Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Incompetence, fear, or corruption? why not all three?

Dear media: perhaps we ought to let Donald Trump speak for himself!

You don’t get rid of your umbrella while it’s still raining.

“Jesus paying for the sins of everyone is an insult to those who paid for their own sins.”

Too often we confuse noise with substance. too often we confuse setbacks with defeat.

FFS people, this was a good thing. take the win.

Sadly, media malpractice has become standard practice.

There are some who say that there are too many strawmen arguments on this blog.

You know it’s bad when the Project 2025 people have to create training videos on “How To Be Normal”.

Maybe you would prefer that we take Joelle’s side in ALL CAPS?

White supremacy is terrorism.

Every one of the “Roberts Six” lied to get on the court.

Is it irresponsible to speculate? It is irresponsible not to.

“Cheese and Kraken paired together for the appetizer trial.”

Bad people in a position to do bad things will do bad things because they are bad people. End of story.

Hey Washington Post, “Democracy Dies in Darkness” is supposed to be a warning, not a mission statement.

Many life forms that would benefit from greater intelligence, sadly, do not have it.

It’s a new day. Light all those Biden polls of young people on fire and throw away the ashes.

Fuck these fucking interesting times.

Meanwhile over at truth Social, the former president is busy confessing to crimes.

The current Supreme Court is a rogue court. Very dangerous.

It could be worse. Vance could have said “post-menopausal sows.” Waiting for that audiotape to surface.

A lot of Dems talk about what the media tells them to talk about. Not helpful.

There are more Russians standing up to Putin than Republicans.

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    162Comments

    3. 3.

      lowtechcyclist

      @Mousebumples:

      Good morning back atcha!

      I have a hard time listening to speeches, interviews, debates, etc., and just forget about podcasts, but I had no trouble staying with this one all the way through.  Definitely worth the time.

      Reply
    4. 4.

      Mousebumples

      https://bsky.app/profile/lolgop.bsky.social/post/3l4qhhzz6wq2l

      You’d think that it would be bigger news that an old man running entirely on being a tough guy got stomped by a girl and refuses to debate her again because he’s so scared.

       

      https://bsky.app/profile/strandjunker.bsky.social/post/3l4o7pnu3kb2j

      SCOTUS killed Roe v. Wade in the summer of 2022 and thought our anger wouldn’t last for 2 years until the presidential election. We would forget about it, get over it. — Well, the judges completely forgot that the nature of our bodies reminds us every 4 weeks.

      Reply
    6. 6.

      Mousebumples

      https://bsky.app/profile/smashfizzle.bsky.social/post/3l4lrtswi2c2v

      A bunch of teenagers in my city, who aren’t old enough to vote, when door-to-door in their neighborhood asking their neighbors to vote for their future. Something is happening here, and I like it.

       

      https://bsky.app/profile/suzette.bsky.social/post/3l4ozep7bkj2b

      Old women remember WHY we had Roe v Wade:

      Because so many girls and women were DYING.

      Now, it’s different circumstances but the same RESULT:

      https://apnews.com/article/5ba5dabf0dc3c98de12389c34b47475d

      Reply
    8. 8.

      kalakal

      Mrs Kalakal is getting some great responses to her Harris/Walz Tshirt here in Pinellas County, Fl when she goes shopping. Lots of “Oh it’s so nice to see that” and some really great short convos with total strangers. For some unaccountable reason they’re always women…

      Reply
    9. 9.

      sab

      I am going to be very shallow here, but I am an old and slightly vain,  and I really like what Ms. Harris is doing with her scarfs round her neck. I hope that becomes a fashion thing.

      Reply
    11. 11.

      Sid

      Harris is so …. normal. Only the most embittered and extreme MAGA could watch that video without having their better angel whispering that to them.

      Reply
    13. 13.

      Joey Maloney

      That was fun. I wish we would get to see President Kamala reading mean tweets after the election, but by then Xitter will be 100% straight-up nazi shit.

      Reply
    14. 14.

      rikyrah

      You wanna know how good this was for Kamala Harris to do?

      Peanut told ME about it. She had watched it on YouTube before I ever suggested it to her..this is reaching an entirely different audience.

      Reply
    17. 17.

      rikyrah

       

      TODAY (@TODAYshow) posted at 7:14 AM on Sun, Sep 22, 2024:
      “Which candidate better represents change? VP Harris gets 47% to Trump’s 38%. Why is that significant? Because in a lot of ways, this is a change election. Voters have been clear they want to see change.” – @KWelkerNBC on a new @NBCNews poll that shows Harris leading overall. https://t.co/6xc6dF1r5m
      (https://x.com/TODAYshow/status/1837827800616620046?t=PoSPihL6se1I0wDyR-zB7g&s=03)

      Reply
    19. 19.

      Nelle

      @Mousebumples: I’ve been saying exactly that.  I think it shows a basic ignorance of female bodies.  Again.  One gets a reminder every month of the reproductive cycle.  Women don’t “move on” to the next topic.  Multitasking is required.

