House Republicans have blown up their own border deal and urged Biden to do a bunch of illegal things.
Maybe they’re trying to sabotage the immigration system. Or maybe they’re just morons? https://t.co/UtrDBSOni2— Catherine Rampell (@crampell) January 30, 2024
Catherine Rampell, at the Washington Post — “House Republicans keep fumbling immigration. Maybe they’re just incompetent?” [gift link]:
House Republicans in recent weeks have blown up an immigration deal negotiated by their own party in the Senate and urged President Biden to adopt border measures that courts have found illegal. A cynic might say this is all theater — that Republicans (led by former president Donald Trump) want to keep immigration problems going through the election.
But did anyone consider a simpler explanation — that Republicans have no clue how our immigration system works?…
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and others now claim Biden doesn’t need new legislation to crack down on the border. Instead, they allege Biden can use his existing authority to reduce immigration by reviving all the executive actions that Trump had put into place.
“If [Biden] wants our conference to view him as a good faith negotiator, he can start with the stroke of a pen,” Johnson said.
There are a few problems with this claim. First, Biden has already issued more than 500 immigration-related executive actions, more than Trump announced over four years, according to the Migration Policy Institute. Biden has arguably exhausted the extent of his presidential authority, and so far his measures haven’t stemmed the tide of border crossings.
Second, if Biden hasn’t revived Trump’s specific policies — as Republicans urge him to do — that’s largely because so many Trump policies were found to be illegal…
Maybe Johnson and his GOP colleagues claim Biden can do things without lawmakers’ help because they want Biden to look feckless. Maybe they grew so accustomed to Trump’s lawlessness that they figure Biden should be willing to cross a line now and then, too.
But again, there’s a reasonably strong case that the problem here is incompetence.
After all, this week House Republicans unveiled articles of impeachment against Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas for his alleged failures on immigration. Unfortunately, these articles complain about measures taken by a completely different government agency — the State Department — which Mayorkas does not control…
This is basically the opposite of what happened.
The right to asylum is a longstanding piece of American (and international) immigration law that has become dysfunctional which is why there’s now a bipartisan deal to change the rules, Mike Johnson just needs to say yes. https://t.co/eA5kIR1WMg
— Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias) January 27, 2024
I think if Democrats were holding up funding for the defense of three allies unless we got an unrelated thing, and then we said no to the very thing we demanded because our nominee told us to kill it, that the media would justifiably go thermonuclear on us.
— Brian Schatz (@brianschatz) January 28, 2024
Yeah it would mean more if Republicans actually followed laws but Greg Abbott is sort of showing the country that Republicans don't believe in laws https://t.co/S3ZIeOmSye
— The okayest poster there is (@ok_post_guy) January 29, 2024
The Senate has a new bipartisan immigration bill, but Speaker Mike Johnson and House Republicans don’t want it to pass because they don’t want Biden to get credit. They’d rather impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas than fix the border.pic.twitter.com/KsCKf1F8jZ
— Keith Boykin (@keithboykin) January 29, 2024
One hopes (she said piously) that Pastor Mike realizes the second thing goes haywire with this fustercluck (as things inevitably will), his comrades will scream that it’s all his fault, the filthy RINO, he needs to be booted out of his Speakership if he can’t actually be hanged in the Rotunda. Maybe he’s good with that!
Hi!
I’m Mike Johnson. I’m keeping the border open and letting your kid die from fentanyl for Donald Trump. pic.twitter.com/YJTsrn49fm— Heather Thomas (@HeatherThomasAF) January 30, 2024
Baud
The Republicans on the Supreme Court are gutting the administrative state in the grounds that Congress should deal with policy issues, while Republicans in Congress refuse to deal with policy issues and are kicking the responsibility to the Executive Branch.
Nice racket.
rikyrah
Good Morning Everyone 😊😊😊
Baud
@rikyrah:
Good morning.
Baud
Silly Schatz. The media doesn’t need a reason to go thermonuclear on Dems.
rikyrah
@Baud:
Racket indeed
Caveatimperator
@Baud:
If and only if a Democrat is in power.
If a Republican is in power, a delegated executive agency can do whatever the President wants.
If a Democrat is in power, Congress cannot delegate its power and must act directly.
Quinerly
I really like this Popular Info site. Seems to be good reporting we don’t get from regular sources.
https://popular.info/p/congressman-urging-texas-to-ignore
Dorothy A. Winsor
I’m hoping we hear the penalty for Trump’s fraud case today. The judge said he’d rule by the end of the month.
Baud
@Caveatimperator:
It’s what the Constitution demands.
Another Scott
It’s all posturing until they have bills to vote on.
RollCall.com:
I think Biden was smart to attach the border provisions to the Supplemental. Make the GQP do something or look like incompetent petulant monsters to the normies. As Fritschner said months ago, it’s long been clear that Biden’s proposal (or something very much like it) was the only path forward so the bomb-throwers were painting themselves in a corner. They don’t want to do anything that fixes the problems (and gives Biden credit), so stripping it out to pass the other things (that have overwhelming support) is a no-brainer and that seems like the likely way to get it done.
Slava Ukraini!!
Cheers,
Scott.
Scout211
This, from the X post by David Sacks above is something I recently heard from one of my extended family members. This person is a normie Democrat from California and I really had no idea how to counter it. So thank you, Matt Yglesias for explaining why this hot take is wrong.
Thanking Matt Yglesias? Who knew?
dmsilev
Mike Johnson isn’t very good at his job. His real job, bringing the GOP back into full power, not his ostensible “run the House” job. First off, he’s not supposed to give convenient sound bites explaining why he’s trying to do his real job rather than his ostensible job. Secondly, he and his circus of nightmare clowns are just incompetent at ginning up scandals. “Let’s impeach the Secretary for Homeland Security! No, we can’t explain why he deserves it, not to any normal person”. “Hunter Biden has a penis!”. “The IRS is going to audit rich tax cheats!!!!” (probably the one they actually care about the most). Etc.
Kay
The worst thing that could have happened to Republicans was media declaring Trump the winner of the 2024 race 12 months out. The GOP, now convinced they are a silent majority and a lock for 2024 will wildly overreach.
Trumpsters here are 100 per cent convinced Biden is “toast”. I don’t blame them – that’s been the mainstream narrative but I think it’s wrong and they’re all going to be truly shocked at how different the outcome is from the narrative.
Baud
@Kay:
Republicans are doing this weird thing that Dems used to do a little too often — talking publicly about their political strategy to make the other side look bad.
