Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Republicans: The threats are dire, but my tickets are non-refundable!

I was promised a recession.

“But what about the lurkers?”

Cole, when it comes to calico cats, restraint is overrated.

The arc of the moral universe doesn’t bend itself. it’s up to us.

Pessimism assures that nothing of any importance will change.

This must be what justice looks like, not vengeful, just peaceful exuberance.

There are more Russians standing up to Putin than Republicans.

… gradually, and then suddenly.

Insiders who complain to politico: please report to the white house office of shut the fuck up.

Optimism opens the door to great things.

Narcissists are always shocked to discover other people have agency.

There are consequences to being an arrogant, sullen prick.

Proof that we need a blogger ethics panel.

Let me eat cake. The rest of you could stand to lose some weight, frankly.

Balloon Juice has never been a refuge for the linguistically delicate.

If you tweet it in all caps, that makes it true!

Israel is using food as a weapon of war. Unforgivable.

We won’t go back.

Sitting here in limbo waiting for the dice to roll

Come on, man.

I know this must be bad for Joe Biden, I just don’t know how.

Reality always lies in wait for … Democrats.

The frogs are rarely mistaken.

You are here: Home / Elections 2024 / Tuesday Morning Open Thread: May the Vibes Be Ever in Our Favor

Tuesday Morning Open Thread: May the Vibes Be Ever in Our Favor

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As a devout Cynic, this is a good take:

Reader Interactions

343Comments

  1. 1.

    Baud

    Eh, it’s not about trust, it’s about work. Alternatively, trust the process.

    And TBH, I think Dreyfuss isn’t completely wrong although he’s being a douche about it.

  2. 2.

    matt

    Supreme Court reform poll:

    Most Republicans support the policy proposals in President Biden’s plan to reform the Supreme Court, according to a new USA Today/Ipsos poll.

    Biden outlined a three-pronged approach to reforming the high court in a speech last month, calling for a binding code of conduct, 18-year term limits for Supreme Court justices, and a Constitutional amendment declaring no one — not even the president — is above the law.

    The latest poll shows 70 percent of Republicans support a binding code of conduct for justices that would require disclosure of gifts, prohibit involvement in political activity, and mandate recusal from cases involving conflicts of interest for themselves or their spouses.

    Slimmer majorities of Republicans support the constitutional amendment proposal (54 percent) and the term limits proposal (51 percent).

    Total support among respondents for the code of conduct is 76 percent, including 89 percent of Democrats and 75 percent of independents.

  5. 5.

    Kay

    National Polling Lead On August 12:
    2008 – Obama +4.8
    2012 – Obama +4.7
    2016 – Clinton +6.3
    2020 – Biden +7.5
    Today – Harris +2.2

    Not quite there yet but we’re going in the right direction. And yes, I know Clinton lost. 90% isn’t 100%.

  6. 6.

    Baud

    Fox: Kamala Harris and Tim Walz are talking about making a national law legalizing abortion

    Hopefully some Republicans voting for state abortion protection initiatives will get the message and cross over.

  7. 7.

    p.a.

    The positive press will turn.  It’s what they do.  Honesty has a liberal bias, and they’ll do whatever it takes to be perceived as unbiased.

    FTFNYT will not turn: it’s already in the tank.  If K&W win, it’ll be just more reason to hire conservative hack columnists.  Of course, if the goose-steppers win, it’ll be just more reason to hire conservative hack columnists.

     

    alsotoo: 1 SCOTUS member for every court district!  Corollary: statehood for DC & PR.  What’s the star design for 52 states?

  8. 8.

    comrade scotts agenda of rage

    @Baud:

    Let’s hope so (about crossover).

    One issue with a national law is that it’ll immediately go into the court system and once it gets to the current Extreme Court, will be struck down.

    Doesn’t mean we should try to pass such a law, always good to keep those clowns having to justify themselves, but until there’s a fundamental shift on the Court…

  9. 9.

    Matt McIrvin

    It does all make me nervous. I don’t want us dependent on an endless parlay of good news. I feel like if we lose even one news cycle it could all come crashing down again.

    So I look out for threats. “Cops kill or beat up Gaza protesters in Chicago, mass violence erupts, news drones flip their shit about it being 1968 again” is the next one on the list. It occurs to me that the police probably wouldn’t mind if what they do sinks the Democratic ticket.

  10. 10.

    Baud

    @p.a.:

     If K&W win, it’ll be just more reason to hire conservative hack columnists. We need balance. Of course, if the goose-steppers win, it’ll be just more reason to hire conservative hack columnists. The voice of the voters must be heard 

  11. 11.

    Mowgli

    Finished my first 100 postcards for Georgia voters. My kids (12,9, and 9) all helped out.

    We could all do with a little less conversation, a little more action.

  14. 14.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Kay: Trump was an effective closer in both 2016 and 2020–Clinton and Biden both had massive leads that evaporated in the last couple of weeks.

    In Clinton’s case, we all remember what was going on in the news, and there was a regional state polling miss on top of that that actually turned an apparent win into an actual loss. With Biden, there really wasn’t, but it was still agonizingly close and it had not been up to that point.

    But in both cases, you could see the trendline in the polls–there was a big lead and it suddenly evaporated. It seemed like a lot of it was that Trump’s campaign was somehow capable of getting him to be relatively quiet for a few weeks right at the end, and that led a lot of people to revert to supporting him. That may not be the dynamic now, with Harris somehow successfully branding herself as the change candidate. But you never know.

    Obama seemed to be the other way around–he was the good closer in his campaigns, especially in 2012 when it was touch and go the whole way.

  15. 15.

    gene108

    @Matt McIrvin:

    news drones flip their shit about it being 1968 again”

    The 1960’s and 1970’s left some huge scar on the American psyche that feels like it’ll never go away.

    I doubt most reporters today were even alive in 1968. I wasn’t.

  19. 19.

    Eolirin

    @p.a.: PR should only become a state if they ask to be, and they’re not going to be reliably Democratic. DC definitely needs to be asap.

  20. 20.

    Kay

    @Matt McIrvin:

    With Biden, there really wasn’t, but it was still agonizingly close and it had not been up to that point.

    Well, it wasn’t “agonizingly close”. Biden won by 4.5 and had 306 electoral votes. He won solidly.

    It’s uncertain. That’s the nature of the thing.

  21. 21.

    Geminid

    @Matt McIrvin: I wonder how many Gaza protesters show up in Chicago next week. Whatever the merits of these protests, I have not seen them gather in many people even though many more millions are appalled by the destruction and bloodshed in Gaza. I suspect the protests next week will be another failure in this respect.

  24. 24.

    Matt McIrvin

    @p.a.: DC statehood, yes.

    Puerto Rico statehood is a way more complicated and contentious issue there than mainlanders think, and Democrats who imagine that the only issue is mainland Republicans preventing admission of a guaranteed blue state might be disappointed. The pro-statehood party is the right-wing party, more or less. And when they have referenda, even when statehood wins, they get complicated by the existence of more than two possible options and by some faction or other’s refusal to accept the referendum as legitimate.

  25. 25.

    Eolirin

    @Kay: Depends on how you look at it. He won the EC by something like 40k votes. His margins in the states that gave him his EC victory were tiny.

  33. 33.

    Eolirin

    @zhena gogolia: There’s a huge on the ground army of volunteers and paid staffers doing GOTV. TikTok does more to drive that effort and make the work it’s doing easier by getting buy in going before the door knocking happens.

    TikTok isn’t being relied on to get people to vote though.

  35. 35.

    Eolirin

    @Baud: Sure. I’m hoping we can do better than that. It’ll be what starts to break the back of the Republican party, at least in its current incarnation.

  36. 36.

    WereBear

    Just watched this clip from MeidasTouch (7:30 on the timeline) which showed a Zoom of 17 people who were not planning to vote for Biden. None of you. Are any of you voting for Harris now? All of you.”

    And then cut to Fred Luntz, who tells them its about passion. Yes. Which can be hate or love, and we know which side you are on.

    They have no joy. That’s why they can’t punch in this ring.

  40. 40.

    satby

    @Baud: the incessant insistence here that all cops are bad is one (of many) of the least attractive things about this place. Sure, plenty are. And plenty are doing their best to serve the public. Blanket bigotry gets a lot of passes here at the Mean Girls HOA.

  42. 42.

    oldster

    The only complacency I worry about is the attitude of the allegedly liberal media, which in 2016 thought that Clinton had already won the election, so they should treat her like an elected president and create scandals to investigate.
    Sure, they also hated her. But there is documentary evidence that editors there told reporters to hit her hard because she had already won.
    If the NYT ever decides that Kamala has already won, then they’ll do the same thing again.
    So, yes, some complacency worries me. 

  43. 43.

    Kay

    @Geminid:

    They’re probably pretty dispirited. It seems they’ve given up on a ceasefire and are now working to mitigate “escalation in the region”. Talk about failures.

  44. 44.

    Betty Cracker

    @Baud: It’s true, and scolds on our side irritate me too. But the unaffiliated (and the media) tar far too many of us with that same brush. We can be a fun bunch! I think that’s what people love about Harris-Walz. ;-)

  46. 46.

    Ken

    @Spanky: It’s also called Planck’s principle — science progresses one funeral at a time. Works for other parts of society too.

    For example, around five years after my death (assuming I’m roughly average for my cohort), radio stations will finally be able to drop their “greatest hits of the 60s, 70s, and 80s” formats. I’m unpleasantly reminded of this every time I visit St. Louis, and listen to K-SHE Real Rock Radio — playing the same songs they did when I was young, but the ads are all now for erectile disfunction pills, divorce lawyers, and reverse mortgages.

  47. 47.

    TBone

    I’m just gonna continue to show up and take the wins. Even the tiniest ones.  I am a devout optimist and remain unabashed.  Fear and worry waste imagination.

  48. 48.

    Kay

    @Geminid:

    But it won’t effect the election. No one in the US has even noticed the US has moved the goalposts and now believe that success means limiting further war. I guess Gaza and Gazans are just..gone.

  51. 51.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Ken: KSHE is a joke. Once upon a time it was subversive. Remember the dope smoking pig? Yeah, they deep sixed it in (iirc) the late 70s. It’s pure corporate BS now. I gave up listening to them somewhere around 1980.

    Of course, I am just one lonely voice in the wilderness.

  52. 52.

    Betty Cracker

    One thing I’ve always disliked about the rapturous reception of Hillbilly Elegy, which propelled creepy weirdo Vance’s rise to national prominence, is that good actors were sucked into its wake, including Glenn Close and Amy Adams. Vanity Fair notes that Close recently shaded Vance:

    On Sunday, Close shared a smiling selfie featuring her cat, Eve, and wrote that the feline “would have left a bleeding mouse head in the bed of anyone who criticized any kind of lady with a CAT!” Her words appear to reference Vance’s recently resurfaced “childless cat ladies” remark, which he used to denigrate people who choose not to procreate…

    During his victory speech after winning a US Senate seat in 2022, Vance thanked his real mamaw, Bonnie Blanton Vance, who died in 2005, and acknowledged their political differences. (Mamaw was a Democrat.) “You’re not always gonna agree with every vote that I take, [and] you’re not gonna agree with every single amendment that I offer in the United States Senate,” Vance said, “but I will never forget the woman who raised me.”

    Perhaps Mamaw would be ashamed of the sofa-shagger.

  53. 53.

    comrade scotts agenda of rage

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    Back in Central Misery, I’d drive to the other offices in the region I supported, Ames IA, Lincoln NE, Topeka KS and Oklahoma City OK.

    I’d station hop the entire time as the trips ranged from 3-5 hours in the car.  I’d go thru typically at least 3 broadcast areas, usually 4-5.

    Depending on the playlist cycle, I could hear the same song by the same band 3-4 times during any car trip.  Now, the playlist cycles would change in terms of what bands would be more prominent than others.

    It’s funny but they play AC/DC more now (and over the last 15 years) than they actually did when that band was putting out the stuff we hear now.

  54. 54.

    The Kropenhagen Interpretation

    @Baud: Both sides have dour scolds, both have elites.

    One side takes the cultural hits for both from the elite media, while the other side prioritizes the needs of the elite above all else.

  55. 55.

    Layer8Problem

    @Baud:  “The Internet is worthless.”

    I cannot let this stand, sir!  The Internet delivers to us more funny cat videos in a single nanosecond than the average 14th century peasant received in a lifetime!

