Taylor Swift officially launched her Kamala Harris era following Tuesday’s debate. But will her endorsement of Harris impact the race? AP’s Kimberlee Kruesi explains. pic.twitter.com/asHO1aJPwF
— AP Entertainment (@APEntertainment) September 11, 2024
“This weekend, @Swifties4kamala will host its first official phone bank in partnership with @VotersTomorrow. Members of the coalition will spend two hours on Saturday, Sept. 14 calling unregistered student voters in Wisconsin and Georgia, two swing states.”https://t.co/2Qb8VbQBSk
— Jack Lobel (@jackplobel) September 11, 2024
After Taylor Swift endorsed Harris, encouraging her fans to register to vote, Google recorded a surge in people wanting to register to vote. www.washingtonpost.com/politics/202…
— Philip Bump (@pbump.com) September 11, 2024 at 9:13 AM
Miss Americana ?? pic.twitter.com/f0uH1J9MqS
— Kamala HQ (@KamalaHQ) September 12, 2024
Play stupid games, you win stupid prizes, Very Serious Media:
Yes! Men of Illinois – please save your women from immodest dress, the gays and cussing by giving away your Taylor Swift tickets and paraphernalia to the godless witches of the Illinois Swifty universe! They will be happy to take these instruments of Satan off your hands! Quick! pic.twitter.com/AkK3fj4GLJ
— Anne Caprara (@anacaprana) September 11, 2024
Here we have none other than thee Linda Ronstadt endorsing Kamala! pic.twitter.com/m3lXtUEqZE
— Steph, Bonds Dog Agent ???? ?? (@stephnav) September 12, 2024
On the other hand: Not very swift, not at all…
I can't stress this enough: no they don't. In politics there's often a massive gap between what people say they want and what they actually want. There is nobody on the planet less interested in policy details than the "undecided voter." pic.twitter.com/Z7o4CTGgHR
— Christopher Ingraham?? (@_cingraham) September 11, 2024
Another important point: the NYT is recontacting and quoting these people over and over so who knows how much they're simply roleplaying the part of sagacious freethinking truth seekers https://t.co/qCvJ8sQlnH
— Christopher Ingraham?? (@_cingraham) September 11, 2024
Undecided voters who want to be on TV aren’t undecided. https://t.co/zWdePTimOf
— Armando (@ArmandoNDK) September 11, 2024
I have found that most “undecideds” are actually closet republicans who just want attention.
— Dan Przygoda (@dprzygoda) September 11, 2024
Kay
Matt McDermott
@mattmfm
16h
From Elon Musk to David Rubin, the white male conservative response to Taylor Swift endorsing Kamala Harris has been to threaten her with sexual violence. Just sickening rhetoric being mainstreamed.
This really bothers me. I think it’s very online so most people won’t see it though. I would like to see mainstream media cover it. It’s appalling. She spoke up and they’re threatening her with rape. This has to be called out.
Baud
Saved me from having to write this.
Kay
This is white male conservative celebrities online. Publicly. Imagine how many of the rank and file threaten to rape her that we don’t see. Just fucking gross, violent, women-hating people.
Elon Musk runs his entire site with the goal of electing Trump and no liberal has threatened to sexually assault him. Why is there a lower standard for Right wing white men? Their God-King is an adjudicated rapist. At what point do women in mainstream media call this out?
BR
@Kay:
To that point, as this person puts the difference between the candidates’ endorsements:
https://bsky.app/profile/marisakabas.bsky.social/post/3l3vhfhasfl2f
Starfish
They sold Swift friendship bracelets for Harris?
satby
Poor JesseSullivanIL! For him, it’s Hellinois, with a Governor Pritzker and a state legislature that has enshrined reproductive choice and LGTBQ+ rights into law. 😂😂😂
Suzanne
Did y’all see that Stevie Nicks echoed Taylor, supported Harris, and signed her note “Childless Dog Lady”? Love it.
RaflW
Jebus H. LeChrist, Alberto Gonzales endorsed Harris.
This calliope world is breaking my brain.
eta: Chutzpah out the wazoo ~ Donald Trump is “perhaps the most serious threat to the rule of law in a generation.”
Yeah, the timing is about right, Bert.
Kay
@BR:
Right. Except- in addition – Elon Musk is a rich Right wing celebrity who not only promotes Trump but uses the social media site he bought to do NOTHING other than promote Trump!
It’s as if Taylor Swift made every concert and appearance into a Harris promotional event. That’s what Musk does for Trump.
It’s just celebrity women who aren’t allowed to make political statements without being threatened with rape. It’s fine for celebrity men.
satby
@Baud: if they’re not actually Republican low lever party members/electeds. Which the NYT has on occasion passed off as “undecided”.
Dorothy A. Winsor
Upping from below:
It’s 8am and I’ve already seen dozens of tiktok videos mocking Trump’s debate answers. The most popular one by far is “eating cats and dogs.” That one must have struck normies as totally crazy. I’ve also seen “concepts of a plan” from writers.
Chief Oshkosh
Jesse from IL is just so much loser balled up into one human being. I really feel sorry for his kids. Not sure about his wife, who may have chosen to hitch her wagon to such a failure.
Linda Ronstadt brings up the one issue that I can never, ever “forgive” Trump supporters for: the intentional, permanent separation of children from their parents. Every single person who participated in that program once it was determined that there was no plan for reuniting the families should be pounding big rocks into smaller rocks in a federal penitentiary on the border. They should be complete outcasts from society, forever. (N.B.: The separation occurring at all is heinous, but the intent to make it permanent by just not giving a shit shows true banality of evil.)
zhena gogolia
Some of us are waiting for the NYT to publish 192 articles this week about how unfit Donald Trump is to serve as POTUS.
BR
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
Here are a few of my favorites mocking Trump’s answers:
https://www.tiktok.com/@mrjaydenlibran/video/7413434276739353886
https://www.tiktok.com/@casadimusic/video/7413373925276831022
https://www.tiktok.com/@casadimusic/video/7413578213198236970
Baud
@zhena gogolia:
“But some voters aren’t so sure”
satby
@zhena gogolia: yep.
BR
@BR:
And folks have really been having fun with Harris’s conspicuous pause:
https://www.tiktok.com/@nmillz1/video/7413427995060227371
Baud
Whoa
Baud
@BR:
Samual L. Jackson needs to enter the chat.
narya
I appreciate all of these old-time republicans endorsing Harris–and I hope they realize that their endorsement does NOT mean that she’s going to listen to their policy recommendations etc. (Butcher’s Bill Kristol, as Pierce calls him, is among the worst for this.)
RaflW
@satby: He’s a fucking venture (vulture) capitalist. He can move to central Missouri if he wants a Talibangelical safe space. Why these assholes think it’s their divine right to screw up a whole state rather than just move is of course perfectly reflective of their arrogance and entitlement.
Glad Illinois bounced his ass in the GOP primary in ’22.
BR
@Baud:
TikTok has you covered:
https://www.tiktok.com/@the.nyce.guyz/video/7413232877426511134
Baud
@BR:
Heh. I knew someone would do that, but I want the real thing!
RaflW
@BR: Colbert did a nice bit on that pause in his live post-debate opening.
zhena gogolia
@Baud: Colbert did that.
Kay
@narya:
I disagree. The reason they’re endorsing is to get rank and file Republicans to break ranks. The composition of a political party is the party. More Republicans in the Democratic Party will move it Right. I still think it’s worth it but we’ll pay for it. Coalition politics means each part of the coalition is essential.
cmorenc
@Kay:
Because…ewwww!
True, threats of sexual assault are much more about the violence than sexual attraction, but even so, the thought of doing anything even nominally associated with sex + Musk is toxically repellent, completely aside from the ethical or criminal considerations.
dmsilev
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
It is utterly insane, and the utter insanity can be expressed in a sentence or two, so it’s a great capsule example for “Trump has lost contract with reality”. It gets even better if you have just enough time on your video to include David Muir saying “We called Springfield and yeah, no.”.