I get that Trump can’t keep his mouth shut, but still, it’s odd and counterproductive.
gene108
Johnson’s basically setting up a contrast between Biden and Trump. He wants a President to ignore laws, take actions by decree, so he doesn’t have to do any work to pass actual laws. If Biden did this, he’d also scream about a lawless president drunk with power who should be impeached.
Might play well with MAGA’s, but I hope most folks don’t fall for the bogus argument hes selling.
Kay
@Baud:
Theyre insanely overconfident. Twitter isn’t real life, no matter how many political reporters spend their entire work day on it.
OzarkHillbilly
@Scout211: The only crisis on the border is the GOP screaming about a crisis on the border. If they all stuck their heads in the sand the crisis would disappear.
ftr, I accept that there is a problem with immigration right now, but a problem is not a crisis.
Soprano2
@Kay: I don’t talk to them much about politics, but I think the same thing is true here. They believe all the lies about Biden being senile, the economy is terrible, etc. I also think they’re going to be shocked at the actual outcome of the election, and will immediately start screaming about a stolen election and cheating. It’ll be 2020 all over again. I will say I’m shocked that they’re actually saying out loud that they don’t want to pass an immigration bill to fix what they claim is a huge national security crisis because TFG wants to use the issue in his campaign! We all know that’s why, but saying it out loud is so stupid.
Baud
@Kay:
Dems can run on “We’ll do the job Republicans won’t.”
And abortion.
gene108
@Scout211:
Asylum = LEGAL IMMIGRATION!!!
Republicans are trying to equate legal immigration with something illegal and it seems to be working, sadly.
This is the first step in shutting down legal immigration all together. People claiming they are only against “illegal” immigration is a lie to deflect from true aim of not letting in anymore black or brown people into the country under any circumstances.
Soprano2
@Kay: I think one problem is that they all listen to Fox News, OAN, Newsmax and talk radio all the time, so they live in a bubble of their own making. Inside the bubble TFG is a lock for the presidency; outside, not so much.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Kay: At which point, they’ll be convinced the election was stolen again.
Quinerly
@dmsilev: he’s a joke. And, way in over his head. Makes McCarthy look like MENSA material.
Kay
@Soprano2:
I still talk to them. I listen more than I talk – I know they can’t be convinced so to me its just information gathering.
Have you heard “the banks are failing”?
I do ask a follow up on that – “which banks?”
No one can give me a name.
Caveatimperator
@Kay:
Spring last year, a small handful of banks collapsed. Silicon Valley Bank was one of the biggest names. People were worried that it was a sign of a repeat of the 2008 crisis.
And it never materialized. Those banks failed because of problems that were specific to those banks.
eclare
@OzarkHillbilly:
Thank you! Everyone accepts that there is a crisis on the border with no proof. None.
There is a fentanyl crisis, but that is different.
Suzanne
Ross Douthat had a piece up at the FTFNYT today (I’m not gonna link, because fuck him), in which he basically realizes that Trump and his MAGA cohort are abnormal and unattractive. And that downwardly mobile MAGA men negging on Taylor Swift is, like, incredibly bad strategy. LMAO.
If you are so lucky in your life to have missed out on “negging”, allow me to be the asshole who ruins your blessed ignorance. From the OED:
Kay
@Caveatimperator:
Right, I recall. But they say this as if it’s ongoing.
The Thin Black Duke
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Who cares what they think? These are the same people who think Taylor Swift is an untalented golddigger.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@The Thin Black Duke: I kinda care because I think their claims can reduce the trust others have in our elections. It’s maddening.
Kay
@Soprano2:
We all say this is due to Fox etc and that’s true but mainstream media regularly launders far Right theory and injects them into the discourse.
It wasn’t just Fox who fearmongered on the economy and “Wokeness” and crime – it was the NYT and Wapo and all of cable news.
Baud
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
We need to reduce the trust that others have in them.
@Kay:
Agreed. More liberals need to recognize the problem.
Baud
@Suzanne:
It won’t work with Swift, but it’s a technique that I saw in my younger days worked too often.
Kay
I recognize that a lot of people have been tricked into using immigrants as fall guys and I know I am more pro immigrant than most people (I am basically open borders) BUT I think Democrats have to be careful they don’t adopt GOP bullshit while trolling the GOP on immigration.
Tgats shameful and embarrassing. Don’t be Eric Adam’s. He’s a dumb, mean spirited asshole.
eclare
@Suzanne:
https://youtu.be/O65__nhLm_Q?si=sYED0BbXwM1nEWT5
Kay
@Baud:
One thing I have started doing is paying less attention to what people tell media and pollsters and instead looking at what people do.
People never behaved like the economy was bad. Their actions were in direct conflict with what they were telling the diner safari reporters. I used it to inform my own investments and I plan to continue it. Watch what they do, not what they say.
...now I try to be amused
@Baud:
For some reason it reminds me of some dialogue in Yes, Minister:
Betty Oldham : Look, Sir Humphrey, whatever we ask the Minister, he says is an administrative question for you, and whatever we ask you, you say is a policy question for the Minister. How do you suggest we find out what is going on?
Sir Humphrey Appleby : Yes, yes, yes, I do see that there is a real dilemma here. In that, while it has been government policy to regard policy as a responsibility of Ministers and administration as a responsibility of Officials, the questions of administrative policy can cause confusion between the policy of administration and the administration of policy, especially when responsibility for the administration of the policy of administration conflicts, or overlaps with, responsibility for the policy of the administration of policy.
Marmot
@The Thin Black Duke:
100%. And let ‘em re-experience the shock of losing to Obama in 2012 x 10.
Edit: Actually, I’ll amend that. It matters in how much they’re able to rub off on normies.
The Thin Black Duke
@Dorothy A. Winsor: But again, I have to ask: why should we care? These are the people who have already made up their minds, so having a rational debate with the goal of solving a genuine problem is impossible. More to the point, engaging in useless debates with these people is counter-productive because besides being exhausting, it takes time away from interacting with people who share the same goals as we do. Twitter, the majority of the MSM, oligarchs and Republicans can’t be trusted, so I think we need to stop acting as though they’re negotiating in good faith. They’re not.
The Thin Black Duke
@Baud: It doesn’t work with Swift because she has power.
Pavlovs Man
Dunno if anyone has posted this.
https://twitter.com/therecount/status/1752428106818761080
Laura Ingraham: “She shouldn’t be liberal. She should be a total conservative given what, given everything.”
There must be panic in the right wing and its media bubble.