  56. 56.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Eolirin: Yeah, Biden basically won because about four near-coin-flips came up heads. That also encouraged Trump’s efforts to have the election overturned, because the margins he’d have to reverse weren’t that large.

  58. 58.

    Baud

    @comrade scotts agenda of rage:

    It’s funny but they play AC/DC more now (and over the last 15 years) than they actually did when that band was putting out the stuff we hear now

     

    In real time, there’s a lot of songs that they play that don’t stand the test of time. With oldies, they’re mostly playing the memorable stuff.

  59. 59.

    The Kropenhagen Interpretation

    @Baud: With oldies, they’re mostly playing the memorable stuff.

    Playing out the memorable stuff. Some amazing songs don’t perform super well commercially. That isn’t a good reason to never play one while playing the other until it’s sickening to listen to.

    E.G. I could go the whole rest of my life without hearing Living on a Prayer or Smells Like Teen Spirit again.  Lots more like them. Mostly from bands with deep catalogues.

    The DJ is a professional music knower, get me some deep cuts.

  62. 62.

    catclub

    @Kay: Well, it wasn’t “agonizingly close”. Biden won by 4.5 and had 306 electoral votes. He won solidly.

     

    I thought the last few states that brought in 50+ EV’s AZ, GA, PA,  were all very very close.

  63. 63.

    The Kropenhagen Interpretation

    @Baud: I agree to an extent. But they’ve been playing out songs since well before the internet arrived.

  64. 64.

    Starfish

    @satby: Just because they engage in a lot of domestic violence, and we have at least one circuit court removing even the most minimal levels of accountability does not mean that we should not trust the people who are still allowed to engage in “civil forfeiture” to enrich their departments.

    I have seen zero people here engaging in the police abolition movement where we refer to all jails as cages. We are not raising funds for Mother’s Day or Father’s Day bailout programs.

    I think we have a way to go before we are fully committed to the “all cops are bad” agenda.

  66. 66.

    Baud

    @catclub:

    He’s never relied that much on traditional GOTV.  He relies in the power of the cult, including right wing churches and local initiatives led by right wing business leaders.

  67. 67.

    comrade scotts agenda of rage

    @The Kropenhagen Interpretation:

    “Classic Rock” has basically become the Muzak of the present (and the last 20 years).

    This brings back memories of actual Muzak and toward the end of it’s presence in stores, it was always a treat to hear something “muzaked” that you’d think they’d never touch.

    I remember being in a grocery store in Northern VA, early 90s, and hearing a couple of Black Sabbath songs done as Muzak.  I stood transfixed in the aisle.

    Now, it’s the same “classic rock” stuff in every big box store, every outdoor event.  Like you said, bands with deep catalogues.  And like you said, if I ever hear “Back in Black” again…

  69. 69.

    OzarkHillbilly

    The US air force is refusing to comply with an order to clean drinking water it polluted in Tucson, Arizona, claiming federal regulators lack authority after the conservative-dominated US supreme court overturned the “Chevron doctrine”. Air force bases contaminated the water with toxic PFAS “forever chemicals” and other dangerous compounds.

    Though former US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) officials and legal experts who reviewed the air force’s claim say the Chevron doctrine ruling probably would not apply to the order, the military’s claim that it would represents an early indication of how polluters will wield the controversial court decision to evade responsibility.

    It appears the air force is essentially attempting to expand the scope of the court’s ruling to thwart regulatory orders not covered by the decision, said Deborah Ann Sivas, director of the Stanford University Environmental Law Clinic.

    “It’s very odd,” she added. “It feels almost like an intimidation tactic, but it will be interesting to see if others take this approach and it bleeds over.”

    Chevron is bearing it’s first rotten fruits already.

  70. 70.

    RevRick

    @Baud: The rallies have gotten the campaign thousands of volunteers, more than they likely will know what to do with. I was the head volunteer of both of Obama ‘12 and Clinton ‘16 campaigns in Allentown PA, and over 90% of our efforts were either voter registration drives (usually with huge assists from folks bused in from Westchester County NY) or working the phones to first recruit volunteers to recruit more volunteers to do the door knocking and phone banking. We had our initial organizing meeting for the Obama campaign in November 2011.

    The Harris/Walz campaign is on rocket fuel.

  72. 72.

    PST

    @Geminid:

    I wonder how many Gaza protesters show up in Chicago next week. Whatever the merits of these protests, I have not seen them gather in many people even though many more millions are appalled by the destruction and bloodshed in Gaza. I suspect the protests next week will be another failure in this respect.

    I’ve been following security preparations and demonstration preparations closely on the respective web sites of the city and the groups with permits to march. The main assembly point for demonstrations targeting United Center will be Union Park, about four blocks from where I live (and where I will vote on a convenient day in October). Planning for protests seems half-hearted, almost pro forma. There’s no revolution in the air. Crews are beginning this week to construct fencing that will form a perimeter for pedestrians and cars.

  74. 74.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    Can Biden and Sec Austin stop this? Have they commented on this? Last I checked USAF is under the DOD. They shouldn’t be refusing to follow this court order

  75. 75.

    comrade scotts agenda of rage

    @RevRick:

    In your on-the-ground experience in that geographic area, any idea how voter registration drives then translated into GOTV? Or actual voting from those newly registered voters?  Or is that kind of data not typically gathered?

  80. 80.

    Suzanne

    @Betty Cracker:

    Perhaps Mamaw would be ashamed of the sofa-shagger. 

    Don’t know if anyone around here listens to “Know Your Enemy”, but they did a deep-dive episode about Hillbilly Elegy last week. One of the themes they pointed out is that JV has, his whole life, tried to ingratiate himself and adapt his personality and his interests to align with whomever his father figure was at the time. Obviously this behavior persists!

    One thing I was thinking about on my run this morning: why do Republican men seem to have daddy issues? That’s such a common put-down for women, but I think it bears out much more for men.

  84. 84.

    Professor Bigfoot

    @satby: Trump’s first major endorsement was the Fraternal Order of *POLICE.*

    Yeah, we got reason to believe they’are all assholes unless they’re on TV.

  85. 85.

    The Kropenhagen Interpretation

    @Ken: I’m too young for mimeograph nostalgia. And Nirvana has at least two more songs….

  86. 86.

    Geminid

    @Kay: There is big ceasefire meeting in Doha Thursday. From the wording of their “invitation, ” the US, Qatar and Egypt intend to ram one through. CIA Director Burns and the usual suspects will attend.

    Meanwhile, State Department official Brett McGurk is in Cairo today. He’s trying to hammer out a trilateral agreement between Egypt, Israel and the US regarding control of the Egypt/Gaza border. That will be an important element of the projected ceasefire. US involvement there would not be so exceptional. We kept a battalion of paratroopers in Sinai for decades after the 1978 Egyptian- Israeli peace treaty was implemented.

    And Tony Blinken is scheduled to fly to the Middle East tonight unless the Iranian missiles have started flying. He’ll visit Qatar, the UAE (I think), Egypt and Israel.

    It’s not clear when Iran and Hezbollah will launch a large-scale attack, or even if they will. As Hezbollah leader Nasrallah said, “the waiting is part of [Israel’s] punishment.”

  87. 87.

    3Sice

    The classic rock format is dead. Dad rock stations are now playing alt rock stuff from the 90s to today.

  89. 89.

    satby

    @Starfish: oh, you seem pretty committed.

    My son is taking the police initial screening test today, something he’s decided to pursue fairly late in life at just under the top recruitment age. If he finishes all the requirements and joins the force, he will be a 4th generation cop, going back to my paternal great grandfather in Dublin after the revolution. I’m very proud of him, and all the cops in my family, who helped people, often at the most horrible times in their lives (my dad was a homicide detective).

  90. 90.

    RevRick

    @comrade scotts agenda of rage: Our voter reg drives took place in heavily Hispanic areas of Allentown, so if they registered as Democrats, we would immediately follow up with some contact. But historically, the Hispanic community has a low level of turnout. So if our efforts got a hundred more votes, I would be pleasantly surprised.

    The best GOTV only nets 1 or 2% . Which can make a difference in a close race.

  94. 94.

    M31

    not the biggest fan of German expansionism but if they could take Kalingrad back, rename it Königsburg, and rebuild the 7 bridges, that would be great

  97. 97.

    Suzanne

    @Baud: I think that’s part of it. I also think they either didn’t have father figures at all, or their father figures were bad, and they haven’t done the work on themselves to develop a sense of personal integrity and responsibility.

    Ironically, it’s the women in Vance’s life who have exhibited real responsibility and personal growth.

  98. 98.

    satby

    @zhena gogolia: Thanks. You’ve been keeping it real 👏

    Already rethinking coming back.  Mutuals keep sending me links that I was missed (😆), but when I peeked, so much retconning still going on! This thread has a lot of pie, for example.

    Wish I knew Immanentize’s Twitter handle!

  99. 99.

    M31

    @Baud: lol let’s split Germany back into a ragtag collection of principalities and city-states. Long live the Elector of Brandenburg! Down with the Elector Palatine!

  101. 101.

    Baud

    There was a reddit thread a few weeks ago where the youngsters were fascinated by vinyl records and how they can produce sound using grooves.

    Kind of their version of “how did they build the Pyramids.”

  106. 106.

    lowtechcyclist

    @comrade scotts agenda of rage: ​
     

    This brings back memories of actual Muzak and toward the end of it’s presence in stores, it was always a treat to hear something “muzaked” that you’d think they’d never touch.

    I remember hearing “The Times, They Are A-Changing” Muzaked in 1976. The times, they hadn’t a-changed much, apparently.

  109. 109.

    Leto

    @OzarkHillbilly: @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): from the article:

    But legal experts noted that Chevron does affect EPA enforcement actions like the Tucson order – it only affects the rule-making process.

    Moreover, one arm of the administration cannot sue another, so the military cannot sue the EPA, and the case would never end up in court where the Chevron decision would come into play, said Walter Mugdan, a former EPA Superfund director. Instead, it would be resolved internally by a presidential administration instead of the judiciary.

    Again another reason to vote, and to get everyone to vote Harris/Walz. I’ll simply say that I’m disappointed, and leave it at that.

    Edit: the Air National Guard base where I last served had the exact same problem. Decades of washing fuel/other chemicals off into the soil has left the surrounding area permanently contaminated. The base was in the process of building a new outdoor running track/oval, when they had to stop due to soil contamination. The area routinely has emergency orders issued, by the town, to stop drinking the water due to contamination.

  110. 110.

    Another Scott

    @Ken: Heh.

    I always do a double-take when I hear The Raspberries – Go All The Way (3:25) on the radio.

    1) Such smooth vocal tones along with such gnarly guitars!
    2) What are they singing about? Really??!! ;-)
    3) It came out in 1972! 52 years ago!!

    When I was a kid listening to them at the time when they were new, the radio wasn’t playing music from the 1920s. Comeon, man! Get with the program!!

    What’s worse is that the local NPR station has a weekly show – Hot Jazz Saturday Night – which plays music from the 1930s and 1940s… :-/

    Yeah, yeah, good music is good music. But the homoginization and corpratization of music radio has really damaged something great about America.

    :-(

    [/old-man-yells-at-cloud]

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  111. 111.

    Baud

    @Leto:

    Agreed.

    Also, the federal government is large and the President isn’t going to mediate every interagency dispute.

  114. 114.

    PST

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):

    Can Biden and Sec Austin stop this? Have they commented on this? Last I checked USAF is under the DOD. They shouldn’t be refusing to follow this court order

    It’s not a court order. It’s an order from one arm of the executive branch (the EPA) to another (the Air Force). It should get sorted out like any other inter-agency dispute without recourse to the courts. I searched but could not find any document showing that the Air Force actually claims that the Chevron line of cases has any application.

  115. 115.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @oldster: If the NYT ever decides that Kamala has already won any chance of winning, then they’ll do the same thing again.

    Fixed that for you. The FTFNYT is a MAGAts’ nest of fascist fanbois&girls absolutely sure nothing bad could evah happen to them when the jackboots come goosestepping in.

  118. 118.

    lowtechcyclist

    @The Kropenhagen Interpretation: ​
     

    Suppose the objectives of big box stores and radio stations alike are to be as.inoffensive (to their particular audience) as.possible.

