Interesting move to go from “he might be America’s Hitler” to “is he hiring?”
— Rep. Eric Swalwell (@RepSwalwell) July 15, 2024
"Who Goes Nazi?" by Dorothy Thompson all the way in 1941 had J.D. Vance's deal down cold pic.twitter.com/koBzUP4LJX
— late modern malik kafur (@opheliamoding) July 15, 2024
The above tweet seemed so pat that I had to go check the source. Sure enough, back in 1941, when too many Americans were complaining that The Europeans have no claims on American assistance, and besides, are we sure Hitler doesn’t have the right idea about dealing with Those People?, Dorothy Parker Thompson wrote about the people who would be just as happy to wear a swastika armband. Who Goes Nazi? :
… The saturnine man over there talking with a lovely French emigree is already a Nazi. Mr. C is a brilliant and embittered intellectual. He was a poor white-trash Southern boy, a scholarship student at two universities where he took all the scholastic honors but was never invited to join a fraternity. His brilliant gifts won for him successively government positions, partnership in a prominent law firm, and eventually a highly paid job as a Wall Street adviser. He has always moved among important people and always been socially on the periphery. His colleagues have admired his brains and exploited them, but they have seldom invited him—or his wife—to dinner.
He is a snob, loathing his own snobbery. He despises the men about him—he despises, for instance, Mr. B—because he knows that what he has had to achieve by relentless work men like B have won by knowing the right people. But his contempt is inextricably mingled with envy. Even more than he hates the class into which he has insecurely risen, does he hate the people from whom he came. He hates his mother and his father for being his parents. He loathes everything that reminds him of his origins and his humiliations. He is bitterly anti-Semitic because the social insecurity of the Jews reminds him of his own psychological insecurity.
Pity he has utterly erased from his nature, and joy he has never known. He has an ambition, bitter and burning. It is to rise to such an eminence that no one can ever again humiliate him. Not to rule but to be the secret ruler, pulling the strings of puppets created by his brains. Already some of them are talking his language—though they have never met him.
There he sits: he talks awkwardly rather than glibly; he is courteous. He commands a distant and cold respect. But he is a very dangerous man. Were he primitive and brutal he would be a criminal—a murderer. But he is subtle and cruel. He would rise high in a Nazi regime…
I don't think voters will care about Vance's hypocrisy in itself, but I think framing it as a "he sold everyone and everything else out, what makes you think he won't sell you out this time too?" type thing might be somewhat effective.
— Open Source Stupidity (OSSTU) Starfish (@IRHotTakes) July 15, 2024
One more time, in honor of JD Vance, who is a legitimate fascist:
inthesetimes.com/article/nati…— Hamilton Nolan (@hamiltonnolan.bsky.social) Jul 15, 2024 at 3:25 PM
Hamilton Nolan, for In These Times, on J.D. Vance at this year’s National Conservatism Conference:
… On the last evening of the conference, the big room’s chairs were replaced with round tables, and hundreds of attendees filed in for the final VIP dinner. Over salad, they heard from Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance, a National Conservatism Conference veteran who is riding high on the chatter that he may become Trump’s vice presidential nominee. That could represent a tangible bridge between the conference’s organizers and intellectual backers and the Oval Office. Vance is the ideal national conservative specimen, a man who preaches heartland values but wears a nice suit and looks like he sleeps in a vat of lotion.
The entire right-wing D.C. think tank infrastructure is designed to produce this sort of man. Delivered with a little polish, all sorts of crazy things can be made to sound palatable. Vance has the soothing mannerisms of a mid-market TV anchor, lacing his fingers in front of him and softly punctuating his sentences, smiling and making mildly funny jokes. This is just the sort of sweetness that can help you swallow poison. He spoke about how immigration made America poorer and less safe, grounding his points with stories about small towns in Ohio suffering under the burden of an influx of newly arrived Haitians, who strained municipal budgets. He leapt nimbly on, from the frustrations of small town Americans to love of family to something that grew darker, like twilight creeping in imperceptibly.
“America is not just an idea, though we were founded on great ideas. America is a nation. It is a group of people with a common history, and a common future.” He spoke of his family’s roots in one of the poorest parts of Kentucky, a long way from where he stood under that Capital Hilton chandelier. There, he said, “They are very good people. They are people who love this country — not because it’s a good idea, but because in their bones, they know that this is their home, and it will be their children’s home, and they would die fighting to protect it.”…
STOP! Yells national conservatism. Abandon your questioning mind. Sink into the warm bath of faith. As Vance concluded, the entire room stood up to cheer. For God! For family! For marriage! For breeding! For Trump! For triumph! Hundreds of young conservatives ingested their mission. They are the soldiers in the war between good and evil that all of their elders assure them is imminent. And they will march onward, an army in brown dress shoes and navy blue blazers, to seize back the imperial city, or to fall as glorious martyrs in the effort.
War for Ukraine Day 875: 95 Ukrainian POWs Are Returning Home From Russian Captivity!
H.E.Wolf
Dorothy Parker knew what was what. Thank you for finding that essay!
columbusqueen
@H.E.Wolf: was it Parker, or Dorothy Thompson?
Kay
No one cares about hypocrisy.
Vance is horrible and he’s a celebrity so most of it is on tape. Just run against that. He’s as much of a dud as DeSantis.
Elizabelle
The dog on the porch. Lol.
Twas Dorothy Thompson. Who was Mrs. Sinclair Lewis. They and William Shirer should come back and kick Putz Sulzberger’s a$$.
Dorothy Thompson was the first American journalist to be expelled from Nazi Germany, in 1934. (Per Wikipedia.). Putz and his crew would consider that terrible for acce$$ journali$m. Mags Haberman would be expensing her dirndls for hanging around the Great Man in Berchtesgaden.
john b
Biden has tested positive for COVID with mild symptoms and has canceled events:
clay
@Kay: If by “hypocrisy” you mean “oh he was once anti-Trump but now likes Trump”… yeah, that probably won’t move the needle.
But I think pointing out “this guy will say and do anything in pursuit of power” could be an attack that sticks to him.
BR
@Kay:
Yeah, he really does remind me of Desantis. Sort of a charisma free zone, a candidate created by Peter Thiel and the Heritage Society. Could still be dangerous, but that’s if he gets elected, not as a candidate.
Jay
@john b:
Depends is having a sale on,……….12 Adult diapers for $23.99.
john b
@Jay: huh? Just thought this might be relevant news?
SiubhanDuinne
Dorothy Thompson, please. Dorothy Parker was brilliant, but this is not hers.
Kay
@clay:
People assume that’s true of most politicians.
He’s a whiny scold, just like DeSantis. People won’t like him.
Elizabelle
@john b: I know. Just cannot catch a break.
scav
Can’t wait for him to show up at the next St Patrick’s Day parade, or Columbus Day, October Fest, etc and shriek “You’re all dregs, all y’all, each and every one of you coming over here and ruining this country!”
SiubhanDuinne
So much great detail in that cartoon!
Jay
@john b:
It’s been covered in previous threads and has become a new opportunity for trolls and Tanya Harding “Democrats” to try to flood the zone.
We even have both the White House’s statement, and Biden’s doctors statement posted.
As Anne Lourie covered in this am’s Covid front page, there is not a single state in the US where covid prevalence is “low”, it’s all medium, high and extreme.
hells littlest angel
Dorothy Thompson was pretty brilliant. It’s sad that she is largely forgotten today. (Especially sad she’s being confused with embittered snob Dorothy parker.)
Kay
@clay:
A whiny joyless scold. Like DeSantis, he walks around with a big disapproving face. “Oh, woe is us, we’re going to hell in a handbasket, repent”. Trump’s most loyal base is white divorced men. They don’t want this douchebag judging them.
me
They may as well embrace the label at this point. https://bsky.app/profile/charles.littlegreenfootballs.com/post/3kxjcxco32a2v
Jay
@me:
When they tell you who they are, believe them the first time.
Chacal Charles Calthrop
Isn’t there some link between blue eyes and psychopathy? All I can remember is the ancient Who song, “Behind Blue Eyes”
anyhow Vance definitely has the eyes of a psychopath
Kay
Sherrod Brown told us at a fundraiser that he could work with Portman (former OH R Senator) but that Vance has no interest in doing anything. I sort of knew that but it was nice to get such blunt confirmation.
H.E.Wolf
Oh, Thompson, of course. I was having an Algonquin moment. :)
Elizabelle
@me: @Jay:
Pat Buchanan is still alive. Who knew? This convention is giving his competition. That was 1992. How’d that one work out??
FDRLincoln
If Biden drops out, I think the best play is this:
A) bows out due to health reasons. A dignified exit for a man who has been an excellent president.
B) Stays in office to mind the store, allowing Kamala to focus on campaigning.
C) all party leaders MUST unite behind Harris. No convention chaos.
