to get towed. This is why I got another Tesla for now – the software is still immature and you’re going to see shit like this. It’s really hard to get this right.
2liberal
Why is Costco jammed to the rafters today?
mrmoshpotato
@Baud:
Agreed.
mrmoshpotato
@brendancalling: Sounds fun! 😁
mrmoshpotato
@2liberal:
Hams on sale?
Baud
@cain:
Elon is the only reason to root against Tesla.
Bupalos
I honestly can’t even tell what argument you’re trying to make or credentials you’re claiming. Why was it too hard to have the form ready in October as originally planned, or november, or december? Seems to me a functional web form with 36 questions is something a multi-billion dollar agency better be able to accomplish, or yes, voters are going to do the “government doesn’t work” thing.
What is your claim about who and what made this too difficult?
Brachiator
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
That’s often when you should worry.
Suzanne
@mrmoshpotato: To be fair…. tailoring a message to a specific cohort that they will find credible and persuasive, and then getting that message to them…. is absolutely what makes effective messaging. That’s marketing. An entire profession.
Baud
@Suzanne:
Sure, but most marketers don’t have bystanders whining that the message should have been tailored to meeee.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
Suzanne
@Baud: No, but then those marketers don’t expect those people to buy their stuff.
If you’re asking someone for their vote, it is really 100% reasonable that someone should hear a reason why they should give it. Again, there are people for hire who do nothing but this.
Paul in KY
@cain: Another good thing, insurancewise, for any electric car is that the batteries are right at bottom of car & thus makes it very hard to roll over in an accident.
Baud
@Suzanne:
But the problem is that people aren’t paying attention to the marketing directed at them. They’re talking about other messages and complaining about it.
rikyrah
@2liberal:
Were they closed yesterday?
Gretchen
@Kay: if he’s got 4 million listens a month he has plenty of opportunity to message himself. He has a staff that could find these things out. I bet the White House comme staff would answer his questions.
Geminid
@2liberal: Depending on where this Costco is, people might be stocking up in anticipation of snow this weekend. DC is supposed to get hit Saturday afternoon and the storm is expected to run north from there. It’s not expected to be a big storm down here but that could change. Right now Harrisonburg, Virginia is supposed to get 4″ of snow.
Brachiator
@geg6:
This was not so much asking for help with the form. It was more about filing an original or amended tax return to have information for the form. Sometimes it was just a matter of people being confused about what tax year was needed and when.
Wow. I see that people can’t even get to the FAFSA site.
This ain’t good.
coin operated
Bernie lost me during the primaries. Hillary knew how the system worked, he didn’t, and that misogynistic old codger and his minions (looking at you Donna Brazile) went on to say that the primaries were ‘rigged’ against him when he lost. Right up there with ‘the election was stolen’ in my book. If Bernie were on fire, I wouldn’t piss on him to put him out.
Chief Oshkosh
@Bupalos:
Although it’s actually a great car, Chevy was heading in that direction with the Bolt. So of course, they killed it (GM has a long history of improving cars every model year and then killing them just as all the bugs are worked out).
I sure hope the rumors turn out to be true and that they re-start development of production. It was on my 2024 wishlist.
zhena gogolia
@Baud: Not to mention that voting is not buying a product.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Bupalos:
Aside from all of the other times it did. Social Security, Medicare/Medicaid, roads, food stamps, etc, what are those?
wjca
A steady stream of “The document (tape, electronic file, etc.) does not exist and has never existed.” Respinses beyond that are a waste of time, but that much is useful in dealing with a pissible referral to an actual court.
Brachiator
@Alison Rose:
Side issue. The original testimony of the presidents and the shameful witch-hunt had nothing to do with plagiarism.
Did the Penn president resign because of plagiarism?
Chief Oshkosh
@Kay: Charlamagne? Never heard of the guy. The little bit I glean from the article is that he has a small following that he wants to grow by bashing Biden.
Fuck ‘im.
Citizen Alan
@Bupalos: He knew it was mathematically impossible for him to win the primary sometime in March or April. But his ego, combined with the Grima Wormtongues he surrounded himself with (Nina Turner, Brie Brie, David Sirota), made it impossible for him to accept that. And packing his delegates to the convention with people who were bent on booing our nominee at every opportunity before rushing to give interviews to the press about how they were still leaning towards Jill Stein was utterly unforgiveable. To say nothing about putting Cornel Fucking West in charge of drafting the Dem platform and the SOB still walked out of the convention endorsing Stein!