      Reply
    22. 22.

      rikyrah

       

      Propane Jane™ 🔥💣 (@docrocktex26) posted at 7:20 PM on Tue, Jun 25, 2024:
      Yup, no matter which culture war they’re waging, their primary goal is still maintaining a White supremacist caste system that grants them absolute power over the life, liberty, servitude, and death of others. It’s slave master mentality and the GOP incites it 24/7, 365. https://t.co/Yk4rA4DmDl
      (https://x.com/docrocktex26/status/1805757941980553511?t=iPZl4MsceDAd1n5lfNB_QA&s=03)

      Reply
    23. 23.

      zhena gogolia

      NYT, Todd Purdum: “Kamala Harris is good at asking questions. Answering them, not so much.” (paraphrasing because I already threw it into the trash)

      Reply
    26. 26.

      hueyplong

      @Sid: “Only the most embittered and extreme MAGA could watch that video without having their better angel whispering that to them.”

      Pretty sure all of them can watch that video without having their better angels whispering to them, Katy.

      Reply
    31. 31.

      sab

      @rikyrah: My granddaughter’s first vote was for Hillary. Granddaughter was just gutted when Hillary lost. I know the feeling. My first vote was for McGovern.

      I am very much hoping this turns out differently.

      Reply
    33. 33.

      Steve LaBonne

      Iron message discipline wrapped in a warm, relatable demeanor. I confess that until this year I had no idea that she had political gifts on quite this level. And the same communication skills will help her be a very effective President.

      Reply
    35. 35.

      rikyrah

       

      Steve Kornacki (@SteveKornacki) posted at 8:00 AM on Sun, Sep 22, 2024:

      NBC News national poll

      (9/13-17, 1,000 RV, +/- 3.1)

       

      Harris 49%

      Trump 44%

      (https://x.com/SteveKornacki/status/1837839374395871634?t=Q2kVGexLi9P8FrIBwFF24w&s=03)

       

       

      Steve Kornacki (@SteveKornacki) posted at 8:02 AM on Sun, Sep 22, 2024:

      Men: Trump 52-40%

      Women: Harris 58-37%

       

      White: Trump 52-43%

      Black: Harris 85-7%

      Hispanic: Harris 54-35%

       

      White, College+: 59-38% Harris

      White, no degree: 61-33% Trump

      (https://x.com/SteveKornacki/status/1837839882233749987?t=ioam_XStkubUuNUAAMf2dA&s=03)

      Reply
    36. 36.

      Betty Cracker

      Trump, who has perhaps been rejected by more women than any man in U.S. history, made a pitch directly to the fairer sex at last night’s NC rally (AP News):

      “I will protect women at a level never seen before. They will finally be healthy, hopeful, safe and secure,” Trump said. “Their lives will be happy, beautiful, and their lives will be great again. So women, we love you. We’re going to take care of you.”

      The former president said women won’t have to think about abortion because decisions about regulating it are now left to the states.

      They can have a miscarriage and bleed out in a hospital parking lot, all without worrying their pretty little heads about abortion because decisions are left to men like Ron DeSantis and Greg Abbott.

      Experience tells us there are plenty of women dumb enough to buy what Trump is selling, and AP helpfully provides an example right in the article:

      Julia Novotny, 55, of Wilmington, said she’s come around to supporting Trump after initial reservations because of allegations that he’s been sexually abusive to women, which he denies.

      “He’s classy, he’s a gentleman, he looks good in a suit and he has strong values,” Novotny said. “Everybody makes mistakes, and whether he did or didn’t, I don’t know, but you know what? Leave him alone. He’s a good man. He wants to change this country. Our country is in the dirt, and the only man who pulls us out is Donald Trump.”

      Julia Novotny is a goddamn moron, but I think there are legions of women who are pissed off about their states making them 2nd class citizens who will more than offset that fool’s vote.

      Reply
    38. 38.

      Baud

      @sab:

      I hope so too, for her sake and ours. Young Hillary supporters are precious. I still see Hillary hate here and there (although a lot of appreciation too) . The elites really scored a psychological coup in 2016.

      Reply
    43. 43.

      Mousebumples

      @Nelle: also underestimates women and our own agency.

      Upside – I was told by a friend a few days ago that shes registered to vote for the first time. She had can discouraged by all the WI gerrymandering (“my vote doesn’t matter”), but she succinctly told me, “Fuck the government making my decisions for me.”

      Reply
    44. 44.

      Steve LaBonne

      @eclare: We hit a grand slam this year. If Trump and Couchfucker can beat a ticket of this stellar quality, we’re truly screwed. Fortunately I feel better about our chances every day.

      Reply
    45. 45.

      Baud

      @Steve LaBonne:

       I confess that until this year I had no idea that she had political gifts on quite this level.

       

      It doesn’t diminish her to say that she took maximum advantage of her time as Veep to be prepared to step up. Memory is faulty, but I’m pretty sure she’s a better candidate now than she was in 2020, and she was pretty good then.

      Reply
    49. 49.

      Another Scott

      @rikyrah: Thanks for the numbers.  I see it’s a RV rather than a LV poll.  Kinda late to still be doing RV, isn’t it?  I ass-u-me that we’re doing even better with the real LVs, but constructing an accurate LV poll may still be difficult.

      Forward!!

      Cheers,
      Scott.

      Reply
    50. 50.

      sab

      I am happily married. I love the man in my life with all my heart. He is the center of my world.

      But since Trump I go out in the world knowing that most men hate women, and I need to go out in the world knowing that. Like Ms Atwood said: Men are afraid of women because women laugh at them and women are afraid of men because men kill them.

      Reply
    54. 54.

      BR

      @Baud: ​

      I am glad to see that the more undecided / low-info voters see of Harris, the more they like her, as seen by her net favorability and what focus groups say about her. There’ll always be haters, but this is nothing like what we’ve dealt with with past Dem nominees like Gore, Kerry, and Hillary Clinton who rightly or wrongly turned off voters.

