I think he has this about right. The basic “policy positions” of the Harris/Walz campaign are pretty obvious, since the positions of the Biden administration have been there for all to see for the last 3 1/2 years. And anything we propose is completely dependent on winning the House and Senate, and the Senate dropping the filibuster.
Here’s my bullet point list of what I’m guessing are the positions of Harris/Walz:
- Nationwide right to abortion and other key women’s healthcare (including contraception).
- Supreme Court ethics reform.
- Tax the rich, cut taxes for the middle class.
- Strengthen Obamacare.
- Path to citizenship for immigrants coupled with better border security.
- Statehood for Puerto Rico and DC.
- Appoint a cabinet that will make agencies work, especially Labor, EPA, Ag and Interior. (This is never mentioned and probably hard to communicate in a sound bite, but it’s the big win when you vote for Democrats.)
I’m sure I forgot a few — feel free to add them in the comments. And I’m sure the order you’d choose is different. But, you get the gist of this. Simple bullet points of reasonable policies that Republicans will shit themselves over, but everyone else will think are pretty reasonable.
The details of each of these proposals will be worked out in the legislative process. The Harris/Walz campaign can have their wonks write some white papers detailing the proposals and release those details at their leisure. It’s not like the press really cares (they actually run away from any policy discussion because it makes their widdle heads hurt.). So it’s just another cudgel to hit us with, and we shouldn’t take the bait. My new motto for this election: let’s not be chumps.
Speaking of Walz, if you want to watch a barnburner, watch Walz’ speech to AFSCME, his first one without Harris. This is what a full-throated endorsement of unions looks like.
Finally, a personal note. I just gave up on a 16-month-old Dell XPS 13 top-of-the-line laptop and switched to a MacBook pro 14 because it’s apparently impossible for a US computer manufacturer to create a decent piece of Windows high-end hardware. I really don’t care about MacOS vs Windows — I’ve lived on Linux, Windows and now MacOs, and all my apps that I use all the time work on all three. It’s just that my wife’s $700 LG Gram laptop works better than my $1500 “top of the line” Dell XPS that now only has 3 hours of battery life and had an update that bricked the god damned facial recognition laser (which was great when it worked). I’m traveling and I can’t send my laptop back to Dell to replace the screen (unbelievably, the solution they suggested) because they bricked my laser sensor. Also, bluetooth, the camera and audio were a constant faff until Dell finally got their drivers right about 6 months into me owning it. Just a terrible user experience, and I’ve been buying Dells for 20 years. No more under the yoke of that oppressor, say hello to the new boss.
It’s Up to Us Now, Next Up, Youth Again (only Younger!)
different-church-lady
I like how Biden and Harris are so close to each other that you’ve accidentally swapped them into a “Biden/Walz” ticket. ;-) The mistake that proves the hypothesis.
Percysowner
From Slate Media Complaints About Kamala Harris Clash Wildly With Media Consensus of Five Seconds Ago And it must really be making Joe Biden mad! LOL.
Money quote Bolding by me
Old School
I would think Harris/Walz would also highlight policy differences between parties on social security and a response to climate change.
rikyrah
This thread is absolute gold!
The Editorial Board (@johnastoehr) posted at 7:25 AM on Wed, Aug 14, 2024:
Kamala Harris is taking power back from the press corps. She learned from Biden’s fatal error. A THREAD.
(https://x.com/johnastoehr/status/1823697507190251625?t=k_3YcGDxSMejVGoWmmvSSg&s=03)
Baud
Dems are going to have a platform in a couple of weeks as well.
I’ve never had such bad luck with PCs. Hope your new computer works better.
Baud
@rikyrah:
Don’t be old?
rikyrah
V-O-T-I-N-G-
R-I-G-H-T-S
BR
It’s good that the AP story about abortion is getting some media coverage:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SHG1_CPz0Po
different-church-lady
@Baud: Apparently he’s so old he’s dead.
MattF
I’ll note that you have nothing to say about ‘Republican policy’, which is appropriate. R policy statements, and, in particular, the claim that Dem statements are all ‘vibes’, are examples of the ‘Every accusation is a confession’ axiom. There’s no visible there in R policy, and that’s entirely deliberate.
Citizen Dave
Swing for the stars: Elimination of the Electoral College and initiation of Popular Vote For President/VP through a Constitutional Amendment. It can’t happen until we start trying to make it happen.
Seems to me like popular vote for President might be, what’s the word? Popular.
$8 blue check mistermix
@different-church-lady: Thanks, fixed it, but you’re right, it’s Biden/Harris/Walz policies. She’ll make some changes but the basics are obvious.
Josie
@rikyrah: Yes! This is huge.
chemiclord
I would not push for Puerto Rican statehood until it is clear that a majority even want statehood at all.
That topic seems to be clear as mud from everything I’ve heard and seen.
FastEdD
I’ve always used Apple products and they always worked for me, but my computing needs are not great and I’m a teacher by trade. I still have a Mac Plus with floppy discs. Still works. In the 90’s my Dad gave me a Windows laptop and I asked why. “Because I want you to be just as miserable as I am,” he replied. Thanks Dad.
Frank Wilhoit
@rikyrah: I would like to recommend citing links to nitter.poast.org where possible instead of x.com.
bbleh
This btw is why I think the campaign is also avoiding press conferences. It’s not because they don’t to give the MSM information they need — which btw they’re getting by the ton from speeches, social media, etc. — but rather because they know all the MSM want out of a presser is “gotcha” lines and insignificant non-issues they can blow up into Major Questions.
WereBear
Welcome to Apple. You only have to wear the beanie the first year.
A favorite Mac app is Paste. It shares your clipboard among devices. I’m always switching devices and this is GOLD!
I don’t want to hear it, gamers. Mr WereBear is a commercial artist, while I’d still have an Amiga if I could.
matt
The big one a lot of people are looking for is Israel/Palestine. It’s a no win issue for Harris, which makes it super fun for those folks.
noncarborundum
@rikyrah:
QFT
Trollhattan
Echoes of “I don’t know where Hillary stands on X, why won’t she tell us?” when there is a three-page dissertation on X on the clinton for president website.
“Do your own research” initiative was invented a number of months later.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
I’d include Biden’s whole Supreme Court reform package, not just ethics. More justices, and term limits.
bbleh
@rikyrah: if somebody wants to go to the bother, running this through a thread-reader could make it available to those still resistant to the X-virus.
different-church-lady
@matt: It’s a no-win situation for anybody.
matt
@MattF: Everyone knows, including press who pretend not to know, that the Republican platform is Project 2025.
narya
@rikyrah: Not to put too fine a point on it: until Taraji P Henson mentioned Project 2025 and urged people to look it up, almost no one talked about it–even though it is the stated platform, such as it is, of the R party! But, oh, the press is SO interested in POLICY and DETAILS. Yeah, right.
schrodingers_cat
@Frank Wilhoit: You don’t have to click those links if they offend you that much
oldster
I agree that there is no reason for Harris/Walz to talk to the NYT or other legacy press. They are malign actors on the national stage, throwing up obstacles to Democrats while giving Trump a free pass.
I also agree that voters do not need to hear minutiae of competing plans, most of which will never become law. This was a catastrophic error of the 2020 primary season. All of that time debating M4A versus Obamacare versus my favorite pet healthcare plan was time wasted.
What voters do need, however, are broad brush announcements of the core differences. And they need it, in part, because a lot of voters are shockingly ignorant.
There are voters out there who blame Biden for ending abortion, because it happened on his watch. Seriously, there are people who hold Biden responsible for the new crop of post-Dobbs restrictions, because they do not understand how the SCOTUS works, and don’t know that Biden fought for abortion rights. These are the same people who think that if gas gets more expensive while Biden is president, then he should be punished for that, too.
