President Biden is going to be on The View on Wednesday!
I hope VP Harris does an interview with them as well.
Nothing triggers MAGA like those ladies!pic.twitter.com/Kxz9UDCWgL
— Art Candee ???? (@ArtCandee) September 23, 2024
Kamala Harris uses sign language to say she supports ending language deprivation for deaf kids.
I love Kamala Harris. #TrumpIsInsane#VoteOutEveryRepublican#UnitedWeStand #WhenWeFightWeWin #HarrisWalz #TrumpIsAGlobalLaughingStock pic.twitter.com/pIUVmF14hs
— Amelia.M (@Amelia84M) September 21, 2024
Walz: After one of these mass shootings, Donald Trump said 'people just need to know how to get over it.' And my opponent said, it's a 'fact a life.' Where do you have to be in your life that that's the first thing that comes out of your mouth? pic.twitter.com/uItIBkZrm1
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) September 21, 2024
Morning treat, concerning a Biden/Harris admin stalwart who sometimes gets overlooked a bit. John Heileman, at Puck, transcribes an interview with the Secretary of Transportation, aka ‘Pistol Pete’:
… Among political professionals there’s a broad consensus that Buttigieg is, by a non-trivial margin, the most talented communicator in the Democratic Party this side of the Obamas.
To get a taste of just how good Pete is, head over to YouTube and sample his increasingly viral hits on Fox News, where he has made a point of regularly tangling with the network’s lineup of bad-faith blowhards, calling out their bullshit without ever losing his poise or his patience. His skills on the stump have made him—in a personal capacity, during his off-hours from his day job—one of Team K’s most valued and widely deployed surrogates. Add to that his keen mind, fierce ambition, aw-shucks Midwestern affability, and mind-blowing youth (he is, gulp, just 42) and it’s easy to see why the party’s cognoscenti believe that Pete is the one rising Democratic star with more than a decent shot at being president one day—that he’s close to a mortal lock.
Last week, Pete sat down with me to tape an episode of Impolitic With John Heilemann. Some highlights of that convo are below, and you can listen to the whole thing here. Shortly after we chatted, The New York Times reported that, just as he played the role of Mike Pence in Harris’s V.P. debate prep four years ago, Pete is standing in for J.D. Vance in Tim Walz’s murder-boarding for the understudies’ face-off on October 1. Because of the Times’s lousy timing, I wasn’t able to interrogate Pete about that juicy topic. But we did go deep on the state of the race, why he believes Harris has the stronger hand to play in the homestretch, the appalling hellfire unleashed on Springfield, Ohio, by Trump and Vance’s racist lies about the town’s Haitian immigrants, and what Harris and Walz need to do to seal the deal in the Blue Wall states. As always, this conversation has been lightly edited…
John Heilemann: Seems like you’re spending the vast majority of your time when you’re off the clock from your day job on the campaign trail working to elect Kamala Harris. As we sit here, a little more than six weeks from Election Day, how’s that going?
Pete Buttigieg: Good! The V.P. has been, I think, really clear in reminding us all that there are a lot of underdog qualities to this campaign, but also, I’d rather be us right now [than the Trump campaign]. The American people agree with the vice president on the issues that matter to them most. But we know that just because folks agree with you on the issues doesn’t mean that you get to win the election. You’ve got to earn that. [Kamala Harris] is out there doing that. Tim Walz is out there doing that. And a lot of other Democrats who really care about this—including me, when I get the chance in my personal capacity— are out there doing everything we can…
I think it’s really healthy to maintain that underdog mentality, to know that we’re gonna have to earn every vote. There are a lot of people we have to persuade to vote for us; there are a lot of people we have to persuade to vote, period. But the energy and momentum in this campaign—you certainly felt it at the convention—has been extraordinary. The other thing that I think is really notable is that every test that people set up for the V.P., she has gotten through flawlessly. Six weeks is the blink of an eye, but it’s also an eternity in politics. There’s going to be ups and downs; there’s going to be setbacks; it’s a roller coaster. That’s how campaigns are. But again, fundamentally, I’d rather be us for the simple reason that most Americans strongly disagree with Donald Trump’s decision to end right-to-choose and agree with her wanting to protect it. They disagree with Donald Trump’s tax cuts for the rich and prefer her middle-class focus. They want somebody who’s more pro-worker and more pro-union.