      Reply
    55. 55.

      Mousebumples

      @Baud: yup. H/T to her boyfriend. He’s been pushing it. And he’s been regularly asking me for reminders on when elections are or how to vote on referedums.

      Voting is your superpower!

      Reply
    57. 57.

      eclare

      @Baud:

      She observed Joe first hand, and she has Obama as an informal adviser.  I respect people who learn as they grow older.  So many people (Republicans) grow more rigid and stubborn as they age, it’s a shame.

      Reply
    58. 58.

      Mousebumples

      @sab: But since Trump I go out in the world knowing that most men hate women, and I need to go out in the world knowing that. Like Ms Atwood said: Men are afraid of women because women laugh at them and women are afraid of men because men kill them.

      100%

      I’ve probably told this story before, but when I first met now Mr. Mouse (January 2017), he made a comment of how he couldn’t wait to wake up and see what our President had done last night.

      Follow up questions clarified that he was amazed at how dumpster fire things were at that point.

      Reply
    59. 59.

      Mousebumples

      @BR: yes! I love that framing.

      Or, to get more personal – MAGA politics are inserting themselves into your doctor’s office and bedroom.

      Fuck ’em.

      Reply
    61. 61.

      Nelle

      I went door to door on my street for two hours yesterday.  Very hot, by the way.  I’m thankful for the cool front.

      I thought I was only going to registered D houses, but no, “We’re registered Independents, but strong for Democrats this year.  Can you get us a Harris Walz sign like you got for those neighbors across the street?”

      People wanted to talk.  About their lives and why they want to volunteer, but can’t (some big health issues, work trips).  About their children.  About issues (women’s health, gun violence, education were the big ones yesterday).

      Harris is only 4 points behind in Iowa right now.  I think Walz really helps, but one guy reminded me that Iowa went for Obama.  Wouldn’t it be a shock if we flipped Uber red Iowa?

      Reply
    62. 62.

      pabadger

      Anyone doing any text banking? I want to do text banking in addition to postcards this election but the it’s not as easy to do so with the DNC as 2020. Anyone doing texting through other organizations?

      Reply
    63. 63.

      sab

      OT Still shocked that one of our cats got out last night and spent ten minutes in a hostile world. Said cat is a doofus. She wouldn’t know what hostile is until a local coyote eats her.

      We have on tape that she didn’t get out when the dog went out. So she went out when the dog came in.

      ADT saved her life.

      Reply
    65. 65.

      Mousebumples

      @Nelle: thank you for your report on the ground! I went to school in Iowa, and I remember the excitement when the state Supreme Court legalized gay marriage. I’d love to flip Iowa!

      Reply
    67. 67.

      Mousebumples

      @pabadger: anything at http://Mobilize.us ? that’s where I’ve found texting campaigns previously.

      Eta – I see some there, including with the Working Families Party group, who I’ve worked with in past cycles. Might need to use the filters, though.

      Reply
    74. 74.

      BR

      @Baud: ​

      Two can play that game. I love that some Swifties are trolling MAGA by saying “I was supporting Trump, but then Taylor Swift changed my mind.”

      Reply
    78. 78.

      p.a.

      I just don’t know her policies- what she stands for.

      Have you read the Party’s platform or visited her website(s)?

      You can’t make me!

      🤔🤬🤯

      AND this^^^ is the effing MEDIA.

      Reply
    79. 79.

      JML

      @eclare: Running a national race is different than any other kind of campaign. Harris was a candidate I really liked in 2020, but her campaign was relatively uninspired. She’s unquestionably improved as a candidate and being on the ticket as the VP candidate and then serving as VP has undoubtedly improved her as a candidate. She was always smart and skilled, adding the national experience and seeing what you need to do to win has definitely helped her. I’m not surprised.

      I’m impressed with how well Harris is handling the casual racism and sexism she’s still facing from the media and so forth. It’s got to be maddening (I’m outraged and it’s not happening to me!) but she handles it in a way that makes the perpetrators look small and sad, without actually demonizing people who deserve it.

      Reply
    81. 81.

      JML

      @TS: they don’t “know” who would be best for them, and this kind of “if you only understood” argument is literally the least successful form of persuasion in political history. They’ve been inundated with propaganda telling them that others succeeding comes at a price, and that they’re the ones who pay it.

      racism, resentment, fear, and grievance are a scary combination and it’s been constantly stoked and fed for the GOP and their tame media outlets. I’m not saying it’s ok by any means, but it’s hardly surprising.

      Reply
    82. 82.

      Frankensteinbeck

      @sab:

      Men are afraid of women because women laugh at them and women are afraid of men because men kill them.

      I’d like to add something important.  Men are afraid of men because men will kill them if a woman laughs at them.  As a teenage boy, get on the wrong side of the patriarchy, even just failing to be good at it, and you find out how ugly it is.  Often physically and violently.  I both intimately understand the vicious system that drives incels to madness and have disgust for the monsters that system created.

      Reply
    83. 83.

      Another Scott

      @eclare: @JML: They’re all good at messaging, and messaging is vitally important.

      I like very much that Harris-Walz have taken up Biden’s hammering the importance of treating normal people with dignity and respect (1:29 video of Biden swearing in State Department people and telling them he will fire them on the spot if he sees them disrespecting anyone).

      No matter how much someone can only see good in Turnp-JV, they cannot honestly say that they treat others with dignity and respect.

      It’s our side’s super power.