    I guess. As someone who was in his teens and 20s during the era that ‘classic rock’ draws its playlists from, I should be in their target audience. And in fact, I used to listen to classic rock stations frequently. But by about a decade ago, they’d worn out too many songs that I’d once loved to hear, and I stopped listening to classic rock stations altogether.

    Maybe I’m an exception, but I’d think that not playing songs to death would be part of being inoffensive, at least for the radio stations. In the big box stores, I don’t care what they play as long as it’s not too loud to ignore.

  119. 119.

    twbrandt

    There’s a lot of angst floating around about Dems being over confident and too complacent, and I’m just not seeing that. The Harris/Walz campaign continues to hammer on the fact that there is much work to do, and pretty much all left-leaning outlets that I’ve seen continually emphasize that same point. I think Dems understand what’s at stake and will work like hell to make sure Harris wins.

  120. 120.

    Gvg

    @comrade scotts agenda of rage: I gather we have to put in the law that it is not subject to court review. That seems like something that needs to be in a law about the court anyway. Separation of powers. Even if the reason wasn’t outrage over corruption.

    I also think expanding the size just needs to be done. They aren’t handling the cases in a timely manner. The population has grown and the caseload. Should have been expanded years ago.

    As for 18 year terms….haven’t most of them exceeded that already?

  121. 121.

    Betty Cracker

    @satby: I would be proud and terrified in equal measures in your situation. I hope your son stays safe and finds satisfaction in carrying on the family legacy.

    FWIW, I agree that “ACAB” is wrong and wildly counterproductive. But I see how people get sucked into that mindset. The profession draws a staggeringly disproportionate number of sociopaths and bullies for obvious reasons, and the militarization of police forces is a serious problem.

  122. 122.

    Baud

    @twbrandt:

    I agree. But it’s also hard for people to ignore the result the last time we ran a woman against Trump, no matter how many things you can point to that are different this time.

  123. 123.

    The Kropenhagen Interpretation

    @lowtechcyclist: Maybe I’m an exception, but I’d think that not playing songs to death would be part of being inoffensive, at least for the radio stations.

    Hey, I’m with you on this. Worth remembering, though, that a lot of people are kinda basic.

  125. 125.

    lowtechcyclist

    @3Sice:

    The classic rock format is dead. Dad rock stations are now playing alt rock stuff from the 90s to today.

    Yeah, but there are a lot of Boomer grandpas around.

  126. 126.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    @Gvg:

    Clarence Thomas, 32 years, 295 days

    John Roberts, 18 years, 319 days

    Samuel Alito, 18 years, 195 days

    Sonya Sotomayor, 15 years, 5 days

    Elena Kagan, 14 years, 6 days

    Neil Gorsuch, 7 years, 125 days

    Brett Kavanaugh, 5 years, 312 days

    Amy Coney Barrett, 3 years, 291 days

    Ketanji Brown Jackson, 2 years, 44 days

    (Source)

    18 years is a very attractive cutoff for that list. Clarence Thomas is #10 (so far) on the all-time longest-term Supreme Court justices since the founding of the country.

  127. 127.

    UncleEbeneezer

    @satby: I look at cops like men.  Are there no good ones?  Of course not.  But l totally understand why people (especially women and LGBTQ people) will assume any given man is a danger/threat based on our collective behavior and their experiences with us.  So when they say “men are trash/dogs” I don’t think it’s that unreasonable a statement because collectively and historically, we are.  I’ve never liked the ACAB (all cops are bastards) slogan that is popular among Defund the Police and Abolitionists because it’s so obviously an attempt to be edgy but really turns normal people off.  But if someone makes a general, negative statement about cops (especially if the person saying it is Black, Native/Indigenous, LGBTQ etc.) it doesn’t really bother me at all.  It’s really the system of policing that is the problem (and the amount of our electorate who loves the police as fascist bullies) much more so than the officers themselves.

    More importantly though, welcome back!

  128. 128.

    M31

    @Ceci n est pas mon nym:

    have a nice big retirement party for the 18-year plus group, then impeach and remove the ones who obviously lied in their senate hearing, and our new 3-person court could get a lot of shit done

  129. 129.

    Starfish

    @satby: I think “All Cops Are Bad” is a simplistic world view that both libertarians and some folks involved in the black lives matter movement either support now or supported in the past.  I did not see true police abolitionists until the Black Lives Matter movement.

    There was a different accountability agenda being proposed before we got into the widely publicized murders that some cops engaged in.

    I think there are a lot of issues in policing that communities are wrestling with.

    These issues include:
    – Are we criminalizing poverty? Banning public camping is banning being homeless, but homeless people setting fires start forest fires in the west so what do we do about this? This is a HUGE issue.

    – Are police the correct responders to mental health incidents?

    Some communities are creating services either inside or outside of the police departments to respond to mental health incidents to reduce “suicide by cop” and other issues of that nature.

    – Should the police be policing themselves, or should there be a community oversight board that has actual power? The way that bad policing happens, but the monetary damages granted to people harmed by the police are paid out of tax dollars, removes accountability.

  130. 130.

    Matt

    What I will say about Ben Dreyfuss that is in keeping with the decorum of this site is that no, he is not in fact psyched about the vibes moving in Kamala Harris’s direction.

    Does he know he’s posting under his own name? Like, that we can see him type that and then compare it to other things he’s said?

  131. 131.

    Another Scott

    @lowtechcyclist: I had a HS friend who knew someone in his cohort who was a grandpa at 32.

    🫤

    A great uncle’s mother got married when she was 12 years old.

    People are weird. Progress is slow, but can happen.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  132. 132.

    japa21

    @satby: Agree.  However, we (and I include myself) sometimes see the comments of a few people and extend them to a wider swath of the people who comment here.  There are a small minority who insist on the ACAB meme.  My guess is around 5.  But you are right in that there can be a lot of bigotry expressed and I just choose to ignore it.  I tried countering it in the past, but efforts were futile.

  133. 133.

    UncleEbeneezer

    @satby: Good for him.  Hopefully he can effect some change.  There are plenty of good cops who try to do their job ethically and with great intentions.  We just need way more of them and a system that weeds out and manages the bad ones more effectively.

  134. 134.

    satby

    @Betty Cracker: The profession draws a staggeringly disproportionate number of sociopaths and bullies for obvious reasons, and the militarization of police forces is a serious problem.

    It is and it was in my dad’s time, and he died in 1989 at age 54 (and the stress of the job was a factor). He always said a big problem was the smaller towns had no professional training and often just handed out badges to cronies. He loved lampooning self important authoritarian cops, I have such good stories. But there’s been a lot of work on trying to retrain cops toward a more community focus and reforming police work as well as the criminal justice system. Which people should notice and give credit to.

    As my dad said, even if they hate cops, that’s who they call when their car is stolen or their house is broken into.

  135. 135.

    Baud

    @UncleEbeneezer:

    So when they say “men are trash/dogs” I don’t think it’s that unreasonable a statement because collectively and historically, we are.

     

    Would you feel the same if the phrase were “all men are trash/dogs?”

    I too am not so offended by statements of collective responsibility, assuming the statement has a legitimate basis. But “all” changes the meaning, just like “every” would.

  138. 138.

    Kay

    @Geminid:

    The protestors aren’t popular and many of their tactics are terrible but unfortunately they have been vindicated so far – Gaza humanitarian disaster continues unabated for 10 months with no end in sight.
    Biden officials were on social media yesterday recognizing 75 years of the Geneva Conventions and I wish they would just get off – people from all over the world were responding with photos and articles and resolutions re: war crimes. They’re just not credible on it. It’s almost goading people into being incredibly cynical about international laws and norms.
    Sometimes a person or persons just can’t be the messenger. This is one of those times. I literally cringe when Samantha Power posts. Talk about leading with your chin.

    But it won’t impact the election. Most Americans don’t and won’t care. Harris is polling okay in MI so she’s past that hurdle. The facts remain the facts though, and at some point there will be a reckoning and an accounting. Just not now.

  139. 139.

    Suzanne

    Tom Nichols tweets:

    One thing that comes out of this, and you see it as well with Sacks and Ackman, is how much guys like Elon crave influence and respect. Being fabulously wealthy just isn’t enough; like Vivek, they’re the guys in your seminar who hated not being taken seriously.

    Daddy issues, absolutely.

  140. 140.

    Fair Economist

    @Another Scott: The basis of pop music changed pretty radically in the mid- century,  from the 1600 to 1900 classical “common practice era” to blues. In the 50’s they routinely played 200 year old music on the radio because it was still in the same tradition. After that pop music stations played back to the shift in the 50s but no further. That’s still the rule, and will probably stay the rule, for centuries even, until and unless we have another major shift in the harmonic basid of music.

  141. 141.

    PST

    @Starfish: Concerning the ACAB worldview, one item I noted when I was reviewing plans for demonstrations at the upcoming convention is that “Defund the Police” no longer appears to be an objective or talking point. The “March on the DNC Coalition,” which looks like the lead organization and the one that has been getting necessary permits, has as its demand, “Stop police crimes! Community control of the police now!” While that has an anti-cop vibe to it, the substance is mainstream and unobjectionable. Of course police should not be allowed to commit crimes. Of course the police should be under the control of the popularly elected government, not an autonomous force. Pretty bland stuff.

  142. 142.

    Jeffro

    Has anyone thought about asking trumpov, “You know, sir…you don’t have to run, right?  You could just retire on your billions, enjoy your many criminal court cases being dismissed one by one, and spend some time golfing (or taking long walks on the beach with Melania)?”

  144. 144.

    Gvg

    @satby: we haven’t really examined the problem. Here or Americans in general or even the police in general. Some specific police yes. That is actually why they sort of all are bad. Unaccountable power is corrupting absolutely, and no one has really taken the time to even think about police in decades. Some of it is we just have had too many other things going on and we just threw money and some hero worship (superficial and fake) at them and nothing else. So they have no direction, and no clean up. Of course they are mostly bad as departments, not equally so though. We also threw problems on them that weren’t really police problems like mental health sufferers but not enough facilities to put them or professionals trained to help and a population that didn’t care. Then the homeless people and a lot of callous IGMFY voters….

    Let’s look at this. Take away non police burdens and civic areas do something? What? Homeless has multiple causes not same balance everywhere in the country, so multiple solutions. Takes awhile. Try to quit blaming police.

    Mental health. More places, more trained people, takes awhile. Train public to call different number than police?

    Corruption and violence in police system. Unequal doses some worse than others. Set standards. Explain to people all professions have corruption and it’s normal to have to clean out, worshiping as perfect leads to bad corrupting good and coverups. Need to not panic when someone is caught and punished, allow firing after investigations….do not allow another department to rehire. Courts need to hire more I think? I think backlog is supposed to be related to this. I think I have heard their needs to be a national database?

  145. 145.

    jonas

    @comrade scotts agenda of rage:  It’s funny but they play AC/DC more now (and over the last 15 years) than they actually did when that band was putting out the stuff we hear now.

    I realized I reached middle age when the local “Oldies” station was playing music by bands I listened to and saw in high school and college.

  146. 146.

    Mousebumples

    OT, ish – WISCONSIN VOTERS, please vote in today’s primary, if you haven’t already. Polls are open until 8pm. You can go to http://myvote.wi.gov to find your polling place.

    In addition to the August primary (yay, vote got Tammy Baldwin!), please vote NO on the 2 Constitutional Amendments.

    I also got to vote for Dr. Lyerly twice, so that was fun.

    Semi related – I got a call yesterday (multiple calls from a local unknown number) that I picked up.

    Won’t I please vote for PRO-TRUMP Republican Roger Roth? 🤮 He’s not the Trump endorsed candidate, but don’t they have my phone number as donating to WisDems?

    I just said I already voted and asked to be removed from their call list. But seriously, how did they think I was voting the GOP part of my ballot?

  148. 148.

    BritinChicago

    @Betty Cracker: If you want a book about escaping from a poor rural childhood, Tara Westover’s Educated is a much better book (I read them both at the time they came out, thanks to the Chicago Public Library system, which is great) by a very much better person.

  149. 149.

    Steve LaBonne

    @Matt McIrvin: Trump’s people already are trying to shut him up by keeping him off the trail, easy to do because he’s decrepit and lazy. But he’s finding other ways to get his toxic insanity out there, and I’m hopeful that he no longer has a shred of self control and will keep it right up until November. Every time he gets attention his poll numbers go down.