D) VP candidate Andy Beshear, governor of Kentucky. He is a moderate liberal, a strong campaigner, has proven he can win in a red state without compromising his principles, and would pair well against Vance.
Harris-Beshear!
(If Joe drops out. I have supported him staying in, but I think this is the play if the party won’t back him)
Another Scott
+$81 to JoeBiden.com
Cheers,
Scott.
Darkrose
Gods. I should have left LGM for good six months ago. Now I’m upset over bullshit when I should be thrilled about a great conference abd a successful presentation. I just can’t leave well enough alone.
Miss Bianca
@Kay: Tim Ryan didn’t impress me as any great shakes, but he would have been a million times better than Vance.
NotMax
Hoping Judge Merchan takes into account Dolt 45’s associating with convicted criminals at the convention when sentencing takes place.
caphilldcne
@Darkrose: I’ve been in there and it’s very doom oriented. I’m trying to stay away for a few weeks and stay over here where at least we do things. All talk over there.
SiubhanDuinne
@H.E.Wolf:
Suuuure you were. And I am Marie of Roumania.
NotMax
Speaking of the Malarkey convention, the Melania-shaped void becomes more obvious by the day.
Eyeroller
Somebody or somebodies have convinced Democrats that Biden will wipe them out in Congress, even though there doesn’t seem to be convincing public polling that this will be the case. (But mah internal pollles!). Now we have stories about Schumer and Jeffries as well as Pelosi telling Biden he needs to step aside for Johnnie or Janie Unbeatable.
Chris
Dorothy Thompson’s essay always seemed like a roundabout way of saying “who goes Nazi? Assholes. Assholes go Nazi. There is no greater predictor of whether or not you’ll find the Nazis persuasive than whether you’re an asshole.”
A more accurate and roundabout way to put it is that people with no sense of ethics whatsoever, people with a black hole where their morality and empathy ought to be, go Nazi. But “asshole” is shorter.
During four years or Trump, watching which of my friends and acquaintances moved in which direction politically was an instructive process, and it convinced me that Dorothy’s essay was in fact pretty much correct.
Sure Lurkalot
As we know, there are pretty much zero protocols for Covid in the world in year 2024 (except maybe for elite athletes in bicycle tours or Olympic events after an outbreak).
Friends went on a Carnival cruise about a month ago and caught it either before they boarded or very soon after. The infirmary had nothing but Tylenol and cough medicine to dole out. The nurse(?) recommended but did not insist/require that they stay in their cabin. They had symptoms and didn’t feel at all well but they did not stay in their cabin after day 3. The only thing they refrained from was shore excursions. They claimed they wore masks when out of their room but also ate and drank in various dining areas.
Oh, this was their second “Covid cruise”.
It seems that a lot of people with mild to manageable symptoms do not give spreading Covid one iota of thought.
scav
Is there a pie icon for drive-by spam? All the cold-call opinion droppers, boa blah blah. At least they exercised their typing finger, no hope for their neuron.
FDRLincoln
@Darkrose: drop LGM. Your blood pressure and stress level will improve.
Chris
@Kay:
I’ve said for a long time that hypocrisy is the most overrated sin in politics, but this isn’t even hypocrisy. This is simply a dude changing his mind. If he’d done it in the other direction, we’d love him for it. Case in point, somebody a few posts below you linked to Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs, who twenty year ago was quite possibly the most openly fascist blogger in America. He woke the fuck up, he came to the light side, and we’re grateful to him.
zhena gogolia
@scav: You can pie any commenter who’s in a particular thread. Just click the Pie icon at the top and you’ll see all the commenters in this thread.
Soprano2
@Kay: I agree, just tell people what he’s said and written.
Jackie
Did he? Or didn’t he? You be the judge! Rumors circulating that Gaetz had cosmetic facial treatment very recently.
https://www.rawstory.com/matt-gaetz-botox/
zhena gogolia
I feel as if I’m in a nightmare.
Eric S.
@Another Scott: Seen this before, but why $81? His age?
Manyakitty
@zhena gogolia: it just won’t stop
M31
“NatCon” — just call it the Nat-Cs and be honest
Belafon
@Eyeroller: It’s 202
40, and you’re Biden. You haven’t won a contest yet, and you roll into South Carolina. Do you listen to the party, or your base? I think we know who Biden is listening to. And what was it that happened that year in Georgia?Chris
@Darkrose:
Dump their asses.
I realized there was something toxic about them a year or two ago when I spent a long weekend out of Internet range (back when they were my only political blog) and realized what a pleasant relief it was. A few years earlier that wouldn’t have been at all true. I used to be happy to come back from no-wifi vacations and check on what I’d missed. Not anymore.
I got sucked back in from time to time because there really are a lot of genuinely smart people there that it’s a pleasure to read (though that’s at least as much commentary as front pagers). But I’ve barely posted since the current shit show started, and I think I’m pretty much done. There’s just too much toxic over there.
(Of course, the way they’re going, they might just kill the blog all by themselves).
Jay
@scav:
The “driveby’s’, because of the new nym/first comment, must be approved, rule, are already “established”, so the regular pie filter works.
When you notice a “driveby” not in your pie filter, one can spot the trolling with in a few words and apply the filter.
Captain C
@FDRLincoln: They used to be in my daily rotation but I’ve hardly gone the last few weeks.
scav
@zhena gogolia: Thanks! I’ve worn a rut on that procedure recently. Just idle random speculation on different icons to add to the suite. Change of scenery (although the Joy cookie always makes me laugh).
ETA, just a little can of SPAM on roller skates, rather like the flying toaster of yore . . . .
Belafon
@zhena gogolia: https://x.com/iamJohnMolo/status/1522012196565549056
Jay
@Eric S.:
Yup, the $81 makes it clear that the donor isn’t buying the BS and is all in on “Riding with Biden”.
M31
The Thomson article goes very well with Umberto Eco on “Ur-Fascism”
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/umberto-eco-ur-fascism
Scroll down to see a numbered list of characteristics, and it’s pretty astonishing to see just about all of them in the modern GOP.
Ivan X
@Darkrose: I don’t go there because a) it’s humorless and b) that ugly layout. Ewww.
MagdaInBlack
@Jackie: C’mon, that picture can’t be real? Can it? Good lord!
Harrison Wesley
@Jackie: Balloon Head does need to be deflated some.
john b
@Jay:
I must have missed it this morning. I checked the last open thread before I posted and didn’t see anything and the article I first read it in was from tonight. Apologies.
sdhays
I have never been so disappointed in the so called leaders of the Democratic Party. 3.5 months before an election and they think publicly undermining their President is the way to win.
Well, they fucking own it now, fuckers. Whoever is nominated, if we lose, it will be because of those fuckers. Unconscionable.
BigJimSlade
This quote from Dorothy Thompson was just used in a Malcolm Gladwell (Revisionist History) podcast! (perhaps the tweeter just heard it there?)
https://www.pushkin.fm/podcasts/revisionist-history/hitlers-olympics-part-1-the-blue-eyed-tornado
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
@Jackie: Gaetz is bad enough before you get to his looks.
@sdhays: So I discovered unsubscribing from Adam Schiff’s email donation pleas provides an opportunity to send a single message why.
Just saying if a decent number of people unsubscribe for bad teamwork, someone might actually take notice.
Yutsano
@scav: I occasionally would follow a link over there from here but they never really sparked my interest. Could be my loss or theirs. I’ll get over it tho.
Eyeroller
@The Kropenhagen Interpretation: It’s not just him. Supposedly Schumer, Pelosi, and Jeffries want Biden to drop out, because somebody has convinced them they will be wiped out in Congress if he stays in, despite his polls being not all that bad.
Scout211
@Jackie: OMG! Not just the complexion but the unnatural eyebrows. Is that Gaetz or a cartoon?
The Daily Show counted Ron DeSantis’ creepy tongue flicks during his speech at the RNC.
How many licks does it take, Ron? (Twitter link)
zhena gogolia
@Belafon: Thanks!
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
@Eyeroller: They’ll be wiped out in Congress without him. Harris is their only other remote chance.
They’re all just jealous that when the President speaks, he forces people to listen.
zhena gogolia
@Jackie: God, it’s like he took those Beavis & Butthead comparisons as a template suggestion!
Atticus Dogsbody
I keep a link to “Who Goes Nazi?” in my bookmarks.
opiejeanne
@Jay: I didn’t know about Biden having Covid until about 10 minutes ago. No need to jump on that person.
Josie
@zhena gogolia: Those eyebrows are either painted or tattooed on. Weird.
dexwood
@john b:
No need to apologize. Not everyone can read every thread.
Another Scott
@Eric S.: Yup.