So, we at least need to say loud and clear: we are the party that will protect women’s rights, and protect your privacy. They are the party that wants to control women’s bodies and snoop in your bedroom.
We need to make those big differences clear, even to the low-info voters.
But as for sitting down with the NYT editorial board so that they can feel important? Fuck that noise.
WereBear
@chemiclord: While DC is a no-brainer.
Citizen Alan
@Citizen Dave:
I still say we should just increase the size of the House to 4000 and that would eliminate 90% of the problems with the EC. My “swing for the stars” is increasing SCOTUS to 13. Dems fucking deserve to name 4 Justices after the GOP scum outright stole 3.
Anonymous at Work
Microsoft figures out what top lines laptops can handle and then update the OS to be just a bit more than that, feels like.
Citizen Alan
@chemiclord: Also, I have no particular reason to believe that Puerto Rico would send us 2 Dem Senators as opposed to a couple of Hispanic Opus Dei followers.
WereBear
It was a joyous day in my IT life when the office got a Mac for my boss, and I set up. Laughed and laughed during it.
And finally she asked me what was up, and I said, “Just warning you that you won’t be able to go back.”
“No, no, we all have PC at home and I still use it for work, this is just for design.”
But, gentle reader, I was right. 2-3 years later we all had Macs.
OId Man Shadow
Considering what the national political media did to her boss, I think telling them to go fuck themselves is a perfectly logical response.
rikyrah
@narya:
They were intent on not bringing it up, until Taraji dropped it at the BET Awards.
As is, they still haven’t done enough stories on it.
dmsilev
Welcome to the MacCult. Your black turtleneck will ship tomorrow.
In all seriousness, Apple leveraging their phone CPUs to make their own computer CPUs was a great move. My Mac laptop has legit all-day battery life, even while actually using the thing not just sitting idle.
tam1MI
This video popped up in my YouTube feed and I thought it might be of interest to folks here as it had been under discussion here. It’s a lawyer talking about just what and what doesn’t fall under 1st Amendment protection concerning the I/P demonstrations on campuses. (Spoiler Alert: The Columbia demonstrators are SCREEEEEWED).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3kOo3N6CRPE
Paul in KY
@different-church-lady: Our most basic position is a complete destruction of Trumpism/MAGA and all policies/decisions that spring from it.
divF
Welcome to the walled garden. The advantage of Apple is that they own all fuckups, whether its hardware, software, or security, and will fix them. The Windows / hardware vendor split allows each player to say it’s the other guy’s responsibility.
This is a good time to recall Umberto Eco’s commentary on Mac vs. Windows. Written 30 years ago, it still is relevant, along, with Eco’s inimitable style.
WereBear
@rikyrah: She deserves a Medal of Freedom.
I mean it. No one else stepped up.
KatKapCC
@bbleh: Hmm, I tried, and I got this:
hrprogressive
The people bitching about this, like Chris Cilliza and Jay Kang of the New Yorker (whoever the fuck that is) are failing to note a couple of important things about their Big Sads about MVP Not Talking To Them:
1) As the guy at the Editorial Board pointed out, the media hasn’t, for years if not decades at this point, not been bothered with “facts and substance” because, generally speaking, facts don’t matter to them. Only “vibes”, “clicks” and “narrative setting” matter, which leads me to point 2…
2) The Shareholder-Owner Media has been “all in for Fascism” for years now. They actively want another Trump Presidency, either for financial, or ideological reasons. If they really cared about “facts and substance”, they’d be all over the facts and substance of the Fascist Roadmap to Destroy America that is Project 2025.
They aren’t, because their corprofascist owners would embrace Project 2025, gladly.
Guys like Kang et. al all want to believe they’re a Modern Cronkite, but the “facts and substance” of their current profession is they are basically highly paid internet trolls with bylines. They don’t give a shit about “the truth”, and I am glad to see Harris/Walz not giving them the time of day.
OId Man Shadow
If the last two months has convinced me of anything, it’s that voters mostly care about image and narrative.
Hillary = Corrupt; Trump = Disruptor
Trump = Crazy; Biden = Normal
Biden = Old; Trump = Aggressive
Harris = New, Happy, Young; Trump = Old, Grumpy, Stale
I mean, sure throw out the general policies, but given how 20% of people would choose poison over Pepsi if the can was shinier, focus on making your packaging better and more attention grabbing.
hitchhiker
@rikyrah: thanks for that.
The press has failed us over and over and show no signs of understanding their part in what’s gone wrong. They’ve had 9 years to figure out how to cover trump, and they still can’t bring themselves to refuse to be lied to.
When I saw that clip from the Lawrence O’Donnell rant where the White House reporters were shouting at the press secretary and all but calling her a liar (does the president have parkinson’s??!!), it was like a dope slap.
Oh, yeah. That’s what it looks like to have people in the press who are not afraid. I think I remember that. This is what they hope to do to Kamala Harris, of course, and what they will never, ever do to trump no matter how many stupid & dishonest things he says and does.
Matt McIrvin
Yeah, second what others said about Puerto Rico. Statehood for them is up to them, and it’s never been clear that a majority want it, and they’re not pawns for our mainland partisan considerations.
DC is another story because it is clear that they want it.
OId Man Shadow
@Matt McIrvin: If we’re open to adding states, I’d say we give all of our territories the option to choose statehood if they want it.
Maybe even offer it to any tribes that would like it as opposed to the current arrangement.
WereBear
@divF: That’s beautiful. And I loathe Calvinism.
Antonius
@Baud: That is, in fact, everyone’s fatal error, eventually.
Ken
IIANL, but offhand I’d say that’s covered by the Supreme Court’s immunity ruling. Worth trying it out, anyway.
WereBear
@OId Man Shadow: We’re the party of science, and PR has been polished for over a century now.
Argiope
The top headline at WaPo’s The Post Most email roundup now: “Why Trump keeps talking about fictional serial killer Hannibal Lecter.” Not going to click on it, but willing to bet my house that it’s a completely serious explainer about things other than the obvious fact that he’s a narcissistic deranged lunatic who shouldn’t be left in charge of an ice cream stand, let alone the nuclear football. They are really trying to get me to cancel them the way I did the FTFNYT.
Paul in KY
@divF: Thank you for that link! Very funny and also sound analysis of the meta-differences.
divF
@WereBear: That was just an edited excerpt. I finally found the text of the whole article, at of all places The American Catholic web site. It’s really good.
Jeffro
@OId Man Shadow: yup
on some level, this is why AOC terrifies the GOP: she’s sharp, young, direct, and attractive
Ukai
@rikyrah: That thread reminds me of the end of the climactic confrontation in “Captain Marvel”, where (spoilers) Yon-Rogg tries to goad Carol Danvers into fighting him without her full powers, at which Carol blasts him and says, “I have nothing to prove to you.”
Similarly, Harris doesn’t need the White House press corps’ permission for anything, and they can go suck eggs.
Paul in KY
@Matt McIrvin: We need to add 2, cause it’s hella hard to make a nice looking flag with 51 stars.
Trollhattan
@Jeffro: IOW: MONSTER!
OId Man Shadow
@WereBear: And I would counter that partisans already know the policies and vote accordingly. All of us are doing as much now. We were voting for Biden. We will vote for Harris.
Hardcore conservatives might have a bit larger nihilistic faction, but if they replaced Trump now with Vance, most of them would adjust and vote for Vance.
Everyone else only has the vaguest idea and pays more attention to narrative.
bbleh
@KatKapCC: aw nuts. thanks for trying! sigh. I RILLY don’t wanna resubscribe…
Trollhattan
@Paul in KY:
The 7×7-star flag we had briefly had a nice symmetry to it.