      Forward!!

      Cheers,
      Scott.

      Reply
    85. 85.

      TS

      @JML:  I cannot believe people with virtually nothing think trump will do something for them. I understand they are happy that he won’t do anything for those “others” and this gives them joy, but that’s it. They have to know only the wealthy do well with someone like trump.

      Maybe I just can’t understand the level of the racism.

      Reply
    86. 86.

      MinuteMan

      @Joey Maloney:but by then Xitter will be 100% straight-up nazi shit. ​
      Maybe interested will finally pass into near irrelevant though with all the embeds that keep popping up that may lie a ways in the future. Maybe POTUS Kamala can lead the way by using something else rather than lend importance to Elon Putz.

      Reply
    88. 88.

      lowtechcyclist

      @rikyrah:

      You wanna know how good this was for Kamala Harris to do?

      Peanut told ME about it. She had watched it on YouTube before I ever suggested it to her..this is reaching an entirely different audience.

      Yay!!!!

      Reply
    89. 89.

      Frankensteinbeck

      @TS:

      I understand they are happy that he won’t do anything for those “others” and this gives them joy, but that’s it.

      During the big push to overturn Obamacare and gut medicaid, a Kentucky woman put it eloquently.  She was alive entirely because the medicaid expansion and Kynect were treating her chronic illness.  She wanted Obamacare overturned because if the moochers were kicked off the system, everything would be great, meritocracy would be restored to the system, and she would get a high paying job and not need medicaid.

      Reply
    90. 90.

      Steve LaBonne

      @Frankensteinbeck: “She reached down and picked a crab out of a bucket. As it came up it turned out that three more were hanging on to it. “A crab necklace?” giggled Juliet.
      “Oh, that’s crabs for you,” said Verity, disentangling the ones who had hitched a ride. “thick as planks, the lot of them. That’s why you can keep them in a bucket wihtout a lid. Any that tries to get out gets pulled back. yes, as thick as planks.”

      Pratchett, Unseen Academicals

      Reply
    92. 92.

      eclare

      @Frankensteinbeck:

      I remember some woman from KY who was interviewed who said she would vote Republican til the day she died.  The interviewer told her that both she and her son had health insurance due to Democrats and that Republicans  would take it away.  Did she still feel that way?  Yes.

      I wonder if it was that same woman.  Then again, seems like every Cletus has been interviewed, so probably not.

      Reply
    94. 94.

      Frankensteinbeck

      @Steve LaBonne:

      Heh.  For Pratchett that has extra meaning that doesn’t hit Americans.  We don’t really have the ‘getting above your station’ thing.  Class consciousness is deeply embedded in British culture, and not in the class warfare or ambition to rise sense of Americans.  Pratchett talks about it a lot.

      Reply
    95. 95.

      lowtechcyclist

      @rikyrah: ​
       

      Tom Nichols (@RadioFreeTom) posted at 1:36 PM on Sat, Sep 21, 2024:
      This is infuriatingly disingenuous. “We don’t know her positions” is a straw man and Stephens knows it. I’m pretty sure I know what her administration will look like. I won’t like some of it! But Harris must wade into an argument about Gaza or….
      Or what? @SRuhle is right. /1

      If Bret Stephens is undecided between Trump and Harris, then I am God-Emperor of the Milky Way Galaxy. There may be some people who are undecided between one and the other, but they are people who haven’t a clue about what each of the parties stands for these days, let alone these two candidates.

      I liked Tom’s followup:

      Saying it again: “Undecideds” who say “but I want to hear more about her policies” are not undecided. They want Harris to walk into an unwinnable policy debate with the media while Trump rants like a madman, so they can rationalize not voting for her.

      That’s all it is. Anyone who actually follows politics is quite aware of the enormous chasm between the two parties on practically all major issues. Maybe one Dem differs on the details from another Dem (and the same on the other side) but >95% of the policy difference between any Democrat and any Republican is the chasm itself. Anyone who claims to be waiting for details about that last <5% isn't worth wasting time on; as Tom says, they're looking for an excuse to justify voting for their senile racist misogynist crazy man.

      Reply
    96. 96.

      Another Scott

      @Frankensteinbeck: I was mentioning to a friend yesterday that the way our wetware evolved to quickly see patterns in shadows and act on them was great for keeping us and our tribe from being eaten by smilodon, but not so great for logically figuring out economics and international and interpersonal relationships and planning for the future.  They’re different things, and we cannot rely on truthiness and our guts to tell us what’s the better way forward.  Especially when monsters continue to appeal to that older way of thinking.

      I like to think that we can make the transition from plains apes to modern humans that can be less susceptible to really old thinking, but it’s a tough transition.

      “You can’t reason someone out of a belief they didn’t reason themselves into.” – Anon.

      Whoever figures out the best way to solve the puzzle will be the savioresss of humankind.

      Have a good Sunday, everyone.

      Cheers,
      Scott.

      Reply
    98. 98.

      gene108

      @Betty Cracker:

      he looks good in a suit

      Almost feel sorry for what that woman’s lived through, if she thinks Trump looks good in a suit.

      His suits are mind boggling ill fitted. Properly sized off the rack suits look better than what he wears.

      Reply
    99. 99.

      hueyplong

      @Baud: “… he looks great in a suit.”

      Gotta be the double wetsuit referenced a couple of days ago.  This might be shaming, but that woman’s kinks rate up there with Robinson’s.

      Reply
    100. 100.