Cheers,
Scott.
john b
@dexwood:
thanks. Not a huge deal. I know everyone is more on edge than normal (including me)
Ivan X
@zhena gogolia: We all do.
lowtechcyclist
@SiubhanDuinne:
So life isn’t really a glorious cycle of song? ;-)
Jackie
@MagdaInBlack: Only his
hairdressercosmetologist knows for sure!Jay
@john b:
a bunch of us have been trying not to engage, been using the pie filter, not re- posting stuff because almost every comment thread except for David Anderson’s, Adam’s, and Anne’s Covid posts, get swamped with drive by’s, trolls, and obsessives, for almost 3 weeks now, all about the “same thing”.
At this point in time, for those that want to counterpoint the doomers, a good trick is to clip your counterpoints, paste them into a word file. That way you can cut and paste from the word file in response to their 99th post of doomerism, with out having to write out your response for the 99th time that they have ignored and will ignore.
Eyeroller
@The Kropenhagen Interpretation: It’s like they have this fantasy that obviously he should be far ahead of Trump by now, despite all of history and known facts about polarization in this country being nearly 50/50. It is baffling to me that they cannot understand this.
I don’t think it’s really about the disasterdebate because there were plenty of Democratic “insiders” texting their media buddies about their panic within moments of the first 20 minutes and they apparently didn’t wait till later, when he recovered. It was not a natural response. It had to be preloaded.
Eolirin
@Eyeroller: I’m concerned there’s a belief that Trump’s strengths are entirely about Biden’s age, and not that Trump has a floor of support that’s pretty high. It’s preventing us from grappling with the fact that a large portion of the country has lost its mind or that white supremacy is still a huge goddamn problem.
But it’s possible the knives are out for more personal reasons too.
Princess
@me: Is this for real? I’m not seeing it anywhere.
Harrison Wesley
@Scout211: I’m old enough to remember the ’80s sci-fi series V. Governor DeSantis is one of the Visitors.
Jay
“Chicken Little” Democrats.
The ticket in November will be Biden/Harris.
At least the brainworm Rat Fucker RFK.Jr has been exposed, by his son.
So much fat media targets in the past three weeks that 3 decades ago would have made careers, but the media is all in on group think and one subject.
Another Scott
Meanwhile, … Mmmm chicken 🤤 (animated gif)
[ rofl ]
(via Mastodon.social/explore)
Cheers,
Scott.
pajaro
@zhena gogolia:
I’m 77. This is the toughest month politically-speaking that I can remember, and that includes 1968. I think this place has the best prescription, which is to focus on whatever one can do to help produce the outcome we want and need.
Chet Murthy
@me: @Princess: I would think it would be shocking if the Heritage Foundation (behind Project 2025) were -not- sponsoring the RNC. I mean, they’re a major, major G(r)OPer powerhouse and have been for a generation or two. I’d go so far as to say that it’s so obviously true that nobody even bothers to report on it.
George
@Eyeroller:
I agree. I think the meme of OMG JOE IS OLD had been something that started, more or less, on January 21, 2021. For years, the GOP and the media conditioned the populace to question Biden because of his age so that when the first half of the debate happened, they had the chance to ramp up the meme.
But even if the debate had gone swimmingly, the GOP/media would have found something else to use against Biden–e.g., he’s now an old guy with Covid! They’ll do anything they can to avoid addressing Biden’s accomplishments. Unfortunately, too many on my side of the spectrum are too dense to recognize the GOP’s tactics.
Captain C
@Jay:
Textbook example of enshittification.
rumpole
that passage also describes Clarence Thomas to a T.
me
@Princess:
Here’s more pictures . https://bsky.app/profile/dawnxianamoon.bsky.social/post/3kxjgdca24w26 https://bsky.app/profile/donzeko.bsky.social/post/3kxjepkxlun2f
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
@rumpole: It’s almost like a whole archetype.
zhena gogolia
@me: Wow. WE NEED TO GET SERIOUS, MY GOD ALMIGHTY!
dexwood
@me: The Republican Nazi Convention showing us who they are.
zhena gogolia
@me: I love this response: “Much love. Very unity. The GOP really flipped the script on the democrats with this convention.”
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
@zhena gogolia: We need a serious conversation about how immigrants prove to be a boon everywhere and have revitalized many a struggling town.
zhena gogolia
@The Kropenhagen Interpretation: Except, as someone pointed out earlier today, if their names are Thiel, Musk, or Murdoch.
Eric S.
@sdhays: This! I wrote a long rant to friends on this earlier today. This is one response I got, “It’s like saying I’m not going to vote for Yoda because he’s old and talks funny. Palpatine 2024.”
Jay
@me:
@Princess:
@Chet Murthy:
Mock, Paper, Scissor’s posted a photo taken on the first day of a 4′ x 8′ banner over the main stage proudly stating that the Nazi Fest was proudly sponsored by The Heritage Foundation.
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
@zhena gogolia: I’m talking about industrious working poor to educated professional immigrants.
Not the leeching billionaire class.
tam1MI
My thoughts exactly.
pajaro
@FDRLincoln:
I’ve been a regular reader and sometime commenter at LGM for a while. It’s just amazing how the three main front pagers have lost the majority of their commenters. I’ve never seen anything quite like it.
3Sice
RNC is boring and nobody is watching.
Eric S.
@Harrison Wesley: Dear FSM, you are right.
Jay
@The Kropenhagen Interpretation:
You can’t. The “immigrants” don’t pass the paper bag test.
There will be no “serious” conversation.
Odie Hugh Manatee
The Nationalist Conservatives need a catchy shortened hip version of their name so the cool kids will give them a look.
I suggest they call themselves “The Nat C Party”.
Chet Murthy
@The Kropenhagen Interpretation: I have a good friend and former colleague who move to Nashville from Connecticut. His son is married to an immigrant. He’s worked around immigrants his entire professional life. He is adamantly against TCFG. He tells me about the interesting travails of trying to help his church reach a point of love and acceptance of LGBTQ folks. And he’s described to me the pervasive anti-immigrant sentiment he sees all around him in Nashville, even in his church, even among ostensible liberals.
I’m an immigrant. I live in a city and state that is majority-minority. I’m horrified by this rise in anti-immigrant sentiment. But it is what it is.
Gvg
@rumpole: yes, that’s who I thought of immediately. Thomas.
I wonder if Trump hates his parents?
Immigrants made us rich, and are still helping us. These people didn’t learn history, and don’t know who they are really.
Chet Murthy
@pajaro: two thoughts:
I’ve commented there extensively for many years, and these days, yeah, I skip most of these “Biden needs to withdraw” threads. But it’s an open question whether he will, isn’t it? I guess we’ll see. One thing for sure though: I don’t think it’s fair to accuse the FPers of gaslighting their readership; they’re just expressing their opinions — very forcefully, but still, it’s just an opinion.
Jay
@Chet Murthy:
It took until 1976 for Greeks in the USA to become “white”. Over 110 years.
Chet Murthy
@Gvg: haha, I think what we know of his behaviour towards them, it’s a ga-RON-tee that he hates/hated them.
Jackie
@Jay: Yup. And big signs at the Milwaukee airport stating “The Heritage Foundation WELCOMES YOU TO THE RNC Convention!”
Chet Murthy
@Jay: I remember the “Polack jokes” in Delaware and Philly back in the late 70s.
Nelle
@john b: I’m just home from an outside book club meeting. Of the first four there, I was the only one who hadn’t had Covid in the house this last month.
Jay
@Chet Murthy:
pretty sure that in the next few days Loomis will remote diagnose President “Fighting Joe” Biden with Parkinson’s, not Covid.
Another Scott
Meanwhile, … Phys.org:
There’s still a lot that we don’t know, even about little tiny things that don’t seem very complicated – but have a huge impact on the planet. Basic research like this can have a huge impact, even if some MotU consortium can’t make billions on it in the next 6 months.
Cheers,
Scott.
Chet Murthy
@Jay: IIUC, they’ve already diagnosed him with “Foot Parkinson’s”. haha.
Gvg
@Chet Murthy: lately I have also noticed that many people are really anti homeless. Both sides. It’s something people haven’t thought of or talked about for a long time and bigotry has grown and fermented I think. Someone here recently said they thought the homeless would be rounded up before the trans and I realized that might be true. Few are standing up for them, and with a housing shortage impacting the young and middle class nobody has a good solution. We better start thinking and counter propagandizing. I have no idea how, but I just realized the potential about this week.
3Sice
Saw someone point out the crosstabs in today’s Georgia poll were screwy to the point of embarrassing. Insider Advantage polled 2 African-Americans in a state where they made up 30% of the 2022 electorate.
Institutional racism. How does that work?
47/44 Trump feelz about white.
Sister Golden Bear
About that Republican “call for unity” thing…. They’re united in wanting to eradicate LGBTQ+ people from public life (as the first step).