Soprano2
I will never forgive Bernie for this. He did come onboard at the end, but it was too little too late especially when you know the stakes (which we did in 2016, it was the composition of the Supreme Court among other things). Plus the crap about the primaries being “rigged”. It was all a bad look.
catclub
@Citizen Alan: Sounds like a firm basis for a grudge worth holding… for a long time.
catclub
@Brachiator: The issue sure looked like ‘ getting female university presidents to take the fall’
Bupalos
@Paul in KY: gives them an awesome road grip feel. The bolt is a blast to drive because you’re sitting up really high for a little compact but you feel this tight connection to the road. And of course it’s zippy as hell.
catclub
@Chief Oshkosh: are the KIA EV’s terrible? It seems like lots of companies are putting out EV’s now. I am not sure if the Nissan Leaf has ended or not. It is the only super cheap one I know of.
trollhattan
@2liberal: First working day of the month/year and loads of folks got paid.
IOW avoid Costco on the 1st of any month, or the 2nd following a holiday.
Bupalos
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): I think you’re losing the thread of the argument a bit here. We’re the party of good governance. Which means we can’t afford fuckups like the FAFSA and HEERA, because they’re the party of Reagan’s “scariest words in the english language, I’m from the government and I’m here to help.” It’s a level down from Trumpist “I’m from the government and I’m here to molest your children in a secret dungeon and harvest their adenachrome,” but it drives a lot of our less insane political oppositiin.
Above all, if there are problems with our programs voters need to hear the whys and hows and not have it appear opaque. Republicans fucking around with it? Let’s hear that.
Barbara
@Brachiator: I think any academic who appears in front of Congress on any subject at all needs to have it drummed into their heads: You are not here to inform. Nothing you say will make a difference to them or persuade them to a new view. You are there to give them the opportunity to grandstand and if possible to extract damaging sound bites that can be used to further their political demagoguery.
Your job is to avoid giving them those sound bites.
The lady who tried to spar with Josh Hawley about the term “pregnant people” looked utterly foolish trying to make the kind of subtle arguments she might discuss in a class room setting or academic forum.
If you can’t wrap your head around Congress being a hall of jerks seeking to score publicity points, don’t testify. Seriously, Gay should have been given a list of 10 talking points to choose from in response to hostile questions. She might have found those points to be unsatisfying, but she would have represented her institution far more effectively.
Suzanne
@Baud: Is that true? I will note that I am more plugged in than, like easily 95% of voters, and I get emails and texts begging for money all the time….. and vanishingly little communication of substance that pertains to my specific interests. Like, if they can find you to beg for money and dunk on Trump, they can find you to beat you over the head with good news, especially the good news that someone is most interested in.
Fair Economist
@Alison Rose: These are boilerplate, not plagiarism:
Is there any acknowledgement of a scientific advisor that doesn’t say that?
I’ve looked at the accusations and this isn’t plagiarism. There’s only so many ways to state simple facts. By this standard, every news report plagiarizes every other news report.
Chief Oshkosh
@MazeDancer:
Don’t even need those advisors either. Just ask your cat.
You: “A Republican-run Congressional committee has invited me to discuss problems we’re having at work. Should I go?”
Cat: “…”
You: “Right! What the fuck was I thinking? I’m busy counting my socks that day!”
Cat: “…”
Bupalos
@Soprano2: ok yeah, the “rigged” primaries thing was genuinely corrosive to democracy. He had an obligation to express that genuine political feeling of the left (that the Democratic party was stage-managing the primaries to destroy their influence) in a way that didn’t sidle up to casting election integrity in doubt.
The irony is that the institutionalist machinations the Clinton campaign did engage in had the real-world effect of MAXIMIZING Bernie’s numbers.
Matt McIrvin
@Kay: “Why are the Democrats too feckless to come up with an effective counter to all of my attacks on them?”
Chief Oshkosh
@catclub: Kia and Hyundai EVs are supposed to be great. However, the Chevy Bolt is (was) less expensive and qualifies for the max federal rebate.
Kay
@Old School:
I think the value to Biden would not be total numbers but instead about a demographic he has to reach – young AA men.
it says in the piece that he has had Biden on the show and also members of the administration.
I think he’s saying that Biden is not reaching young black men – he wants a targeted message.
zhena gogolia
@Kay: He had Kamala on once and there was some uproar about her saying she smoked weed or something.
Kay
@Old School:
total numbers would obviously be lower for an AA Audience because AAs are a numerical minority.
AA’s “punch above their weight” in D politics because they’re 85/90 Dem – a person with a 4 million AA audience would have more influence than a person with a 95% white 4 million audience.
hence, Biden went on his show. He’s important.
brantl
Anyone demanding you convince them to vote for Biden has got no f’ing sense, or eyes in their heads. FTFY
Kay
@zhena gogolia:
He seems to like her so that’s good.