Ken
@Dorothy A. Winsor: My favorite was the genius who noticed “they’re eating the pets” had the same cadence as the Peanuts “Linus and Lucy”.
Kay
@Baud:
My heart just goes out to student loan debtors. It is INSANE how Right wing judges have made it impossible for them to make any rational plan for their financial futures. This kind of chaos is just not supposed to happen in advanced countries. They literally have to switch plans every time some Trump nutjob judge in Texas issues a ruling. It’s a collapse of the US legal system which is supposed to provide predictability and certainty in financial affairs.
Baud
@RaflW:
@zhena gogolia:
Heh.
The silent pause heard around the world.
BR
@Kay:
I’m not worried about short term effects of Republicans endorsing Harris. How far left policy can go is mostly limited by congress and a few red state senators. Only if never Trump Republicans stay in the party for multiple election cycles and even run in primaries will it affect the party in a major way.
Barbara
@Kay: I wrote this yesterday, but Swift probably receives thousands of messages like this through every kind of media all the time. Like, this is a not atypical response from insecure men when confronted with a successful women they don’t like, and it filters up as high as it needs to based on who feels threatened by her success. Normally, people like Musk or Rubin aren’t worried that Taylor Swift could deny them anything they really care about. But when they are, they react like a lot of other insecure men, if not actually threatening sexual assault, than publicly declaiming that all Swift needs is a good fuck with a man like them to straighten her out.
It’s loathsome, but it’s not even original and it marks them out as being, ahem, not nearly as special as they probably like to think they are. No, Elon and David, you are just like a lot of other males in the universe. You just have more money.
Kay
@cmorenc:
He’ll put a baby in her! Fucking disgusting. Half of the billion dollar media industry is women. Maybe they could let the non teminally online public know that this rich male celebrity who owns a social media site is threatening to rape women for the crime of expressing a political view?
zhena gogolia
@Ken: That is my favorite.
Baud
@BR:
There’s also nothing stopping anyone on our left from joining us to drown out any new right wing influence.
Anne Laurie
@Kay: Dave Rubin is one of the ‘Tenet Media influencers’ the FBI is investigating for ‘unwittingly’ taking Russian disinformation money. ‘Witting’ is obviously not part of his skill set, but you’d think even a right-wing meathead might figure out this was a bad time for him to give the feds *another* reason to go through his personal records…
Kay
@BR:
I think you already see it with the move Right on immigration and criminal justice. But I accept the reality of coalition politics. Many, many Democratic voters are to the Right of me. It’s a big tent. I only object when JUST the Left side of the Party is thrown under the bus, which often happens.
Anne Laurie
Alternative view, repeated by multiple snarksters: He’ll give her one of his many IVF-engineered offspring, none of whom he has any attachment to, and most of whom will end up not speaking to him once they’re old enough to make their own choices.
satby
@Baud: good! Long overdue.
Kay
@Anne Laurie:
It just seems so clearly designed to shut her up. I find it truly alarming that it’s accepted (now) and not called out by mainstream media. This is women being barred from having public political views. The men doing this are themselves celebrities on the Right and they feel free to spout their far Right views. She is being targeted because she’s a woman.
Anyway
Plus he amplifies every false election claim/voting conspiracy out there to the extent that state election officials are concerned. He has a huge reach with his platform doesn’t matter how many people on our side block him.
PPCLI
@RaflW: did Gonzo add: “And I would know because I was the most serious threat to the rule of law a generation ago!”
Belafon
@Kay: That works if we’re having to beg them to join us. Has Harris begged anyone. What positions has Harris taken that give you the impression that those Republicans are having an influence?
While the Democrats are the opposition party to the Republicans, you don’t have to be a Democrat to oppose what the Republican party as a whole is doing. The world isn’t so easily divided.
Barbara
@Kay: The implicit message of childless cat ladies being mentally deficient is that they need a good fuck and a baby to “complete” them. I think that many if not the majority of women receive that message loud and clear.
Maxim
@Chief Oshkosh: Agreed.
BC in Illinois
Various people — Rep. Moskowitz is the most entertaining — have suggested that Trump “really needs to think about whether he should continue as the Republican nominee.” While this is rightly treated as a joke, the Repubs are not without options.
What do they need in a candidate to replace Trump? Some one who will:
There are dozens of possible candidates in the Senate and dozens more in the House.
Barbara
@Kay: I think Taylor Swift probably has more guts than the combined readership of BJ. I am serious. I am not the biggest fan of her music but her willingness to poke her thumb in the eye of just about anyone who treats her badly is truly impressive, starting with getting the DJ who groped her at a media event fired and then countersuing him for assault when he sued her for defamation.
She re-recorded her first albums so that she could take control of her work back from the label that gave her what she perceived to be an unfair deal — a move that JayZ called “gangsta,” and then hastened to say, “and that is definitely meant as a compliment.”
Many people, but especially women, just give their power away. Taylor Swift doesn’t. I mean, I do agree with you, and I think that many women would shut up but I think it’s salutary to see that Elon Musk, for instance, is more afraid of Taylor Swift than she is of him. It might make me drop a few coins to buy her stuff.
Matt McIrvin
@Dorothy A. Winsor: the “Linus and Lucy” one will never get old.
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
Agreed.
RaflW
@PPCLI: He did not, but several of us have said roughly that on Bsky this morning.
Like war crimes orderer Dick Cheney, this endorsement feels icky, but also a bigish deal.
I see it in broader terms as a sign that establishment Republicans are finally waking up that Trump is ruining the whole party (I know, it was ruined before!) and they might want to stick their necks out a mm or 2 in response (nothing too risky, there’s sinecures to hang onto!). Up to now, other than lackluster ‘challenges’ like Nerfball soft Haley and Copypasta DeSantis, the party has let Trump just rip for 9+ years now.
Booger
@Kay: Well, you could read it as ‘he would put a baby in her,’ or you could read it as “I HAVE ELEVEN CHILDREN AND I’M NOT USING ANY OF THEM CAN I PROVIDE YOU WITH A SPARE, NICE SINGLE CAT LADY?”
tomatOE, toMAHto
Baud
@Booger:
“Rape or child trafficking? You be the judge.”
zhena gogolia
@Matt McIrvin: Just watched it again and laughed my ass off.
Sigh. How can we be faced with him as POTUS again?
Tim C.
@RaflW: Yes. See the epic pity-party tantrum in Eastern Oregon right now. Nobody is stopping anyone from moving to Idaho.
RaflW
@Kay: We do need to watch for this, but I think the vast majority of these people will snap right back to the GOP if they can finally gather the gumption to sideline Trump.
DeSantis and Vance have show us that the party will keep being shite even after Donold is weakened, but that’s fine. Most of his crap is electoral poison without his attendant schtick and Apprentice fame.
Baud
@zhena gogolia:
Link?
Baud
@zhena gogolia:
People hate us and want to stop us.
SatanicPanic
@Barbara: it’s basically proving E Jean Carroll’s claim in real time. Trump assaulted her because she mocked him.
zhena gogolia
@Baud: https://x.com/NoahGarfinkel/status/1833708370974695574
JerseyBeard
Am I totally weird to still be curious about 1) what the hell actually happened at Trump’s assassination attempt? Dude’s ear looks fine and no access to medical records/personnel has been given to any media outlet as far as I know, and 2) the Vance vetting email leak seems to have completely dropped off the pundit/editorial board radar when it should be money making click-bait fodder regardless if their real or a Dan Rather-style setup.
Am I encroaching into conspiracy land to even be curious about these topics?