  151. 151.

    Jeffro

    @Ken:

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    @comrade scotts agenda of rage:

    @Baud:

    I am finding more and more songs & bands that have hit my lifetime ‘play limit’ – even songs and bands that I used to really like.

    Cville has a pretty good station, 106.1, that plays a really wide variety of music (all genres, although they’re heavy on ‘adult alternative’) plus local artists I’ve never even heard of plus in-studio live recordings of artists (of all fame levels) who stopped by while in town.  Pretty good stuff to have on in the background most days!

  155. 155.

    Jeffro

    @comrade scotts agenda of rage: I remember being in a grocery store in Northern VA, early 90s, and hearing a couple of Black Sabbath songs done as Muzak.  I stood transfixed in the aisle.

    one of the few redeeming things about Instagram is the fairly large number of accounts where Musician X does a number by, say, a heavy metal band as a surf punk song, or as a piano ballad.  It’s very cool…sometimes.  =)

    There’s a guy named Joe or Joey from Syracuse who does “Wasted Years” by Iron Maiden as piano ballad, and it’s crazy good stuff.

  156. 156.

    Betty Cracker

    @satby: Your dad sounds like a great guy, and I’m sorry you lost him so young.

    He always said a big problem was the smaller towns had no professional training and often just handed out badges to cronies.

    He sure was right about that! In my county, the current sheriff is a former Gov. Rick Scott chief of staff and a partisan douchebag who slams Democrats on his social media accounts. He also seems to be corrupt and heartless with his own workforce, and the last point might bite him on the ass at long last.

    This year, he’s up against another Republican (a working deputy) who seems to have funding and public sentiment behind him. (It has to be a Republican because there are no elected Dems at any level in this county. The primary IS the general, basically.)

    Two Dems had hopelessly thrown their hats into the ring as usual, but they withdrew their candidacies and endorsed the least-evil Repub because they recognized that being in the race would split the vote and help reelect the incumbent. Wonders never cease!

  158. 158.

    Trivia Man

    @comrade scotts agenda of rage: Agree – i heard some excellent Muzak covers, including the Black Sabbath you probably heard. They had some real musicians.

    Also, i listen to that ild music still. Mostly full albums or deep cuts. Im ok if they just stop playing the top 40 from 1960-1980. Ive heard all if it a lot.

  159. 159.

    UncleEbeneezer

    @Baud: Not really.  I know plenty of women who have said “all men are trash” but I know damn well that they love, respect and work with many, many men.  Even when they say “all men” they don’t actually mean it.  We all say shit, all the time, that isn’t meant to be taken literally.  So I err on the side of assuming that it’s a generalization that doesn’t actually signal some deep hatred of men, but just a venting of incredible frustration with their terrible experience with (far too many of) us.

  162. 162.

    TBone

    Digging up more dirt on JV Pantzed.  Seems he shit the bed, again.

    https://edition.cnn.com/2024/08/13/politics/kentucky-startup-appharvest-jd-vance/index.html

    The rise and fall of the company, and Vance’s role in it, cuts against his image as a champion for the working class — an image that helped catapult him to the top of the Republican ticket as Donald Trump’s running mate.

    A CNN review of public documents, and interviews with a dozen former workers, shows that AppHarvest not only failed as a business after pursuing rapid growth, but also provided a grim job experience for many of the working-class Kentuckians Vance has vowed to help.

    Grim is being too polite.

  163. 163.

    Omnes Omnibus

    We didn’t have faith that Biden could win.  Now we are overconfident.  What is the appropriate amount of confidence to have?  Enjoy the god damned ride and do the work.  Confidence does not equal complacency.

  164. 164.

    Baud

    @UncleEbeneezer:

    Ok.

    FWIW I don’t agree that anything goes.  Everyone get frustrated with everyone else for some reason or another. I’m ok with a certain level of collective griping, but I try to keep some somewhat subjective limits to keep things from going too far.

  165. 165.

    Booger

    @Baud: All right, imma jump right in here with a plug for my new fave, WNRN radio. Listener supported music radio covering a big chunk of Virginia, online at WNRN.org. I’ve bought more songs in the last six months from hearing them played on WNRN than in the last couple of years. Give em a listen.

  170. 170.

    BR

    @TBone: ​

    Also it was obvious to those of us close to the agtech space that indoor ag startups were doomed to failure and the VCs who put money into them were the most clueless investors out there, looking to be fleeced. So he was investing in an unethical company *and* a bad investor.

  175. 175.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @Betty Cracker: The one positive thing I took from Hillbilly Elegy was the importance of having someone in your life who pushes you to fight your way out of the same cycle of despair that sucked down your ancestors and contemporaries. For JD, whose mother was a druggie, that was Mamaw, and (as he seems to admit) he owes her bigtime.

    (NB I say this as someone who was doubly blest: The son of two hillbillies who picked up stakes and headed to the big city in search of work almost a decade before I was born. Whose own parents, together or separately, came across the Atlantic ca. 1900 to a nation where they couldn’t even speak the language in search of a life where they didn’t have to have multiple children to ensure at least one made it to adulthood.)

  176. 176.

    TBone

    @satby: it is of interest but the paywall was unattractive – it told me my “window is closing.”  GTFOH 😂

    My stepdad was a cop before becoming a college professor of American and Russian history (taught separately).

    Having also worked for an attorney who repped the FOPs in five counties with many, many depts. and a lot of client contact, I have many pro and con police stories.

  177. 177.

    satby

    @UncleEbeneezer: nuance is not a thing here, or even out in the wider world for the most part. Substitute a racist slur for the statements made above and see if they still scan.

    A very salty man called me yesterday all set to bitch me out about boycotting his blog. Plus people kept saying I was missed. I found that hard to believe.

  179. 179.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @Baud: In real time, there’s a lot of songs that they play that don’t stand the test of time. With oldies, they’re mostly playing the memorable stuff.​

    I challenge any of my contemporaries to pull up a playlist from WCAO (AM 600, Baltimore) from a random day in 1965-1967 and not turn the audio off in disgust within the first hour. Like most everything else in the multiverse, “classic rock” obey’s Sturgeon’s Law: 90% of it is shit. It’s the remaining 10% we hear now on the moldy-oldies stations.

  180. 180.

    Geminid

    @Booger: Yes, the “Wren.” I listened to them this morning. I usually switch between WNRN and DC’s all-news WTOP (on 107.7 FM, their Fredericksburg transmitter). They do a lot of national political coverage.

    I also listen to Harrisonburg’s WSVA 550 AM a lot. Gotta get those dairy and grain prices!

  182. 182.

    Ridnik Chrome

    The way I know we’re going to win is the number of Republicans throwing Trump under the bus.

    I saw on NY1 this morning that Susan Molinari just endorsed Kamala Harris. The Molinaris are old school Staten Island Republicans. If they’re abandoning Trump, then Trump’s in bad, bad trouble.

  188. 188.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    @Uncle Cosmo: My peak listening years were probably about 1968-1975. During that period, at least one radio station I listened to started mixing 50s and early 60s oldies into their playlist. I assumed they got bored with playing “American Pie” a hundred times a day and needed something new. Got to know some great old stuff that way, but also a lot of the old stuff was crap too. “It’s my party and I’ll cry if I want to”?​

    My daughter rediscovered the “oldies” of my era and became a rabid Dylan fan. She was appalled that I never got into Dylan, but in my defense the Dylan stuff that made it to the Top 40 radio was as much crap as the rest of it. I mostly remember “Lay Lady Lay” and “Tambourine Man”, both of which got played to death and which I hated.

  189. 189.

    lowtechcyclist

    @M31:

    not the biggest fan of German expansionism but if they could take Kalingrad back, rename it Königsburg, and rebuild the 7 bridges, that would be great

    You’ve probably seen this XKCD, but just in case you haven’t. :-)

  193. 193.

    M31

    @lowtechcyclist: lol, amazingly, no! that’s so great lol​
     

    lol I knew someone from there and the first thing I asked her was ‘have you been over the 7 bridges’ and that’s when I learned that not all the original bridges are still there *sniff* of course there has been a lot of construction and several wars between the 1730s and now

  196. 196.

    satby

    @The Thin Black Duke: yes, and was shot by a guy that had been bounced from 4 (I think) other departments. He’s going to get convicted for it too.

    As @Gvg: noted (though many of these reforms are being worked on). And I’m all for police reform, as is my family. Nothing hurts or endangers good cops more than bad ones. BLM and the travesty at Uvalde is why my kid decided to apply. He understands the mission. 

    allow firing after investigations….do not allow another department to rehire.

  198. 198.

    3Sice

    @different-church-lady:

    I was going to make a Puddle of Mudd joke, but yikes:

    “Puddle of Mudd’s Wes Scantlin Arrested on Outstanding Warrant Following SWAT Standoff After Alleged Traffic Violation.”

  201. 201.

    cain

    @Matt McIrvin: I’m more for keeping them separate. I feel like it’s colonialism if we incorporate them. They should be their own country. I suppose they like this quasi-state thing.

    DC though should be a state and we should incorporate them as a state.

  204. 204.

    satby

    @Denali5: I wasn’t gone because it wasn’t calm. I was gone because of the incredibly tedious replays of the weeks we all lived through and were able to draw our own conclusions from.  Some people should get to real therapists instead of trying to work out their issues here.

  205. 205.

    cain

    @Baud:

    This. He hadn’t even opened up field offices in some places even in 2016. It’s what led to our over-confidence. Then we got back stabbed by the racists.

  206. 206.

    Matt McIrvin

    @M31: Apparently they’d only need to rebuild two of them (destroyed in World War II), but there are also other bridges that didn’t exist then.

  209. 209.

    Ridnik Chrome

    OT: As a Cubs fan, I’m really enjoying that Steve Garvey appears to be on his way to a blowout loss in the Senate race in California.

  211. 211.

    cain

    @comrade scotts agenda of rage:

    Reminds me of the this by Porcupine Tree, prog rock band – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ThXGrdgw9sk

    “Sound of Muzak”

    The only lyric piece of of this I didn’t like was this:

    “The music of rebellion makes you want to rage But it’s made by millionaires who are nearly twice your age”

    If we’re talking about 60s artists, who are millionaires now. I’m pretty sure those folks knew what rebellion was. Artists like Buffalo Springfield” wrote some great lyrics about rebellion.

  212. 212.

    Matt McIrvin

    @cain: The PR independence faction seems to be a smaller left-wing minority though. It just seems to be this perpetually unresolved situation, but the partisan political needs of mainlanders are not going to drive it.

  213. 213.

    M31

    just in case anyone is not done with dragging JD Vance for couch and drag jokes, here’s the Fark thread with the prompt

    J.D. Vance’s Drag Name: Go

    besides the obvious “Divan” (though I wouldn’t want to pollute the glorious memory of Divine with that piece of shit loser Vance), some of my favorites are

    Pussy Velour
    Corey Chaise
    Mike Pence

    lol it’s relentless and the couchfucker deserves all the piling on there is and more

  214. 214.

    MCA1

    @Uncle Cosmo: I don’t think I’d go as far as 90%.  I think the funnel of commercial radio filters out plenty of perfectly good music – those second tier songs that everyone’s forgotten about but were really good.  We don’t need to hear every tune from every album, but there are a lot of times my phone starts auto-playing and I come across something beyond the two singles on an album that got radio play back in the day and think “Dang, that was a really good song that no one’s heard in 30 years.”

  216. 216.

    WereBear

    @Spanky: Because a chaotic inner life begs for guardrails, even a cage.

    Better than the torment they have in trying to make decisions when no one has taught them how.

  217. 217.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Another Scott: ​
     

    I had a HS friend who knew someone in his cohort who was a grandpa at 32.

    🫤

    A great uncle’s mother got married when she was 12 years old.

    People are weird. Progress is slow, but can happen.

    OK, but I was responding to a comment that the classic rock format is dead because ‘Dad Rock’ these days is alt-rock from the 1990s to the present, and my response was that there’s a shitload of grandpas still listening to classic rock. (Boomers, though I didn’t specifically say that.)

    Sure, not all grandparents are >60 years old. But it’s all those people in their 60s and 70s still listening to the radio that keep the classic rock format alive, for whatever it’s worth.

  218. 218.

    Jackie

    This is happy news!