JCJ
About a year and a half ago I was dumbfounded by a statement from a patient. He had had fairly advanced cancer of the lower esophagus and gastroesophageal junction with extensive lymph node involvement. He had a very good response to chemotherapy and radiation, but recovery from surgery (esophagectomy) had been slow. He was found to have a brain metastasis which I treated with stereotactic radiosurgery. Follow up MRI showed resolution of the metastasis with no new lesions. I reviewed these images with him and his wife. I then asked if he had any concerns. He blurted out, “I’m worried about the border!” I must have surprised him when I returned to the MRI and showed no residual disease at the border of the previous lesion. He then said something about the southern border. I told him I did not think that was important for his cancer.
Kay
2022 was a good “watch what they do despite what they say” cycle.
Its just one cycle but it fits my theory 🙂
I now bet on what they do instead of what they say. Some kind of connection between those two things has been broken. They no longer match.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@The Thin Black Duke: Can’t argue with that.
Jeffro
YUP.
They don’t have anything remotely as powerful as “Tay-tay” and the Swifties on their side. It’s unilateral disarmament…or maybe ‘not able to be armed‘, when we’re talking about pop culture, much less being on the right side of anything.
Kay
@JCJ:
That is wild. Wow.
Baud
@Kay:
Honestly, I think a lot of people — and not just Republicans — really can’t process the idea of Democrats being successful, especially when it comes to areas like the economy and national defense.
Baud
@The Thin Black Duke:
I don’t think you have to have power to have confidence in yourself, but it helps a lot.
Kosh III
@…now I try to be amused:
Yes Minister is one of the better and often accurate depictions of how things work.
How many times has the recommendations of a “Blue-ribbon” commission been implemented.
Spanky
@Kay:
Because I’m a bad person, my base assumption is that examples provided by the media that run opposite to what we can plainly see happening (or see in hindsight) are made up of whole cloth to satisfy either the reporter’s or their editor’s own biases.
That’s the trust I have in modern journalism.
The Thin Black Duke
@Pavlovs Man: Go ahead and do a media event where you’re boycotting a Taylor Swift concert, see how that works out for you.
SFAW
Interesting way to spell “chump.”
If these mofos any sense of shame, they’d die from it.
Suzanne
@Baud: Yeah, I can recognize it in hindsight from my early 20s as happening a lot.
Based on my observations, I think today’s young women are, maybe not more confident now, but certainly less interested in increasing their self-confidence based on the attentions of young men…. relative to when I was in my early 20s. They’re searching for success in other places. That’s really why the MAGAts are tying to tear Taylor Swift down. She represents that attitude and normalizes it.
Marmot
I assume they haven’t enlarged it?
Yeah, I know. But I can’t un-see this when “destroyed” is right there, unused. And change starts somewhere.
If not us, when? If not now, who?
Spanky
@JCJ: Jaysus HMS Kee-rist.
The Thin Black Duke
@Baud: Any marginalized person knows that if you have power, it gives you the leverage to push back. As Chris Rock said, “It’s great being a rich black man. It’s like being a honorary white person.”
eclare
@JCJ:
Wow. SMDH. Stunning.
Kosh III
I think Democrats, especially House reps should run on a platform of denouncing the “Do Nothing Congress.” And say that when they do try to do something, they are too incompetent to succeed.
Truman ran on that in ’48 and we know the margin of victory for President Dewey. :)
Omnes Omnibus
@Marmot: “Blown up” carries a connotation of a bomb exploding that I think is apt. Hoist upon their own petard and all that.
SFAW
@JCJ:
First of all, thank you for doing all you do. Oncology (which I assume is your field) must be both exhilarating (when you can “cure” cancer), and depressing-as-shit (when you can’t).
That said: I’m amazed you actually found a brain in that guy’s head, onto which the cancer could metastasize.
SFAW
@Kosh III:
Glad someone mentioned this. It’s not the cure-all for President Biden — Faux/Pravda will always do their best to counter truth — but it’s a good start.
Suzanne
@The Thin Black Duke: Ali Wong said, “When you’re a woman with money, power and respect, your romantic options don’t expand. They decline. I’m told it’s because men are threatened by women with money, power and respect. What do you think is going to happen to you? You think your dick is gonna get acquired in a hostile takeover?”
Jeffro
@Suzanne: that piece had me LOLing all over the place!
“you freaks are making us real conservatives look bad” – R.D.
I’m subtracting points for “cultural valence”.
Douthat’s inability to realize that the #1 animating principle on the loony Right is Cleek’s Law is surprising. He ends up technically correct, but missing the bigger picture:
OzarkHillbilly
@Jeffro: Hey now, they’ve still got Kid Rock and Ted Nugent.
Kay
@Suzanne:
I think we’re going to have to look for what I see as a new thing – a belief in the Right that misogyny can lure AA and Latino men to the GOP
I think they see an opening there and they’ll use some of the misogyny themes we talk about that (now) exist in the Left and Center. They’re going to weaponize this against us.
SFAW
@The Thin Black Duke:
“Well, has she cured cancer? NO! Did she invent the computer? NO!! Has she ended poverty? NO!!!! Q, E, and touchdown, libtard!!”
Betty Cracker
Remember Clarice Schillinger, former PA Lt. Gov. candidate and Moms for Liberty-affiliated parental rights activist in Bucks Co. who was accused of providing alcohol to and assaulting minors? There was a hearing yesterday featuring testimony from the teens:
Schillinger will be arraigned in March. All these degenerate groomers really need to stay away from kids.
Marmot
@Omnes Omnibus: Oh, I know. But it’s soft, ambiguous, insider jargon that doesn’t work as well as one-word, descriptive terms like “demolished,” “destroyed,” etc., which a normie audience would better understand.
(Insiders also use “blow up” to mean expand, like with the deficit, the budget, etc.)
Ask me about “culture wars,” “polarization,” “Congress”! You will only slightly regret it!
Edit: Wait, do you mean “exploded in their own faces”? I don’t see it.
The Thin Black Duke
@Suzanne: But I think most women would prefer to have power than be with a man who doesn’t respect their competence. I’m distrustful of narratives where women and POC have to be distrustful of attaining power because it’s disruptive of the Status Quo. I don’t believe Ali Wong for a minute that being rich isn’t an acceptable trade off. Idiots have been making jokes about Steadman Graham being “Mr. Oprah” for years. As the joke goes, “I’m sure he cries on the way to the bank”.
Baud
@Kay:
Agree. I’ve been seeing that as well.
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
To be fair, Schillinger probably read a children’s book featuring LGBT characters and that really messed her up psychologically.
Rocks
@Kay: They’re going to try. I sense a shift in the winds.
Omnes Omnibus
Talk to me in November.