TBone
@Baud:
Oops already provided so here is the obligatory blue song 💙🎶 makes me misty for a certain former ship captain before things “went south” between us
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Kp9G0zkorio
I sold the baguette-cut diamond platinum heart pendant at a Mexican pawn shop for gas money to come home 😆
zhena gogolia
@Baud: I actually play it on the piano. Now I’ll never be able to play it without hearing that.
zhena gogolia
@JerseyBeard: No. It’s all very weird. I love when he said he “took a bullet to the head” in the debate. Maybe that explains his performance.
Baud
@zhena gogolia:
Heh. I know, right? Ruined forever.
RaflW
@Kay: “It’s a collapse of the US legal system which is supposed to provide predictability and certainty in financial affairs.”
I’ve been a voice in the wilderness on this for 8 years. More form the angle that corporations should not be funding Trump because these same reckless and feckless judges will make torts much more unpredictable, but it really is an issue for all of us that unqualified and extreme judges are in.
Thank g-d Biden and the Senate did a ton of bench-filling. We have got to get Harris in, though the odds for the Senate being in our favor are tough, so confirmations will be a shitshow or a total blockage.
Cook just moved MT to leans R, which of course is on one level a “duh” but Tester has been that rare cross-party person. Weirdly, I think if it looks more likely this fall that Harris is going to win the E.C. (she’ll win the popular, I’m confident), I think Montanans will panic about a Black woman president and abandon Tester in response.
SatanicPanic
On some of the normie channels on instagram I’ve seen people mocking the eating cats thing. The MAGA dummies are like “oh but there’s videos “. Like ok guys is this where you really want to be in life? Defending a deranged weirdo running for president? Aside from it being pathetic, it’s not good for Trump that normal people are concerned about real things, not people eating their cats.
Starfish
@Barbara: Taylor Swift is a billionaire so she is no hero. Billionaires have a ton of personal security that they can afford.
There was some kid putting pressure on billionaires for the pollution they create through private jet use, and I think Taylor Swift “won” against him because she did not like being called out for all the polluting her private jet was doing.
In addition to that, she records variations of the same songs over and over again and releases them into markets where other performers are about to drop their new albums just to prevent them from reaching number one on the charts.
artem1s
@RaflW:
The old guard Bush Crime Family members are smelling blood in the water and positioning themselves to take over the party again. Remember this is the guy who wrote the torture memo and was responsible for fast tracking execution in TX while W was governor on the off chance that SCOTUS would rule the death penalty unconstitutional. Too bad they didn’t have the guts to do this 9 years ago. Assholes.
SatanicPanic
@JerseyBeard: no bullet hit that man. If a bullet from a high powered rifle hit his ear there’d be a scar. And the amount of blood coming out suggests a very small laceration. I hit my head a few months ago and it bled more than that; I didn’t even need stitches.
Emmyelle
I was pleasantly surprised by Taylor Swift’s endorsement. It was a very well-composed Instagram post. That part wasn’t surprising, as she is an excellent writer. But I had started to believe she would vote for Harris but stay quiet. I’m a giant Swiftie (to an embarrassing degree for an almost 60 year old), so I follow her pretty closely. She was rattled by the Vienna incident-who wouldn’t be. And we all know that MAGA is a violent terrorist movement. The reactions we are seeing are predictable and were almost certainly predicted. She has presidential level security at this point.
If you are not a Swiftie (what’s wrong with you?!), you probably have not seen the Miss Amaricana documentary which chronicles her political awakening in 2017-18, also coinciding with the aftermath of the #TaylorSwiftIsOverParty fallout from the Kim and Kanye shenanigans, the Reputation tour, and the at-the-time stability of her relationship with Joe Alwyn. It paints a portrait of a vulnerable young woman realizing the empowerment that comes with deciding that her bucket of fucks to give was running really, really low. In other words, it was a unique moment of convergence of major life-altering events.
She is of course currently one of the most empowered people in the world, and that draws violent reactions from men. Vienna, and the rape threats highlight this. That is scary AF. Also, I worried about the Dads, Brads, and Chads who get shrinking winkies every time a 15 second clip of her looking fabulous at a Chiefs’ game comes up on their TV, and her concern about how her activism would impact her partner. And I was also reading into the lyrics of “But Daddy I Love Him”, which is not about Matty or Joe or Travis but rather an admonishment of the fans on the right (Sarahs and Hannahs in their Sunday best, the Wine Moms) and the left (vipers dressed in empaths’ clothing, Sanctimoniously performing soliloquies I’ll never see) who feel entitled to tell her what she should be doing with her life.
I thought the Swifties for Kamala would maybe push her to close off a little more, and the AI “endorsement” would remind her of who she is dealing with.
So, yeah, I was impressed with the endorsement when it came. I remain concerned about her safety but a billion dollars probably goes a long way toward protection.
She’s amazing.
Also, pets are doing a lot of work this cycle!
Starfish
@SatanicPanic: It’s true. I found a video,
zhena gogolia
@SatanicPanic: If I had any cats at the moment, I would be more concerned about coyotes and foxes eating them.
SatanicPanic
@Starfish: 🤣🤣🤣
Attempted Chemistry
@Ken: Also, from the Simpsons, “We Put the Spring in Springfield”.
schrodingers_cat
Tankie Internationale is not happy with Kamala Harris. One sample. This person is a journalist, has an Indian name and a maple leaf in her nym. So probably a Canadian of Indian origin.
Dorothy A. Winsor
Just saw a meme that said “Kamala was like a childless cat lady with a laser pointer and Trump chased the dot all night.”
TBone
Mike E gave us this absolute classic last night. Hope I got the nym right, it was another bleary evening.
NSFW warning!
https://m.youtube.com/watch?si=yswRiasTFuBkMKW9&v=R0QcyJ9ik1Q&feature=youtu.be
😆
SatanicPanic
@zhena gogolia: same! There’s coyotes all over my neighborhood. Our kitties never go beyond our balcony.
TBone
@Dorothy A. Winsor: 💜
zhena gogolia
@schrodingers_cat: She also wants us to have a lethal fighting force!
TBone
@schrodingers_cat: I welcome their hatred 😆 I took a look at a tankie website this morning too and hahahahahaha!
Jinchi
It’s still pretty surreal reading the media take on the election, especially comments like this:
Do members of the media remember what was happening four year ago? Hundreds of thousands of people had died of Covid, millions were unemployed, the west coast was suffering massive fires, we were cycling through shortages in things like toilet paper and everyone was in lockdown.
I mean rightwingers can argue that none of it was TFG’s fault, but we are absolutely much better off than we were four years ago.
TBone
@Emmyelle: I am a convert for life! 💖💙
I started telling my brother last year that Taylor and the Swifties would step in and am glad to see it was a correct prediction (I rarely make public predictions).
Barbara
@Starfish: I didn’t say she was a hero. Nice straw man move there.
Belafon
@Starfish: So Swift’s retreads are more popular than new songs from someone like Charli xcx? How does that work?
schrodingers_cat
@zhena gogolia: You know what else is lethal, Kamala Harris’s death stare. My mother has it, and so did my paternal grandma. Just one look is enough to stop you dead in your tracks and you know you dare not try anything funky.
Princess
@JerseyBeard: Donald’s ear looks fine but what on earth has happened to his hair? It looks like he’s wearing a new fawn-colored toupee with bangs. It’s very odd. I wonder if his old one got destroyed when the SS threw him to the ground.
Kirk
@Kay: re moving to the right, my guess of what it will look like looking back will be enough “right” moves into the D column that the R withers to a size where they’re not meeting the threshold for automatic placement on a lot of ballots. That in turn will put a lot of money many states put in place for automatic second party access on the table. We’ll see a period of feeding frenzy from both existing third parties and … call them red dog democrats, until one of the parties becomes the defacto second party. At that point the Democratic party will shed a lot but not all their right side weight.