    “The federal government is processing citizenship requests at the fastest clip in a decade, moving rapidly through a backlog that built up during the Trump administration and the coronavirus pandemic,” the New York Times reports.

    “At ceremonies in courthouses, convention centers and sports arenas across the country, thousands of immigrants are becoming new Americans every week — and becoming eligible to vote in time for the presidential election this fall.”

    Hopefully a lot of  brand new Harris/Walz voters!

  220. 220.

    M31

    @Matt McIrvin: OK, rebuilding the two destroyed bridges is the new slogan of Make Prussia Great Again campaign

    then we can all put on powdered wigs, play the flute, and be gay for Frederick the Great cosplay

    then have JS Bach come over and improvise a fugue on my new theme

    now this is history of topology PLUS

  223. 223.

    Kay

    @BritinChicago:

    If you liked Educated read I’m Glad my Mom Died. What I loved about both books is they respect the reader- unlike Hillbilly Elegy. There’s no lecture embedded in the stories. Vance makes the mistake so many authors make – he thinks he has to LEAD his reader to each and every conclusion. He leaves no room for your own thinking or own experience.

    If the Educated author were JD Vance she would write “in summary, religious fundamentalism is bad for girls” or the I’m Glad My Mom author would write “as you now clearly see, celebrity in childhood can be damaging as can eating disorders” They just tell us what happened and what they think about it. They don’t insist we agree or validate their opinions or put them in a teacher role.

  224. 224.

    JML

    Part of the attraction of the 18 year term is that you would expand out the candidate choices for the Court again, and you would have less drive to drop someone on the Court in their 40’s who doesn’t know anything and hasn’t done anything just to try to land them on the bench for 30+ years. (we’ve also lost something important by almost exclusively picking Justices from the federal judiciary, most of whom have little understanding of how government actually works)

    It will be enormously difficult to get this kind of reform done, but a) that doesn’t mean it’s not worth trying, b) it’s a good political issue, and c) even if you only get some of the pieces of it it should have a real impact.

    It’s a little sad, that expansion of government is frequently so radioactive; things would function better for the judiciary if we expanded the court and added more judges to some of the circuits. The House frankly needs more members to actually serve the people; we’ve been locked at this number for what…70 years? Ridiculous, but right-wingers lose their minds on people over this, and the deeply stupid and complacent media have sold people on “government bad and stupid, durr” for 30 years…

  225. 225.

    cain

    @Geminid:

    I can’t imagine them attacking. They’d get their ass kicked and then in that moment of weakness the other ME Sunni based countries would swoop in. They know this.

    It’s all Uno cards at this point, ‘reverse, reverse, skip, skip, draw 4 uno”

    That ceasefire must happen and Hamas needs to realize they have no goddam friends. They need to get in line. Given that they are ok with having their own people murdered to save their own skin…  I wish the Palestinians would break out of their news bubble and see the bullshit from Hamas.

  226. 226.

    rikyrah

    @p.a.:

    The positive press will turn.  It’s what they do.  Honesty has a liberal bias, and they’ll do whatever it takes to be perceived as unbiased.

     

    There is no positive press.

    They’re doing their best not to report anything Harris/Walz

  228. 228.

    Chris

    @UncleEbeneezer:

    ACAB comes from frustration at decades of so-called “reforms” that are supposed to make the police better and somehow never actually do.  We give them body cams so that significant abuses can be caught and punished.  They turn off the body cams.  Nothing happens.  We give them exhaustive training in de-escalation and non-lethal confrontation and the equipment that goes with it.  They refuse to apply the training or the equipment.  Nothing happens.  We appoint reformist police commissioners to try and rein in the worst abuses in the system.  The cops, with some help from their union, simply ignore the commissioner and go on as before.  Nothing happens.

    This is also, incidentally, why blaming “the system” and not the people in it is just a little too easy: a hell of a lot of what’s wrong with “the system” is that most of the people in it will push back furiously and sometimes violently against any attempt to make them anything more than just a self-directed mafia.  The extended coast-to-coast police riot that we had all through the summer of 2020, with numerous egregious acts of assault caught on camera with, again, no consequences, is an example.  The average cop runs on the same sense of aggrieved entitlement as the Chamber of Commerce plutocrats, Supreme Court justices, child-molesting clerics, and other such people that we routinely dunk on in other threads here.  They know they’ve got a sweet racket going, and they’re going to protect it any way they can.

    There is a reason the frustration has erupted all the way to ACAB, and while I doubt if abolishing the police would solve a whole hell of a lot, I think at this point it’s incumbent on the so-called “moderate” reformers to explain to us not only what they’re planning to do to create a more law-abiding and accountable police force, but how they’re planning to make those good ideas actually work where all the previous ones failed.

  229. 229.

    cain

    @Betty Cracker:

    Us Portlanders definitely see the shit attitude Portland police has here. Most cops are fine, and very professional. I’ve never had a problem – but then again I seem to generate positive vibes with cops for some reason (and bartenders).

  230. 230.

    frosty

    @satby: the incessant insistence here that all cops are bad is one (of many) of the least attractive things about this place.

    Thank you. It pisses me off. These comments are slandering my family.

  231. 231.

    Another Scott

    @Booger: I heard them for a few minutes driving from NoVA to Winston-Salem a few weeks ago.

    Old Johnny Cash to new stuff, back to back.

    A great mix and far too uncommon.

    Reminded me of the old WRNR in Annapolis, especially Damien’s show.  Just a wonderful mix of music.  Unfortunately, the transmitter was something like 300W at the time so it was almost impossible to get in NoVA most of the time.  :-/  Of course, it’s changed hands and is a different format now (though there’s a ghost of it online).  Sic transit and all that.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  232. 232.

    rikyrah

    @Geminid:

    @Matt McIrvin: I wonder how many Gaza protesters show up in Chicago next week. Whatever the merits of these protests, I have not seen them gather in many people even though many more millions are appalled by the destruction and bloodshed in Gaza. I suspect the protests next week will be another failure in this respect.

     

    Federal Judge made the ruling yesterday that the route set by the City of Chicago was ok for the protesters. They are not going to be allowed near the United Center. protest route will stop blocks from the United Center. These aren’t industrial areas. These are working neighborhoods. So, yeah, good luck with thinking that you’re going to clown near someone’s home who is already pissed off at the inconveniences the DNC is bringing to their lives.
    Good luck with that.

  233. 233.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Jeffro: Trump has actually been convicted on one of the felony charges, and while I doubt he’ll actually go to prison on that one, he’s got to think that some kind of punishment beyond fines is a real possibility unless he can get back the effective immunity that comes of being a sitting President.

    And given his age and health, he might not even live beyond a second presidential term. Even if he survives the next four years, while it may not literally be possible for him to abrogate the Constitution and become President for Life, he may be able to do that in his own imagination.

  234. 234.

    tam1MI

    @comrade scotts agenda of rage:

    Back in Central Misery, I’d drive to the other offices in the region I supported, Ames IA, Lincoln NE, Topeka KS and Oklahoma City OK.

    I’d station hop the entire time as the trips ranged from 3-5 hours in the car.  I’d go thru typically at least 3 broadcast areas, usually 4-5.

    Depending on the playlist cycle, I could hear the same song by the same band 3-4 times during any car trip.

    It’s regional too. Whenever I would drive from Michigan to Tennessee to visit my sister and (now ex-) brother-in-law I would go by Seymour, Indiana and every single DNA time I did the radio stations would be playing a John Mellencamp song.

    I recently was in a discussion on a message board concerning a biography of the late Ben Orr of the Cars and several people there mentioned visiting his grave near his hometown of Cleveland and hearing Cars songs on the radio. (Mostly JUST WHAT I NEEDED).

  235. 235.

    cain

    @Suzanne:

    I’m not sure if it is Daddy issues. While Elon was flashy during his rise. It was only after his wife divorced him that he started to spiral. I think he’s been doing a lot of drugs and alcohol and is in a fit of black depression. The man needs serious help.

  236. 236.

    satby

    @japa21: thank you for catching that I was also making a larger point about bigotry on this blog, not just about cops. On a number of things and in the many instances of ignoring what POC have directly stated.

  237. 237.

    Chris

    @Ridnik Chrome:

    The number of Republicans who’ve come out and endorsed Harris…  I mean, it’s not a majority, it’s not even a large minority, 95% of the party is still all-in for Donald Trump, but still, wow.  I can’t think of a lot of precedent for this.  I certainly don’t remember it happening in 2016, even though everybody in both parties “knew” Trump was going to lose and giving him that sort of kick was assumed to be a free action.

  238. 238.

    E.

    @satby: In my neighborhood we most definitely do not call the cops when our homes or cars are broken into. And why would that be?

  239. 239.

    lowtechcyclist

    @satby: ​
     

    He always said a big problem was the smaller towns had no professional training and often just handed out badges to cronies.

    It’s hardly just small towns that are the problem. It was big-city cops who ‘kettled’ George Floyd protesters – trapped them in a city block, told them to disperse but made it impossible, and then beat them when they failed to follow impossible commands. How many police who would normally be ‘good cops’ were part of the kettling – who maybe didn’t beat anyone, but still provided some of the muscle that made the operation possible?

    When the police of NYC and Chicago turned their backs en masse on mayors that tried to do the least thing to hold their bad apples accountable, were they all ‘bad apples’?

    When people show me who they are, I believe them.

  240. 240.

    Kay

    I actually think Hillbilly is two books. There’s the memoir he started to write and wrote for half the book then there’s the realization that he can cash in on Trump and media’s fawning over white working class.

    The memoir had the potential to be good. The abrupt turn to “this life story is timely and will promote my political career” is clumsy and manipulative and just bad. It’s one big ideologically motivated lecture.

  241. 241.

    2liberal

    @p.a.:  Corollary: statehood for DC & PR.  What’s the star design for 52 states?

     

    The people in CA, 39 million of them, are drastically under represented in the US Senate.  Break up California!  It will need a trifecta to do it….

  243. 243.

    UncleEbeneezer

    @satby: There’s a world of difference between a generalization about people in an oppressed group and ones about their oppressors.  When someone bashes men, it doesn’t do anything besides momentarily hurt my feelings.  It doesn’t result in laws, discrimination or violence targeting men.  There’s no power behind it.  Treating both as the same, makes no sense to me.  They aren’t the same.

    Generalizations about Black People have a long and ugly history in this country of being an essential part of the justification of some of the most horrific actions and laws in human history.  Generalizations about White People (or police) don’t do anything like that.

    There has been a very real attempt by White Supremacists and Incels to weaponize Colorblind, All Lives, #NotAllMen language to help bring Racism, Misogyny etc. back to the surface after years of them being socially unacceptable.  The fact that the Andrew Tates, Steve Bannons and Ben Shapiros of the world love to pull the “but what if I said that about (insert oppressed group)?” false-equivalence maneuver is more than enough reason for me to know that it is something we should all avoid and reject.  It’s a bad faith move that only works by manipulating our desire for fairness to overlook the extreme category error of why “Black Lives Matter” and “Blue Lives Matter” are not even remotely, the same thing.

  244. 244.

    satby

    @PST: Chicago was one of the first cities in the nation to roll out a community policing program. I worked on it on the non-profit organization’s side as a VISTA, the year before it became AmeriCorp. That was 33 years ago. Police reform, like education reform, is a tug-o-war between progressive and reactionary forces in our society.

  245. 245.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Baud: ​

    Would you feel the same if the phrase were “all men are trash/dogs?”

    A close friend of mine used to say that with great regularity. Can’t say it bothered me.​

    I guess the question is, would “Almost all cops are bastards” be satisfactory?

  246. 246.

    Another Scott

    @lowtechcyclist: +1

    Just playing stream-of-consciousness conversation this morning.  Since we don’t have threaded comments here, it seemed to fit as a reply to you there.

    💡

    I know!  I’ll suggest to JC and WG that we have threaded comments!!1

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  248. 248.

    Matt McIrvin

    @frosty: My family had a lot of Bernie voters and “dump Biden” advocates, this blog slanders them all the time.

    Cops too. They were always very nice to me. That doesn’t mean they’d be nice to everyone. Their politics tended not to be great.

  249. 249.

    The Kropenhagen Interpretation

    @lowtechcyclist: I guess the question is, would “Almost all cops are bastards” be satisfactory?

    I think the better inclination would be to focus on bastards among police organizations and choose language that doesn’t put it on each individual.