RedDirtGirl
@Suzanne: I actually saw a clip of a male commentator on Fox Sports via Mediaite (I know, I know) who lambasted the male fans going after Taylor Swift as misogynist losers with no lives. I couldn’t believe it!
The Thin Black Duke
@Kay: Of course they will. I see these black idiots on Vlad TV complaining about b*tches and h*es castrating black men. They will gladly accept second-class citizenship to be able to keep those big mouth sistas in the kitchen again. Mind you, it’s not an accident these dumb-ass brothers get media platforms.
matt
@Scout211: any time Republicans talk about Democratic ‘branding’, they are lying.
matt
@Betty Cracker: More like Moms for Taking Liberties, amirite?
Marmot
@Kosh III:
Replace that with “Republicans,” and I’m with you. Hm. “Republican Congress”? “Republican House”?
Eliminate the ambiguity. For the life of me, I can’t understand why politicians, et al., refer only to “Congress.” Super popular in the ‘90s.
Marmot
@Omnes Omnibus: Ha! Hope you’re right about the reality. I only disagree on the presentation.
PAM Dirac
@Spanky:
It’s not at all new and I learned that important lesson over 50 years ago. In 1963 my family moved down to Miami where my father was doing graduate work. We stayed with my mom’s parents in Lake Worth for the summer and towards the end of the summer started making trips from Lake Worth down to our new house in Cutler Ridge. On one of these trips my brother thought the seat felt too hot and saw flames. My mother was driving and she pulled over and got us all out. Within minutes the car was completely engulfed in flames shutting down Route 1. The newspaper article that appeared said my mother froze at the wheel and a cop had to pull us all out of the car. It was a complete lie and my mother was pissed about it her entire life. I was too young at the time to really understand, but it is clear that our “truth-telling” media didn’t find a story where a mother reacts calmly to an emergency situation and gets her kids to safety good enough and had to go with the “big strong man saves helpless woman and children” narrative. At least it sensitized me to the fact that newspapers and cops could be completely full of shit.
UncleEbeneezer
White girls from Tennessee, who used to sing Country tunes, aren’t supposed to act like this. They aren’t supposed to sue a dude for sexual assault, help register voters and take up so much attention at their manly safe-spaces (NFL games). Conservatives view Swift as the worst kind a Race Traitor. And it only makes me love her more.
NotMax
@Jeffro
[Rod Serling intonation] Imagine if you will Eminem announcing he’s now dating a championship NFL player. [/Rod Serling intonation]
The RWNJs and their outlets would be all “Taylor who?” in an instant.
//
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@The Thin Black Duke:
It’s the late, great Steve Gilliard quote from Jan 2005, as pertinent today as it was then:
Full post should be bookmarked:
http://stevegilliard.blogspot.com/2005/01/about-yesterday.html
Driftglass on it 6 years later:
https://driftglass.blogspot.com/2011/03/gilliard-doctrine.html
The Thin Black Duke
@PAM Dirac: When the Legend becomes Fact, print the Legend.
sab
@PAM Dirac: YIKES! I am sorry for your mom.
rikyrah
@gene108:
This is obviously the goal. It’s what they did during Dolt45’s Administration.
Suzanne
@The Thin Black Duke:
Oh, 100% agree. But that’s a pretty recent development, I think. Cultural narratives for women have traditionally been about how True Love is worth material sacrifice, devotion to partner and family are the highest values, etc. And, like, they told us these things so that it would be more likely to come true. Now there’s this recognized archetype of “the pick-me girl” who is desperate for male attention, and it’s not really considered flattering.
Even Swift has evolved on this front, yeah? Remember like ten years ago, and the joke was that every time she had a breakup, a song came out of it? The right wing loved her then, or at least thought she was harmless. She seemed needier. In their view, she was teaching young girls to be eagerly seeking their attention. That’s definitely not the narrative of her later work.
Ali Wong has some hilarious and painful jokes in her specials about her now-ex-husband loving the money she earned and becoming a bit of a slacker because of it.
Spanky
@Jeffro: Well shit, that was amazingly cogent, coming from Douthat.
I do object to the “easily inebriated” epithet he attaches to Jason Kelce. Does he not realize how many PBRs it takes to get an offensive lineman loaded?
Baud
@The Thin Black Duke:
So will a lot of white women to keep those black men down.
Lots of enablers out there, unfortunately.
JoyceH
I’ve said it before but – the GOP won’t “fix” the border because from their POV it’s not broken. Their donor base loves the undocumented workforce that is too afraid of deportation to clamor for better pay and working conditions, and their rabid base can be stirred up to vote by scaremongering about the “invasion”. Getting what they want and at the same time using it as a cudgel against their opponents is almost too good to be true.
andy
@The Thin Black Duke: that’s the amazing thing. usually these people are desperate to kiss the ass of anyone who’s loaded, and TS is loaded as fuck. i guess their problem is that she has thoughts and expresses them without checking with some man first.
Elizabelle
@Kay: Yep. I think that worked for them, to some extent, in Florida.
Suspect they will lose, in the long run, but GOP always manages to come up with new ugly and new lies every election cycle.
rikyrah
@The Thin Black Duke:
that will never not be hilarious to me.
Swift is fast approaching, if she hasn’t already gotten there, a net worth of ONE BILLION DOLLARS, at the age of 34.
Golddigger.
BWA HA HA HA AH AHA HA HA HAH A
karen marie
OMFG.
It’s Habba’s LinkedIn page. Go read the whole thing. It is hilarious!
Barbara
@rikyrah: Probably the same people who didn’t understand that Gisele Bundchen was more famous and made more money than her now ex-husband Tom Brady.
rikyrah
@Kay:
OR ignore certain topics completely, because they haven’t been able to find a way to ‘ Both Sides’ it.
I am convinced that’s why they refuse to cover, with any honesty, the depth of what’s happening to women in Red States, since Dobbs.
Not about their healthcare
The states fast becoming maternal deserts
That abortion is healthcare
That there actually ARE NO EXCEPTIONS…
The persecution of the Black woman in Ohio – very few outlets covered that. Nor, that persecution of that teen in one of the Dakotas that was prosecuted.
Suzanne
@Kay:
Oh, absolutely.
The Bush campaigns targeted Latino men and noted a cultural preference for “machismo”, like, 20 years ago. Definitely going to try to paint themselves as the strong, masculine party.
Which is somewhat undermined by the presence of the downwardly mobile Punisher-logo-wearing whiny incel cohort.
But much of attracting people is aspirational. Like, where are the attractive, successful people? If we can effectively communicate that ugly, weird losers vote Republican……
Bruce K in ATH-GR
@rikyrah: We’re talking about the same people who tried to start a culture war against the Muppets about a decade ago, just because there was a Muppet movie in which the villain was an oil tycoon.