Very simplistic, no timing, and lots of “I could be wrong and will be about the details” in there. But it’s what I see happening.
Trivia Man
There is a pertinent Simpsons clip if a focus group. Kids are asked about Itchy & Scratchy.
Do you want them to have adventures relating to your daily lives and problems?
All kids: Wild cheering and approval!!
OR… do you want them to have wacky adventures in space, or with elves and dragons, or magical fantasy adventures!
All kids: Wild cheering and approval.
Starfish
@Belafon: Swift fans are
a menacemy coworkers in their early twenties, and they are making it hard to find any other music in the library’s music collection.Also, Bon Jovi saved someone from suicide, and his song from my childhood was pro-union.
BR
Kay, this is the kind of video that brings everything together — firsthand testimonials of women who in response to the debate are talking about having suffered because of abortion restrictions. I know you’ve written a lot about how media is ignoring the real consequences of these policies, and we’re lucky that it’s possible for women to be heard, bypassing the media entirely:
https://www.tiktok.com/@geekynerdbitchcarmen/video/7413550942223666462
narya
@Princess: Or maybe he’s like Moira in Schitt’s Creek, with a wall of hair. I didn’t think he used a toupee, just a massive combover, but he’s probably continued to lose hair and may need a (wait for it) weave.
jonas
@Ken: Maybe his staff gets him to remember talking points by putting them to song.
“In 1215 at Runymeade — doo-dah, doo-dah — the nobles and the king agreed, oh, the doo-dah day!”
The Thin Black Duke
@Starfish: Billionaire Swift is asking her fans to vote for a political party that will most likely raise her taxes. Maybe Swift isn’t a hero, but when do many celebrities refuse to make a political statement ( Duane “The Rock” Johnson, Patrick Mohomnes, etc.), I’m going to give her props for doing the right thing at this point in history.
zhena gogolia
@schrodingers_cat: It’s great
Princess
@narya: that’s what I thought but he definitely isn’t using a combover now. There’s a parting there and I know he doesn’t have anything to part.
Starfish
@The Thin Black Duke: There are only so many billions that childless cat ladies can leave for their cats.
zhena gogolia
@The Thin Black Duke: yes
The Thin Black Duke
@Starfish: Are you pissed off at Dolly Parton too?
RaflW
Apropos of more or less nothing, I went briefly down a rabbit hole about Boris Epshteyn, who was one of the close advisors to Trump in the spin room with him Tuesday.
Not only did one investment firm where he worked get shuttered by FIRA, in 2013 (he was director of legal affairs for West America Securities at the time), but the firm he went to after that — TGP Securities — has, as of this year, also been shuttered, this time by the SEC, after making a suspect $1M loan to “Pebbles Digital Media” (this occurred 4 years after Epshteyn left, but the firm’s CEO was the same).
At the time Boris was leaving in 2017, TPG was sanctioned $10,000 for shady trading advice.
So, exactly what we’d expect of a top Trump advisor.
H.E.Wolf
Perhaps. On the other hand, there’s a reason Balloon Juice has funded the Four Directions Native Vote GOTV effort in MT, to the tune of almost $80K plus matching funds from non-BJ sources.
https://balloon-juice.com/2024-targeted-political-fundraising/
From the write-up in the Targeted Fundraising section of the blog: “Montana’s tribes comprise about 5% of the voting bloc, nearly twice the margin by which Tester won his last race.”
Native Americans vote Democratic at ~95%. And Four Directions is charged-up for a victory in MT, partly because state officials have tried to obstruct Native American voters in the past.
Old School
@The Thin Black Duke:
Almost.
Swift said she was voting for Harris/Walz, but said her fans should vote who they want to.
JML
I’m not the least bit surprised right-wingers are offering/threatening to “put a baby in” Taylor Swift. In their world, that’s all women are good for and once they’re properly impregnated, they’re supposed to shut the eff up and cook and clean and stay in the kitchen and out of the way, except when summoned for sex or other work. Crazy-ass cult behavior out there from people who would happily make women slaves if they thought they could get away with it.
these are the people who can’t believe women are allowed to have bank accounts in their own names, let alone freedom to do what they want with their body.
Depraved AF, the lot of them.
Hope T-Swift and her very intense fanbase drown all of them in the loch.
RaflW
@H.E.Wolf: I have gladly participated in the MT 4D funding. I am not giving up hope, but it’s gonna be an uphill slog to try to hold the Senate. We absolutely have work to do, and allies to help with it!
hueyplong
The Trump people telegraphed their concern about Swift when they floated that fake endorsement a while back. This is a unadulterated good thing and early indications are that GOPer reactions to it will only make things worse for them.
OId Man Shadow
@The Thin Black Duke: She’s been pretty decent to the folks working for her from the reports I’ve seen. I think she’s okay with paying more taxes.
The Thin Black Duke
@Old School: You’re right. I stand corrected. But I still appreciate her speaking out when it would be so easy for her not to.
schrodingers_cat
Yesterday all day on Twitter, #Elonisacreep was trending, after his rapey tweet to Taylor Swift. Apparently he has cyberstalked her for years
Elon gets stuffed in Twitter’s equivalent of a locker almost every other day. What a loser.
Scout211
Another loss on appeal for Trump:
“Election interference!” Probably from Trump, campaigning on his legal “victimhood.”
Emmyelle
@TBone: Long live the walls we crashed through……
laura
@Kay: regarding student loan debt I borrowed $110k for law school after working and paying my own way through undergrad. I’ve paid back $149k. I still owe $36k, but with interest my remaining debt is $42k. My work life was representing public sector workers- negotiating and enforcing their contractual and statutory rights as a Union Business Agent. As such, I do not qualify for public service forgiveness. I’ve been in repayment since 2002. I’m currently in forbearance as Miguel Cardona and the Department of Education is working hard to find ways for relief, but republican state law makers keep suing him to keep the boot on my neck. I currently have zero hope of receiving any debt relief. I remain thrilled for those who have had the burden lifted. Fuck all these shit ass Republicans- every last one.
BR
@schrodingers_cat:
Musk could tell Twitter to block those hashtags or posts if he wanted to. Sometimes he does. It’s a reminder that even the dissent against the right wing that exists on Twitter is an illusion of control that Musk is leaving to keep people on the site. But I expect that in the next two months he’s going to shift the algorithms and content heavily in favor of Trump and folks will regret having not left earlier.
lowtechcyclist
@Kay:
It is truly appalling. And while I’m sure Taylor Swift has the best security a billionaire can afford, we know all too well that women without resources like hers are inundated with similar threats if they become publicly visible in a way that the MAGAts find objectionable. Election workers, school board members, public health workers, people like that.
This needs to be covered in a way that sees this as a pattern and not a bunch of isolated incidents that have nothing to do with each other. Trumpism is at its heart a revenge cult, and its leader and its adherents want ‘revenge’ on immigrants for largely imagined offenses, revenge on women for rejecting them and/or being supposed sluts, and revenge on pretty much anyone who crosses them in any way, intended or not.
People, and women in particular, shouldn’t have to worry that taking a public stand should put them at risk. So this needs to be covered in a way that makes the problem, and its source, clear.
Geminid
@Kirk: I think that nationally, the Republican Party has a floor of 180 Representatives and 35 Senators, and it would likely take a decade to get down to so few Senators. Without a deeply divisive issue like Slavery, they will not collapse like the Whigs did in 1850s.
And I do not see enough defecting Republicans sticking with the Democrats to make a substantial difference in the composition of the 0arty. Right now I see 5-10% of Republican voters crossing over at most. Most of them will revert to their party or linger among the Independents.
An influx of purple and red district House members might lessen the Progressive Caucus’s influence some, but there’s not that much real difference between them and the more moderate New Democratic Coalition members anyway. So I think concerns about Republicans swinging the Democratic Party Rightward are overblown.