Paul in KY
@Ken: Would be a good way to put it to the test…
Probably very satisfying for Pres. Biden as well.
Ukai
@Paul in KY: 9+8+9+8+9+8 = 51
moonbat
@rikyrah:
Thank you! I was just about to come here and link that. He’s absolutely right and sort of highlights the discussion had here yesterday.
rikyrah
@hrprogressive:
truth
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@hrprogressive:
If he’s bitching, then the Harris campaign is doing something right.
As Charlie Pierce said many years ago:
CaseyL
@KatKapCC:
That’s just one of a few potential thread-readers.
I got the same message, and then tried unrollnow.com, and it worked just fine.
Paul in KY
@Trollhattan: That was a nice looking flag.
Tractarian
@schrodingers_cat:
What are you, five years old?
His point is that more people would be willing to read this “absolute gold” thread if she linked to a site not owned by a white supremacist, drug-addled edgelord.
Paul in KY
@Ukai: Good job! No need to pressure Puerto Rico anymore :-)
Juju
@schrodingers_cat: I don’t think he was offended, but if you aren’t on X you can’t read anything but the first box.
Matthew
Regarding laptops, I used to buy Windows laptops every 2 years. Now I buy a fully loaded, top of the line Mac and run it into the ground. The last one lasted 7 years until Apple told me it wouldn’t upgrade the OS anymore. And I was still using it as a development machine.
Old School
@bbleh:
Instead of reading 30 tweets, it is also available at his website.
frosty
@rikyrah: FYI I never see anything from your Twitter links except what you paste in. So no thread for me.
I’m not signed in and not a member. Anyone have any ideas how to see the rest?
Steve LaBonne
Fuck the mediots. Every time she does give them an opportunity to ask questions, they ask vapid gossip questions. I’m thrilled that she is flatly refusing to play their game, and watching them piss and moan about that is delightful.
Kirk
@WereBear: And yet some of us have moved away from macs. Me, for example. I’ve had two in the last 20 years. While both the Mac and the Win had things they did better, what the Win did better was what I wanted more.
Were it not for games, these days I’d go back to a linux of some sort. But I do spend a number of hours on my games, so…
oldster
@OId Man Shadow:
I agree with you — when it comes to the lowest-of-the-low information voters, packaging and narrative are all they track.
I also agree that Harris does very well against Trump in that contest. And certainly, the more that Trump manifests his new cognitive decay this fall, the more stark the contrast will be. He has always been hateful, but he has never been as incoherent as he now is. He is simply going to become the candidate of old hateful resentment. Sure, a percentage will vote for that. But I hope it will be a solid minority.
BethanyAnne
https://nitter.poast.org/johnastoehr/status/1823697507190251625?cursor=EwAAAPAEHBkWiIa17cSHis8yJQISFQQAAA#r
frosty
I’ve never had anything but Windows laptops. No problem with the OS and software. But …
The last two were HP 360s that flipped around to act like a tablet. Hinges broke on both.
Old Lenovo, updated to Win 10 was bulletproof. I kept it when I scrapped the others.
Current Lenovo (Win 11) had the motherboard replaced twice under warranty. Doing OK now but occasionally needs to be reset with a paper clip in a tiny hole.
schrodingers_cat
@Juju: So join X and lurk. That’s what I did from 2013-2019. Or find alternative means of reading those posts but asking the initial link sharer to do all the extra work for those who want to shun Twitter seems a bit excessive. YMMV.
Matt McIrvin
@Paul in KY: Actually it’s not that bad, there are fairly normal-looking patterns worked out for all the numbers of stars that are plausible in the near future.
K-Mo
I 100% agree with the notion that what’s important are the vast differences between Dem policies and Repub ones as spelled out in Project 2025. They should focus on that dichotomy, continuing with the theme that we are normal and they are weird. Platform includes:
Wise and judicious policy to continue the growth of our economy while continuing to bring inflation (now below 3!) under control. Including:
Wise and judicious foreign policy including strengthening our alliances and engaging in diplomacy to protect our National security as opposed to burning alliances, projecting weakness on the world stage, and alienating progressive and democratic forces in other countries.
… and so on
Captain C
@Trollhattan:
Also of them ignoring her policy-filled speeches while showing TCFG’s empty podium.
BethanyAnne
The Editorial Board
@johnastoehr
4h
Kamala Harris is taking power back from the press corps. She learned from Biden’s fatal error. A THREAD.
1. The first thing you need to know about the vice president’s approach to the Washington press corps is look how well she’s doing as a result. Kamala Harris is now leading Donald Trump in some national polling averages as well as in some swing-state polls.
2. True, her lead is within the margin of error in most cases, but that’s an improvement from where the Democrats were before Joe Biden dropped out of the running and orchestrated instantaneous unification around his second-in-command.
3. I don’t think I’m overstating things. Her lead, the millions she’s bringing in, the thousands who are signing up to help, the big big mo’ – I think all of it comes directly from her campaign’s decision not to give the press corps too much access too fast.
4. I think that decision comes directly from the fact that Harris saw firsthand what the press corps did to Joe Biden’s campaign.
5. Some members of the press corps have noticed how well Harris is doing without them, and apparently, it doesn’t sit right. Here’s Chris Cillizza with a representative sampling.
6. The former Post writer said the vice president has been “almost entirely” ignoring the media since she launched her campaign, and that’s bad, he said.
7. Cillizza: It “bypasses the argument that the media is a critical part of our political system and any candidate who wants to be president — whether they are winning or losing — should be regularly subjected to scrutiny from the press.”
8. Even if I agreed that candidates who want to be president should be regularly subjected to media scrutiny, I don’t think this press corps, as it is currently organized, is able to.
9. There are exceptions, of course, but this press corps is generally not equipped to scrutinize candidates on matters of fact and substance. I say this because this press corps has conspicuously traded matters of fact and substance for vibes.
10. It didn’t matter what Joe Biden did – pull the country out of a pandemic, dodge a recession, tame inflation, grow jobs, revive every single one of the “left behind” counties that voted for Trump in 2016 because of “economic anxiety” – it *didn’t matter* what Joe Biden did.
11. The press corps decided nothing was more important than his age, and lo! 2024 became an election about vibes and vibes ended his candidacy.
12. Vibes are this press corps’ forte, not fact and substance. If fact and substance were its strength, there would have been a different reaction to The Disaster Debate during which Biden talked about policy and issues while Trump didn’t bother.
13. Trump was incoherent and false, but he came off as confident and strong, and he came off as that way, because the press corps’ forte isn’t fact and substance.
14. If fact and substance were important, there would also have been a different reaction to Biden’s NATO press conference last month. He did it after the Disaster Debate to show he still had what it takes. He talked for an hour about foreign affairs, international laws and war.
15. But this press corps didn’t hear any of that after Biden said “Vice President Trump” by mistake. There’s no grace for the old in Washington, nor is there interest in anything but vibes in the Washington press corps.
16. There was a time when liberals and Democrats would have nodded in agreement with Chris Cillizza on the merit of candidates being regularly subjected to scrutiny.
17. But after this press corps made a fetish of Biden’s age, I don’t see any more room for the benefit of the doubt – and there’s no going back.
18. This press corps made the election about vibes and it’s going to remain an election about vibes, and if those vibes now grind against the instincts of this press corps, tough shit.
You reap what you sow.
19. In the future, we might look back and see the most important difference between the Biden and Harris campaigns is their level of trust in the press corps.
20. The president believed voters would reward him for the substantial things he has done, and he trusted – indeed, he depended on – the press corps to inform voters, as it’s supposed to.