      Matt McIrvin

      @RevRick: There were a lot of primary candidates running in 2020 and most of them kind of got crowded out. Bernie was still getting the left insurgent energy and once the Black Democratic base coalesced around Biden as an acceptable establishment not-Trump candidate, the rest of the race crystallized around him.

      But one thing Harris did do was perform well enough in primary debates against Joe Biden to impress Joe Biden. And that turned out to be key for the future.

      Reply
    101. 101.

      comrade scotts agenda of rage

      @lowtechcyclist:

      If Bret Stephens is undecided between Trump and Harris, then I am God-Emperor of the Milky Way Galaxy.

      As the late, great Robin Williams once said:

      “Not buying the bullshit.”

      “Undecided” to reich-wing clowns like Stephens is simply a dog-whistle for “I want to vote for this man but can’t actually publicize the fact that I’m a hollow shell of a person.”

      Reply
    102. 102.

      Jeffro

      @Betty Cracker:  JL: “He’s classy, he’s a gentleman, he looks good in a suit and he has strong values,” Novotny said. “Everybody makes mistakes, and whether he did or didn’t, I don’t know, but you know what? Leave him alone. He’s a good man. He wants to change this country. Our country is in the dirt, and the only man who pulls us out is Donald Trump.”

      We know people like this exist, and yet it’s still shocking when they say any one – much less ALL – of these things.

      “He’s a good man” – what?

      “Our country is in the dirt” – What??

      “He’s classy” – WHAT IN THE HOLY CHEESE AND CRACKERS??!?

      Reply
    103. 103.

      SatanicPanic

      @Betty Cracker: sometimes I wonder what life is like in North Korea or some similar place where the ruler is some dude who claims to be god on earth and people believe it. MAGA world is basically already there.

      Reply
    104. 104.

      comrade scotts agenda of rage

      @Jeffro:

      “He’s classy” – WHAT IN THE HOLY CHEESE AND CRACKERS??!?

      Well sure he’s classy, if you define somebody who puts golden toilets in his properties.

      Reply
    105. 105.

      JML

      @eclare: That woman in KY didn’t believe that Democrats had gotten her health insurance and didn’t believe that the GOP would take it away. She was expressing her disbelief in the messenger that was telling her something that didn’t align with her deeply embedded worldview. And this is why 45% of the country is still voting for TFG, even though we know he’s going to keep screwing most of them into the ground.

      Kevin Smith was 100% right in Dogma when he talked about how tricky it was to change someone’s beliefs.

      Reply
    106. 106.

      gene108

      @pabadger:

      Anyone doing any text banking? I want to do text banking in addition to postcards this election but the it’s not as easy to do so with the DNC as 2020. Anyone doing texting through other organizations?

      I’ve done text banking for a one person running for Congress. It was organized through this https://www.mobilize.us/

      Reply
    109. 109.

      Jackie

      Kamala Harris and Donald Trump are both considering “60 Minutes” interviews that would air back-to-back on Oct. 7 as a campaign grand finale, Axios reports.

      “With Trump ruling out a second debate with Harris, the CBS News juggernaut — which remains the nation’s top-rated news show, drawing 11 million viewers last week for its 57th-season premiere — would give the campaigns one last mass audience, 29 days before Election Day.”

      We’ll see…

      Reply
    110. 110.

      BR

      @Another Scott:

      @Frankensteinbeck: I was mentioning to a friend yesterday that the way our wetware evolved to quickly see patterns in shadows and act on them was great for keeping us and our tribe from being eaten by smilodon, but not so great for logically figuring out economics and international and interpersonal relationships and planning for the future. They’re different things, and we cannot rely on truthiness and our guts to tell us what’s the better way forward. Especially when monsters continue to appeal to that older way of thinking.

      This talk from a decade back talks about how we think through things using feelings vs. models while grappling with reality and how these are in conflict and what happens when they are:

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CGd_M_CpeDI

      Reply
    111. 111.

      Betty Cracker

      @gene108: I’ll never understand why his fans attribute virtues to Trump that he so obviously doesn’t possess — toughness, smarts, negotiation shrewdness, etc. But yeah, the “looks good in suits” comment jumped out at me too. It’s like praising DeSantis’s footwear!

      Reply
    113. 113.

      BR

      @Jackie: ​

      Eh, I doubt many 60 minutes viewers are undecided voters. This is more to satisfy the media and drive their narratives. I think Harris can reach as many people on a random YouTube channel.

      Reply
    114. 114.

      Another Scott

      Meanwhile, …

      southpaw
      @nycsouthpaw
      10h

      Quite a twist in this—he was with the FBI counterterrorism unit some 20y ago. Also notable that it disagrees w @Tom_Winter’s timeline.
      NYPD NEWS
      @NYPDnews
      11h
      Statement from the Police Commissioner:

      [ image of one paragraph statement saying search warrant was for things from 20 years ago, nothing to do with NYPD, NYPD will not be commenting. ]

      Sep 22, 2024 · 4:16 AM UTC

      This guy was Adams’ pick as interim commissioner, was from outside the NYPD, and the NYPD apparently really doesn’t like outsiders in leadership…

      Cheers,
      Scott.

      Reply
    115. 115.