Itinerantpedant
@Starfish: John Kennedy had the best protection an entire country could provide. See what happened then.
Nothing is ever certain. And men with guns are WAY more like to come for her than me, so I’ll not make dismissive comments about her safety.
RevRick
@Kay: Nah, the handful of former Republicans aren’t going to change the Democratic Party and move it right. We are just giving them asylum, just like refugees from a foreign country. The essential culture of America is unchanged by refugees who become citizens.
Honus
@satby: pretty much every undecided voted i have read about is described as a two-time Trump voter. Which I guess kind of makes sense. No two-time democratic voter would be undecided. Still don’t know why the opinions of wobbly republicans are so important though.
O. Felix Culpa
@zhena gogolia: Yup.
Jeffro
@BC in Illinois:
This is a really good point, up to a point. A replacement-level GOP candidate…policy-wise…would be easy to replicate.
But none of them would be so out and out malicious, so talented at stoking resentment and grievance, or so skilled at manipulating what passes for ‘media’ in this country.
And there’s the all-important fame/name recognition/perceived wealth factor. Tough to replicate any of that with today’s GOP officials.
So…let’s hope The Rock and Tom Selleck stay in their lanes. =)
Belafon
@Starfish: Seems like this is kind of personal for you.
She is a billionaire, who didn’t earn it through bein born to rich people. She also compensates her crew pretty well, and she does donate to local causes when she shows up in towns. Plus, while I’m not her target audience, I saw an estimate yesterday that about 53 million of her US fans are over 18, with a little over a third being male.
As for not having to listen to her, my favorite local radio station, kxt.org (an indie music station) here in the DFW area, has only played two of her songs and that’s because she’s collaborated with artists they do tend to play.
piratedan
@Jinchi: I think that the PERFECT response from her would be to ask those that asked that question to remind her how things were 4 years ago.
Make them frame that question properly. Have them define what they felt was so optimal four years prior.
Scout211
Liz Dye this morning on Public Notice. Well worth a read, as she always is.
Read the whole thing, if only for the AI generated memes posted on right wing social media. They are, well, weird.
Belafon
@Old School: This a great way to frame it, and not only is she treating her fans as intelligent people, the best way to create a person immune from the type of stuff Republicans are trying to pull is to convince them to figure out on their own who they should vote for.
Jeffro
@Emmyelle: all very well said!
(and I have to add: “The Shrinking Winkies”? GREAT future band name) =)
Jeffro
I have to agree. They’re joining us and not the other way around, and it’s pretty clear they’re joining only because their party is never going to move on/win elections with trump vacuuming up donor dollars and making the whole party look horrible.
Plus they keep telling us: “I disagree with Harris/Dems on most every area of policy, but…” They’ll go back as soon as the orange menace is off the stage.
Anyway
What does that mean? Is he prevented from spreading election misinformation and voting conspiracies?
TBone
@Emmyelle: my hubby’s last name is Walls and I was vociferously yelling at him during our meet cute at the auto repair shop he managed 😆 so YES long live the Walz!
CRASH!
Tony G
“Undecided Voters”. When there’s an election for the school board or for the town council in my small New Jersey town I am genuinely undecided until I learn more about the candidates. But “undecided” about Donald Trump??? For more than nine years now It’s been impossible to check the news with Donald Trump and his “policies” being right in your face. Voters who are “undecided” about Donald Trump are either very stupid or are lying.
TBone
@schrodingers_cat: 💙 always the same ending for fElon, no wonder he dreams of Mars…
TBone
@schrodingers_cat: we call it The Stinkeye in DelCo. It is only effective when wielded by women.
Trivia Man
@SatanicPanic: “nobody had ever seen so much blood” is how i recall his description at the convention. And nobody in the media batted an eye. 🙄
TBone
@narya: 😆
RevRick
@Jinchi: The old Karl Rove GOP strategy is to attack the opposition at their perceived strength. Trump’s whole “I had a great economy “ claim is bogus.First, he just coasted on the growing economy Obama handed him. Second, the two things he tried for the economy were stupid. The tax cuts were sold under the guise that they would trigger a massive increase in business investment. They didn’t. Instead, they only shoveled a ton of money into the laps of those who already had a ton of money. And that might have sparked the wave of vulture hedge funds swooping into first-time homebuyers neighborhoods. And then his tariffs led to the need for a huge bailout of farmers.
Lastly, he left the economy in shambles. Let’s not forget that he ditched the playbook on how to deal with a pandemic and he failed to stock up on PPE for frontline workers. He only got some recovery when Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats passed the Cares Act.
TBone
@The Thin Black Duke: 👍 has everyone here forgotten Taylor’s major charitable donations (food) and also her huge cash bonus payments to those who work hard for her?
https://www.billboard.com/lists/taylor-swifts-charity-donations-gifts-timeline/
Scroll through the astounding list of heartlifting achievements in philanthropy. She will continue to do great things.
Bex
@artem1s: The Bush Crime family’s got nothin. Maybe they can hork up their version of RFK Jr., but I doubt it.
catclub
CNN Headline:
The crazy thing is, usually the headline is terrible but the story is ok. This time the reverse. The headline is perfect and then they don’t cover how immersed in the online rightwing-o-sphere that trump is. And he is the most credulous loser on the internets.
Trivia Man
Tate fans notwithstanding, i have confidence in the youth
New Deal democrat
I am currently reading “The Ancient Regime in Classical Greece,” the first of three volumes of Paul’s Rahe’s “Republics: Ancient and Modern.”
I am struck by how there is nothing really new under the sun. Rahe writes that “stasis” [civic strife or faction] was “the principal danger” of each city or community:
“Within each Greek community, Plato tells us, there were at least ‘two cities at war with each other — the polis of the poor and that of the rich.’”
Thus, “[t]o head off stasis, many communities took steps to obviate the concentration of wealth by preventing land from becoming a commodity…. [T]he city took precautions to prevent the wealthy from using their influence to dispossess the smallholder and his heirs. … The laws designed to safeguard the smallholder from expropriation had as their principal aim not the protection of the individual citizen’s rights but the welfare of the city as a whole.”
This is because the city depended on all of its citizens taking up arms as soldiers on its behalf should it come under attack by its enemies. Laws designed to prevent the calcification of wealth aggregation ensured that each citizen would have a stake in doing so. (pp.48-49)
Further, and apropos of this week’s headlines, since there were no police forces, “an individual threatened with violence or theft was expected to see to his own protection; he had no one to turn to other than his fellow citizens…. [C]ommunities pass[ed] decrees penalizing citizens who fail[ed] to come to the aid of political exiles and of other foreigners singled out as guests deserving public hospitality, and these decreees appear to have been modeled on statutes making assistance to resident aliens under attack a legally enforceable duty.” (P. 55)
TBone
@Trivia Man: 💙 Pepperidge Farm remembers! Good eye!
catclub
@artem1s: The Bush DOJ under Gonzales was fully into weaponizing the government against its enemies.
I think the reporting on that was a big deal for TPM and Josh marshall almost 20 years ago.
perfect chutzpah for them to object to Trump doing it as dangerous.
TBone
@The Thin Black Duke: 😆
rikyrah
Sarah Reese Jones (@PoliticusSarah) posted at 9:41 PM on Wed, Sep 11, 2024:
Lawrence O’Donnell, “Three full years of stupid press coverage of Kamala Harris has finally come to an end. After three years of Washington reporters turning over the question of what’s wrong with Kamala Harris, last night they finally got their answer. Nothing.” https://t.co/6VY2tQzS74
(https://x.com/PoliticusSarah/status/1834059705192186154?t=0Yjvll3XYc1yD16bLCcTsA&s=03)
rikyrah
Cornell Belcher (@cornellbelcher) posted at 9:51 AM on Thu, Sep 12, 2024:
This is spot on. This isn’t about Harris vs Trump because the debate made it abundantly clear who was in fact qualified & ready. This is really now a referendum on us! This is really about who we are as a country. This election will tell the world who we are.