Bill Arnold
@Another Scott:
R. Reagan got a ~1.5T stimulus, in 2009 dollars. The Fed also dropped interest rates about 8 percent.
brantl
@Matt McIrvin: I think if Stumpy blows this one (and give him a chance, he’ll do his best), I think the Rethuglicans will unite around one candidate, next time, just to spite Stumpy, cause God knows, they live for spite.
brantl
@Hildebrand: Industrial grade douche, amirite?
brantl
@Kay: 8 years, maximum, 4 years or 0 years, alternatively.
TEL
@Bupalos: I generally try to stay out of flame wars but you’ve now claimed that you (1) know more about how student loan programs work than someone who works as a student loan officer at a major university and (2) Bernie was robbed of winning the democratic primary by the institutional machinations of Hillary Clinton. Sigh. Pied.
brantl
@Spanky: The GOoPers are just about bankrupt, in Michigan. I see a trend…….
brantl
@dmsilev: by 2028, you’ll be able to braid his drool, not that you’d want to, but still.
Bill Arnold
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
Better than that. He called Liz Cheney one of the “RADICAL LEFT LUNATICS” who “destroyed” evidence.
Another Scott
@brantl: The powers that be tried to unite around JEB! That didn’t go too well (TIFG announced one day after JEB! in 2015).
Too many people want the big chair, and TIFG showed that there are no boundaries in GQP politics any more – (just about) all that counts is being “the most conservative” if you want their nomination.
I honestly don’t know how they fix it.
Cheers,
Scott.
Elizabelle
@Chief Oshkosh: I know. That’s the part I have never understood. Why did the university presidents appear to testify? It was so obviously a setup, by people acting in bad faith.
I would still be washing my hair. Just too busy to make the trip.
artem1s
The number one reason I think the Dems (and any other sane human) should voter for Biden is to perpetuate BORING (and competent) government. Maybe then the endless flow of narcissists, grifters, and hot take meme influencers will find somewhere else to get their attention fix. I’ll vote for anyone who vows to Make American Politics Boring Again!
Princess
@emmyelle: In no way, shape, or form is the board of Trustees at Harvard, who are responsible for hitting and firing Gay, “leftish academia.”
if you’re asking why colleagues in her field did not engage and defend her writing, possibly they felt it couldn’t be defended — I don’t know.
XeckyGilchrist
The only thing we can say about the Republican behaviors of 2024 is that they’ll be stupider and angrier than they were before.
brantl
@Chris: They respond, they say: “C’m’on in, Brother!”
brantl
@catclub: But even he couldn’t have convinced those idiots to take the vaccines. The virus-sized microchip would’ve re-programmed them! (which goes to prove you need a more sophisticated item to re-program lesser things.
Geminid
@XeckyGilchrist: That sums it up well. What I wonder is, are there more or less of them. I don’t thInk there are more of them, but that’s just a hunch.
Bill Arnold
@Brachiator:
Yeah. That “radio personality” is lazy.
Out of curiosity, I tried a couple of google searches. The two I tried were
“Tech Hub” whitehouse
“Tech Hub” biden
Both showed the relevant whitehouse/gov pages, with abundant information, as the first two search results.
Bupalos
@TEL: do what you want and plug your ears however and whenever you want, but i didn’t claim either thing or flame anyone. That’s really dishonest.
artem1s
@Chris:
preach! this is why Dems have no bench at the state level.
If you can jump straight to the WH, why bother serving a full term in the governors mansion? what possible good would a decade or more of experience do for running a country? Just hold a rally, right? All problems solved! /snark (should be obvious but, you know the drill)
Bill Arnold
@Joseph Patrick Lurker:
Why?
Bupalos
@Chief Oshkosh: yup I bought one. Honestly it’s actually still packed with luxury because I had to get the higher trim as it’s all that was available.
Bill Arnold
@Fair Economist:
Lordy. If the similarities in 20+ year old articles listed in that NYTimes piece are considered plagiarism, there are a lot of easy right-wing “intellectual” scalps free for the taking by anyone willing to put it a little automated effort with a modern plagiarism detector.
I’m seriously tempted.
marklar
@MazeDancer:
“Claudine Gay out at Harvard.
Two high-profile Presidential searches in academia at once.
Jewish women encouraged to apply.”
Why Jewish women?
Another Scott
@Chief Oshkosh:
Supposedly the Bolt will be back on a new platform in 2025.
Platform transitions are disruptive. [ Insert long boring stories about when the K-Cars and the X-Cars, etc., came out. ]
Cheers,
Scott.
different-church-lady
@Marcopolo:
no, the way AI works now is if you take all the works of Shakespeare and store them on a million websites and tag every one of them SHAKESPEARE! the AI can produce an acid-nightmare version of something Shakepeare-like.
Kathleen
@Soprano2: They’re nothing more than thugs and bullies. They don’t care.
Paul in KY
@Bupalos: That is a nice feeling to have!