    The same way I avoid saying someone is a racist; I say an idea is racist or a statement or a law.

  250. 250.

    Kent

    Folks, every election in this country is always close.  And this one will be too.  It is the structure of the country we live in with an Electoral College designed to advantage slavery still chugging along advantaging the descendants of slavers.

    The only real exceptions in the past 50 years were Reagan in 1980 and Obama in 2008 and both of those were fairly unique elections with the economy in the tanks and immense fatigue about the incumbent (Carter and Bush).

    The unique set of circumstances that led to Obama’s easy win in 2008 aren’t going to replicate (financial crisis, Iraq war fatigue, Katrina incompetence, etc.)  Bush’s approval was in the 20s in the last months of his presidency.

    So do things look up?   Yes.  But will be be biting our nails election night when we slowly watch the returns come in and Trump’s numbers look better than anyone expected?  Yes.  And could he win?  Very much yes.

    Don’t do like the Republicans did at their convention last month and celebrate the win before it is actually in the books.

  251. 251.

    UncleEbeneezer

    @Chris: Just fyi, you are preaching to the choir here.  From 2017-2023 I was heavily involved in local police reform efforts.  It’s a both/and problem including the system and the people who inhabit it.  I don’t personally get mad at anyone who loathes the police.  I’ve heard enough of their stories and their venting doesn’t bother me.  That said I try to avoid ACAB types because they are usually extremely performative and unrealistic in their activism.  And many are extremely out of touch with the sentiments expressed by their own community, who don’t want NO POLICE, they just want police that treat them like they treat White People in the suburbs.

  253. 253.

    Geminid

    @cain: Iran is a big country geographically with a population of 85 million. They really don’t have any substantial external threats besides Israel bombing them, and they chose that conflict with Israel. But a lot of Iranians hate the regime, so the government would run domestic risks if they got into a major war.

    Retired Israeli general Amos Yadlin said a few weeks ago that Iran does not want to fight it out with Israel now, that Iran’s strategy is long term; they want to isolate Israel by means of a long war of attrition both material and psychological.

    The Hamas leader’s assasination in Teheran was hugely embarrassing though, and the IRGC in particular is said to favor a forceful response. The newly elected President is cautioning that a war would hurt Iran’s economic growth and efforts to reconcile its citizens to their government as well.

    The office of Supreme Leader Khameini will have the final say and he will try to avoid all-out war, I think.

  254. 254.

    Kay

    Sean Fain is a really good advocate, Part 47:

    The United Auto Workers union has filed an unfair labor practice charge against former President Donald Trump and billionaire Elon Musk, arguing that the two men illegally intimidated workers in a Monday night interview on X.

    In a statement Tuesday, the union said the complaint centered on disparaging comments made by Trump on the platform, which was formally known as Twitter, about striking workers. Trump suggested that employers could fire workers for going on strike, according to the union.

    Unfair labor practice charges are filed with and investigated by the National Labor Relations Board.

  255. 255.

    Dave

    @comrade scotts agenda of rage: The first time I realized I wasn’t even close to young anymore is when they started playing the music I grew up with in grocery stores.

    I was bopping along to it and then was hit with an icy implacable reminder of mortality. When they move on from that music is when I will know for certain I’m old as opposed to merely no longer young.

  256. 256.

    The Kropenhagen Interpretation

    @Kent: Don’t do like the Republicans did at their convention last month and celebrate the win before it is actually in the books.

    Not celebrating yet, but I’m happy to invoke the specter of a landslide.

    There’s a difference between expecting to win and setting expectations for a big win.  “We will win” breeds complacency. “Let’s get a landslide” invites people to be part of a moment.

  257. 257.

    Chris

    @Matt McIrvin:

    @Jeffro: Trump has actually been convicted on one of the felony charges, and while I doubt he’ll actually go to prison on that one, he’s got to think that some kind of punishment beyond fines is a real possibility unless he can get back the effective immunity that comes of being a sitting President.

    As Roger Moore (where did that guy go?) pointed out not so long ago WRT the Proud Boys, nothing makes you paranoid like knowing you’re guilty.  No matter how many breaks the system has cut you previously, if you know that you’re guilty and that any functioning system doing what it’s supposed to do should’ve caught and punished you, it’s going to be there in the back of your mind that you’re one unlucky break away from prison.  It’s all the more true when people have been loudly calling for it for years, and some of these people are lawyers and judges, as is the case for Trump.

  258. 258.

    Matt McIrvin

    @2liberal: There have been proposals to break up California. From a partisan perspective it’s a double-edged sword: one of the effects would probably be to make it harder to elect Democratic Presidents, because unless the borders are drawn in an absurd gerrymandered way, some of those would be largish red states (and the extra electoral votes the remainder would get would not make up for that).

  259. 259.

    JML

    @lowtechcyclist: the police are caught in a bit of a trap right now, and it’s going to continue to be hard for them to get through it. Most cops are good, honest, and care for their communities. But the police have done a terrible job in weeding out their own bad apples, while also insisting that no one outside of the police is capable of judging them. (institutionally, of course) There’s crazy amounts of “blue wall” pressure in the ranks, and real management problems where senior leaders either enable bad behavior or seem incapable of correcting it.

    The trust issues between many communities (especially communities of color, but also LGBTQ) and the police are deeply concerning and won’t get fixed quickly: trust issues never ARE.

    There’s definitely some moves that the police could make that would help build support for reform in their own ranks while helping to gain more trust in the community…can they take them? Sadly, police unions are often run by real blue wall types who forget that it’s not the union’s job to defend bad behavior, but to ensure their members are treated fairly and with a reasonable process. Instead they act as if they cannot be held to account for anything, and intentionally hamstring attempts at reform.

    It’s really tough. I look at some of the young cops who were convicted in the Floyd case and think how this might have never happened if a jackass like Chauvin wasn’t their training officer. If the police had better ways of making sure that guys like that weren’t “teaching” the newbies “how to be cops”.

  260. 260.

    Jeffro

    @Matt McIrvin: I know all of that.  I want someone to ask trump the question in public, just to see what he says.

    They won’t, but if they did, he’d probably just blurt it all out: “I’M RUNNING TO STAY OUT OF JAIL AND SKIM ANOTHER COUPLE HUNDRED MIL”

  261. 261.

    rikyrah

    WTTW – Chicago PBS (@wttw) posted at 9:25 AM on Tue, Aug 13, 2024:
    Chicago taxpayers paid $164.3M to resolve lawsuits that named 200 Chicago police officers whose alleged misconduct led more than once to payouts from 2019 to 2023, according to an analysis of city data.

    https://t.co/TJnW4a6yJH
    (https://x.com/wttw/status/1823365146070118635?t=IFLqLp1IoG3f2hsXRSG8Vw&s=03)

     

    Averaging 40 million per year.

    And, I know, that those suing look like me and mine.

    I don’t have a problem with paying police salaries.

    I don’t even begrudge them the opportunities with salary and overtime,  that keep their salaries into 6 figures after only 18 months on the job.

    What I do resent is me, as a taxpayer, having to pay for THEIR ABUSE OF CITIZENS , WHO MORE OFTEN THAN NOT, LOOK LIKE ME.

     

    THESE SETTLEMENTS need to be taken out of the POLICE PENSION FUND. 

  262. 262.

    Kent

    @Matt McIrvin:So I look out for threats. “Cops kill or beat up Gaza protesters in Chicago, mass violence erupts, news drones flip their shit about it being 1968 again” is the next one on the list. It occurs to me that the police probably wouldn’t mind if what they do sinks the Democratic ticket.

    The current set of pro-Hamas Gaza protesters with their masks and Palestinian keffiyehs engaging in anti-Semitic graffiti and such are about 100-times less sympathetic than the Vietnam war protesters of 1968.  A bunch of police taking down an anti-American and anti-Semitic protest in quick order isn’t necessarily a bad look for Chicago or Democrats given the current sentiment of the country.  Especially with swing voters.

    History doesn’t always repeat itself.

  263. 263.

    gwangung

    @satby:

    the incessant insistence here that all cops are bad is one (of many) of the least attractive things about this place. Sure, plenty are. And plenty are doing their best to serve the public. Blanket bigotry gets a lot of passes here at the Mean Girls HOA.

    POCs know this. The more relevant question is…HOW CAN YOU TELL THE DIFFERENCE? This is, after all, literally a life or death question for us.

    ACAB is a SURVIVAL mechanism. Please don’t let your privilege blind you to this.

  266. 266.

    The Kropenhagen Interpretation

    @Kent: The current set of pro-Hamas Gaza protesters with their masks and Palestinian keffiyehs engaging in anti-Semitic graffiti …

    And here comes the propaganda to stop us questioning our foreign policy and Israel’s war stance.

    Going forward, I’m going to do like you do, I’m going to assume that everyone who raises Hamas is harboring deep anti-Muslim bigotry.

  267. 267.

    Kent

    @rikyrah:THESE SETTLEMENTS need to be taken out of the POLICE PENSION FUND. 

    You don’t understand how pensions work do you?  All that would accomplish is make the taxpayers pick up the slack.

  268. 268.

    Jeffro

    @Kent: Don’t do like the Republicans did at their convention last month and celebrate the win before it is actually in the books.

    I have to admit, considering how gleeful (barf) some of the RWNJs in my life were during the RNC, I have been thoroughly enjoying these past two weeks.

    I’ll still put in the time volunteering and donating, and will take none of it for granted, but man, is it ever good to see things coming together so well on our side.

  269. 269.

    Kay

    @Kent:

    I think specificity helps when motivating volunteers and also keeps one out of the “hopium” or “power of positive thinking!” areas, which to me lead nowhere good. So there’s a couple of things that make NC look possibly gettable for Harris for example. Nothing wrong with telling people in NC that. It would be both honest and realistic to say “we could have Biden states plus NC! That’s now possible!” and then tell them WHY.

    But I wouldn’t tell people Ohio is gettable. I don’t think it’s true.

  270. 270.

    Chris

    @Matt McIrvin:

    They were always very nice to me. That doesn’t mean they’d be nice to everyone. Their politics tended not to be great.

    That’s always been my take.

    I’ve got wingnuts in my family.  I’ve never doubted that if my life hit rock bottom, if I needed a place to stay or needed some money and didn’t know when I could pay them back or needed some help getting through a major medical operation, they’d be there for me.  I could trust them with my life, but I’d be daft to trust them with, say, the life of some illegal immigrant teenager with ICE on their tail.  They’re good to me, but they’d absolutely fail the “would you shelter a Jew hiding from the Nazis” test, and while the latter doesn’t in any way diminish the former, the former doesn’t in any way diminish the latter, either.

  271. 271.

    topclimber

    @cain: The armies of Sunni run countries in the ME are a joke. Jordan and Turkey might be exceptions but why would they want to police Lebanon? Egypt doesn’t pass the laugh test.

    Israel can undoubtedly cause lots of damage to Iran’s military but not without cost. At some point Israel’s IDF will refuse endless assignments based on stealing more land on the West Bank, which is really all Bibi was ever about.

  272. 272.

    jonas

    @Ridnik Chrome: Has Garvey even been campaigning? I just got back from a trip to CA recently and saw no news stories, no yard signs (even in the OC), no mention of him anywhere at all.

  273. 273.

    sdhays

    @Geminid: “…they want to isolate Israel…”

    Nice that they have that in common with the Prime Minister of Israel. They should get together for coffee.

  274. 274.

    Matt McIrvin

    @The Kropenhagen Interpretation: I think 2016 was something of a perfect storm in that Hillary Clinton’s campaign seemed to be both regarded as an inevitable winner, and somehow not conducive to enthusiasm, especially among the young.

    A lot of that was sexism but while obviously the final result isn’t in, somehow it’s not operating in quite the same way with Harris. Some of that might be the passage of time. I think a lot of it was that young voters in 2016 had literally spent their whole lives marinating in hate media aimed at putting down Hillary Clinton without entirely realizing where it originally came from (in the early 90s it was overtly, baldly sexist but it had a way of getting laundered).

    So she came in already regarded as this long-established figure with a questionable reputation. And while she had gained respect from her more recent work, it was fragile.

  275. 275.

    Kent

    @The Kropenhagen Interpretation: I’m not making a foreign policy argument here.  Just outlining how politically speaking pro-Hamas protests in 2024 are not the same as anti-war protests in 1968.   And most Americans, especially swing voters, do not give a flying fuck about foreign policy unless American kids are dying overseas.  Your typical swing voter cannot locate Gaza on a map.