DeSantis And Aunt Lydia Join Moms For Liberty Panel At GOP Convention To Brag About Hurting LGBTQ Students
Martin
@The Kropenhagen Interpretation: Speaking of cultural issues that Democrats refuse to speak to. ⅓ of Californias workforce are immigrants, but shhh don’t say anything – you might anger the racists.
Ruckus
@Chacal Charles Calthrop:
It’s not the color of the eyes or the skin (although that skin color thing does have some shitty connotations – especially with a portion of the lighter skin color side) It’s the color of what people call the soul, you know that part that is supposed to be the basis of being. Some have a soul that is pure shit. The soul that believes they are miles better than anyone else because they have skin with a low pigment level – you know, that looks like the majority but thinks like the complete and utter assholes that they are. You know the one’s that look like me but hold hate as their primary or often only emotion and haven’t figured out that it’s not humanity that stinks – it’s them. A mirror into the soul of shit as it were.
Chet Murthy
@Gvg: This is so true. And esp. out here on the West Coast, it seems like our government is doing very little for them. Sigh. And yeah, there’s a lot of anti-homeless sentiment. But it’s been here for a long time: I remember back in the early teens there was a Twitter bro who wrote a public letter to the SF mayor complaining about having to step over homeless people on his daily walk from home to Twitter offices. I would hope that he got laid off or fired long ago.
TooManyJens
@3Sice: The one I just looked at polled 800 people, 17 of whom were African American. Two percent. What the FUCK.
https://insideradvantage.com/top-line-tabs-for-insideradvantage-fox5-atlanta-survey/
Another Scott
@Martin: Eh?
USCIS.gov (today):
Cheers,
Scott.
Ruckus
@The Kropenhagen Interpretation:
We need a serious conversation about how immigrants prove to be a boon everywhere and have revitalized many a struggling town or nation. Including this one.
waspuppet
To paraphrase David Roth, we don’t know whether Vance has changed his opinion of Trump or of Hitler.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@3Sice:
They don’t need to ask black people anything because according to TFG he has the black vote wrapped up. He’s expecting 99% just from the HBCs alone.
I’m not joking…
Harrison Wesley
@Gvg: There are lots of ideas out there for affordable/subsidized housing and there are organizations promoting them, but the movement doesn’t seem to be catching fire. Apparently NIMBY triumphs over all.
HumboldtBlue
@Elizabelle:
Got-damn!
piratedan
@Gvg: the housing and the homeless issue is just now getting some attention because Dems are doing policy like fixing infrastructure, going green in energy policy, forgiving debt, etc, so now we’re on to the next crisis.
As usual no easy answers, when you got other considerations like working such housing into the infrastructure demands, NIMBY and a social safety net. Some places are seeing success by simply giving the homeless a home but integrated with mental and general health care. Yet, getting a community behind it and to have their tax dollars go to it takes both political will and a game plan to show the benefits, even if its simply playing into a guilt reflex to help those that need help and reduce awkward questions about those people sleeping in the public park with their grocery carts to your kids.
It’s also tough when your city now becomes your landlord, how do you make it affordable but also incentivize people wanting to rejoin society?
NotMax
@Jay
Put in mind of the 1951 anthology film It’s a Big Country.
3Sice
@TooManyJens:
2% – my bad.
Landlines, blah, blah, blah.
It’s awful, racist garbage and they are being paid to turn it in.
Sister Golden Bear
@Chet Murthy: I also remember “Polack jokes” in the early-mid 1970s in SoCal. Also some “Eyetalian jokes.”
For the record, both immigrant groups were negligible percentages of the local population.
Dan B
@Chet Murthy: Our neighborhood is 15% white. Most of the rest are first or second generation immigrants or African American – 15% Afrucan immigrants as well. Our Rep is Adam Smith. What does he think that they think of Biden? Does he believe that a Trump regime will be “challenging”? Has he talked to anyone of his constituents who are not straight white donors?
Doubt it.
Harrison Wesley
@Gvg: Auburn University’s Rural Studio is dedicated to developing affordable, sustainable housing. The site is well worth a visit if you’re interested in the issue.
me
Check out this shit being mulled over by the “serious pundits”. https://bsky.app/profile/questauthority.bsky.social/post/3kxjhsvknpd2z
Ruckus
@Ruckus:
As far as I know my mother’s parents were immigrants. The family lore is that grandad was one from Sicily, I’ve commented on this before, and earlier today. I have no real idea on gran or my father’s parents. But most of us are the result of immigrants (or slaves) unless we are Native Indians. Maybe not first or second generation but not all that long ago as humanity exists.
Sister Golden Bear
@Harrison Wesley: NIMBYism is one reason for the somewhat successful push in CA for tiny houses for the unhoused. It’s definitely a far less efficient approach but avoids things that enable NIMBYs to derail larger projects for years.
Darkrose
@caphilldcne: It’s gotten incredibly toxic, mostly because Campos, Lemieux, and especially Loomis are thin-skinned jerks who can’t handle the slightest bit of criticism, and have taken to insulting the commenters who disagree with their endless hair-on-fire Biden takes.
The last straw for me was when a saw a Loomis post today citing a Politico piece about something Biden did years ago, right after the amazing Erin Reed posted about the Teamster president speaking at the RNC and also endorsing an anti-LGBTQ, anti-DEI rant from Josh Hawley. I questioned why the labor historian was freaking out over Biden instead of maybe talking about this. In his next post, Loomis got snippy over the callout because awww, he has a book due in August and I guess bitching about Biden is a better use of his time than addressing something that’s directly in his wheelhouse. I said something polite but snarky in the comments and he told me “Your existence is meaningless.”
Okay then. I’d already cancelled my Patreon donation. If I want to be insulted and condescended to by white dudes, I can go to Reddit. At least they won’t ask me for money.
kindness
@Chet Murthy: I read your quote wrong. You posted: ‘So whatever the FPers do or say, it’s just about staking out a position. ‘ I read it as:
So whatever the FPers do or say, it’s just about spanking out a position.
Sad thing is, I didn’t connect the error right away because that one does fit some of what I see going on over at LGM.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@3Sice: Na, just
lazy ass as fuckfinely calibrated polling by Sober and Serious Men of Truth., the black voter thing is just themcoasting off areferencing an earlier poll.Belafon
@The Kropenhagen Interpretation: Texas will come to a standstill if this deportation occurs, or even if 10% of the immigrant population here self-deports to get ahead of it. There is so much construction going on, and immigrants are doing it.
Darkrose
@FDRLincoln: I did, and I already do.
Captain C
@Elizabelle:
Initially misread that as ‘exposing’ and wondered what kind of Yiddish slang I had just read.
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
And what it is is short-sighted and cruel.
Jay
@Gvg:
Unhoused, not homeless, they have a home, it’s just that it’s often on the margins of “public property”.
Most of our unhoused here live in tents, trailers, rv’s, cars or in a few cases, cheap crappy offices emptied by covid. Over 70% have jobs, Just under 30% are on social services. Most are on waitlists for subsidized housing, which are as long as 7 years.
Median rent for a crappy 1bdr apt in the outer burbs requires a $3700 deposit, at the minimum, another $1600 on top if there are more than 2 of you, another $800 for each pet. A minimum wage job here pays $38,758 a year. A “living wage” income here is $58,639, if there are two in a 1bdr, and both are earing that income.
Homeowners don’t want low income housing in “their back yard”. They have been “told” it will lower there property values, and here, that’s most middle class peoples only “wealth”.
The “Torygraph” did an “expose” on the Downtown East Side, and as usual, they painted all the residents as junkies, criminals and the mentally ill, when in reality, most have jobs further in the city. If you are working in a Starbucks on Denman Street, next to the Gucci Store, there is a good chance that at least 1 of your coworkers is camped out in a tent on Hastings Street.
The problem is for the most part, a lack of affordable housing.
Harrison Wesley
@Sister Golden Bear: Cool – I just saw an article on that in one of the gazillion e-pubs I get. Yes, it’s not a long-term solution, but it’s a hell of a lot better than leaving people in the street.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Elizabelle: Come on, you know Mags would be all over that dreamy black shirt in Rome. After all he’s media too.
3Sice
They’re pissed out on the west coast about the SAG-AFTRA and WGA wins.
That’s not coming out of the studios piece. That’s coming out of Clooney’s ass. The big “liberal” bundlers get rich on production points and telling the work-a-days sorry folks we have to work off scale on this one…
BR
@Belafon:
I do wonder what their billionaire donors think about it. Some of them are bigoted and since they’re rich they don’t care about the economic consequences. But some know it will hurt their businesses — like the Home Depot CEO who is a die hard Trumper and has to know that his business would collapse. I wonder how they square it.
Harrison Wesley
@kindness: “Spanking out a position.” So that’s what they call it these days….
Darkrose
@The Kropenhagen Interpretation: Thanks for the heads up. I just unsubscribed and told him that he was disregarding the will of the California voters who chose Biden/Harris as the ticket in the primaries, and that going to the press only serves Trump.