(https://x.com/cornellbelcher/status/1834243560780030192?t=hLZsyCSYCseKhfFHT8TSgw&s=03)
TBone
@catclub: 👍 he is such a strange, weird little troll!
rikyrah
DFW Sports 4Life (@Kennymack1971) posted at 9:35 AM on Thu, Sep 12, 2024:
The way some people are going after the ABC debate moderators is hilarious but it also gives the game away.
They really wanted this debate to be a nitpick fest focused on VP Harris so they could say see she’s not really ready for the spotlight.
That didn’t happen and… https://t.co/XDO7sukDCe
(https://x.com/Kennymack1971/status/1834239521480728933?t=2yL5TWqbR4ab-TOhDyv19Q&s=03)
Baud
Apparently, Reddit liked Jon Stewart’s daily show debate broadcast. Some folks here didn’t. I haven’t watched it.
Suzanne
My neighborhood is freaking out. There are three public schools in the neighborhood. One of them (not where my kids go) is on full lockdown and the police are searching for a suspicious person with a gun inside the school. Police are inside clearing classrooms. Helicopter is circling.
I am tempted to go get my kids and bring them home.
rikyrah
LarryO from last night.
https://youtu.be/ntMYmVC9Ajw
Barbara
@New Deal democrat: The failure of Rome to enact meaningful land reform was a major contribution to the success of invaders, especially in North Africa.
Baud
@Suzanne:
Let us know what happens.
rikyrah
Good Morning Everyone 😊 😊 😊
Baud
@rikyrah:
Good morning.
TBone
@Suzanne: do. it.
Barbara
@rikyrah: She was a freaking prosecutor, with lots of courtroom experience. Even without that knowledge, anyone who has seen Harris questioning witnesses in Senate committee hearings, but especially hostile witnesses like Bill Barr, might have a clue that she is, as we say, good on her feet.
I will say it for probably the eleventieth billion time — Trump could only be considered an acceptable candidate for public office where men are presumed to be competent and women have to earn their respect every time they open their mouth, and ANY slip will be counted as proof of incompetence. Trump is Exhibit A to the proposition, well nigh irrefutable, that the entire media is subject to this misogynistic truism, if not actively fomenting it.
tam1MI
If she thinks Taylor Swift is evil because she made herself rich, she must think Beyonce is Satan incarnate.
a thousand flouncing lurkers (was fidelio)
@Princess: Maybe he saw the one Sebastian Stan is wearing in that new movie about Trump & Roy Cohn, and thought it would make him look younger.
AM in NC
@RaflW: I called Sen. Thom Tillis (NC) this morning and asked his staffer if he was supporting Trump. She said she did not know and asked for a comment.
I told her that after the debate it is clear Trump cannot be leader of our armed forces, as he is detached from reality. and that Tillis himself swore an oath to our country not a political party. She was very somber and I thought it quite telling that she wouldn’t say if the GOP Senator endorses the nominee.
Frankensteinbeck
@Suzanne:
Tough decision. If the schools are close together, do it. If not, I’ve never heard of a school shooter going to a second school, but it will certainly show your kids that you care about their safety. Possibly to excess.
Princess
@Baud: My son liked the Stewart thing so much he sent it to me. I watched a bit and it confirmed that… I am not Stewart’s audience. But my son liked it because he thought it would appeal to the centrist Joe Rogan crowd, and high ratings suggest it may have worked.
Barbara
@tam1MI: I don’t want to pile on, but I made the original statement that got the response. It just drives me crazy that if you say something complimentary about a woman, you frequently get a response to the effect that if there is even one bad thing that can be said about her that woman should never be praised for anything. That’s how I took that response.
Which is another way of saying that women are worthless unless they are perfect. And since no one is perfect, basically, all women are worthless. It’s the corollary to the presumption of male competence, which presumption for some people can never be overcome, versus the assumption that women should be defined solely by their mistakes and flaws, however minor.
artem1s
@Jeffro:
Once again they are making Dems do their dirty work for them. They always disappear when the hard choices and work has to be done. And they get the added benefit of blaming the pain on whichever Dem is in office when the bills come due. They have effectively convinced most Democrats that Bill Clinton was a bad president and made them forget all the middle class economic gains that were made, the assault rifle bans, the advances in women’s rights, and the recession and messy wars in the Balkans NATO cleaned up for the GOP.
every single grievance TCF has been trumpeting for the last 9 years were GOP inspired attacks on previous Democratic Presidents, AG’s, EPA, SoS, and DOJ’s. The GOP has repeatedly taken bills that were meant to advance civil rights and protect minorities and turned them into slush funds for billionaires and/or de-fanged them to the point where they hurt the people they were meant to help. And Congressional Dems went right along with it because it’s not polite to remind everyone what monsters the GOP leaders really are. It’s time to stop letting them memory hole GOP failures and undermine Dem advancements.
They have lost the right to ask for or demand forgetfulness.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: I gave up on Stewart and his bothsidery schtick during the first Obama administration.
Frankensteinbeck
@Tony G:
By a national press working slavishly to clean it all up and make him seem merely unusual.
@New Deal democrat:
I know that the land inheritance issue dragged down Sparta. I was shocked when I found out Ancient Greece was a slave economy, and the Greeks were Viking raiders turned up to eleven.
Baud
@Princess:
As long as it works. Thanks.
rikyrah
Post Politics (@postpolitics) posted at 11:37 AM on Wed, Sep 11, 2024:
Trump attack on Harris racial identity strikes a nerve at Black church watch party https://t.co/AscSRfIn0s
(https://x.com/postpolitics/status/1833907793511751798?t=wtZCbwcLnMyBmoUy4_jYZQ&s=03)
geg6
@Baud:
About fucking time. Navient is what easily could be pictured for the second meaning when you look up the word “predator” in Merriam-Webster.
rikyrah
Veronica McDonald![]()
(@Purify_toast17) posted at 8:33 PM on Wed, Sep 11, 2024:
How you know Harris won the debate is all the media is claiming she was overprepared, the debate doesn’t matter etc.
But when they thought all she was going to do was stammer & giggle while Trump tore her down they proclaimed the debate “make or break”.
We see you!
(https://x.com/Purify_toast17/status/1834042508977836335?t=_FK-iyyzuFVCobIV00gy3w&s=03)
Mr. Bemused Senior
Exactly so. I pray Joe Biden is right about us.
H.E.Wolf
I am with you 100%, on all of this! And it greatly heartens me to be in it with you.
RaflW
US Sen. JD Vance is helping elevate the risk of stochastic terrorism on his home state constituents.
rikyrah
Jasmine Crockett (@JasmineForUS) posted at 9:53 AM on Wed, Sep 11, 2024:
The next time a black woman says to MAGA… “say it to my face,” just know yo ass bout to get handed to you!
(https://x.com/JasmineForUS/status/1833881616554369417?t=yLuPquUtHOvnx94GJkuZDw&s=03)
Belafon
@Princess: Anytime I watch Stewart, I watch it through the lens that he wants to be able to criticize both sides equally, but he can’t because the parties right now aren’t equal, and he knows it. He’s not as bad as 1 Democratic thing = 50 Republican things, but he seems to really need a Democratic thing even though any one Republican thing is far worse than the one Democratic thing.
Suzanne
@Frankensteinbeck: My husband thinks they’re safer at their current school. I am not happy but the idea of them walking home.
schrodingers_cat
@RaflW: Just call it what it is, White Supremacist Terrorism. There is nothing truly random about this. I don’t like this terminology at all.
When the perps were Muslim we didn’t call terrorism, stochastic.