  277. 277.

    KatKapCC

    @Baud: Have you taken even five seconds to understand where that “griping” comes from?

    Have you been harassed on the street dozens of times? Followed for blocks by a man telling you what he wants to do to you? Been screamed at when you didn’t respond “properly”? Followed into stores being called a stupid cunt? Been groped on the bus or in a crowd? Harassed and propositioned by a boss? Emotionally, verbally, physically, and sexually abused by a partner? Stalked by an ex for years? Received rape threats online because you literally just voiced an opinion? Been raped because you weren’t nice enough to a man? Been killed because you weren’t nice enough to a man? Been told by others it was your fault because you weren’t nice enough to a man?

    After everything women have had to endure at the hands of men for thousands of years, I think men can just deal with hearing “all men are trash” a few times. If it hurts your feelings, maybe spend your time telling your fellow bros to stop being trash rather than cluck your tongue at women expressing centuries’ of anger, fear, frustration, and disgust with a turn of phrase that makes men sad.

  278. 278.

    comrade scotts agenda of rage

    @cain:

    Big PT fan here.  I even have an almost-finished studio cover of ‘Sound of Muzak’ that me and the bass player did probably a dozen years ago now.  Could never find a guitarist to do the solo.

    ‘In Absentia’ is a great album.

    Have a couple of other finished studio covers of PT songs.

  280. 280.

    jonas

    @Kay: Meanwhile, I think some questions should be asked of that Teamster guy who showed up at the Republican convention last month. Does he believe, as Trump does, that strikers should be summarily fired? That would be an interesting position for the head of a union to take.

  281. 281.

    Kent

    @Kay: I agree 100%.   My argument isn’t to give up.  It is the opposite.   To keep fighting to the very end.  In every single state.  I’d love to see NC come back into the Dem column but I agree with Ohio.  It shares more in common with its Indiana, Kentucky, and West Virginia neighbors than it does with its Pennsylvania neighbor.   I think Texas might flip sooner than Ohio.

    On the other hand, a win is a win.  It is winner take all.  Bush governed like he won with a landslide despite being handed the election by SCOTUS on the narrowest of pretexts.

  282. 282.

    UncleEbeneezer

    @JML: It’s so frustrating because while I’m sure police in other countries are problematic in their own ways, our problem here is uniquely awful and complex.  Our history of (and sadly, still widespread sentiment of) racism, our history/design of policing to serve racist functions, our allowance for states to largely control law enforcement and our cultural obsession/love of guns all make a perfect storm for policing to be an almost impossible problem to remedy.  So we end up with disproportionately bad outcomes compared to other countries, no simple solution, and even if there were simple solutions, they would be extremely difficult to put into practice.

  284. 284.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Kent: When I watched Biden’s TV interview, I noticed that they introduced it with a bit about how he was “managing two wars”, which I thought was odd phrasing given that the US was not directly fighting in either war. Reminded me of something the New York Times would say.

  285. 285.

    Steve LaBonne

    @UncleEbeneezer: People shouldn’t have any illusions about how problematic policing is in a bunch of other countries. The UK and France for two. Getting to the kind of policing we ought to have is not an easy problem.

  286. 286.

    Kay

    @The Kropenhagen Interpretation:

    Yesterday was a particularly tough day for cognitive dissonance with two US officials swearing their allegiance to the Geneva Conventions and demanding other countries do the same the week after carefully ignoring video and medical record evidence of IDF gang rape of a handcuffed Palestinian prisoner.

    Ooof. Get off social media. You’re not helping. The first comment was “is this real?” People thought it was parody.

  287. 287.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Uncle Cosmo: ​
     

    I challenge any of my contemporaries to pull up a playlist from WCAO (AM 600, Baltimore) from a random day in 1965-1967 and not turn the audio off in disgust within the first hour. Like most everything else in the multiverse, “classic rock” obey’s Sturgeon’s Law: 90% of it is shit. It’s the remaining 10% we hear now on the moldy-oldies stations.

    Oh sure, but 10% of the songs that got airplay between the mid-1960s and the mid-1980s is a shitload of songs. On classic rock stations, it’s more like 0.001% of them that get played.

  288. 288.

    Kent

    @Steve LaBonne:@UncleEbeneezer: AOC was once asked what “defund the police” would actually look like, and replied that it would look like policing in white suburbs.

    I live in a wealthy white (and Asian) suburb in the “liberal” Pacific Northwest.  Policing here means a patrol car shows up in 30 seconds if you call 911 and busy bodies on NextDoor track any suspicious cars or brown people in real time.  And any homeless person who contemplates pitching a tent in any public right of way is picked up on suspicion of “something” and their stuff tossed in a dumpster.

  290. 290.

    The Kropenhagen Interpretation

    @Kent: My problem is with you characterizing the protests as pro-Hamas, which you repeated.

    I consider this characterization a product of bigotry perpetuated deafeningly by the media.

    @Kay: We all know people are willing to diminish rape if they don’t find the victim sympathetic, which seems to be most of the time.

  291. 291.

    Dave

    @cain: Everything I see regarding Musk is just that of a miserable man who should feel fulfilled but is incapable of it. Say what you will about Zuckerberg and Bezos (please do I am not a fanboy) but at least they seem able to enjoy their gross ridiculous wealth and are either able to self regulate effectively or have the awareness to pay people to self-regulate for them where they are weak at it which is basically for people in their circumstances the same thing.

    Musk though man every poor impulse and ugly thought seems to have been magnified for that guy and it doesn’t seem that he wants to change that or would listen to anyone even if he did. He isn’t the most destructive billionaire (looking at you Murdoch) but he is the most pathetic one.

  293. 293.

    Chris

    @Matt McIrvin:

    A few years ago, a friend from Marseille posted a story about a couple of cops getting two years in jail when they were caught beating the shit out of an immigrant kid.

    Which is probably still getting off easy, compared to what most people other than cops would’ve gotten.  But viewed from the U.S, it kind of made me drool with envy.  What, they actually went to jail?  No being given a month long paid vacation while things die down, no being fired only to be rehired by the police department in the next county over a week later?  And that was “just” for beating somebody up, not murder or rape or something “serious?”  That’s spectacular!

  294. 294.

    Dave

    @Kent: That’s a fair point though I do think there is value in the sort of joyful vibes based we are going to do this and it’s different than the attitude in 2016 that was more complacent and with a media that was well at it’s worst because of the people involved and the time frame.

    Now Harris and Walz can benefit from being a change election vibe and Trump being the representation of incumbency; which is a little weird but reality doesn’t have to make sense.

    If I had to guess there is reasonable, not high maybe 10-20%, chance that Trump’s support does collapse and we have an election that looks more like 2008 than 2020. Of course things can change for the worse (god knows what the media will fixate on) and maybe I’m in a bubble but it feels like Trump’s bullshit mirage is starting to collapse.

    And there is value in having people excited to participate in a change election not simply complacent that things will work out.

  295. 295.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Starfish: Where I can’t quite get with the police abolitionists is that I’m not convinced we can really have a modern society without SOME kind of law-enforcement mechanism. Their argument is that police are so bad that just eliminating them and replacing them with nothing would be an improvement, but I suspect that the knowledge that police exist does have a deterrent effect that has some social value.

    On the other hand, I’m coming from the perspective of someone who has not routinely been on the wrong end of their behavior.

    But what we have, ideally, might not look anything like police as currently constructed. They certainly wouldn’t do all the things we ask police to do while being armed for a war zone.

  296. 296.

    Ruckus

    @oldster:

    Complacency should worry all of us. There is an advantage to having money and being closer to the ruling side of things.

    The mass of the population does not all think the same.

    These are 2 issues that have to be taken into account with any possible candidate, with any possible issue. This is a country that has, like every other, a ruling class. A class of people that think they are the chosen ones. It’s humanity. But this country has a concept that this is not good for the majority. Which is true. It isn’t.

    The majority of us are working people (or retired working people), not wealthy people who can buy and sell others. We have a country that says that the wealthy are not any better than the rest of us. But that much money, even the concept of that much money can be unhealthy for the rest of us, because it often can buy things and people that can change the dynamic of the country. That is one reason we use to have a very high taxation level for the ultra wealthy. Now maybe it was too high, but now it is not high enough. The rich will always be rich and get richer, giving them the ability to purchase power. And to many humans the money is always the most important part, even if it isn’t the people making the noise who have the money.

    My point is that money buys power in humanity, not even spending that money – simply having that money buys power. This country is supposed to level out that power differential. And it can, to some degree. But money is too big of a concept of human life to be able to be totally controlled. Because money does make life easier. And a lot of money is, in many ways a hell of a lot nicer than not quite enough money. And a lot of money can create greed for more – and often does.

  297. 297.

    UncleEbeneezer

    @Steve LaBonne: Yeah and that’s why I support it.  We will never completely defund any police department in this country.  That’s just not gonna happen.  Unfortunately you get Republicans, Libertarians and maximalist Progressives who treat “Defund” literally and distort public perception of a good approach.  I always felt we needed a better slogan that was more realistic and didn’t immediately turn off a huge swath of voters, even on our side.  But it’s hard to come up with simple, catchy slogans for complex and nuanced problems.

  298. 298.

    Kent

    @The Kropenhagen Interpretation:@Kent: My problem is with you characterizing the protests as pro-Hamas, which you repeated.

    Objectively the calls for a permanent ceasefire are.  When Hamas’ entire ideology is permanent warfare against Israel.  I see zero sign that Hamas or the Palestinian side in general is interested in any kind of PERMANENT ceasefire.  Which would mean permanently abandoning armed resistance.

    The hypocrisy of chanting for a ceasefire and at the same time chanting in support of “the intifada” is breathtaking.

  300. 300.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Dave: I’ve seen some frustration from very politically engaged people (the venerable Murc on LGM got positively apoplectic about it) that it shouldn’t have to be like this. What, you needed the positive vibes of the switch to Harris to get you motivated to vote? You shouldn’t have needed that! You should have made a rational game-theoretic calculation that defeating Trump was important enough, pretty much regardless of the Democratic candidate! The difference between Biden’s support and Harris’s stands as a painful demonstration of how illogical even our own side is.

    But Mr. Spock would be a lousy political advocate.

  302. 302.

    topclimber

    @Kent: They aren’t going to abandon it as long as Israel expands its apartheid rule. What sign to you see of this ever happening?

  303. 303.

    topclimber

    @Matt McIrvin: Perhaps I have missed it, but the plural form of police abolitionists suggests a bigger movement that I have seen. Willing to be educated here, but it sounds like all the “defund the police” voices among Dem politicians–which is to say, not many.

  304. 304.

    Dave

    @Matt McIrvin: Absolutely true I wasn’t really political until around 2003-2004 and I had to learn very quickly for my own sanity that “should be this way” or “shouldn’t be this way” needs to be placed in a very specific category more of how do we work to make reality closer to the should and in the meantime deal with what  actually is (admittedly 2016 really strained that).

    I came across a story regarding someone who hadn’t been really supportive of trans people (read like the sort of not that intense I don’t understand this and it makes me uncomfortable) until their child came out to them.  Then the guy read up on it and started an organization in support of their child and trans people.

    Some of the commentators were fixated on the idea that it shouldn’t have required that personal experience and that’s fair but also they were focused on that exclusively and just couldn’t accept that it’s better that he did embrace his child and didn’t stop there. I do understand that impulse but it’s ultimately counterproductive.

  306. 306.

    tam1MI

    @Booger: I was dumbfounded on early Sunday morning to hear World Party’s “Ship of Fools” playing in a Safeway.

    I remember being gobsmacked to hear Squeeze’s PULLING MUSSELS FROM THE SHELL playing in a grocery store because it was such a a deep cut.

  307. 307.

    Ruckus

    @Matt McIrvin:

    Police have always been issues because it always runs back to humanity.

    Humanity needs some rules to create a society.

    Too many, too onerous rules stifle humanity and create a society of wealthy and everyone else – creates a power wall between money and everything else.