… [L]et me ask it this way: Do you think there’s a case to be made that Donald Trump is not mentally fit to be president right now?I think there’s something to that. I think he’s often confused. He often seems a little out of touch with reality. It’s getting worse, right? We’ve seen it kind of pick up if you compare to what he was like even a few years ago. I don’t think he made the most sense back then, but you definitely see that piling up. And I guess the other thing to think about—not just given his advanced age, but given that he managed to get impeached twice the last time around—is this really raises the stakes on the running mate. So one question I would ask voters is not just, Are you okay with the commander-in-chief and leader of the free world being somebody who seems to have trouble with the grip on reality?, but also, How do you feel about J.D. Vance?…
First of all, the only appropriate response to any political violence is to categorically condemn it. I think that’s what most people on both sides of the aisle have to say about what happened: that we are glad President Trump was unhurt and horrified that there was another attempt like this. I think the difference you see with what J.D. had to say is the difference between people saying, How do we stop this? and someone saying, How do we use this?.
The reality is that the overheated and violent rhetoric coming from the right has had very real real-world consequences, notably the fact that political violence came to the steps of the United States Capitol, leading to police officers being beaten and injured—a riot that led to deaths. And, of course, that’s far from the only example where we have violence being inspired right now by [the right’s] rhetoric. So if you’re really going to say, Let’s do something about the rhetoric in this country, that’s not a liberal or conservative thing, it should be an American thing to say that political violence is unequivocally to be condemned. We say that; common-sense Republicans say that. But Trump and Vance have trouble bringing themselves to say that…
…[T]here’s something really interesting and important going on with J.D. saying, basically, We made up a bunch of crazy stuff because that was the only way to get the people of Springfield the national media attention they needed [in the face of strains on the community due to immigration]. But the people of Springfield, including the mayor and Republican elected officials, are saying, Hey, we did not need the firestorm you just inflicted on us; that’s not doing us any favors; go away. [Vance] is their senator. What you did not hear from him was what a normal senator would say: These are my constituents. They have a problem. Here’s what I’m doing to help. [Vance’s approach has been] How can I use you?, not, How can I help you?…
You’re a Midwest guy: Indiana native, former mayor of South Bend, and now you and Chasten live in Michigan. The clearest path to 270 electoral votes for Harris is to hold the Blue Wall battleground states—Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin—that Biden won in 2020. Some people feel that these are tough states, especially Pennsylvania, for a Black woman to win. In your view, what does Kamala Harris need to do to bring home those states in a part of the country you know so well?
Two things. One is to assemble a political project that people want to be part of. That’s why the “joy” thing isn’t just superficial. It’s the idea that instead of death-match, doom and gloom, fight, grievance, all the stuff you get from Trump and Vance, it’s something more constructive and positive that people just want to attach their names and reputations and votes to. That’s the vibe level. The second is the policy level, to make sure people understand that the reason why the Midwest is seeing factory investments at a pace we haven’t experienced since the Kennedy administration has to do with her being right on policy. And I think that combination is the path to victory…
And you have to connect the dots for folks. You can’t assume just because you deliver economic benefits to a community that they’re going to give you credit for it. And what’s happening right now is, whether you look at it in terms of policy or in terms of feel, there’s a proposition that’s coming together in this campaign—our campaign, her campaign—that I think ultimately resonates more in the Midwest. But the reality of a polarized country is that every campaign right now is a game of inches, and she’s going to be out there working to earn every inch of ground until the bell rings.
On The Road – Captain C – Veryetsmuseum (Resistance Museum) – Amsterdam, October 2024. Part 3
Baud
I first saw this news on a reddit thread and the MAGA were out and, boy, were they triggered.
J.
I think Pete would make a great Secretary of State in the Harris administration.