TBone
@Barbara: hugs and a fist bump
HumboldtBlue
@RaflW:
Sweet Jesus torturing children, it’s the end… isn’t it?
RaflW
@artem1s: Yep.
These f–kers had Trump’s ass fully exposed shortly after J6. Even the most calculating weather vane of them all, Mitch McConnell briefly dared offer a mild rebuke, but out of office shits like Cheney Sr., Gonzales etc didn’t take even the tiniest stab at the injured beast.
Of course we’ll take the ‘endorsements’. But to hell with those guys come the new term. Buh-effin-bye.
TBone
@artem1s: amen!
Princess
@Belafon: I hear you but the part I find annoying is how he constantly centers himself and his feelings. Massive ego. Oh well; I’ll take the win this time.
cmorenc
@satby:
They are only “undecided” on how soon and how many times they are going to vote for Trump.
Scout211
Hey jackals, has Nuclear Biscuits checked in yet?
They were preparing for Francine and it looks like Francine is packing a wallop of rain and wind.
RaflW
@schrodingers_cat: The stochastic part is just Vance somehow pretending his fingerprints aren’t all over it.
TBone
@RaflW: JFC
DOJ come get this fuckin’ terrorist! He’s right there in plain sight.
Sigh…
Spocko is unsurprised.
TBone
@Suzanne: what does your intuition have to say.
schrodingers_cat
@RaflW: Don’t give him cover by calling it random. Call it Republican directed White Supremacist terrorism.
As someone who has studied stochastic processes this nomenclature irritates me at several levels.
TBone
@Scout211: power outages massive in that area. Maybe their battery died?
Gin & Tonic
@RaflW: Personally I hate the term I see often: “migrants.” The Haitians in Springfield have jobs and homes and go to church, and the people who run the businesses and churches are on the record as saying they’re great. They aren’t “migrants,” they appear to have settled, and appear to have proper immigration paperwork in order. They are now Americans.
I’m reading a book about the Ukrainian railway system, and one of their execs made a telling point: some time after the 2014 “Revolution of Dignity” the concept “being Ukrainian” went quickly from an ethnicity to being a member of a political nation. That’s what America means to me as well – move here, get a job, buy a house, and you’re an American.
different-church-lady
Nothing creepy about that, nosiree.
Gin & Tonic
@schrodingers_cat:
I think those of us who know what “stochastic” means have lost this argument. Like “exponential.”
geg6
@Starfish:
LOL, apparently you don’t like her but it seems you really don’t know much about her.
First, as a performer, how, exactly is she supposed to get from venue to venue for her concerts if not by plane? She should just quit performing? There are no trains or electric cars or boats that can take her from the US to Asia or Europe. Until there is a solution to that, she does what everyone else in the world does.
Second, she is re-recording her works to take back control of them from an unscrupulous producer and record company. She wants to control her work. If she releases something, it’s up to other artists releasing at the same time to up their game. The fans decide and that’s that. Meanwhile, she takes back her power from bad actors.
Meanwhile, her concerts have moved the economies of every city she has appeared in, employing hundreds of thousands even beyond her own crew. Not to mention the huge contributions she makes to food pantries in each city. And she handsomely rewards her crew with gigantic bonuses for even the most lowly of workers. She doesn’t throw tantrums, she isn’t abusive and she publicly thanks them.
Haters gonna hate, I guess.
Ksmiami
@artem1s: yep. The entire GOP is an edifice of failure and fakery.
TBone
@different-church-lady: my main job would be to refrain from sewing that fucker into the bed and beating him senseless with a baseball bat.
schrodingers_cat
@Gin & Tonic: And optics, not to speak of chaos.
Steve LaBonne
@Gin & Tonic: Not only are they Americans, they are Americans who are working hard to revive a dying city. There’s a similar situation with Guyanese immigrants in Schenectady, NY but it’s a less benighted place and I believe they have gotten more appreciation than abuse.
different-church-lady
@Starfish: Yeah, but she’s mobilizing an army against Trump.
Princess
@Gin & Tonic: and decimate.
different-church-lady
@TBone: Not that I’d really know, but it seems to me if you used the bat first the sewing would go quicker.
different-church-lady
@Princess: I’m going to end up being the last person on the planet who “couldn’t care less.”
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Scout211: My guess is the moderators were prepared to fact check Trump’s most common and outrageous lies–dogs and cats, executing babies, etc. They did it with a single understated line. It was great.
artem1s
@Gin & Tonic:
Let’s make VJ own this.
The disruptions (such as the bomb threat) he’s referencing in Springfield are due to WHITE people freaking out because some Brown and Black AMERICANs have made a formerly White homogeneous enclave their home. Their is a similar Somali population in Columbus that is repeatedly cited as the cause of everything bad about Columbus. It’s what White flight bedroom communities do when they finally have to face the people they spent the last 6 decades trying to shut out.
Vance is blaming White violence on innocent bystanders and in doing so inciting more violence like TCF did on J6. Make him own it.
TBone
@TBone: college radio just played this ode to JV Pantzed 🎶
https://youtu.be/_2s9ke-pKWw
Geminid
@Baud: You asked earlier about whether Shawn Harris, the retired Army general who is running against Rep. Greene in the Georgia 14th CD, wears a cowboy hat. I don’t think so but Harris does have a cattle farm. Harris says he has conferred with Marcus Flowers, who ran against Greene last time and was known for his cowboy hats.
It turns out Marcus Flowers ran against Rep. David Scott (D) in this year’s 13th CD primary. That district covers some of Atlanta’s western suburbs. Scott won, but he is 77 and I suspect he will retire next cycle (along with more of the Democratic Caucus’s elders), so Mr. Flowers may well take his cowboy hat to Washington in 2027.
The Thin Black Duke
@schrodingers_cat: You want white terrorists to go away? Treat ’em like BLM protestors. I’m a sane world, Kyle Rittenhouse would be rotting in a jail cell right now.
Frankensteinbeck
@geg6:
I saw those plane tracker people’s chart of Swift’s plane movements over a year, and it drove home to me how being a major music star requires more travel than any other job. She’s constantly going to concerts everywhere. Does she even get to spend time at home?
Ukai
@geg6: Not that she needs internet mostly-randos like us to defend her, but the world would be a better place if more billionaires were like Taylor Swift.
cmorenc
@JerseyBeard:
Frankly, whether Trump’s ear actually got clipped by the bullet or not, it was a very close miss by a bona fide assassination attempt that only failed by the tiniest flinch, the tiniest mis-aim of the shooter while taking the shot. There’s nothing to gain by us in mocking Trump’s hamming up his ear getting minor-nicked by a piece of debris kicked off by the bullet clipping a closely nearby object (e.g. perhaps the teleprompter) – we’re counter-productively being the callous assholes playing it like that.
Instead, we should far more productively focus on the fact that his assassin was motivated by being so far off the MAGA deep end that he believed Trump was betraying the cause, and not some off-the-deep-radical-left kook provoked by “TDS” rhetoric. And that it was such easy access to an AR15 style assault rifle that hugely assisted the shooter in coming so close from such a distance.
TBone
@different-church-lady: 😆🖤
The idea is to sew quietly while he sleeps, but your way is indeed a time saver! Efficiency!
MCA1
@Kay: I think the question is whether or not the Harris camp and the D party see endorsements from Never Trumpers and the Cheneys et. al. as an opportunity for longer term realignment, or just an opportunity for short term vote pickup in this election. If the latter, then it doesn’t present as much threat of rightward drift.