Those culture warriors have faded into obscurity. The Muppets have … not.
I suspect Taylor Swift needs a fan base of right-wing fascists about as much as a fish needs a bicycle.
The Thin Black Duke
@Suzanne: Oh sure. But again, the evolution happening with young women is directly related to their growing acquisition of power; the power of having more choices available. And, as with any new acquisition, there’s a learning curve involved. Swift is something of an anomaly in Showbiz: she’s a talented musician who’s also a damned smart business person. It was fun listening to an interview with Snoop Dogg where he talked about what a gangsta move it was by Swift to remaster her earlier LPs. He said it with admiration.
PAM Dirac
@sab: Now that newspapers.com is a thing I can more understand why she was so pissed. The AP wire picked up the story and it appeared in a number of newspapers all of the country including her hometown newspaper (Rochester, NY). Now there is a bunch of whining that newspapers can’t make any money. Well maybe they should start printing stuff worth paying for. Just because a responsible independent press is a good thing doesn’t mean the the current press institutions are responsible or worth keeping.
Marmot
@Jeffro:
Whereas a liberal-“coded” relationship is what?
Part of what conservatives don’t appreciate is that the need to scream at freaks is, in itself, behavior restricted to freaks.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@rikyrah:
What kills TFG is that Taylor is a successful woman who made every single dollar using her talents and intelligence, something TFG could never have done. She’s popular and her fans love her for being the kind person she is.
TFG is loved because he’s a racist fucker who shits on the people they would like to shit on.
Another Scott
@JCJ: +1
People are weird.
I don’t like the Washington Football Team. I don’t let them consume space in my brain though. I just don’t think about them.
Too many people think that they are somehow protecting America if they worry about or have strong opinions about stuff that doesn’t affect them and spend time telling everyone else about it.
Don’t like Taylor Swift? Maybe you’re not her audience.
Don’t like football players taking a knee? Maybe you’re not the audience.
Don’t like Greta’s activism? Maybe you’re not the audience.
Don’t like kids figuring out who they are on their own? Maybe it’s not about you.
Maybe it’s not always about you (me), but about someone else or some other group.
We wouldn’t hire a ballet dancer to fix our plumbing. We wouldn’t hire a plumber to be our tax accountant.
Experience and expertise matter. People staying in their lane matters. Being able to understand when one is being manipulated to be angry matters. Freedom to be one’s self matters.
Thanks.
Cheers,
Scott.
PAM Dirac
@Suzanne: There’s the flip side too. Women were supposed to be happy serving their man, but men were supposed to only be happy dominating their woman. But the men in the current stories are completely comfortable saying how much they love and value their wives/girlfriends, are able to laugh at themselves, are dedicated fathers (even to their daughters!) and by all indications are loving life and very successful despite being “emasculated”. Compare that to the constantly whining, bitter, stupid RWNJs. Must be a liberal conspiracy /s
SFAW
@Marmot:
It’s not really that ambiguous in the context provided. But thanks for pseudo-pedanting (or whatever that was).
Harrison Wesley
@karen marie: Christ, that snip sounds like an intro to a 50’s TV crime show.
Jackie
@Pavlovs Man: Heh
Suzanne
@The Thin Black Duke: Agree. The culture shift is that it is really okay for women to be selective about their partners, and that “none” is better than a partner who holds you back. Swift represents that now. Kelce represents a man who isn’t threatened by his partner’s success and lack of dependency. Obviously I don’t know anything about their relationship, but I think this is why the images of them together seem to just fucking rile up the loser cohort.
Betty Cracker
Least surprising story of the day from The Guardian:
I was hoping reporters would be inspired to dig into Rufo’s background after he led the charge against Harvard’s former president. If Rufo ever had to write an academic paper to get his not-really-Harvard degree, I bet he plagiarized most of it.
OzarkHillbilly
@UncleEbeneezer: Good White girls from Tennessee…
sab
@PAM Dirac: Our local newspaper, back in the day when it was the Knight Ridder flagship paper, was pretty good. Now it really sucks since it is just a tiny pony in the Gannett stable.
The handful of local reporters do a well reported story a couple of times a week. The rest is just drek from USA Today.
John Knight preferred to hire history majors over journalism majors because they were better at journalism. He said he only hired journalism majors because they were people who really wanted to be journalists.
SFAW
@karen marie:
“Linux is a tsunami which will spread like wildfire.”
[Pretty-close-to-actual quote from a tech journal, 20-odd years ago. Obviously, a favorite of mine.]
Kay
@Betty Cracker:
Ugh. One would think the NYTimes and the anti woke ninnies would die of shame.
WHY are they so incredibly gullible? Wasn’t it obvious what Rufo is?
our elites are so fucking dumb. I don’t know – they lack “street smarts” or something. They can’t really function as adults. They fall for every fraud who comes down the pike.
SFAW
@Betty Cracker:
They forgot the “pseudo-” in front of “scientific.”
Quinerly
@karen marie:
Thanks for pointing this out. Actually made my morning. Plus, what a bizarre picture of her sitting on the table.
I still say Trump has a malpractice case against her.
Jackie
@RedDirtGirl: Fox Sports is completely separate from Faux News.
Spanky
@Betty Cracker:
Not happening. Sounds like work.
Kay
@Suzanne:
mph I think it will be much more blatantly anti women than “strong and masculine”.
They’re going to tell AA and Latino men that women are the reason their lives suck or they have problems.
It won’t be “pro masculine”. It will be hatred of women and blaming women for all problems.
artem1s
@Kay:
This has pretty much been the case since Obama. The GOP echo chamber has no idea what the real issues are for American’s. And they don’t really care. What they do care about is what is the most effect fundraising message. Abortion is now dead in the water. 1/6 is not terrible effective given the 91 counts and counting. Immigration, the wall, caravans of illegals, transphobia and lie-iberal, groomer sports ball girlfriends – must still be bringing in the bucks. Their top 10 hit list is getting pretty thin if Taylor Swiftboating is what they are counting on carrying them across the finish line.
Marmot
@SFAW: Yeah, I can’t un-see it when “destroyed” always works. And they never use that. You’ll see, and not un-see, too.
Kay
@Betty Cracker:
I think to a certain extent their privilege has made it so they don’t have to learn discernment skills – they can’t tell good people from bad people, because they haven’t had to do that- they’re protected from the fall out of it.