      Jeffro

      ol’ Ezra spends a couple thousand words to explain two very simple things 1) trump is Project 2025 and it is him, unhinged and unleashed, and 2) that’s why every thinking American is repelled beyond belief by it

      Why trump can’t shake Project 2025

      (gift link)

      In 2024, the deep state that defeats Donald Trump might be his own.
      That, after all, is what Project 2025 was actually meant to be. The 900-page tome that Democrats hoist in front of the cameras is a festival of policy options, detailed down to the sub-agency level. But options for whom? Not for Trump himself. Even the most wonkish of presidents can only engage on a small fraction of what the executive branch does. And Donald Trump was not the most wonkish of presidents. When he said, during his debate with Kamala Harris, that he hadn’t read Project 2025 and has no intention of doing so, I believed him.

      But Project 2025 — and much else like it that has gotten less press — is more than a compendium of policy proposals: It is an effort to build a deep state of Trump’s own. The presidency is not one man, Diet Coke in hand, Fox & Friends on TV, barking orders. It’s 4,000-or-so political appointees — nearer to 50,000 if Trump again uses Schedule F powers to strip civil-service protections from vast swaths of the federal government — trying to do what they think the president wants them to do or what they think needs to be done. They do that by setting policy for the more than two million civilian employees of the federal government and by writing regulations that the rest of society must follow.

      Veterans of Trump’s administration believe personnel was their biggest problem. They could not act ambitiously or swiftly enough because they were at constant war with the government they, in theory, controlled. Part of this reflected Trump’s erratic leadership style and the constant conflict between the warring factions inside his White House: the traditional Republicans clustered around Mike Pence and Reince Priebus; the MAGA types led by Steve Bannon and Stephen Miller; the foreign policy establishment that spoke through H.R. McMaster and Nikki Haley; the corporatists led by Jared Kushner and Gary Cohn. Read any book on the Trump presidency, and you will be buried in examples of Trump’s top appointees trying to foil each other — and him.

      But some of it reflected a federal bureaucracy that resisted Trump and the people he appointed.

      To do that, the next Trump administration must first clear out or conquer the federal government that currently exists. Project 2025 is obsessed with this task and many of its 900-some pages are dedicated to plans and theories for how this might be done.

      “The great challenge confronting a conservative* President is the existential need for aggressive use of the vast powers of the executive branch to return power — including power currently held by the executive branch — to the American people,” writes Russ Vought, Trump’s former director of the Office of Management and Budget, in one of its chapters. Victory will require the “boldness to bend or break the bureaucracy to the presidential will.”

      *obviously by “conservative”, Vought means “completely unhinged”.  Anyway, carry on…

      This, I would say, is the unifying theory of a second Trump term. Purge or break the federal bureaucracy. Fill it with vetted loyalists. Then use its power to pass policy, yes, but also to break or conquer the other institutions in American life that so vex Trump and his supporters.

      Here’s a couple other long-winded explanations that tickled me:

      “trump has no principles other than what’s good for trump”

      Trump is the leader of the Republican coalition. He cannot credibly divorce himself from the groups working day and night to secure his victory and staff his presidency. There is no competing power center that the media or the public can assume will do the governing that so bores Trump. But Trump is not temperamentally suited to the work of managing a coalition and he has not elevated a trusted ideological consigliere to do it for him. He is a diffident, distracted ruler, and the result is dozens of groups competing for his favor and unsure of how to win it.

      Hmm…this one’s also “trump has no principles other than what’s good for trump”

      “The problem, which I had always suspected, was that very few plans survive contact with Donald Trump,” said Matthew Continetti, the author of “The Right: The Hundred-Year War for American Conservatism.” “He always wants to maintain maximum flexibility and maximum maneuverability in order to improve his position at any given moment. So he was not just going to turn around and say, yes, Project 2025 is exactly what my program will be, and it’s exactly who I plan to have in my administration.”

      and…yup, you guessed it…

      The MAGA coalition — particularly its elected officials and Washington staffer class — has grown devolved beyond Trump. It has more views on more issues than he does. It has absorbed more specific and unusual ideologies than he has. It is more hostile to abortion than he is, or than he wants to appear to be. It is more committed to deregulating health insurance than he is, or than he wants to appear to be. There is a great gap between the MAGA leader who slept with a porn star and the factions in the MAGA movement that want to outlaw pornography, as Roberts proposed on Project 2025’s first page.

      Trumpism is whatever Trump says it is, but MAGA is whatever his movement becomes. This is why JD Vance has been a political liability to Trump’s campaign: Vance represents MAGA as it has evolved — esoterically ideological, deeply resentful, terminally online — unleavened by Trump’s instincts for showmanship and the winds of public sentiment.

      Reply
    116. 116.

      Matt McIrvin

      @Frankensteinbeck: We have something a bit like that in the idea of “forgetting where you came from” and the striving after authenticity. It’s more of a geographic-racial-ethnic identity thing though. All those country songs that are just about who is or is not “country”.

      Reply
    123. 123.

      sab

      @rikyrah: I just spent six weeks getting my inherited right to my dad’s ira because vanguard couldn’t recognize one person (a married woman) had had two names.

      I dearly love my husband, but I am very close to trotting down to the courthouse to get my maiden name back.

      Also too we should get matrilinear now. All kids have their mother’s name. Father.? Who knows , who cares?

      Reply
    124. 124.

      Baud

      @BR:

      Socialism -37

       
      Unfortunate that a bunch of young people decided to label their good ideas that weren’t really socialism “socialism.”

      Reply
    125. 125.

      cain

      @rikyrah:

      All I see uneducated white men are not going to be having much of a love life.

      Also interesting that this thing seems to indicate that there are more uneducated white men than any other demographic?