Omnes Omnibus
@Ruckus:
The goddamned US Cricket team, for example.
karen marie
Does Vance have to resign from the senate to run? I haven’t heard anyone talk about it, so I assume he stays until January 2025, unless Trump (oh, please, dear god) loses in November.
Any speculation on who would replace him? Would it be a special election or appointment?
MisterForkbeard
@Chet Murthy: I have an old highschool friend who came out of the closet after college, and then moved to NY and then to Nashville – where he’s lived for the past 15 years.
He says this year is the first time he’s ever felt really worried. But that prior to this it was always a really lovely area but with some very troubling people
Trivia Man
Watching the circus a bit – TCFG looks perpetually confused. Trying for tough and all I can see is “I wonder how a real human would react to that sentence?”
And the maxi pad on his ear looks more ridiculous by the day. Is he really pretending it is medically necessary? Maybe the DNC convention will feature everyone wearing ear pads.
jackmac
@The Kropenhagen Interpretation: I also unsubscribed from his emails citing his backstabbing of Biden behavior.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@karen marie: I believe he plans to split himself in two using binary fission like an ameba.
Trivia Man
And shorty johnson has place of honor next to TCFG tonight. I dont see empty greene behind him, maybe they just rotate that camera spot.
Chris
@Jay:
@Sister Golden Bear:
I always wonder how much the “his name is Elwood Blues, and he’s a Catholic” context in The Blues Brothers goes over younger viewers’ heads.
The Illinois Nazis in the film are very clearly from that Midwestern fascist tradition that spread like wildfire in the 1920s/30s and got a lot of mileage out of targeting non-Protestant “white ethnic” immigrants. The Blues having grown up in an inner city Catholic orphanage… They wouldn’t have experienced the worst of that, but they definitely would have grown up hearing about it.
But the eighties is pretty much the last decade in which that sort of thing flies. Afterwards, it’s too far in the past, white supremacy has moved on from caring which part of Europe your ancestors are from or which church you go to, that whole context of WASP vs White Ethnic stops being a salient thing.
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
@Darkrose: @jackmac: Yay! I’mma tell all my frienz.
w_seattle
@Chet Murthy: Indeed, those jokes right alongside the Polish rifle as the Eagles’ popular QB. That always struck me as odd.
Darkrose
I don’t think gaslighting is the right term here. And if it was just expressing their opinions forcefully, I wouldn’t have a problem with that. It’s the naked contempt for anyone who pushes back without any attempt to engage with legitimate criticism. Like, Campos is a fucking law professor who is shopping around articles about how unnamed doctors say Biden has Parkinsons–how is that adding to the discourse in any way?
And not for nothing, but the one front pager who’s expressed a contrary opinion is Cheryl, who has always been polite and measured even when she disagrees. Funny how the dudes there are the ones with the onion-paper thin skin.
Omnes Omnibus
@karen marie: He does not need to resign to run as VP. As for the rest, why don’t we work on making the questions moot?
Chet Murthy
@kindness: I cannot tell you that you are wrong. Thing is, you might be. We’ll find out, eventually.
Ruckus
@Sister Golden Bear:
I see a number of those tiny house projects in LA county when I take the train across the county. It seems from the outside to be a better deal than living on the street.
Harrison Wesley
@w_seattle: Philly is like Walt Whitman: “I am large, I contain multitudes.” I lived there for almost 50 years, and it always had something(s) going on. Great city.
Darkrose
@3Sice: Yup. Hollywood and Silicon Valley genuinely hate that Biden is the most pro-labor president we’ve had in decades, and for all most of them claim to be “socially liberal,” they’re happy to throw marginalized folks under the bus in order to keep screwing workers over.
NotMax
@Trivia Man
He’s focused on not being caught on camera falling asleep.
Jay
@Darkrose:
When President Joe Biden’s long form medical exam results from 4 months ago are available online, at the White House Site, and includes a full page of him being specifically examined for Parkinson’s, which he does not have according to a Specialist who examined him in person,
and you remote diagnose him with as we are mocking now, “Foot Parkinson’s”, then double down when called out,
One is either proving that they are an idiot, or gaslighting.
Martin
@Another Scott: There is a huge difference between quiet supporting a policy and expressing a cultural value. Steve Bannon <spit> is correct about one thing – that politics is downstream of culture. Which is why the GOP doesn’t really do politics, they do culture, because culture reaches WAY more voters than politics does, and Democrats don’t even play that game. They back women’s health policies but they don’t try particularly hard to destigmatize the reasons why women seek abortions – that’s a very new thing, and not particularly strongly expressed. They don’t exactly champion immigrants. They sure as shit don’t advocate for more legal immigration. Immigration is a problem to be solved, not a benefit to the nation. Until Joe, there was no strong expression in favor of organized labor – it too was something to be tolerated, not celebrated.
Democrats need to figure out their vision for an American future culture and start expressing that vision. Policy is fine – but it will only reach some of us. Democrats cede all of the cultural space to Republicans, and they wonder why voters aren’t enthusiastic. You have an entire generation falling into nihilism because their future prospects are so bleak because no matter how hard they work, some corporation is doing to take all of their earnings and pollute their future, denying them opportunities to build wealth and quality of life. Where is the vision for them? Ok, you’ve got a grab bag of college debt relief programs. That’s good, it’s appreciated, but it’s not going to make those voters feel their future isn’t completely fucked. Democrats have to do more than just quiet policy. They have to do more than just yell that GOP ideas are bad. They have to offer up their own vision of America and they really suck at doing that.
w_seattle
@Harrison Wesley: Yup, Philly is interesting. Been out west for a while, but I grew up in northern Delaware. Even went to high school with a couple of Bidens.
Chet Murthy
@The Kropenhagen Interpretation: cruel it is, no doubt. But short-sighted? Not sure about that. Warsan Shire wrote that no one leaves home unless home is the mouth of a shark. She was right about that. So lets start there. America is a pretty decent place for poor immigrants who want to work really damn hard. Now imagine one of these MAGAts: he’s thinking: “we can make our country a whole lot worse for immigrants, take the difference as profit, and they’ll still come! Win!”
And I’m not even sure they’re wrong. Sure, they’ll never scrub the stain off their eternal soul, but hey, they were already goin’ to The Bad Place anyways ….
And furthermore, I think too many of us think of the world in terms of adding up the “utility” of everybody. So more people getting better living conditions is an improvement. But a lot of these MAGAts don’t see things this way at all. At. All. To them, when the lower classes get better living conditions, that subtracts from the MAGAts’ status, and that’s a loss. A loss. Pushing down on immigrants improves the status of native-born MAGAts, and that’s a win in their book.
3Sice
@Darkrose:
He’s always been a crackpot. The Truman retcon woo was a big red flag for anyone remotely paying attention.
Jay
@Martin:
FDR was pretty good at that.
Harrison Wesley
@w_seattle: Hey, that’s pretty cool!
Another Scott
@Martin: We have different perspectives. For instance, I read that the GQP convention has millions fewer viewers than 2016. I see with my own eyes that TCFFG has less overt support in my suburb than before January 6, 2021. I see that he has trouble filling even small venues with his rallies.
(repost) APNews.com – Biden’s letter to House Democrats covers the culture things you say that they’re not talking about.
I don’t know why you’re not seeing and reading the things I am. But they’re out there.
FWIW.
Cheers,
Scott.
Martin
@Ruckus: We used to build row homes to fill that gap. Can’t do that.
Bupalos
@Eyeroller: the somebody would be all the pols coming to them reporting their analysis in their district. Folks here are acting like they’re operating on whims and less information than random internet surfer. None of these people are the hysterical traitorous boobs some seem to assume. They can be wrong, all the pols can be wrong…. But we’re just guessing and they are playing with a lot more information.
Trivia Man
@NotMax: Definitely droopy eyed for Don Jr. Blinking constantly, drooping head, zero raction of any kind even for slam dunk lines like “AMERICA FIRST!” and “This party has room for you, we welcome everyone!”
He did get a smile for REELECT MY DAD DONALD J TRUMP (I think his own name woke him up). And at the end it took several seconds to register he should applaud and stand up. Very disengaged. Sad.
3Sice
Anyone seen rikyrah?
They had tornadoes in Chicago with trees down, power outages, etc.
Trivia Man
This is my gift to you – watching the dreck so you don’t have to.
Bupalos
@Martin: I’m almost always enthusiastic about your stuff but this is killer.
NotMax
Crowd on the floor of the convention brandishing signs handed out by the party reading “MASS DEPORTATION NOW.”
randy khan
@Chris:
What’s going on there is, well, I was going to say hard to fathom, but maybe not. It’s practically open warfare between a couple of the front pagers and the commentariat. (Not all of it, but a huge chunk.) But what it feels like at a certain level is just plain panic.