21. But where he saw fact and substance, the press corps saw only vibes. And in depending on the press corps to get his message across to voters, Biden effectively handed over power that was rightfully his.
22. He allowed the press corps to be the principal arbiters of his reality, rather than reserving that right for himself. You could say Biden was waiting for power to be given to him and he suffered gravely for it.
23. By contrast, the Harris campaign is not letting the press corps wedge itself between her and voters. She is not allowing the news media to mediate her message. She’s preventing the press corps from speaking for her and she’s preventing it from exercising a veto on her speech.
24. In that, she is *taking power* – defining her campaign as well as Trump’s. She is turning the narrative about Biden’s age (81) back against Trump’s (78), such that whatever he says in self-defense is seen as proof of the allegations against him.
25. This decision leaves the press corps on the outside looking in. She’s sustaining a conversation with voters directly, on her own terms, and she’s doing well as a direct consequence of that decision.
26. But being on the outside looking in feels bad to people who see themselves as the adjudicators of American politics. They have incentive to turn attention back to where they think it belongs.
27. That’s why some are busy manufacturing a phony moral standard by which to scam Harris into playing by their rules. That phony moral standard goes something like this, courtesy today of Chris Cillizza:
28. He’s being coy but, in essence, he’s saying that Harris is violating some kind of taboo, or worse, that she’s hiding something of great importance from voters. This, of course, is favorable to her opponents, but let’s be clear: she’s violating *nothing*.
29. There is no lawbook declaring that candidates shall talk to reporters. There is a playbook, if that’s what you mean, but not a lawbook. The vice president could go the whole time without talking to one reporter and she would not have done anything morally wrong.
30. I will repeat myself till I burst. This is a democracy. Harris is obliged to talk to Americans. That’s the end of her obligation. She’s not obliged to talk to the press corps, as if it were a constituency. If she stopped talking to voters, that would be disqualifying.
31. This is not to say she shouldn’t, but that’s a different question, isn’t it? If Harris decides to talk to the press corps about matters of fact and substance relevant to her, it will be her decision made out of concern for tactics and strategy for her campaign.
32. Reporters like Cillizza have a bad habit of presenting themselves to voters as if they operated in their interest and we know nothing could be further from the truth. We should not only stop tolerating this bad habit. We should be hostile towards it.
33. The most powerful thing Harris has done – a game changing decision, if you want to call it that – was to learn from Biden’s fatal error.
34. He tried to meet the press corps’ phony moral standard, only to have it move around, beyond his reach, thus surrendering his power. In the end, his dependence on the press corps made it so he had to ask for permission to campaign.
Harris isn’t asking.
/end
wjca
Well, we know that Pete Buttigeig can do that. Not sure any of those are that great for his political resume though.
BethanyAnne
Copied from Nitter, because Elon can go suck a lemon.
Anonymous at Work
@chemiclord: There are a lot of areas to sort out IF PR decides to stay a territory like the Jones Act, tax cuts, breaks and shelters, etc. that leave them in lurches and boom/bust cycles.
Get that settled at least and it simplifies the question. No-vote-but-no-tax territory or -and-taxed state. The special treatment (good and bad) makes the referendum based on external factors rather than straight question.
Matt McIrvin
@Citizen Alan: Nah, the main problem with the EC is that it’s generally strategically advantageous for a large state to be winner-take-all so the election hinges on the largest swing states. Expanding the House would eliminate (well, reduce) the small state bonus but it would do nothing about that.
Trollhattan
@Kirk: Yeah, have hands on with the Mac interface (college photo and graphics lab) and find it annoying, in part simply because it’s unfamiliar and then because they do some really dumb things.
The sticker shock is real and comparing like for like performance specs against Win world competition invariably results in a Mac equivalent being thousands more. “But, they last longer” can’t be quantified–things break or they soldier on. We remember the ones that broke. (Generally, laptops don’t live as long as a decently designed desktops, nor as user-upgradable or repairable.)
Ivan X
Goddamn do I love my MacBook Pro 14-inch. It’s really like the most perfect computer I’ve ever had, and I started in 1978 (when I was 8).
Only complaint I have is that its miracle battery has now declined to “very good”. There’s an app called Al Dente that I believe keeps it from being charged past 80% to keep it in miracle mode.
Ok, other complaint is that Apple have become a bunch of cocks and clearly think it’s their computer, not mine, but that doesn’t impede my day to day use.
Protip: If you charge with a USB-C cable, rather than the MagSafe cable, then guess what, you can also charge on the right side of the computer, depending on where you are/how you’re sitting. (This does not apply if you have the entry model with plain vanilla M3 chip; it rudely omits the right-side USB-C port.)
sdhays
I’ve wondered just how much of Harris’s improvement in performance has been for just this type of ridiculous shit.
OId Man Shadow
@BethanyAnne: Thanks. I didn’t want ot sign back up for Twitter. I send you an imaginary gold star. :)
Captain C
@Paul in KY: I don’t know about that, as 51 = 3×17, it could go three sets of alternating rows of 9 and 8 stars; that might look pretty cool.
Capri
The right says the exact same things about the press- they are shoddy theater critics in the tank for the other side. The press has taken the wrong lesson from this . They think “if both sides say we suck we must be doing something right” instead of “everyone can see we suck.”
Nelle
@Paul in KY: Just give California 4 Senators.
Freemark
@schrodingers_cat: I appreciate his post because the thread is unreadable without a Shitter account. I also can’t read NYT unless it is a gift link.
WereBear
@Kirk: Not a gamer, but I understand. If I didn’t write novels, it probably would be different. :)
Belafon
@KatKapCC: A number of people block thread unrollers because those are sites that will then take that work and add their stuff and post it to their site as if they own it.
Chet Murthy
@schrodingers_cat: For me there’s no choice: I don’t have a Twitter account and block Twitter/X cookies. So I can’t see threads on Twitter, *period*. When I see a Twitter link, I have to decide if it’s worth the trouble to edit it s/x.com/nitter.poast.org/ or just slide on by..
dnfree
@schrodingers_cat: I clicked the link. Since I am not on X, I got the first post only, no thread. I would like to see the thread, if possible.
Chet Murthy
@schrodingers_cat: Joining X (or even allowing Twitter cookies) is helping Kums (a)Lone. Not gonna do it. I’d prefer everyone not use Twitter. But at a minimum, I’m not going to do it myself.
Chip Daniels
The #1 policy of the Harris/Walz team that separates them from the Trump team:
PRESERVE, PROTECT AND DEFEND THE CONSTITUTION.
Nothing else comes close.
OId Man Shadow
Refresh the page, folks. Comment 83 is the thread we all wanted to see.
Freemark
@BethanyAnne: Thanks for the copy.
$8 blue check mistermix
@Ivan X: Thanks! So far so good.
Appreciate everyone who welcomed me to Mac world. Here’s a little more of what I think is going on.
My wife’s laptop is fine – zero problems. It was like $700 at costco. It is plastic, bigger than I wanted and didn’t have the ram or processor I wanted. But, again, works fine, zero problems.
It thought, naively as it turns out, if I paid more than twice as much to Dell, I would get a thin, light machine with decent battery life and a nice screen. Nope. They just can’t do it. First, the battery life is bad because Windows is behind Apple on using ARM architecture processors. For their “flagship” machines, they won’t put in a bigger battery because they want the reviewers to say “wow this is thin and light”. Second, they rush these things out the door before all the drivers are 100% ready, putting the load on me to figure it out. Finally, they are cutting corners on their upgrade testing and pushed an update that bricked the camera (for a short while) and the facial recognition sensor (laser) forever.