Just consistently poor judgment about PEOPLE – they promote fucking frauds and monsters over and over.
theyre like kids where you have to say “you can’t hang around with her – she’s bad”
rikyrah
Tim Hogan 浩勤 (@TimInHonolulu) posted at 9:36 AM on Wed, Jan 31, 2024:
1. The media doesn’t seem to comprehend that we are on Trump bankruptcy watch. If judge Engoron enters a final judgment too large for Trump to bond to stay collection actions pending appeal, after his self-inflicted disaster in in the E Jean Carroll case, he’s likely to file. https://t.co/XZSwy5j3Vi
(https://x.com/TimInHonolulu/status/1752717480173416534?t=GWGSaPl9COCw-c97dcvt0Q&s=03)
Tim Hogan 浩勤 (@TimInHonolulu) posted at 9:36 AM on Wed, Jan 31, 2024:
2. I wonder if anyone has polled how voters would feel about a presidential candidate under Bankruptcy court supervision? Debtors are subject to deep financial scrutiny under Rule 2004 that is often viewed as a lawful “fishing expedition.”
Tim Hogan 浩勤 (@TimInHonolulu) posted at 9:36 AM on Wed, Jan 31, 2024:
3. Would that scrutiny finally prove what has been concealed but still suspected: that Trump is owned by the Kremlin? How would that proof impact the down-ballot races in November? @maddow @Lawrence
Timill
@OzarkHillbilly: Doesn’t help that Taylor is actually from Pennsylvania, as others have noted.
NotMax
@Kay
Turds of a feather….
//
Marmot
@Another Scott:
But Scott! Things must never change!
Society would crumble if we don’t defend the social hierarchy! If a former country singer voted Dem, sports stars spoke out about racism, Greta harmed Big Petroleum, girls were sometimes boys!
Therefore you hate America!
/s
sab
@artem1s: I love your term of “Taylor Swiftboating.” What an empty enterprise.
sab
@rikyrah: Extremely good point. Will the MSM report any of it in time to matter?
rikyrah
@JoyceH:
Absolutely on point.
geg6
@Jeffro:
I saw a clip on Morning Joe this morning with some FOX idiot saying hey! We have superstars on our side, too! We have Jon Voigt and Kanye and Kid Rock and Ted Nugent!
I think I laughed harder than Joe and Mika did.
Manyakitty
@Quinerly: Judd Legum is fabulous. That’s one of my subscriptions. Strongly recommend.
OzarkHillbilly
@Timill: My Taylor Swift data set is sadly lacking.
I will say this whole TS-TK psy-op operation against the fragile snowflake white right wing males has inspired me to put “Taylor Swift” and “Travis Kelce” bumper stickers all over the back of my truck, then watch their heads explode in my rear view mirrors.
satby
@Marmot: there’s a hill for everyone, guess it’s nice you’ve found yours.
rikyrah
@Kay:
You are absolutely on point.
TriassicSands
And how should the Democrats fix it? Why, by doing exactly what the Republicans tell them they should do. The only problem is they don’t really benefit from fixing border problems since they entire electoral plan is to blame everything on Democrats, help fix nothing, and then whine endlessly about the failures of Biden and his party.
What is so difficult to believe is how many millions of voters are too stupid or too mindlessly partisan to see through this to the heart of the Republican Clown Show
ETA: The quote is not Scott’s. He’s quoting Republiclowns.
Ruckus
The current day people in charge of the republican party are insane.
They want a world that NEVER existed, that no sane human wants and they want to be in charge of it. They have read history as seen in some perverted comic book and believed it. They want the fairy tale they are playing at like 5 yr olds, because they have zero understanding of how to be actual adults.
Frankensteinbeck
@Pavlovs Man:
Okay, now I am getting it. Partly it’s Race Traitor, but that goes back to a more fundamental principle. Conservatives are all about identity, way beyond just race.
Taylor Swift is into football. Her fans are getting into football. The cultural assumption is that football is a conservative thing! Now it’s being infiltrated by liberals?
Taylor Swift is the ultimate race traitor, touching conservative things and making them liberal. Taylor Swift is mainstream culture shifting, the embodiment of their reactionary terror.
@Marmot:
‘Blow up’ has had a mainstream definition of ‘destroyed like an exploding bomb’ for… more than fifty years. It’s used more that way than the ‘inflated’ definition. Much more. Biden is using it in a way that is intuitive and normal for the overwhelming majority of American English speakers.
You could get pedantic that it’s not the budget itself that is being blown up, but he’s certainly using the phrase right.
Suzanne
@PAM Dirac: Agree.
I think it is critical to recognize that the Taylor Swift freakout is happening at a time when marriage rates among non-college-educated people are down, people are getting married at older ages, the birth rate is dropping, and young people are apparently having less sex. As always with MAGA douchebags, they’re projecting their insecurities and failures onto others.
Ruckus
@The Thin Black Duke:
They are, as I said above, 5 yr olds, play acting at government. Unfortunately they are 5 yr olds in adult bodies and have convinced other 5 yr olds in adult bodies that their “ideas” are valid, that we MUST go back to a time that didn’t exist for anyone alive in the last 200 yrs, because otherwise their world will end.
Harrison Wesley
@Betty Cracker: Well, they just got rid of sociology in FL public universities. Now we know what they’re going to replace it with.
sab
@Suzanne: My stepsons both wanted to get married. Then their mom got involved and went all bridezilla.
The actual brides freaked out and said ” we are not doing that.” So the boys are still single and shacked up in shame.
I would like them married. I have been married twice in elopements. Hard on the family, but the family isn’t the point.
Baud
@Kay:
Gullible, or complicit?
satby
John Pavlovitz wrote a great post about this: MAGAs, It’s You. You’re the Problem
Baud
@satby:
Why should we be happier than they are?
rikyrah
@sab:
Maybe you should bring this up to them.
‘Next time…go to the courthouse.’
They can always throw a nice party for the first anniversary.
satby
@Baud: great essay, actually. Had a hard time picking a good excerpt.
Kay
@rikyrah:
A smart person in the Ohio Democratic Party told me GA Democrats think Republicans succeeded in tamping down AA male support for Stacy Abrams with misogynist themes about her on radio shows and podcasts.
I dismissed it at the time but listening to Matt Gaetz announce it I am now hearing it.
rikyrah
MeidasTouch (@MeidasTouch) posted at 10:10 AM on Wed, Jan 31, 2024:
Donald Trump fired off a late night post in which he said he is “interviewing various law firms” to represent him in his appeal of the E. Jean Carroll verdict, leaving many to wonder if Alina Habba’s time on the case is over. https://t.co/as4K6xRbSv
(https://x.com/MeidasTouch/status/1752725982925263255?t=y2wHYHlFrb2KfIsR3fc5tA&s=03)
BWA HA HA AH AH HA AH AH AH AHA HHA
TBone
Here is a prayer
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Xz9DX_VMXdI
Using E. Jean’s exact words.