Ruckus
@BR:
They don’t square it because it’s impossible to square. It’s their money that protects them and if life gets too expensive for too many their business goes under. The history of the world since money was invented was survival of the wealthiest, fuck everyone else. But any country of most any size has a much larger population that either works or revolts. I doubt we’ll see much of this in at least my lifetime but then I’m an old and likely have 25 or fewer years. I’d bet that someone in their 30s or even 40s, or younger are going to see this first hand and in not all that distant of time. We had a reasonable situation till the upper tax rates were drastically lowered. Now the rich get richer and the rest of us, to continue living have to pay them in some way or another to do so. They get wealthier and we get screwed. It was this way in most parts of the world and the US countered a lot of it with the higher tax rates for the uber wealthy. They still get wealthier they just don’t get AS much wealthier, but still they are WEALTHY. And they think that them not being so wealthy they could buy a country or a 747 of their own is wrong. I know how to fix it but I doubt that will happen in my lifetime. Or maybe the next 2 or 3 lifetimes.
3Sice
@Trivia Man:
A Trump completist. I suppose Vance is the cousin Oliver of this soon to be canceled series.
cain
@Eyeroller:
Apparently, Pelosi had no idea Schiff was going to make that public proclamation. It was a surprise to her. So I don’t think the Dems are unified and Pelosi is working something.
Jay
@Chet Murthy:
‘Merkin’s see “immigrants” as the illegals, the asylum seekers, the people who’s previous homes were in the mouth of the shark.
The Canadian Heart Surgeon making 4X a year than what they would in Canada, is not an Immigrant. The Chinese chip designer is invisible, because he works in a Blue City. Same for the Pakistani engineer, the Indian entreprenure, the Nigerian nurse, etc.
Tehanu
Well, this is exactly why I love this country, because it IS a good idea* — not because my family happens to live here. So the Hillbillionaire can stuff his family roots right up — oh, wait; he already did.
*If only we actually lived up to the idea, it would be great.
Chris
@3Sice:
Oh Jesus.
What even was with his Harry Truman crusade? I never paid that much attention, I figured everybody has their weird hobby horses, but I definitely was always puzzled by it. “Did you know that Harry Truman, the man who gave us eight more years of New Deal politics, the man who put civil rights in play for the first time in seventy years, the man whose handling of postwar Europe will probably always be the high water mark of American foreign policy, might have lied about how poor he was, and might have taken more in retirement benefits than we think he should have?” Oh my God, who gives a shit? Forty six presidents and two hundred odd years and this is the scandal you choose to care about? It’s straight out of a 1950s WASP patrician playbook. “Oh yes, Harry Truman! The senator from Pendergast! Harrumph!”
Sister Golden Bear
@Harrison Wesley: Redwood City, CA near me recently opened a larger transitional housing center using modular housing units — think something akin to trailer homes stacked three stories high.
it got done fairly quickly—in large part I’m sure is that it was on either city/county land in a former industrial area next to the county jail on the wrong side of the freeway. Though it’s actually closer to the actual downtown area than other such efforts, and IIRC they’d tried hard to provide good bus services to/from it.
SF had problems with a shelter being in the middle of nowhere without transit—so utterly predictable most of those that the city was trying to off that the streets weren’t interested in going there.
Chet Murthy
@randy khan:
I think you’ve nailed it. And something else: when you have nothing you can do about a worsening situation, panic is likely, maybe even inevitable. I know I’m pretty despondent inside (and yeah, in comments here and elsewhere) about what’s coming in November. If I didn’t have a plan for what I’m doing to try to fight what seems inevitable, I would be panicking even more than I already am. Which is a lot.
I try to remember that these are academics, not used to acting on their conclusions, but rather writing them down and publishing. To realize that you might be personally at risk, and that there’s nothing you personally have the know-how to do about it, is ….. pretty frightening.
mrstealyourcostcosample
@Darkrose: I got banned after years for a comment that Loomis railing about the toxic aspects of suburban culture / white flight while going all in for the most colonizer of American sports (football) was mildly hypocritical.
Didn’t go as far as I wanted — he’s a misanthrope that likes Black people on books, on stage, and on the field, but generally can’t deal with real Black people as humans, particularly when critical of his work.
Bupalos
@Darkrose: I just subscribed hoping to say “thanks, for taking the heat and helping Biden make his decision”
but they only want comments from people knifing Schiff in the back.
RevRick
@M31: For me, one glaring omission from Eco’s list is the slogan Make Country X Great Again. It is at the heart of any fascism’s sales pitch. He hints at, noting the racism which undergirds every fascism. But in order to convince the masses of the need for heroic sacrifice to an apocalyptic end, there needs to be a cult of the nation.
mrstealyourcostcosample
@Another Scott: there were like 1000 people maybe at the Butler rally. the aerial shots are grim
Martin
@NotMax: Don’t worry about it, USCIS Continues to Improve Access to Immigration Services. The angry mob has been dealt with.
Bupalos
@mrstealyourcostcosample: Loomis couldn’t deal with Simone critical of his work if they were from northern Scandinavia and dipped in marshmallow fluff.
NotMax
OMFG. Vance comes on stage and gives what can only be described as the straight arm Nazi salute in the direction of Dolt 45.
Bill Arnold
@Trivia Man:
The Trump Thing literally forked Christian eschatology (Revelation 13-14); that avatar/head of the Beast (DJT) was supposed to have a head wound (that healed), not an ear wound. Satan is seriously annoyed, so Felonious D is pretending that it is a head wound.
/s ? :-)
Sister Golden Bear
@3Sice:
Oh My Maude, I’m not certain I even want to know…
Trivia Man
decent line to open – “cool it with the ohio stuff, we need to win michigan too”
mrstealyourcostcosample
@Chet Murthy: the hardest lesson for an academic to learn is that shutting up is a free action and being right is not really its own reward. there is such a thing as judicious restraint in speech and action that the LGM crew has not mastered. you don’t have to say something about everything, especially when, as here, there’s really nothing to say.
and saying something takes you into foot Parkinson’s insanity
Chet Murthy
@mrstealyourcostcosample: Oh, nice! I did not know that. Thank you!
NotMax
Random thought.
Josh Hawley wants his fist pump back.
//
mrstealyourcostcosample
@Bupalos: he’s a psycho fr. i enjoy the obituaries series but that’s about it. it’s so hard to read people who are against EVERYTHING.
can’t just be like, “welp, this is e not for me, i disagree, but live and let live” … i think getting banned made me realize he’s not doing a bit and I got a little sad / scared for homeboy
NotMax
Vance out of uniform, still not sporting s lapel flag pin.
Trivia Man
@NotMax: Not even an AR-15 pin!
Jackie
@NotMax: Heh Just caught TCFG struggling to keep his eyes open while Don jr is speechifying. Not very successfully.
Stuart in Austin
@FDRLincoln: Fuck you!
Bill Arnold
@NotMax:
Josh Hawley’s fist pump was with a real fist, at least.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@Darkrose: “Your existence is meaningless.”
This is what happens when you are in love with the sound of your own voice. The person who said this looks down on many people and thinks that their existence is wasted and life would be better without them.
This is not a good person and they are not trying to do good things.
Darkrose
Truer words have never been spoken. I’ve spent the majority of my working life in academia; you’d think I’d remember this.
Trivia Man
Credit where due – another chuckle here. Gives a shout out to going to The Ohio State University and a chant of M GO BLUE breaks out.
Sister Golden Bear
@Chet Murthy:
As one of the Black Twitter folks I follow astutely noted, it’s not Black Women and other marginalized folks like queer and trans people (insert emergency “not all” here) who are freaking out. Because we’re used to facing an existential threat to everything we are and love. Many of the folks who have been panicking — like the LGM folks — have typically been privileged just enough that this is the first time they’re truly experiencing it.
Another Scott
@NotMax: One thing that struck me about the famous FTFNYT 3-picture set of TCFFG’s PA rally is that – he really does appear to have very stubby fingers there.
“Short fingered vulgarian” indeed.
No wonder his attempt to make a fist is so pathetic, also too.
Cheers,
Scott.
Fair Economist
@Martin:
No. The GOP doesn’t do culture. They have co-conspirators, primarily churches and media, that do culture, and the GOP profits from that. Our problem is that we don’t have similar organizations grinding away on the culture front. We have something of an advantage because they’re *wrong* but that only goes so far when the media becomes so biased that most people think the best job market in a half century is a recession.
Trivia Man
Still waiting for him to try and soften his “arrest pregnant women before they leave the state” stance. And “birth control and no fault divorce ruined america.”