So I think the $700 laptop is about the sweet spot for windows, and people who aren’t as picky as me will be fine with it.
End of screed.
Anonymous at Work
@Matt McIrvin: Honestly, in DC, I have an alternate take. Statehood should be paired with filibuster reform, elimination of Electoral College, Supreme Court reform, and voting rights. Democrats should say, “Deal with us on these or we won’t add DC as a single state, but as 50 states.”
Adding a state takes 218, 50 +1, 1. Dividing a state takes that PLUS approval of the state’s citizens. Since DC is administered by Congress, that 218 and 50+1 is the ‘approval of the state’s citizens.’. Making it 50 separate states would break the Senate and destroy quite a few House districts. So, Democrats take 75+ new Democratic Senators off the table in return for Republicans, including Thomas, Alito, Roberts, et alia, back off on a wider variety of other fronts
UncleEbeneezer
@Belafon: Also, apps like Threadreader aren’t always responsive. I’ve requested threads/unrolls many times (from accounts that don’t block them) and eventually gave up because they took too long.
sdhays
@Anonymous at Work: Ha! The “thermonuclear option”.
UncleEbeneezer
Protect IVF
Family Leave
Equality Act (LGBTQ rights)
Honestly, I kind of laugh at anyone who claims they can’t guess what Harris’ positions will be. It’s pretty clear to anyone who has been paying even the slightest attention.
superdestroyer
Why not just discuss closing the annual budget deficit with a combination of tax increases, ending unneeded tax write-offs, and cutting no longer needed programs.
Chet Murthy
@$8 blue check mistermix: I’m not slagging on Macs: Their hardware is great, and for sure even before OSX they were more stable and useful than Winders machines. But I do wonder: with Chromebooks, we see now multiple manufacturers putting out chromebooks on the -same- hardware that they use for Winders machines, and the Chromebooks are perfectly cromulent. I’ve had 3 HP X360 14 Chromebooks (they last about 2yr, but they’re so much cheaper than a pricey Lenovo stinkpad that it’s still cheaper by like 2x) and they’re lovely machines. One even had a fingerprint reader! Just great stuff! And yet, AND YET they’re the same hardware as HP’s Winders laptops. so HP has to make the drivers work, and heck, make them work well enough that -Google’s- OS updates keep them working.
A cynical person might conclude that the problem is Winders.
Juju
@schrodingers_cat: I have no desire to join and lurk. I’m fine with not reading every thread. This is the only place in which I participate. I am not on Facebook or Tik Tok or anything else. I had a stalker. I trust very few. Also, Elon Musk! Ick. I wasn’t complaining for myself. I was just commenting about why I think the comment was posted.
cain
@BethanyAnne:
Hey also came from a time of Walter Cronkite and tries to trust the news. But even Obama did something similar – taking his messaging directly to the people.
This is a great summary and we had a number of convos about this yesterday morning or earlier, but we had one individual who seemed adamant that we needed to engage the press.
We don’t have to. We don’t have to reward them with access if they won’t put any substance. They’ve got a bunch of people there who don’t know their shit and are more interested in just restating what GOP does without comment, but will not restate what the Dems do but also add their own spice.
She should pick and choose news agencies that adhere to journalistic integrity and seek to inform.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@superdestroyer: Or possibly waste, fraud, and abuse. :-)
cain
@$8 blue check mistermix:
I use a linux based laptop for work and play. Of course, all the code is written by my friends in the open source world. So you bet that I’m gonna use it as it is not only their labor but mine.
The best is when you see both windows and macos taking design ideas from GNOME. :) (and GNOME taking design ideas from web apps)
WereBear
@$8 blue check mistermix: Dell got greedy.
If all I did was write, I could get by with a Chromebook and their free Office-type apps.
But I have to turn it into various things. We need to edit video and music. Mr WB is learning more art on it. So we pay top price and drive it until we can’t anymore.
I can’t coordinate everything between devices with the PC with the ease I do it with Mac.
rikyrah
@K-Mo:
Every member of Congress has their special wheelhouse. There are certain topics where they know more of the ins and outs about policy and how Democratic Party Policies help progress those issues, or could help them if fully funded and supported.
I don’t need for Democratic Party Officeholders to know everything about Project 2025…
I DO want them to know the part of Project 2025 that clashes with their pet projects.
And, talk about it everytime they get on TV or in front of constituencies.
There’s something in that nightmare that attacks every inch of our lives.
WereBear
@Chet Murthy: I loved a whole series of Chromebooks. The latest got Powerwashed and the cats watch videos on it.
It’s also an option should a laptop go down.
Citizen Dave
@Citizen Alan: The two Citizens agree! That (increasing House to what it should be) would also work. I first learned about the freeze on the House size from a valued commenter here at this great web community.
JustRuss
I’ve been buying and supporting Dells professionally for 20 years, and have to say since covid they’ve been less than stellar. I keep hoping they’ll figure it out.
I bought a Mac laptop 10 years ago, and I still use it for web and basic stuff. I kind of hate Apple, but nobody makes a better laptop.
A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)
@Old School: thank you for the link!
Pittsburgh Mike
I’d add green energy manufacturing subsidies.
But you’re absolutely right — the key differences between Harris and Trump are obvious to anyone. As is the effective procedure for figuring out who you should vote for:
1 — do you like being able to buy health insurance when you have pre-existing conditions?
2 — do you hate lifetime caps on health insurance
3 — should women suffering a miscarriage be able to get medical care immediately, instead of having to wait until they’re nearly dead from blood loss or an infection?
4 — should rape victims be able to get an abortion?
If you answer “Yes” to any of those questions, you should be voting for Harris/Walz.
zhena gogolia
@Chip Daniels: Bingo.
HumboldtBlue
@Percysowner:
I’m partial to these paragraphs.
Chris
@bbleh:
There’s an anecdote from the FDR era that nicely illustrates how the press has always been, where some reporters are asking him whether his policies on a given issue are “socialist” or “capitalist,” and he just says “they’re neither fish nor fowl but they’re going to taste pretty good to the people of the Tennessee Valley!”
Which sounds like exactly the kind of too-cute non-answer that people (and especially reporters) hate politicians for, but was actually exactly the right way to handle the press and their arrogant presumption that they deserve “answers” to everything that comes out of their mouth;
First, the question is being asked in bad faith. It’s not meant to obtain information; it’s transparently a reporter trying to get the president to slap a label on himself, in the hopes that this will alienate either the radical or the moderate wing of his movement, and make it harder for him to govern (and get reelected).
Second, the question is utterly inane and content-free. The words “socialism” and “capitalism” were already about as meaningless then as they are now, and the media sure as hell wasn’t making any effort to educate anyone about what they meant and why their readers should care which one the president identified with. “Are your policies socialist or capitalist” doesn’t tell me a goddamn thing about the policy in question.
Third, the politician’s too-cute non-answer is accurate. He was not a socialist. He was not a capitalist. He couldn’t care less which ideological box and which side of an academic divide the political science professors would slot him into. The only thing he ever gave a shit about with these policies is whether they’d work. Does it have enough support to pass? If it does, can it actually be done? If it can, will it actually help people? Then fucking do it already. It doesn’t matter if the cat is black or white as long as it catches mice.
Which is exactly the kind of pragmatic, non-ideological, policy and results focused wonkiness that media opinionmakers love to think of themselves as embodying. It’s just that in their world, pragmatic non-ideological policy wonkiness is only ever allowed to lead to one conclusion: liberals in general and Democrats especially are just wrong, and conservatives in general and Republicans especially are just right.
SatanicPanic
@Argiope: I read that story earlier and it answered my question- why does he keep bringing it up? Because I keep seeing clips of him talking about Hannibal Lector but they’re never in context. And I am not going to sit through a Trump speech to find out what the context is. So I found it useful.