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
The Republicans want nothing less than war with the civilian population, not the governments, of Mexico and Central America.
Mike in NC
Johnson is the perfect leader of these dimwitted Confederate assholes.
Baud
@Kay:
Surely there’s exit polling that breaks down turnout.
Madeleine
@Kay: “mainstream media regularly launders far Right theory” describes the problem perfectly. Thank you, Kay. Now I can scream better at NPR and PBS (which I follow for other things than national gov’t and politics news).
sab
@Baud: As we often say here (in two languages) why not the both? Complicit and naive. NY
The Thin Black Duke
@Baud: Because we don’t construct imaginary blockades that get in the way of our happiness.
Baud
@The Thin Black Duke:
Not when we have real blockades!
rikyrah
Charles Blow is on point as to why he votes.
LadyGrey 🇦🇲🇺🇦🇺🇸 (@TWLadyGrey) posted at 5:51 PM on Tue, Jan 30, 2024:
This is why I love black voters. And Jewish voters. This is a language I understand.
They are trying to take away our rights. To harm us. How are we going to protect ourselves?
There’s no earn my vote. There’s only live to fight another day.
(https://x.com/TWLadyGrey/status/1752479781583540626?t=ji4rcQNdBpGXtNePNmINcA&s=03)
Kay
@Baud:
I’ll ask him if that’s where they’re getting it (exit polls)
I think white people generally don’t listen to AA radio or podcasts or you tube (especially not radio or podcasts directed to young men) so we wouldn’t hear it until white people like Gaetz picked it up.
rikyrah
That Well-Adjusted Biden Guy (@What46HasDone) posted at 10:43 AM on Wed, Jan 31, 2024:
Honestly it boggles my mind sometimes how President Biden’s approval rating isn’t 60%. All the things voters have sworn they’ve wanted, the things that other Presidents have failed to deliver on, he’s actually accomplished.
(https://x.com/What46HasDone/status/1752734338809045212?t=IvL58mGa6Yi11BU1QSOk5g&s=03)
Baud
@Kay:
Yeah, it’s too bad that people are so human.
TBone
Tick Tock, motherfuckers!
Baud
@rikyrah:
What if the thing that people really wanted was to complain about things?
Kay
@Baud:
I had to tell my Lefty youngest that Chappell Traphouse making fun of all middle aged liberal women as silly and privileged and fad-driven is mysogynist. It just didn’t occur to him that Lefties would use that as a weapon.
Kay
Chapo Traphouse, I meant.
Baud
@Kay:
Too young to remember 2016?
coin operated
@JoyceH:
It always comes to this…illegal immigration will end when Big Ag says it will and not a moment before.
Edited…spelling
TBone
@rikyrah: thank you for that.
ArchTeryx
@Suzanne: Sadly, I know all about negging. It was done to my fiancee for a number of years. I turned it inside out to help rebuild her, but it’s always harder to rebuild than destroy.
On topic, the idea of Republicans doing that to Taylor Swift is absolutely hilarious. This is a woman that commands BTS level audiences and her Swifties are just about as fanatic. Negging her? Really? What the hell will that accomplish other than making y’all look like a bunch of stupid punk kids?
Suzanne
@The Kropenhagen Interpretation:
Yes.
What kills me about this is that they piss and moan about drugs coming across the border, but it certainly isn’t that Republicans don’t love them some opioids and meth.
Matt
What’s the downside for them? There’s a sizable chance we end up with this combo:
See also the electoral results of all that copsucking in NY’s 2022 elections…
sab
@Kay: Sweet summer child. Calling him that will sting.
But your relationship doesn’t seem to depend on stinging zingers. Failure in Trumpian parenting. Kids who dont hate you also dont fear you.
Suzanne
@Kay: There’s definitely a cohort of leftist men who hate women, and they will say all sorts of misogynist shit, and then just say they’re criticizing white women. So it’s okay. And you’re a racist for thinking it’s offensive.
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
@Matt: We get what we want first then we’ll consider what you want, maybe, sometime later…
Compromise.
sab
@Suzanne: If I wasn’t married to my guy I would hate men.
Do these bozos not realize that half the population is one guy away from hating them? And we are slightly more than half.
Kristine
@Suzanne: I’m reminded of an article I read ages ago about female pilots, iirc including test pilots. When they went out to bars, they told men they were schoolteachers because otherwise the men wouldn’t talk to them.
Also the small bit in another article about female airline pilots. As the passengers disembarked, one pilot said she would receive wide smiles and thumbs-up from women but men wouldn’t look her in the eye.
Kay
@sab:
I laughed at some of it because there’s truth in it, right? There’s some truth in the stereotype of upper middle or middle class liberal women – I am one so I recognize it.
But it’s also mysogynist and it’s mysogynist for a political purpose – to discredit liberals and create Leftists
I also think it’s weird because some of it just pushing back on their own mothers – which is fine for a 20 year old man but weird and embarrassing for a 40 year old man. I know you’re mad at your mom, bub. Get over it.
The Thin Black Duke
@ArchTeryx: “Never interrupt your enemy when they’re making a mistake.”
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
Perhaps, yeah. But it’s an element of one group too narrowly focused on its own issues criticizing elements of another for having the same problem. Bilateral intersectionality fail with a major dose of hypocrisy.
Soprano2
@Kay: I’m afraid to do too much of it especially at the bar. I need to check in with one guy I work with that I can talk to about it. No, I haven’t heard that about the banks. They never have specifics, do they?
Soprano2
@Kay: This is true, I just listened to a Planet Money podcast where the conclusion was that people feel bad about the economy because they’ve been hearing so much bad news about it. I thought no shit Sherlock, NPR did a story about inflation almost every day for a year! I just think it’s worse for those in the bubble.
SFAW
@Marmot:
I guess that was some kind of attempt at justifying how you chose to read “blown up,” but ,,, “whatever.”
Citizen Alan
@andy:
I genuinely can’t recall any MAGA types kissing the ass of any woman ever on account of her wealth. I think most of them are offended at the idea of a woman making more money than a man. The guy I was working for in 2004 was viscerally offended that John Kerry had married Theresa Heinz, a woman much wealthier than Kerry was. I didn’t stay in that job long enough to ask what he thought of that gigolo John McCain.
Kristine
@Soprano2:
I get Bloomberg newsletters and they still talk about the risk of a recession. I swear the MoTUs are aching for one so they can use it as an excuse to rein in labor.