    In this country we are supposed to (in my opinion…) balance the money and the laws and the control and the obedience. But humanity has ALWAYS had problems doing this, because the money buys that control. In a democracy that power is supposed to be equal. But money still and likely always will buy a (I call it) background power, an under the table power, a concept of better against a concept of common. One way to combat that is unequal taxation – higher taxation based upon the level of higher wealth, with said taxes having the ability to level, at least to a degree, the playing field of humanity. That upper level of taxation has been reduced because the size of the upper level population has grown and thereby their power has grown. Think back to when this change started to be noticed.

  308. 308.

    Matt McIrvin

    @tam1MI: That seems to be one of the two or three Squeeze songs that still gets played though.

    You can never tell what those are going to be. In 2024, “Mr. Blue Sky” seems to be regarded as ELO’s signature tune. During their heyday, it was probably “Evil Woman” or “Don’t Bring Me Down”, definitely not “Mr. Blue Sky.”

    “Don’t Stop Believin'” is THE Journey song now. That was always a hit, but back in the day, it was just one of their many hits, not the one big one.

    Often what happens is that an old tune gets used in a commercial or a movie or something and it gets people remembering it.

  309. 309.

    UncleEbeneezer

    @Steve LaBonne: American police killed 33.5 people per 10 Million in 2019.  Canadian police killed only 9.  They were the second highest, among the list of Democracies.  England’s number was 0.5.  So our police kill three times as many people (per capita) as the next country and 66x as many as Brittish police.  It’s not unreasonable to admit that our problem in the US is an order of magnitude worse, at least when looking at the most pressing aspect of police killings of civilians.  That’s not saying that things are rosy elsewhere, just that the problem is particularly bad (for a whole host of reasons) in America.

  310. 310.

    Citizen Alan

    @satby:

    Here is my take on the “all cops are bad” issue. If you want to be thought of as a good cop, answer these three questions:

    If you observed a fellow officer either committing a crime or engaging in unwarranted policy brutality against a citizen:

    Would you intervene to stop them?
    Would you report them to your superiors and, if necessary, internal affairs?
    If it got to that point, would you testify against them?

    If your answer to any of those questions is “No,” then in my opinion you are not a good cop. You are, at best, a willing accomplice to bad cops. And if you answered “Yes” to all three questions, you won’t be a good cop for long because the bad cops will chase you out or worse.

    Joe Serpico was a good cop. And he had to flee the country to avoid being assassinated by the NYPD.

  311. 311.

    Shalimar

    @satby: I don’t think all or even most cops are bad.  But I will also never call the police for anything, because drawing a bad one can be fatal.

  312. 312.

    Citizen Alan

    @Matt McIrvin:  I had literally never heard of Mr. Bluesky until it was used as the opening song for Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. II. Similarly, I had never heard of “Running Up That Hill” until it was used as background music in a pivotal and intense scene in Stranger Things where a popular character was running for her life. And the response was so great that the song started getting huge airplay decades after its release.

  313. 313.

    Matt McIrvin

    @UncleEbeneezer: I suspect that’s a side effect of our general gun problem. American police always carry firearms and they operate assuming with some justification that all Americans carry firearms. All that makes them far, far more likely to kill people.

    The thing that gets me is that I can remember when US police organizations advocated for stricter gun control, because it would make police safer. Now they do the opposite, because they’re right-wingers and advocating for more guns is what right-wingers do. Also, some of them probably got into law enforcement because they like guns and it’s a job that involves them.

  314. 314.

    JML

    @UncleEbeneezer: part of where we’ve really gone sideways in the last 30-40 years relates mostly to 2 things: drugs and guns. Compared to other western nations we have handled our drug issues in fairly terrible ways, and the gun issue has been part and parcel of it. We’ve militarized the police in many ways (letting police departments buy military surplus hardware was an awful decision that’s had staggeringly bad consequences) and the sheer numbers of guns in the US has increased the bad results exponentially.

    but it’s everything: fewer cops living in or near the communities they police, militarized departments bringing in people who think it’s their job to be Rambo of the City, having the police dealing with people in mental health crisis that they simply don’t have the training (or possible the inclination) to help, no-knock warrants, pretextual stops, lack of consequences for violations, the idiotic trend for “warrior training” in many city departments…the list goes on. It’s been so hard to keep people who weren’t really suited to be police from getting another job two towns over after getting fired for cause.

    Being good police is a hard job. We need more of them, and we need them to be in environments where they can stand up to their own.

  316. 316.

    FDRLincoln

    I work in the training division of a law enforcement agency. I’m a civilian administrator and educator, and I teach the recruit cops classes about interacting with autistic people, about constitutional law, and about the history of law enforcement.

    All cops are not bastards. But most of them aren’t flawless heroes, either. Most cops are normal, mediocre people, who tend to take on the character of those around them.

    There are a small number of exceptionally good cops and a somewhat larger number of bad cops, and the largest number of all are “eh…” cops, just like in any other profession.

    So much depends on the culture of the specific agency. Many agencies are rotten to the core, others have problems but can be improved, some are actually pretty decent. The decent agencies don’t end up on the news. I am fortunate to work for one of the decent agencies…in 150 years we’ve never shot anyone, and in the last 10 years have had just one use-of-force complaint. Other agencies ask us how we do things, and good cops who work for lousy agencies often apply with us, because they want to work for an agency that will support them in doing the right thing.

    Doing law enforcement right requires constant vigilance against abuses of power, with a firm emphasis on character and integrity. That battle will never be completely won. But some agencies ARE trying.

  318. 318.

    StringOnAStick

    @M31: There’s a guy on that thread with what looks like the “don’t tread on me” flag, so I clicked on it.  Instead it says “nobody is treading on you, you’re just WEIRD”. Perfect.

  319. 319.

    Chris

    @Matt McIrvin:

    I mean, he’s right.  Not just in an absolute sense, but in that 90% of the “bad vibes” re Biden goes right back to a media that declared war on him in August 2021 at the latest and didn’t let up, to such a ludicrous point that you had things like Biden’s imposition of a $35.00 cap for insulin medicine reported in the news as “insurance companies say they’ll cap insulin prices at $35.00!”  All uncritically absorbed by our voters, a large part of whom concluded that Biden must be bad and not doing anything.

    If we’re depending on “vibes,” then quite frankly we’re screwed, because we’re looking at a future where effectively every president can be kneepcapped in their first term by enough bad press.  We’re going to be here in 2028 looking at the exact same situation Biden was in last month, through no fault of Harris’ own.

  320. 320.

    StringOnAStick

    @MCA1: I belong to a music community that has open mic once a month; I always try to perform B side stuff or things I can bet people haven’t heard before or for a long time.  I’m getting a lot of mileage out of obscure Canadian musicians right now, and since it’s even harder to be a breakout act in that regional market, I’ve got some great stuff to introduce to them.

  321. 321.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Ruckus: There weren’t always police–as a distinct organization, they’re a fairly modern invention. But before there were police, what societies had was generally worse: some combination of sanctioned vigilantism and social control by the military.

  322. 322.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @Geminid:

    The Hamas leader’s assasination in Teheran was hugely embarrassing though, and the IRGC in particular is said to favor a forceful response.

    I have a few questions about this:

     Was US intelligence aware of that assasination plot?
    If it was, did the US have the ability to tell Israel it was a no-go?
    Did we green light it?

  323. 323.

    Citizen Alan

    @satby:

    As my dad said, even if they hate cops, that’s who they call when their car is stolen or their house is broken into.

    Well, of course! The insurance company won’t do anything until they see a police report. If my car or house was broken into but nothing of importance was taken (certainly nothing valued more than my deductible), I don’t know that I would bother to call the cops.

  324. 324.

    Kent

    @topclimber:@Kent: They aren’t going to abandon it as long as Israel expands its apartheid rule. What sign to you see of this ever happening?

    I don’t disagree.

    But then don’t be talking about a permanent ceasefire.  Or protesting for a permanent ceasefire when there is no intention of permanently abandoning armed resistance.

  325. 325.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Citizen Alan: I remember “Running Up That Hill” being a big college-radio thing in the 80s. And every alternative music dude thought Kate Bush was hotter than blazes, so that helped. It was interesting seeing Stranger Things suddenly make it a hit again.

  327. 327.

    Steve LaBonne

    @UncleEbeneezer: The difference is the prevalence of guns, not big differences in police culture. There is plenty of police brutality and corruption in those countries (eg. RCMP and First Nations people), but less shooting because cops are less worried about getting shot. In the US getting guns off the street would accomplish more than years of police “reform” has.

  328. 328.

    Citizen Alan

    @rikyrah:  I find that painfully naive. An alternative explanation, and one supported by abundant evidence, is that the media aggressively published the Clinton leaks but sat on the Vance leaks because they are, in fact, biased in favor of Republicans.

  329. 329.

    Chris

    @Citizen Alan:

    Joe Serpico was a good cop. And he had to flee the country to avoid being assassinated by the NYPD.

    Yeah, that’s the thing.  This isn’t like my current company, where managers and office environments run the gamit from good to bad and I’ve had horrible or awesome experiences based on what department I was currently in.  The police is an environment where the “bad” elements will work tirelessly, fanatically, and if need by lethally, to make sure any “good” elements are either co-opted or run out of the force.

    To put it uncharitably, if the police were the army, then most of our police departments would be the Russian Army: an institution whose culture has for a very long time been exceptionally prone to abuse and misbehavior, in no small part because everybody, from the generals at the top who think of these things in ideological terms, to the soldiers at the very bottom for whom soldiering means getting to abuse the new recruits, torture the prisoners, rape the civilians, and pillage their homes… is deeply invested in the army continuing to be a goon squad with no professionalism, discipline, or accountability.

  330. 330.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Steve LaBonne: The same thing applies to crime. There are countries with way lower violent crime rates than the US, but some like the UK aren’t actually a lot better in that regard. They just don’t have guns everywhere so people are less much likely to get killed.

  331. 331.

    Geminid

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): I think the Israelis and the US agree that the US does not want to know about this type of operation in advance. That way the question of US approval or disapproval is not raised.

    Back in April, when the the Israelis struck the building next to Iran’s Damsscus embassy and killed 6 IRGC officers and 5 Syrian militia leaders (and two civilians), reports were the Israelis gave the US a heads up just before the attack. This might have been the case when they hit Haniyah in Teheran last month.

  332. 332.

    Chief Oshkosh

    @Baud: 9th in the morning to get the juices flowing. 6th in the evening to help your dreaming.

    It’s a plan.

  333. 333.

    Trollhattan

    BBC dutifully reported on the Trump-Musk Twitter thing, including the evidently borked start, and the soundbites comprised Trump complaining in general and specifically attacking those dang immigrants. 2024’s version: they’re been kicked out of their home-country prisons, sent here, and threatened with execution if they return. Execution I tell you. Further, they so bad, the baddest of the bad, they make our homegrown criminals seem like kittens and jelly donuts by comparison. That why crime is high as a high thing.

    Musk’s contribution seemed to be serial mm-hmms. 

    Anyhoo, I think we’re gazing at a two-issue election: the three-headed immigrants, immigration criming, borders so open beast and the horror that is utter communist, so-not-black, gays-enabling Kamala Hoodat Harris.

    I do not think they have anything else, and will be shouting these items from the rooftops the next three months.

  334. 334.

    frosty

    @Another Scott: Weasel has been on WTMD (Towson) on Saturday nights. I’m not sure if he still is. TMD is stoll independent and eclectic but they play too many oldies for my taste.

  337. 337.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @Citizen Alan: ​If my car or house was broken into but nothing of importance was taken (certainly nothing valued more than my deductible), I don’t know that I would bother to call the cops.

    Which is exactly what I did several months ago when the side window of my auto was smashed in the wee hours as it sat in front of my house.** I.e., not bother. Replacement was less than the deductible, and you may be sure that had it been reported the insurance crooks would have used that factoid to jack up my already-ludicrous rates even higher. Bastards!

    ** NB One of several cars in a two-block stretch that were assaulted likewise.

  339. 339.

    Manyakitty

    @satby: sounds like we need lots more like him. Plenty of good cops, but it sure looks like they’re getting replaced by…less good ones. Hope he starts a trend.

  343. 343.

    WaterGirl

    @rikyrah:

    What I do resent is me, as a taxpayer, having to pay for THEIR ABUSE OF CITIZENS , WHO MORE OFTEN THAN NOT, LOOK LIKE ME.

    THESE SETTLEMENTS need to be taken out of the POLICE PENSION FUND. 

    Yes. Without consequences for everyone, the culture won’t change.

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