For anyone curious- Hannibal Lector is his example of the types of people that “countries no one heard of “ are releasing from their insane asylums to come here. And since it’s Trump all of his references are from the 80s.
The article still makes him look like a weirdo.
BethanyAnne
@OId Man Shadow: Thanks :)
@Chris: I love that answer, lol.
Manyakitty
@schrodingers_cat: it’s also impossible for those of us not on twitter to see any threads, only the first post.
Renie
Your post is so timely. Today WashPost has an opinion piece by Matt Bai entitled “Does Harris need a serious policy agenda? Only if she wants to win.” I commented that now that WashPost added to the Biden must drop out they are going after Harris. Asked him where’s the article on all the unfulfilled trump promises from his presidential term and that all he is running on now is hate.
Josie
@BethanyAnne: Thanks for doing the work on this thread. It was worth the effort. I wish someone would write up an essay based on this and publish it somewhere prominent.
danielx
I prefer the more general rule of the Obama administration: don’t do stupid shit.
cain
@JustRuss:
I tend to get the Lenovo X1 Carbon series. They always work with Linux and are not heavy. My work laptop is an HP and its terrible. I got a project laptop that is a Dell and it’s worse – trackpad doesn’t work, very poor battery life and that was on windows.
Mike E
@schrodingers_cat: nitter for those of us not on X and I definitely won’t sign up with Elon Musk just to read a thread ..”unroll” is another handy link for us unregistered readers
@BethanyAnne: thanks!
bbleh
@Old School: cool — thank you!
Trollhattan
@Renie: “Serious policy” as contrasted against “happy fun-times kitten and rainbow policy?”
Omnes Omnibus
If a commenter finds an interesting piece of information somewhere and posts a link to it, is it really fair to ask them to present it in your preferred format? Everyone has different preferences, different set-ups on their devices, etc. The original poster may be working from their phone, not have a lot of time, not be tech savvy, or any combination of the foregoing. Remember, commenters are paid even less than front pagers.
tam1MI
I take my 11-inch Chromebook with me when I travel and when traveling to friend’s houses for role-playing games. Much easier to carry in a backpack and much easier on the back than a full size computer.
Fair Economist
It’s some combination of bizarre and intentional media gaslighting that Democratic Presidential candidates (but not Republican) are expected to have extremely detailed policy proposals in a system where the President doesn’t get to write laws.
bbleh
@rikyrah: @Old School: wow that … pulls no punches.
I agree entirely of course, and I approve particularly of him name-checking Cillizza. And I think the same thing was true to some extent of Obama — his WH was famously cool to the DC Press Corpse.
Fine. As the man says, as ye sow, so shall ye reap.
cain
@Omnes Omnibus:
That’s where others show up and provides an alternative. :)
Fair Economist
@Citizen Alan: This is not true. Even with an infinite House Harrison still wins 1888 and Trump still wins 2016. Only Bush-Gore can be changed by making the House larger. Enlarging the House fixes only a small part of the EC problem.
different-church-lady
@JustRuss: I’ve never had an Apple laptop last less than five years, and I got 12 years out of the last one I bought new.
Citizen Alan
@Matt McIrvin: Well, I think you underestimate the value of reducing the “small state bonus.” But there are also other valid reasons for wanting to expand the House. The whole point of the House of Representatives was that the represented the American people as a population rather than as a compact of states (which is the Senate’s roll). As a well-off and somewhat politically connected lawyer, I have only been in the same room as one of my Representatives 3 times in my life. Increase the size of the House by a factor of 10 and suddenly there’s a good chance I might actually know my Rep on a personal basis or, at the very least, within 2 or 3 degrees of separation. It would bring accountability back to the House by focusing Reps’ attention on their connections with the districts they ostensibly serve.
Baud
I wonder if Harris will come out against abortion rights.
3Sice
Butter policies…
Paul in KY
@Matt McIrvin: Should have known!
Baud
@3Sice:
Need one to win Wisconsin.
tam1MI
Here is the advice I give people in the market for a new (usually Windows) computer. Computer experts feel free to correct me:
The brands you want to look at are Dell, Lenovo, and Asus. Acer is okay if you’re strapped for cash, but they do not last as long.
However, even more important than brand names are specs. In general, you want the fastest processor with the most cores you can afford, the largest RAM you can afford, and the biggest solid state drive you can afford. (Bare minimum should be a 3 ghz dual core processor, 8 GB RAM, and 1 TB solid state drive). If you want to do games or other graphically intense stuff, get the best graphics card you can afford. (I don’t do that kind of stuff on my computer, so I can’t give any guidance on what exact specs to look for).
All too often I hear people complain about “how slow” their new computer is, and then I look at the specs for it and go, “GOOD LORD! NO WONDER IT’S SLOW!”.
Ivan X
@$8 blue check mistermix: I think this take is correct. Fact is that Apple’s 2019 Intel-based laptops had great build quality (though a piss-poor keyboard that I’m pleased to have just received $395 in a class action lawsuit as a result of), but their batteries sucked and the fans were always going and, if you had a MacBook Air, it was slow as shit.
Then their first ARM-based machines came out in late 2020, and it was a whole new world. They don’t even put fans in their MacBook Air models now. Their ability to make an x86 to ARM architecture switch in a way that was nearly invisible to most of their users is, I think, one of the unheralded tech accomplishments of the last ten years.
Qualcomm based Windows machines seem to be emerging with similar benefits, but I don’t follow them to know how close they are, because I really find that OS unpleasant to use. Not objectively bad, clearly it’s fine for many, but certainly bad for me.
I agree that the sub-$1000 Windows laptop is probably the right price for that platform. For all the reasons you stated, paying for “premium” doesn’t really yield returns, especially when compared to what you can get from Apple at those price points.
rikyrah
BWA HA AH AH AH AH HA HA
Sarah Reese Jones (@PoliticusSarah) posted at 9:45 AM on Wed, Aug 14, 2024:
.@Acosta asks Harris communications director Michael Tyler about holding a press conference. Tyler says the priority is engaging voters, “We will commit to directly
engage with the voters. They’re actually going to decide this election.”. https://t.co/g6foa52hgw
(https://x.com/PoliticusSarah/status/1823732725821358329?t=3Tu6KCmndjz_VCWLyuva2Q&s=03)
Paul in KY
@Nelle: I’d go with that!
HumboldtBlue
Manyakitty
@BethanyAnne: thank you.
rikyrah
LOL
Plies (@plies) posted at 9:38 AM on Wed, Aug 14, 2024:
Trump Team Wants Him To Stay On Message. He Is On Message. He Talking About The Same Sh*t He Been Talking About The Last 10 yrs! Racism & Sexism It’s All He Knows. He Doesn’t Know Policy, Insults & Coning Is What’s Gotten Him To This Point. His Show Now Is Just Coming To An End!!
(https://x.com/plies/status/1823730941346635858?t=WSKSgnu8kBfrR84nHHedbA&s=03)
mrmoshpotato
@tam1MI: LOL! Yes!
rikyrah
Touré (@Toure) posted at 9:32 PM on Tue, Aug 13, 2024:
Kamala entered the race 3 wks ago to massive fanfare from voters and media. She got tons of free media and soared in the polls. Massive momentum. There was no need to do a big intv. The DNC is next week—more free media, more momentum. In late August she’ll do big intvs.
(https://x.com/Toure/status/1823548336047067623?s=02)
schrodingers_cat
Not wanting to give Musk traffic is a noble goal. But expecting others to do your work for you is not
If someone volunteers to do it great. But this incessant whining about Twitter links is getting old.