Betty
I wish people commenting on Taylor Swift would learn that she grew up in Pennsylvania and moved to Nashville for her career. Not a country girl or a Tennessee girl. More craziness: it is now being reported via Facebook that Taylor was on tv for 44 seconds during the last Chiefs game.
RevRick
@OzarkHillbilly: The GOP’s overheated rhetoric about the border echoes what they claimed in the 1920s when they slammed the door shut on immigration from Eastern and Southern Europe (and other despised regions). “We’re being overrun by immigrants who are unassimilatable, are of low intelligence and morals, and will pollute our native blood.” It’s bigotry101, all over again.
It also reflects a basic lack of faith that our country can do big things. In the first two decades of the 20th century, our country of 75 million took in another 15 million immigrants. Somehow, we managed. To put, those numbers in perspective, a comparable number of immigrants would be 66 million today.
Sister Golden Bear
@Baud:
IIRC, there have been studies that negging and other pick-up artists techniques were most effective with women suffering from Cluster B personality disorders, which are marked by inappropriate, volatile emotionality and often unpredictable behavior. The disorders in Cluster B are antisocial personality disorder, borderline personality disorder, histrionic personality disorder, and narcissistic personality disorder.
And then the PUA artists complain about the women they land being “crazy.”
karen marie
@Quinerly: The comments are hilarious too.
Yeah, the photo looks like she left a hotel bar drunk and got lost on the way to the bathroom.
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
As you just explained, they’d have to be for that shit to work.
dirge
And that’s the problem right there. I mean, it’s fine insofar as people generally understand the meaning, but it’s exhausted, muffled prose, like speaking through a stack of face masks.
To put a finer point on it, “blow up” is masquerading as vivid imagery, but is actually a stale idiom, one contraction away from just being another word for sabotage (itself originally a vivid image, now a descriptive term). A punchy word is good, a fresh, evocative metaphor is sometimes better, but a stale idiom encourages the reader to gloss over without engaging on either level.
I’m just going to keep linking that until I’m persuaded everybody has read it.
Again, I think the use of “blow up” is tolerable, but criticism is warranted. We should aspire to do better. It actually is important.
Anoniminous
@Suzanne:
As I have said before, Sexism was endemic in the Old Left which carried through to the New Left ….
and, in some circles, onward to today.
EarthWindFire
But isn’t that what the conservafreaks hate most? That there’s something somewhere that isn’t about them and no one cares what they think about it.
Ruckus
@Odie Hugh Manatee:
Bingo!
Right down to the very basic concept of pompous, arrogant assholes who “think” that they should be in charge of the world so that the people that show them up by just breathing can’t be seen. There have been and always will be people 300 yrs behind the times. We just have modern communications which allow them to be seen and heard and their historical “system” that is running on thin air and thinks it needs to exist in a world which has drastically changed and that scares them beyond anything they have ever experienced or even heard about.
Ruckus
@Betty Cracker:
I bet he plagiarized
mostALL of it.FIXITFY
Marmot
@Frankensteinbeck: It’s strange that this is so hard to explain! I thought it was pretty uncontroversial.
Everybody is using “blow up” correctly (including Catherine Rampell, above [it’s not Biden]). It means both “enlarge” and “destroy,” and politicians and journalists use both senses in different circumstances. “Enlarge” when they talk deficit, etc., “destroy” when they talk legislation/negotiation.
So it’s a two-word, ambiguous jargon term for insiders, and journalists should not use it. Stylebooks are pretty clear about that kind of thing. Anybody communicating with the public should try to find the best words.
And look at the options! “Destroy” is perfect. “Demolish” is too! Direct, clear, single-word options.
Ruckus
@Kay:
They require applause to confirm that they must be right.
WHY are they so incredibly gullible?
Because they have position.
Because they have position above the masses. (Just ask them)
Because the masses buy their dreck.
All of the above.
Marmot
@dirge: Um, I love that essay.
Never use a long word when a short one will do. If you can cut a word, cut it.
dirge
So, file under assortative mating?
I’m increasingly convinced that half our problems arise from new technologies enabling the Cluster B population to readily identify one another and organize (mostly in the Republican Party, but there are still some lefty and apolitical groupings). Used to be, they had to bully and gaslight each other face to face, one at a time, and be lucky to form a posse of a dozen or so. Now they can do it at scale.
The other half, tangentially related, is advertising, which should be outlawed.
Ruckus
@artem1s:
Their hit list has always been razor thin. And stupid. And immaterial. And bullshit.
They want a world that they think existed – and it did not. It wasn’t the same world we have today, because time and communications changed, but it also wasn’t the world they think it was. At least not in most of humanity or my 3/4 of a century. But some people never grow up/mature and still want to play adult games their entire lives.
Manyakitty
@Kay: not sure if they’re falling for it or if it’s a coordinated effort.
dirge
I understood you to be making a similar argument to Orwell’s, whether already familiar with this essay, or arriving at the ideas independently. Either way, it’ll be hard for either of us to put it more persuasively than Orwell does, so hopefully a few people find the link helpful.
So very muchharder than it sounds. I do try.Manyakitty
@satby: this is excellent. No surprise it’s from Pavlovitz.
Ksmiami
@rikyrah: she is a billionaire now…
wjca
I tend to prefer a different theory. I think they are enormously frustrated that they can’t find anything to impeach Biden for. What they’ve found, even their own side knows is nothing but bull. But, I can see them thinking, or at least hoping, that they can goad Biden into doing some of those illegal things that they’re demanding. And then, they figure, they’ll have him.
Won’t work. But maybe, deep down, they think he was born yesterday.
patrick II
@Jeffro:
I heard a Fox commenter brag that Trump had Kid Rock And Vanilla Ice, but that of course he would be Happy to have more.
( Please come home Taylor ).
Lobo
@The Thin Black Duke:
I am happy to laugh all the way to the bank too.
Bill Arnold
@eclare:
Apprehensions (“encounters”) by CBP are way up.
https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/stats/nationwide-encounters
This is not, however, a measure of influx of undocumented people (including people who arrive legally and overstay their visa). It is a measure of how many people CBP managed to stop; maybe CBP got better at their job. I’m sure they have some analyses of their failure rate over time, but can it be (should it be) trusted?
I have not found current estimated statistics for actual illegal immigrant population in the USA.
There are a few charts by “Center for Immigration Studies”, an anti-immigration group, but they are not fully current, and I do not trust them, because they elide the year 2020 in their charts without any visual indicator, hiding a slow rate of increase from 2019-2021. (Been back and forth with their lead researcher a few times; they did quickly respond (and we were both polite), but unsatisfactorily.)