My sense is that people like Bill Kristol and David Frum have been pretty open about their preference not being to become Democrats or effect permanent change to the Democratic Party or coalition, but rather to get those rank and file R’ to vote D until it kills MAGA so that the saner, actually conservative Republicans can resurrect the GOP from the smoldering ruins (or possibly create a viable third party to supplant the MAGA GOP, but I think they’re mostly realists). It can get annoying to hear them tut-tut Dems when they do stuff to appeal to their own base because it may turn off crossover voters and independents, but I don’t think they’ll be providing that advice if they ever manage to take control of the reins on the other side again – they’d encourage it because it opens the middle for them. For now they’re only saying that stuff because they legitimately want Democrats to win elections, as that aligns with their longer term goals (and I believe that most of them are sincere in their fear and loathing of Trumpism).
schrodingers_cat
@The Thin Black Duke: Yep. Instead of giving apex figures like Trump and Vance who incite these terrorists plausible deniability by calling the terrorism they incite stochastic. Which is the scholarly jargon for random.
TBone
@different-church-lady: 💪💙😎
catclub
@OId Man Shadow: and here is the relevant post from the past:
Quote of the Day: What Passes For Hope These Days
A quote from a four-year-old post by Jonathan Schwarz titled Global Warming: Why We’re Not 100% Doomed:
Sadly, Schwartz’s title notwithstanding, current indications are that we are, in fact, 100% doomed.
AWOL
@Itinerantpedant: JFK hubristically refused to use the protective glass bubble the Secret Service advised him to use in hostile Dallas.
Kayla Rudbek
@Baud: yes!! Great news for a Thursday!
Eolirin
@Gin & Tonic: If we were to enforce a static understanding of every word that every branch of math or science stole and repurposed, fundamentally changing their meaning in the process, we’d have no language to use in any field.
This is an academic term. It’s used in papers. Take it up with members of the field.
PST
@Gin & Tonic:
I watched one of the Haitian immigrants in Springfield talk about how he dreamed of home and hoped to return one day when political violence eased. I think a range of attitudes has been typical of immigrants in the U.S. for all of its existence. Some look for a new life and never look back. Some need to make money or escape a situation but plan on only a sojourn. Expectations of both kinds are disappointed sometimes. Multigenerational families may include sad grandparents who never adapt, parents who do, and children indistinguishable from others their age. It’s an old story, and the Haitians are just another chapter.
geg6
@different-church-lady:
Nope. It will be the two of us. Drives me nuts.
Chief Oshkosh
@RevRick:
I agree with your other comment, too, but this one covers issues and history that have completely fallen off the radar. Trump closed our liaison labs in China that MIGHT have mitigated the entire pandemic. Once it was clear that the pandemic was going to hit, he ignored ALL of the plans created of DECADES by experts on steps to take. And worse than all of that, what actions he did take demonstrably made things even worse. Pelosi did have to step in and essentially run the country.
He was (and remains) a complete and utter fuck-up. As someone once said “You don’t know anyone as stupid as Donald Trump. You just don’t.”
catclub
Although anyone who votes for him, even once, for president of the USA, is a close second. As Forrest Gump says, Stupid is as stupid does.
Kayla Rudbek
@Kay: yes, conservative temperaments want consistency which the current RWNJs don’t want to provide
SomeRandomGuy
@Eolirin: Given that mathematics is a linguistic add-on, and language is inherently sloppy because very sloppy thinkers use it for very sloppy reasons, the idea that *language* would be lost is rather silly.
What is often lost is *precision*. For example, “exponential growth” doesn’t mean “really fast growth,” – it means growth akin to the exponential function, exp(x) = euler’s number, e, raised to the power of x. How fast is exp(x) growing when exp(x) = 2? It’s growing at a rate of 2. And, the rate of its growth of the rate of its growth is 2. And the rate of its growth of the rate of its growth of the rate of its growth is 2.
Key thing about exponential growth is, if it took a week to double, you expect 9 more weeks for it to increase to a thousand times starting value. Same thing for exponential decay, and, this is also why the Poisson distribution is considered so useful – its probability has a similar form of exponential decay.
Bill Arnold
@Jinchi:
The unemployment rate in September 2020 was 7.8 percent.
(I was unemployed all of 2020. Landed a good job a few months after J. Biden was inaugurated.)
Bill Arnold
@schrodingers_cat:
Yeah, she can “do the eyes thing”. It is akin to (not same as) the “predator stare”.
That gaze was why Kamala Harris was my first choice in the 2020 election cycle.
lowtechcyclist
@Chief Oshkosh:
This. Of all the things Trump and is minions did before 1/6/21, this was easily the most horrible IMHO. I don’t see how the participants can’t each be charged with hundreds of counts of kidnapping, and sentenced to enough years in prison to ensure that they’d never walk free before they died.
MikefromArlington
“Having a swifty in your family should be a wake up call”
Gimme a break. These are the same guys that put Hawk Tuah girl on a pedestal.
catclub
@Bill Arnold: They have the memories a of a mayfly.
So no.
The Lodger
@Anne Laurie: I figured Elon would randomly pull out a boy or girl working in the family emerald mind and just ship the kid to her..
Ruckus
@Itinerantpedant:
He had that protection that was normal at that time.
Times have changed. Maybe not as much as some would like but we do still have a segment that thinks kings are gods and women are second class annoyances.
SomeRandomGuy
@Kay: No – they’re engaging in humor about sexual violence, but preserving deniability, in part to trigger the libs.
That’s why I’d suggest you don’t say “threatening her with rape”. That’s what Walz figured out. Only some complete *clown* responds to “register, learn your candidate, VOTE” with “huhhuh huhhuh let’s fuck ‘er.” In fact, said clown was animated, and the partner of Beevis: Butthead.
“No wonder Vance and his weird obsession with children attracted Elon Musk, and Trump’s friend Leon Musk. Seriously, his response to her endorsement is to metaphorically drop the f-bomb? What kind of *child* does that?”
SomeRandomGuy
@lowtechcyclist:
Having trouble responding, but: the problem we’re seeing with the federal government is likely due to the OLC, or Office Legal Counsel.
If the OLC says that an action, like torturing prisoners, is lawful, it’s considered a good faith effort to see that the laws are faithfully executed. Similarly with separating children from their parents.
An OLC opinion is considered binding and lawful unless and until a court overrules it. But no one gets hauled before a court, because, again, an OLC opinion, even one legalizing torture, says it’s all good and legal.
There’s probably more going on, too. Any form of government criminality is a political prosecution, and, if there’s insufficient political will, it will become a “mistakes were made, but we don’t know who made them, when, or why, fog of war, blah blah blah.”
So right now, a bad faith opinion from the OLC seems to be sufficient to allow mass criminality with no consequences. Those people who talk of American Exceptionalism think that “when America does it, that means it’s *not* immoral.”
Ruckus
@Jeffro:
The rethuglican party has been trying to recover for decades. In my time they have always been trying to go in reverse, back to times when they were always if not the dominate party a close race to be that. I’ve been following politics for over 60 yrs and the reality is that they really have never changed. What has is communications. Some radio and then TV started making a wider level of communications that existed prior to only newspapers and some radio, which of course was mostly not national, just local. The republican party is fighting for power, in the only way they know, trying to get more conformance in the population and looking backwards. But TV and now the internet have made that a lot harder for them because anyone that wants to see more than a very basic picture has the option. Like what we are doing here. This multi way communications that we are doing has made more change and openness than anything else in my lifetime. And I was born before many people had TVs and the first ones sucked donkey balls. The only thing they were was better than was no TV. What are you looking at this blog on? Think back how long ago it was that what we take for granted today really, was not what we are doing now. The change in electronics in my lifetime is pretty damn amazing. What I studied in the USN schools was that vacuum tubes still dominated ships electronics but transistors were coming big time. The ship I first reported to was about 5-6 yrs old and everything was transistorized. The electronics bits and pieces were still big because the concept we know today was just coming to age. Look what the phone in your pocket or purse does today or your laptop or desktop computer, or a flat screen TV that takes up half a wall and is MAYBE an inch or so thick.