Baud
@rikyrah:
👍
Paul in KY
@Chris: Just another snapshot of why FDR was our 2nd greatest president.
rikyrah
Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) posted at 9:35 PM on Tue, Aug 13, 2024:
BREAKING:
MADISON, Wis. (AP) — Wisconsin voters reject Republican-authored ballot questions that limit governor’s power to spend federal money.
Mike Harvey (@electMikeHarvey) posted at 9:56 PM on Tue, Aug 13, 2024:
This is amazing news for the State of Wisconsin.
It might prohibit Wisconsin from doing what @GovRonDeSantis of Florida is doing.
Letting school children starve by not using federal food dollars because eating is apparently “woke.”
(https://x.com/electMikeHarvey/status/1823554170336453019?t=HR6_XN-lsNyxQHQNdeJE2w&s=03)
Betty Cracker
@SatanicPanic: I read somewhere that migrants who are “asylum seekers” got mixed up in Trump’s pea brain with people ejected from “insane asylums” and delivered to the U.S. border. Sound plausible. He’s that goddamn stupid.
Chet Murthy
@Ivan X:
Apple has form here, eh? They’ve done it twice before:
They really know how to write emulators.
catclub
There are definite policies. But they don’t want to express them. It ends up saying the quiet parts out loud. Repeal the ACA, repeal medicare, cancel Social security. Repeal environmental laws. repeal worker safety laws. The John birch society agenda.
Paul in KY
@different-church-lady: I’m at 7 years on mine. Still going strong.
Baud
Fresh policy!
Chet Murthy
@schrodingers_cat: A polite request to post a nitter link isn’t the end of the world.
HumboldtBlue
@Betty Cracker:
That’s exactly what happened. I posted a twitter link abut 10 days ago of a woman who made the connection, he thinks they’re crazy people being let out of asylums to come here.
UncleEbeneezer
@schrodingers_cat: Thank you. I don’t use IG, Tik Tok, Mastodon, Spoutible etc., so when people post a link that would require an account, I just keep scrolling and go about my day. If I really wanna see it I’ll look around to see if it’s posted on another platform (a lot of Tik Tok videos are also on YT).
HumboldtBlue
HumboldtBlue
Joe calling out reporters to do their jobs…
Baud
@HumboldtBlue:
👍
HumboldtBlue
Harris is making inroads to working class white male voters, and Biden’s policies are the reason why.
Trollhattan
@Betty Cracker:
It seems to be the case, and a half-degree from his imagining them emptying the mental wards (IIRC something Castro actually did during the Mariel Boat Lift) Trump is specifically claiming they’re releasing murderers to send them here, under threat of execution if they return. And each of them is worse than the worst Real American felon murderer. “Believe me.”
Eunicecycle
@Betty Cracker: He really is that stupid! I have no experience with immigration but I had heard of asylum. He shouldn’t be within 100 miles of the WH.
Trollhattan
@HumboldtBlue: Oh boy, the dissonance out of the Trump camp on EVs, now that Musk is on the Trump Train. First, this:
And then, this:
You can’t make this shit up.
Di
@rikyrah:
Yup. Voting rights has to be one of them, and one of the most important ones.
rikyrah
@HumboldtBlue: What kills is that Biden doesn’t even get the credit for bringing new financial opportunities to these red areas.
Memory Pallas
I actually think these calls for Harris to declare detailed policy positions are really only about her positions as relates to corporate and high worth individual tax rates, and regulatory policy. They are being driven by rich CEOs who are nervous about Trump, but feel like they are a position to demand she throws them something.They don’t really want detail, they want to see that she is willing to distance herself from Biden’s position.
I hope she continues to ignore…
sxjames
@Old School:
Thanks! That link was very helpful
Chris
@Paul in KY:
1st being Lincoln?
I always wonder about that. I usually have George Washington first, largely for the same reason I rank Sean Connery first among the James Bond actors: he was the original, so his success made all the follow-ups possible.
Never been sure whether I’d put Lincoln or FDR in second place. They were the two presidents who faced such an enormous crisis that, if they hadn’t knocked it out of the park, the country would have ceased to exist (as a unified nation instead of several in the first case, as a representative republic instead of an authoritarian regime in the second case), and they’re easily the ones who presided over the most consequential amount of change for the better in U.S. politics. I’m not sure who’s number two and who’s number three, though.
Also, I’ve pondered for a while whether JFK deserves to be included in there. The changes he made to the country were virtually nonexistent, certainly compared to the other three, but he’s the only other president who ever faced a crisis on such a scale that if he hadn’t handled it well, the country would have ceased to exist (Cuban missile crisis). And in his case, it’s not “the country as we know it,” it’s “the country (and a bunch of others), literally.” Of course, the flip side of that is Erik Loomis at LGM’s summary of the event: “to his credit, he did not blow up the world during the Cuban Missile Crisis; less to his credit, he considered it.” Always thought Khrushchev deserved even more credit than Kennedy, for having had the courage to be perceived as the one who “blinked” (with everything that implied for his future in politics).
Geminid
@BethanyAnne: John Stoehr is a very perceptive man and a good writer. I first encountered him through Magdi Jacobs who has written for Stoerh’s site The Editorial Board on occasion. Stoehr used to post a picture of H.L. Mencken at the top of his Twitter feed.
HinTN
@Paul in KY: Nope – 17 x 3 becomes 8 and 9 by 3
ETA: @Ukai: Beat me to it.
A Man for All Seasonings (formerly Geeno)
@Paul in KY: rows of 9-8-9-8-9-8
Ivan X
@Chet Murthy: yup. I actually was on an emulator dev team in the 90’s, doing QA on one of their most obscure products, called Macintosh Application Environment. It was a Mac OS 7.5 emulator for Sun and HP Unix workstations, which some enterprises still had on desks in that period. Its ancestor was the Mac OS 6/7 emulator that shipped with their own A/UX Unix Macs, and its descendent was the Classic Environment that let Mac OS 9 apps run on Mac OS X (which was finally retired in the mid aughts with Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard).
Truly great bunch of engineers on that team, both as technicians and as humans.
Ukai
@Chris: FDR’s internment of Japanese and Japanese-Americans keeps him out of second place for me. Maybe even third place.
Old School
@Paul in KY:
It’s 53 stars that we’ll need to bypass.
lowtechcyclist
What David Roberts said. The chasm between where the two parties stand on pretty much everything has never been so huge in my 70-year lifetime as it is now. And there’s little if any middle ground – you’re either on one side of this gulf, or on the other side.
Policy details like what new legislation we would pass to forestall climate change (which they refuse to acknowledge is even happening), or what additional lengths to which they would go to deprive women of their bodily autonomy, are unlikely to change anyone’s vote. Anyone paying attention knows that we’re trying to do something about climate change, and they’re dead set against it. Anyone paying attention knows that we want to protect women’s right to abortion, birth control, and related medical care, and they want to criminalize it.
You’re either on one side of that chasm, or the other.
K-Mo
@rikyrah: Count me as “yes, and” to what you’re saying. Let the Congress folk talk about policy details and specifically why P95 is wrongheaded on them.
Kamala as chief executive should be saying, here are the broad contours of how we should be operating, and why those contours are so much better than the direction the Republicans want to go. I don’t want her to get bogged down in specifics. I want her to say, let’s solve problems the way we know we can, not put everything in a dumpster and light it on fire. Then she can point to some proposals that are percolating their way up and say: I look forward to reaching agreement to move forward on these things, but we have to be willing to actually move forward, not stall things forever to promote a nihilistic world view.
BethanyAnne
I think of the legacy media as the DC Press Corpse.
Manyakitty
@BethanyAnne: and that’s still better than they deserve.