      Otherwise after all that weight for Kamala there is only a 4% difference?

      Reply
    126. 126.

      Starfish

      @rikyrah: I have a sense that Nuzzi has been terrible for a long time. I don’t remember what it was, but there was a sense that she injected herself and centered herself in the stories.

      I found this story where the journalist who centered herself in a story by leaving her husband to run off with pharma bro Martin Shkreli is defending Nuzzi, and this makes me laugh so much.

      Reply
    128. 128.

      Almost Retired

      @sab: ​
        Similiar experience here. My wife kept her name (after meeting my family) and her inherited IRA from her father sailed through. Her sister changed her name, and only won the battle after 6 months of “we value your call” hold time with Vanguard.

      Reply
    130. 130.

      BR

      @Baud:

      Walz has been doing a great job of reframing it whenever asked. Like “they’ve been banning books in school, while we’ve been feeding kids in school and banning hunger”.

      Reply
    131. 131.

      Nelle

      @Elizabelle: I confess a great deal of self-interest that intersects with the GOTV project.  Early on in our relationship, I understood that marrying the man I did might involve a less than settled life.  He’s a scientist/engineer who prizes science over bureaucracy and, after his first firing for accurate reports that made the government unhappy, he always lines up the next job when he sees the writing on the wall.  Oh, one of the biggest polluters of Chesapeake Bay is a big donor to the government?  Quickly get another job, then share the info with U of Maryland Law School.  Rinse and repeat.  We’ve lived in eight states and two countries since our marriage.

      So, if I want community, I have to make it and do it quickly.  I don’t just interact with my neighbors when I want their vote.  When Israel began bombing Gaza, I was over at my Palestinian neighbor’s place (I am about to start talking to him about the election – we’ve left that subject alone).  I need these people.  We have porch wine, where people come to the big porch we have and chat.  We run extra covid tests across the street when the man is sick and has run out.  Plates of cookies and muffins are brought here and I give out biscotti.  We all watch out for the widow with big memory loss issues.  Covid hit me hard that, choose them or not, these neighbors are the closest lifelines that we may have.  Certainly, they make my life better.

      Today, I hope to find out why the former Moms for Liberty neighbor is now a registered D.

      Reply
    132. 132.

      BR

      @sab: ​

      @rikyrah: I just spent six weeks getting my inherited right to my dad’s ira because vanguard couldn’t recognize one person (a married woman) had had two names.

      And now we’re hearing that that’s what the SAVE act that pastor Johnson and Trump are trying to push and want to do a government shutdown over — stopping women from voting by using name changes as a way to block voting.

      Reply
    133. 133.

      lowtechcyclist

      @Frankensteinbeck:

      She wanted Obamacare overturned because if the moochers were kicked off the system, everything would be great, meritocracy would be restored to the system, and she would get a high paying job and not need medicaid.

      Apparently belief in One Weird Trick isn’t just a liberal thing.

      Reply
    134. 134.

      Jackie

      This is another reason to watch Texas this Nov:

      The number of women in Texas who died while pregnant, during labor or soon after childbirth skyrocketed following the state’s 2021 ban on abortion care — far outpacing a slower rise in maternal mortality across the nation, a new investigation of federal public health data finds.
      From 2019 to 2022, the rate of maternal mortality cases in Texas rose by 56%, compared with just 11% nationwide during the same time period, according to an analysis by the Gender Equity Policy Institute. The nonprofit research group scoured publicly available reports from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and shared the analysis exclusively with NBC News.

      “There’s only one explanation for this staggering difference in maternal mortality,” said Nancy L. Cohen, president of the GEPI. “All the research points to Texas’ abortion ban as the primary driver of this alarming increase.”

      “Texas, I fear, is a harbinger of what’s to come in other states,” she said.

      https://www.nbcnews.com/health/womens-health/texas-abortion-ban-deaths-pregnant-women-sb8-analysis-rcna171631

      Reply
    135. 135.

      sab

      My stepdaughter was rejected by her first adoptive mother ( husband’s ex) after her own mother had died and her grandmother tossed her into fostercare.

      She wants me to be her mother. I love her a lot but I am not a mother. Labelling me as such seems like an insult to her birth mother who loved her.

      Reply
    136. 136.

      cain

      @gene108:

      She is only looking at the AI generated versions of his pics. She doesn’t actually watch the man. She probably doesn’t know any of his very vague policy positions.

      Reply
    137. 137.

      Another Scott

      @BR: Thanks.

      Bruce is good.  I have a few minor quibbles, but there’s only so much one can do in a TEX(x) talk.

      (Our brains make models all the time – e.g., even before we do the thinking part of constructing our own models of how the outside world works. Understanding how those processes in our head work, their limitations, and their dangers is important.)

      Cheers,
      Scott.

      Reply
    139. 139.

      pabadger

      @Mousebumplesu: Thanks I will check things out there. No idea why Harris/Walz makes it so hard. I even emailed them.

      Actually I do know why – they want to drive people to doors and phones.

      Reply
    142. 142.

      UncleEbeneezer

      @rikyrah: Amazing artists can also be really dumb.  I put her in the same Leftier-Than-Thou camp as Tom Morello (and the rest of Rage Against The Machine) and Susan Sarandon.  Hopefully she learns better but I certainly won’t hold my breath.

      Reply
    145. 145.

      Starfish

      @sab: If you are parenting children, you are a parent. If you want to choose a different term to go by give space to the deceased, that is fine.