Gretchen
@Martin: yes, young people are struggling in part because rents are high. That said, why is there zero attention on the DOJ starting lawsuits against landlords using price-fixing software in Houston, Atlanta, Charlotte, Baltimore, and Arizona? They found out that landlords are using software to colluded with each other to raise rents to previously unimaginable levels. But all you hear is rents are too high, Biden is doing nothing, and anyway he’s old so let’s take a flyer on someone else? https://www.planetizen.com/news/2024/06/129389-doj-investigating-corporate-landlords-criminal-conspiracy
Enhanced Voting Techniques
There is that vibe to this. One can pick out the ones who never learned and focus on the positive to get themselves out a bad situation.
But I would also suggestion another reasons why blacks and marginalized folks aren’t in panic mode, they aren’t the target demographic for the fear mongering.
Chet Murthy
@Fair Economist:
One way or the other, future historians [if there are any] will have something interesting to study, in this election. If TCFG wins, it’ll be the victory of The Big Lie over such manifest success in governing; if TCFG loses, it will be the resistance of the population to a massive, saturation assault by The Big Lie. Either way, amazing historian fodder. Whimper.
Shalimar
@pajaro: Four main pagers, since Farley posted yesterday that all the people who don’t want Biden to drop out should just fuck off and quit the blog if they don’t like the posts they are getting. Add him to the relentless barrage from Campos, Loomis, and Lemieux.
NotMax
Prefer my Vances to be named Vivian, not Negativian.
//
NotMax
@Chet Murthy
Twelve-part series by Ken Burns’ grandchild?
:)
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
@Chet Murthy: I suppose I need to account that not everyone subscribed to my belief that when we all do better, we all do better.
That might be my favorite tautology.
ETA: Followed closely by “if it’s in stock, we have it.”
Ruckus
@Martin:
I know there are/were a number of them in parts of LA. At least at this time I think the tiny houses do a bit better because they aren’t like a small barracks. Don’t know about others on here but when I went in the USN – a very long time ago, living in a barracks is less fun than it sounds like. A miniature house would at least seem like a more private setting and it’s larger than a bus bench or tent on the sidewalk. I worked/owned a business not far from downtown LA and even a long time ago, there were homeless. A lot of homeless. It has only gotten worse in the last 50+ yrs.
Once again a huge help would be for the tax rate for the uber wealthy to go back to where it was long ago. That gives the various governments the ability to deal with the situation better than they can now. Group homes, mini houses, JOBS would help the situation, but the uber wealthy seem to have risen to the old world concept of wealth – which is “Fuck you I got mine!” And I don’t see how it gets better without someone paying, even if those of us without that uber part pay a slight bit more – the uber part needs to pay a higher percentage more. Kings used to take all the money and flip off everyone else, and that’s exactly what the really wealthy are doing here in the US.
wjca
Absolutely not! I’m a sociopath, not a psychopath.
Shalimar
@Darkrose: Campos is trying to get articles printed that even the New York Times thinks are going too far to add to their several hundred anti-Biden articles per week. I think that says it all about the quality of LGM’s product over the last 3 weeks.
Captain C
@Shalimar: “Your offer is acceptable.”
Trivia Man
Whenever J starts talking about himself, you can see the orange head immediately droop.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@Shalimar:
I closed the tab on them that I’ve had open for years. Enough is enough, I’ve hit my limit of reading overinflated egos sniffing their farts and telling us that they are just grand.
They’re just not worth it.
Trivia Man
@Trivia Man: Huh, that’s funny. He didn’t mention abortion even once. I thought that was an important issue?
Trivia Man
Brags about his disagreement with Pence – Of COURSE I would disregard the electoral vote count! Bold move, Cotton, let’s see how that works out for you. Biden team is already pouncing and amplifying.
Fathead is surrounded with grandkids, I suppose it makes him look human.
MinuteMan
@john b: Biden probably caught it from the 5G phone call he made to Twitler.
Ruckus
@Jay:
The other thing is to block them. That picture of pie at the top of a post is there for a reason. I don’t have many in the filter, I think maybe 3 or 4, and the most I can remember having is 5. It doesn’t take much to shut down most trolls. A few pie them and they get far fewer answers to their bullshit. And they are looking for attention because that gives them an audience. Take that away and they leave like a Saturn 5 rocket. I currently have 6 in the pie filter but 2 or 3 of them never show up any more so realistically speaking I have 3 or 4 in the filter currently.
Chris
@The Kropenhagen Interpretation:
Well, that’s actually an interesting philosophical difference in the blue and red worldviews there.
Historically, America’s growth model runs heavily on importing “working poor to educated professional” immigrants – in other words, normal people. But the reason that works has a lot to do with the most idealistic version of American values (and the fact that this vision is, in fact, correct): the belief that all men are created equal, that the elites aren’t smarter or more virtuous than the peasants or workers, and that the latter can be and will be productive and loyal citizens who add a ton of value to their society, if only they’re offered a system that gives them half a chance to do so. Let Europe keep its kings and nobles. We’ll take the little people, we’ll give them the chances they never had in the old country, and in a few generations, we and they will have built a country that pisses on anything the old royal bloodlines ever built from a very great height.
You can see where this is going, of course. Everything I just said is completely anathema to the conservative worldview, because that worldview is the same one as the kings and nobles’. To them, people who are poor and oppressed are not victims of a shitty system who would do much better for themselves and their country if they came to America; people who are poor and oppressed are that way through their own fault, because they’re lazy and unvirtuous, and bringing them to America only means they’d ruin this country like they ruined their own. To them, most human beings are not smart or hardworking or good enough to add any meaningful value to the world around them; only a few exceptional human beings are like that, and they carry the rest of the world on their backs. So to them, if we have to have immigration at all, we should be scouring the world for those few exceptional individuals – namely, as you call them, the leeching billionaires (Elon Musk, Rupert Murdoch, you know the type) – and letting them come to America so that they can enrich the nation with their awesomeness, while keeping the gates closed to the large masses of worthless peons who can’t possibly have anything to add.
SomeRandomGuy
You know, I heard something that really helped me understand people like JD Vance and Ted Cruz.
“Really intelligent people don’t tend to become lawyers,” is what I heard. And I stopped, and realized, it’s probably true. Really intelligent people probably don’t go into being doctors (in the sense of caring for patients). Lawyering isn’t easy, you can’t be *stupid*, but having a command of skills and learning the specific facts, and being able to orate at length, none of those things require a truly high intelligence.
And it’s true, from what I know. Lawyering is boring. You’re not really trying to find the *truth*, just, the best, most reasonable, explanation for your *client*.
Thing is, lawyers do a lot of effective thinking, and that’s intimidating to a lot of people who don’t do that. And a “pretty smart” person is right a lot of the time anyway. That’s not always an advantage – if you’re used to being right, every time, you might not realize when and why you’re wrong – you’re more likely think you’ve been misjudged, and that you were *mostly* right.
Now, there’s one thing lawyering does teach you: client servicing. That is, how can you advise a client to step exactly as far as they are lawfully allowed to, and all you need to do is argue, successfully, that it seemed the law allowed that, but, hey, we’ll pay statutory damages and penalties. We sure didn’t think it was *okay* that an employee got shredded in a box cutter, but, hey, the law is the law, right? You can’t expect us to do more than the law *requires*, amirite?
And it’s true – in most cases, we don’t expect people to do more than the law strictly requires. But society only really works well when people go above and beyond what the law *requires*. It works when people are laboring toward justice, which is a matter far more important than mere law.
Chris
@mrstealyourcostcosample:
Yeah, you’re not the only nonwhite or female person I’ve seen either banned or threatened with a ban for bringing up Loomis’ racial blind spots. It’s probably the first thing that tipped me off that there’s something really wrong with that place. And to be clear, sometimes I’ve thought that these critics were, in fact, completely out of line. But when you take that and compare it with the way open Nazis or Russian trolls are allowed to fester on in the comments section for years so long as they don’t hurt the front pagers’ fee-fees, you’re pretty much back to that beloved old double standard – “racism is fine, anti-racism may be tolerable, but only until such time as it inconveniences the people in charge, at which point it becomes absolutely unacceptable.”
Origuy
San Jose is planning to put 200 small houses on a lot next to the Valley Transit Authority’s bus depot. So there will be transit access but no residences nearby. The state is supposed to put in money to pay for it, but they backed out on using California National Guard to transport and build the houses.
Jay
@Ruckus:
I havn’t anyone pied anymore,
I just skip over the troll posts and post a generic troll warning.
The obsessed Chicken Little Democrats, I just skim their first few sentences and skip the comment if it’s the traditional Doomerism.
It’s handy because you can see the Doomer’s Nym, burn it into your memory, and later on, or in an actual real thread on a subject, read their comment a little differently.
SomeRandomGuy
@Chris: Oh, friend. You assume such virtuous principles. America’s flaw (I say, speaking ex cathedra as some loser you met on the internet) is slavery, and the sense that some people just need to be subjugated, to have the literal sin beaten out of them, so they can be productive members of society.