K-Mo
@BethanyAnne: This is a powerfully true encapsulation of how the national press has lost its claim to being an essential intermediator.
I think it overattributes Harris’s success relative to Biden to her handling of the press, though. It’s not just that she has eschewed press conferences. Is that she has brought an energy and an excitement to the campaign that wasn’t there before. Her rallies, her social media, her message…all of it has been a massive improvement.
AND sooner or later I think she will fare much better in a debate with Gish Gallop and much better in a sit-down with the TigerBeat Press than Joe did. She’s better at this.
catclub
@Betty Cracker:
I think it was Josh Marshall at TPM (in 2016) who said the Trump era explanation is whatever is the stupidest possible thing, that is the most likely explanation.
catclub
Trump is the end condition of rule or ruin republicans.
If they cannot be in charge they want to burn it all down, and if they are in charge they will also burn it all down.
BellyCat
Now THAT is funny!
SatanicPanic
@Betty Cracker: I wouldn’t be surprised!
Chris
@Ukai:
Lincoln’s treatment of Native Americans should do the same for him, if that’s what we’re going by.
BellyCat
@WereBear: LOL. The two best IT guys I knew (at two different universities) were Mac fanatics.
Ruckus
David,
I had MS dos based computers for a number of years but changed over to Apple quite a while back. And have NEVER felt the need in any way, shape or form to go back. My experience over the last 20+ yrs is that Apple is far better. I have never had to return anything or call anyone to see how to make something work with Apple. And the reason I say that is that I’ve had those MS dos computers and while not every one of them was a piece of _ _ _ _ , most of the desktop types I owned not made by the fruit company had issues. And that includes a DEC computer that was purchased for work, what 2 or 3 million years ago. We had our first computer controlled machine in 1973 and the last 2 I bought in 1994. They worked just a bit better than the early stuff. I learned to program computers back in the 8 bit world. Things have changed just a tad, considering what can be bought over the counter these days.
WaterGirl
.
4D*hiker
Re: Trump’s Hannibal Lector comments
Eh, I’m not as quick to label something stupid coming out of Trump’s mouth as evidence of his own stupidity. It’s just as likely that Trump knows his own audience. They are definitely dumb enough to confuse immigration asylum with insane asylum. And for those of the audience who do know the difference, they get to be “in on the joke” with their Dear Leader.
Trump and his fans are like the murmurations of starlings in flight……quite a spectacle from afar, but just average little birds individually. They know that and resent that. They flock together at his rallies where they feel like they are part of something bigger. I never liked starlings, come to think of it.
stinger
@tam1MI:
Thank you for the excellent description of what appears at your link. I really appreciate it.
Ruckus
@Anonymous at Work:
Well that’s better than it used to be, where they wrote the software and had zero idea if it would work on all possible versions of computers that it should have worked on. Or even most of the possible versions. It’s one reason I switched to Apple, they build the computers and the software. I’ve been using them for over 2 decades and have never had an issue.
K-Mo
@catclub: To me Project25 is a detailed plan to burn lots of things down that normies consider part of everyday life. It’s Brexit for every occasion.
Ruckus
@4D*hiker:
Sorry.
Wrong.
There is a reason I call him shitforbrains. Because he is. And always has been. It’s not that he was always stupid. It’s that his world revolved around the pole up his ass that substitutes for a backbone, until he wore it out recently. Now his thoughts and speech flows out of his pie hole like the stuff that goes down the drain after being run through the garbage disposal. Or the other drain after a painful sit down on the seat in the other room, the one with the closed door.
He’s never been “normal,” he’s the definition of abeynormal. That’s beyond abnormal. It’s short for as far away from normal as possible while still being a breathing animal. Which he also seems to be getting quite close to not being.
4D*hiker
What Trump does achieve in linking Hannibal Lector to immigration:
1) conveys his utter contempt for immigrants seeking asylum, especially from “certain parts” of the world
2) associates horrible images/behavior/motives with immigrants
This is political calculation and manipulation, not stupidity. Whether it comes from Trump originally, who knows…
Ukai
@Chris: That’s fair.
4D*hiker
@Ruckus:
That’s certainly one way of looking at it, no doubt. But I think there is a danger in reducing him to simplistic terms. He is without a doubt a very incurious and unknowledgeable person regarding policy, history, and facts, but he does have a skill set that he has used effectively.
Bill Arnold
@BethanyAnne:
Also, here (web site):
Kamala Harris is taking power back from the press corps – She learned from Biden’s fatal error. (John Stoehr, The Editorial Board, August 13, 2024)
Bill Arnold
@Chip Daniels:
“Mind your own business” (Tim Walz’s line) also resonates. Enough so that Republicans get mad about it because Democrats sometimes support to-them-horrible things like public health measures during a pandemic. (To which, the response is “infecting other people is not minding your own business”.)
katdip
The cluelessness of the press is sickening – Trump has never provided details on his policies. He blathers about broad goals – cut taxes, build the wall, expell migrants, execute drug dealers, cut Dept of education, increase tariffs – but never details how those will happen and how they will actually contribute to our well-being (in fact, most will make things worse, which may explain why there are no details). These are all vibe proposals, the appearance of action without actual action. And as others pointed out, the press doesn’t actually give credit for detailed plans, so good for Harris for avoiding that trap.
Bill Arnold
@tam1MI:
Consider doubling the RAM. The years of utility for a computer are generally (barring total failure) limited by the amount of RAM. Doubling gets one a few extra years.
Seanly
@katdip:
And to boot, CNN and other outlets cleaned up the audio of Trump to conceal how bad he sounds.
@Citizen Alan:
This! It’s BS that the House is capped at 335 a$$holes. Should be much, much bigger.
Seanly
@Bill Arnold:
I’d recommend not getting less than 16 MB of RAM unless you only read websites. I know 8 MB is allegedly the min Windows 11 needs.
If you plan to play any games, even something like Civ VI, definitely no less than 16, preferably 32.
RevRick
@Citizen Alan: I believe that it is way past time that the United States cease to be an imperialist power. Besides statehood for DC, I would grant statehood to the state of Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands and add all the Pacific islands territories to Hawaii. Calculations about whether or not it would increase Democratic numbers in the House or Senate are beside the point, in my view.
Ben Cisco
@Steve LaBonne:
Nominated!
grubert
Mistermix, about the Dell.. I have a mediocre Dell XPS 13 that is unimpressive when running Windows 10. And is pretty decent when running Linux Mint.
Windows the operating system is bloated and needs fast hardware. you’ve used Linux before? You should know this then.
Paul in KY
@Chris: I have Pres. Lincoln at number 1. Pres. Washington in top 5 mainly due to him not going the Napoleon route. Pres. Kennedy was pretty good, but his secrecy over his health problems & potential bimbo eruptions that only didn’t occur because the press was much more discrete and actually liked him drop him down a bit for me (over such as Pres. Madison, Pres. Cleveland, Teddy Roosevelt, etc.). He also escalated Vietnam
Edit: Thank God Khrushchev was in charge instead of Stalin or Beria or Kaganovich.
Paul in KY
@Ukai: There was racism at work there, but also the thought that vigilante mob violence against them could also occur. Is surely a blot on his record.
Paul in KY
@lowtechcyclist: Italian vs tire rims and anthrax, to quote a certain blog owner…
Paul in KY
@4D*hiker: Starlings were unleashed upon us by some POS who thought we should have every bird mentioned by Shakespeare over here.
Paul in KY
@Ukai: Just about all Presidents have been bad for American Indians in one way or another. I think Pres. Jefferson and Pres. Jackson (just to name 2) were much more terrible to Indians than Pres. Lincoln was.