      The way that we expect to ask our female leaders about their relationship to motherhood and never ask the same of men is pretty damn sexist. No one asks these dudes if they are sure they want to be President and if they will have enough time for fatherhood.

      Reply
    146. 146.

      Matt McIrvin

      @Nelle: I have a few elderly relatives who still can’t reconcile themselves fully to the idea of my wife having a different last name. But there aren’t many of them left.

      Reply
    148. 148.

      Scout211

      Axios is reporting this morning that both Harris and Trump are in talks with CBS to be interviewed on Sixty Minutes.  The interviews are to be aired back-to-back on October 7th.  Both Walz and Vance are also invited.

      Reply
    149. 149.

      Sister Golden Bear

      @Starfish:

      Chappell Roan has suddenly been thrust into fame, and this is very hard on her.

      Roan has disclosed she’s being treated for severe depression, and her life has gotten turned upside down since getting famous.

      That said, while I understand why she might not want to formally endorse anyone, just saying “both sides have problems” is…. problematic for someone who wants to be a queer icon.

      Reply
    150. 150.

      Jackie

      @dc: I thought you were going to say Kamala. She also looks good in ALL colors of suits – including blue – AND has much more class than The Orange Asshole! 😁

      Reply
    151. 151.

      DougL

      @Frankensteinbeck:

      I’d like to add something important.  Men are afraid of men because men will kill them if a woman laughs at them.  As a teenage boy, get on the wrong side of the patriarchy, even just failing to be good at it, and you find out how ugly it is.

      I couldn’t agree more. Much of our society is a construct of the fear we have for powerful men. Our economy is designed to reward them. We could have a much better world but about 4000 billionaire men (almost always men) stand in the way. Them and the armies of bullies and sycophants they employ. How to successfully resist the sociopaths and check their power is the goal of every successful society.

      ETA: Or as Ben Franklin said, a republic if you can keep it. The keeping it is the hardest part.

      Reply
    152. 152.

      Matt McIrvin

      @Frankensteinbeck:

      I’d like to add something important.  Men are afraid of men because men will kill them if a woman laughs at them.  As a teenage boy, get on the wrong side of the patriarchy, even just failing to be good at it, and you find out how ugly it is.  Often physically and violently.  I both intimately understand the vicious system that drives incels to madness and have disgust for the monsters that system created.

      To be fair, they’re also afraid of other men laughing at them. In part because that can easily lead to worse. Or they remember worse.

      I think a lot of what made dating so terrifying a thing in my youth is that I had attraction to women all muddled up with a fear of being low-status in the eyes of other boys. I also think that if I hadn’t been brought up kind of feminist, and if the whole “incel” online community had existed at that point, things could have gone much worse for me.

      People sometimes wonder why men think that the grosser aspects of performative male heterosexuality are attractive to women. I don’t think they do. The audience for that stuff is other men.

      Reply
    155. 155.

      Citizen Alan

      @Jeffro: i don’t consider maga voters to be functionally human. There, I said it. I genuinely don’t recognize them as being part of the same species as me. Their brain structure are so different at a fundamental level that I feel like I would have more in common with a space alien from planet zog, provided that space alien wasn’t a misogynistic bigoted, nazi space alien.

      Reply
    156. 156.

      Juju

      @rikyrah: I don’t know wether Brett Stephens is really that stupid or if he’s playing stupid just to be contrarian.  I lean towards just that stupid. Also, I can see why Trump is pissed at Stephanie Ruhle this weekend.

      Reply
    157. 157.

      Juju

      @Baud: I know that’s the first thing I consider when I vote for a candidate, how good they look in a suit.  Fortunately VP Harris looks better in a suit than Trump. 😜

      Reply
    158. 158.

      Splitting Image

      @Juju:

      I don’t know wether Brett Stephens is really that stupid or if he’s playing stupid just to be contrarian.  I lean towards just that stupid. Also, I can see why Drumpf is pissed at Stephanie Ruhle this weekend.

      I’m of the opinion that former editors at the New York Times shouldn’t get the benefit of the doubt. I consider Stephens to be dishonest, not stupid. That said, there is a point in every lie when persisting in the dishonesty makes one sound stupider and stupider.

      Reply
    159. 159.

      Gloria DryGarden

      @Frankensteinbeck: I am very interested in (learning about) all the ways boys and men are pressured and “ molded.”
      As a woman, not in male culture much, I think there is a lot more that goes on than most women are aware of. I feel like I’m looking through a crack in the door, or seeing something out of the corner of my eye.
      For awhile, I’ve been thinking about vulnerability as a quality to be encouraged, nurtured, allowed. I don’t know if it’s even safe, and I’ve started considering that perhaps vulnerability is a privilege.
      I keep thinking that allowing boys and men to be present with vulnerability in themselves and their peers, would help.
      I know that’s possibly naive and simplistic, but I wonder what you think will help, what we can do.
      it hurts to think that even while women have been subject to misogyny, men have been subject to something also, that is devaluing, belittling, dehumanizing.

      Reply
    160. 160.

      Ruckus

      @Belafon:

      That to them IS normal. They are OLD school, everything is controlled, freedom is silly and dangerous.

      Some people need guidance to exist, either their functional brains are so small or so deluded as to what reality is that they need 4 walls and a roof so that they can’t see much of the outside world because they can’t believe/understand reality. They may have been told for their entire lives that the world only works one way and this ain’t it. Some people like to be controlled, then they don’t have to actually think or be responsible.

      Reply

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