Um. And now, I feel like a guy trying to scold a five year old about Santa Claus. So I’ll say this instead: assume that the rest of the world has plenty of “conservatives” in the sense of “old fashioned people who heard of ‘gay’ and want no truck with it.”
Why would Republicans be so afraid they can’t capture lots of those folks from India, and South/Central America? What, besides the idea that makes the Confederacy a “noble lost cause” rather than “a bunch of fucking slavers”?
Trivia Man
@Ruckus: I just wish I had an anti-pie option. 3 or 4 regulars always seem to have something of value or interest or humor, I’d like t be able to see them more easily when I am scrolling. Ain’t got time to read every comment in every thread, a kitty filter or something to alert me might be best.
I have very few in the pie filter, maybe I can use that instead – stop when I see a pie and toggle to read my favorites?
Ruckus
@Gvg:
In the Los Angeles area mini houses are being built. It’s not a cure for sure but every little bit helps. Most of the homeless I see on my train rides across the county, 2 a week now, I see a fair number of homeless, as I always have over the last 60 yrs. But the numbers have gone up, not as seemingly high as the total population has but it’s not an insignificant number. As things cost more the bottom of the working population and the aging of the population has seemingly increased, at least here in the LA County area, and that leads to more and more people not having enough to pay the cost increases. But then poverty always grows when the cost of living does because the rich get richer and give even less of a fuck about anyone else. See my above comment.
Ruckus
@Trivia Man:
That seems to be not all that workable – it would likely slow you down more in my opinion.
My view is no one goes in the pie filter unless they really, really earn it. Because then a number of people pie them and at some point they just go away, leaving the blog to be a good place to park.
Life is just too random to not on occasion have someone be a putz, even unintentionally. But when they seem like one a majority of the time – pie it is.
Shalimar
Just looked at Twitter for awhile and it’s hilarious that most of the blue checks have just now discovered that J.D. Vance’s wife needs to be deported.
Chris
@SomeRandomGuy:
I specifically said “the most idealistic version of American values,” because I know perfectly well all the other things that make up America’s founding and continuation and knew that it should be clarified that this is not, in fact, a comprehensive guide to How America Really Works. There are a million ways in which America never even tried to live up to the premises of words like “all men are created equal” (slavery and, even more than that, the treatment of natives being the two standout examples built into the fabric of the nation from the very beginning). Our immigration situation during the early years of our development, especially as concerned immigrants from Europe who even at their worst were never in the same bag as black or native people, is… not that.
Why would Republicans be afraid that they can’t capture these people? They shouldn’t be. But they are, because their worldview is too essentialist to imagine that these people can ever add value to their lives, even if a lot of them would be perfectly sympathetic to their values. They don’t look at the people at the border and say “huh, I bet half these people would agree with me when I start ranting about gays and atheists!” They look at them and see poor smelly losers from shithole countries, who clearly can have nothing to contribute to this one (even for their values of “contribute”), because if they did, then their own countries wouldn’t be such shitholes. This is how racists think. This is how monarchists think. This is how conservatives think.
Shalimar
@mrstealyourcostcosample: I got banned for pointing out Loomis was being an asshole by insulting Jimmy Buffett’s fans on the day Buffett died just because he doesn’t like Buffett’s music. He loves telling everyone else they’re wrong because they don’t like the things he likes. It isn’t different preferences or tastes. What he hates is by definition bad.
Ruckus
@Jay:
As I’ve stated, maybe not directly, I only pie when it is obvious that they are either shitheads or trolls. I came/come here for discussions, for views different than mine, for a conversations. And it’s good. I’ve been coming here for a very long time, I think not long after John started BJ. I’ve had computers for a very long time and before the interaction of the web and found the internet to be a trove of decent people, and some real assholes. I only pie those that seem to try to be really assholes, because we all have our days and as we seem to all be human it’s a small percentage of humans that can’t on occasion be assholes, my very own self included. It’s the ones that practice it and become full bore throttle to the floor assholes that get pied.
wjca
But on no account are they allowed to divorce!
Darkrose
@mrstealyourcostcosample: I was always careful not to engage on his “white liberals are all racist because they send their kids to private schools” thing because I’d have put my fist through my laptop. My mother, godparents, and the parents of most of my Black friends growing up taught in the Chicago Public Schools, and most of them sent us to private schools. My mother didn’t want me to be one of 30 kids like in her first-grade classrooom. But Loomis is always right and everyone is an irredeemable racist except him.
Slightly_peeved
@Shalimar:
oh and if they don’t like the abuse from Erik. One of the reasons I finally started commenting on the blog was him straight-up lying about the Biden debate and amplifying Republican talking points as he did so.
I just read what he said to Darkrose. Christ, what an asshole. Sorry you had to deal with that.
BellyCat
Truth. Having spent yet another day in family court, a dispiriting realization is the degree to which the law is overlooked when the court, itself, has erred.
Who guards guards, indeed!
Princess
@3Sice: Deep cut. Nice.
Another Scott
@Shalimar: Something something protects but does not bind something something binds but does not protect.
It’s a cult. Most Americans don’t like cults.
Eyes on the prizes.
Cheers,
Scott.
Chris Johnson
@Ruckus: You can use the pie filter in other ways, too.
I’ve looked at my own reactions to posters, and realized that I get the ick when I’m confronted with someone who has put effort in to be a known face, with thoughts outside obvious narratives, and yet they’ve got a particular hobbyhorse and at opportune times they’ll jump on and leverage their social credit score to shit on our allies in some kind of way.
Impossible to tell whether they’re secretly a big spook, or whether they’re just real but malicious (I could have been that, HAVE been that over Hillary Clinton, but she turned out so right about being hawkish on Russia that I can barely fault her anymore) or whether they simply hang out with people who are subject to narrative.
‘cos I’ve worked out all the narratives (most likely) that have been getting weaponized by Russia against us, because I’ve flirted with so many different communities that I can see when the trolls come in all pushing an angle.
So for now I am leaving the most obvious trolls alone, but I’ve pied beloved and well known posters who cannot get it into their heads that we’re actually in a good position and Trump in a bad position (especially when they persistently don’t respond to factual argument but have a lot of time to respond to emotive soothing with more doomerism). And now I’ve pied thoughtful and erudite people who reinforce each other in saying that yes, Trump bad and of course I’m voting for Biden but we really have to always remember that Democrats always let down and betray the working class and proletariat and all our promises are lies, so can you blame them? It’s all very well our opposing Trump, he’s bad, but we are in the ivory tower and do nothing to help the working man.
_I_ was the direct target of that narrative the second I leaned Bernie’s way, and I got soaked in it, and it’s still not at all true. Just because instant magic ponies aren’t a thing, doesn’t mean Democrats aren’t EFFECTIVE at making good on our goals. We’re leftists, planners, builders. And so that’s a narrative to undermine us, by simply denying one of our strongest points and refusing even to argue it.
You can use pie filters to silence lines of argument like that, if you’re familiar enough with them to recognize them. I’m convinced propaganda outfits are clever enough to work that out. Hell, ChatGPT could. Ask it ‘you are a leftist poor person and you don’t trust the Democrats and might vote for Trump. Explain why you don’t trust the Democrats’. That will give you the argument, straight out of a giant database that can figure it out for you and give it a voice.
Then all you have to do is hammer that narrative and you’re using a weapon against Democrats, and all you have to do is make Trump seem trustworthy.
OK there are still some bugs in the system :D
Chris Johnson
I just wanted to add: I love this, and we’re also sitting on a historic opportunity to reinforce this point.
There was once a time when our oligarchs were Carnegies, Henry Ford, Edison and so on. And every one of them were responsible for horrors, but you sometimes also saw stuff like Ford intentionally paying people enough to buy and use his product.
OK, so right now think of ‘impossibly wealthy oligarch’. If you’re LUCKY you’re thinking of Bezos or Zuckerberg. That’s the BEST you’re going to do. Keep going and you’ve got Musk. An absolute clown, but keep going and you’ve got Putin and the Russians, and to cap it off the new owner of the Republican party and their vice president, Peter Thiel. A man who wants monarchy and is injecting the blood of young people into himself so he will live forever.
Modern oligarchs are TURBO CREEPY. It makes it very easy to make the argument that every oligarch is a policy failure. Every millionaire and especially billionaire is a policy failure. I’m not sure we’ve ever had such good conditions for making that point, and because they’re trying to push Trump into the White House, they’re not hiding what they are, they’re telegraphing it.
It’s really not that hard to show how these people are monsters. They’re proud of it. We fought a revolution to get away from people like that (now, so has England, sort of).
All men are created equal. The oligarchs are just the biggest crime lords, and that doesn’t warrant respect.
brantl
@Jackie: That head needs shrinking, not Botox.
brantl
@Jackie: Looks like somebody crossbred Gaetz with a ferret.
karen marie
@Omnes Omnibus: I was just curious. I didn’t realize there was a hall monitor.