Baud
@J.:
Might not want it with young kids at home. That’s a lot of time apart.
rikyrah
Good Morning Everyone 😊 😊 😊
Baud
@rikyrah:
Good morning.
rikyrah
@Baud:
I agree with both of you.
He would make a great Secretary of State
But, his kids are too little.
He would rarely see them.
Baud
Via reddit
If there’s one thing Republicans won’t abide, it’s a black Nazi.
Mr. Bemused Senior
@rikyrah: good morning
Sally
@Baud: I like to see professional diplomats in that position. The world is very messy at the moment and I’d prefer someone with more foreign policy experience. I think he’s been fab in Transport. Like to see him run for Governor or Senate maybe.
Also, young family
lowtechcyclist
I’d like someone with a little more foreign policy experience for State. Is Gretchen Whitmer term-limited as MI Gov? If so, I’d like to see Buttigieg succeed her in that capacity. In the meantime, maybe Treasury for Pete?
Baud
@lowtechcyclist:
MI has a lot of good Dems with stronger connections to the state. Could be problematic.
Suzanne
Kamala is fantastic and I ordered two Harris/Walz camo hats yesterday. Very excited.
Went running this morning. Got honked at (you know, the way gross men honk at women they pass on the street). Looked over, and it was the guy driving the school bus on his way to pick up the charter school kids in the neighborhood. Made me very sad for any girls who have to ride that bus.
J.
@Baud: Good point. Can’t see him staying on as Secy of Transportation, but he should be part of a Harris administration. So which cabinet position would he accept? Defense? Commerce? Labor? Education?
TBone
Feelin’ corny, and I don’t care who knows it 😂 🎶
https://youtu.be/sA3Cc5-Tqfw
Ceci n est pas mon nym
Walz just keeps producing those quotable quotes, doesn’t he? “Where do you have to be in your life?” “Mind your own damn business.” “Weird.” He’s such a perfect choice.
Ken
Walz on Trump and Vance responses to school shootings: “Where do you have to be in your life that that’s the first thing that comes out of your mouth?”
Inside a cube of bulletproof glass, surrounded by Secret Service agents.
mali muso
Good morning! I took my seven year old daughter with me to early vote yesterday. Both of us were the youngest ones there – sadly, my area is pretty rife with old white rethugs. Heard some of them mumbling to each other about how they were pretty sure there hasn’t been a “fair election” in 30 years. But regardless, she got to watch me fill in the bubble for Kamala Harris and she was the one who fed the ballot into the tabulating machine. I have to have hope for her sake that enough decent people in enough places around the country will do the right thing.
TBone
@mali muso: 💜💙💜
dmsilev
@Baud: Sadly (no, not really), there’s plenty of video of Trump and Robinson being buddy-buddy together, and the Harris campaign is already running those clips in their ads.
Sure Lurkalot
@Baud: Hmmm, it was just a little while ago that Herr Leader dubbed Mark Robinson MLK on steroids. Did Herr Leader misspeak? Staff gave him bad advice, again? More heads gonna fall?
Quinerly
Has anyone posted this? Heritage Foundation Project 2025 guy killed a neighbor’s dog with a shovel, bragged about it when he was a professor in Las Cruces, NM.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/sep/24/project-2025-kevin-roberts-killed-dog
Baud
@Quinerly:
That dog’s name: America.
Baud
@mali muso:
Gore-Kerry voters?
H.E.Wolf
@mali muso:What a great thing to do, to take your daughter with you to vote in this election. I remember the many voters in our precinct who brought their children with them to the polling place in 2008, so that they could witness that historic moment.
I also remember your comments, 8 years ago. This year I hope we’ll redress the balance that went so horribly askew, shortly before she was born.
And now your daughter is old enough to remember today’s experience, so we have even more reason to vote for Harris/Walz, freedom, and joy!
Mel
@rikyrah: Good morning!!!😺
Jackie
President Harris will probably give Pete Buttigieg any position he wants – and I don’t expect him to request anything he’s not capable of excelling at.
Frankensteinbeck
@Baud:
For people on the left, the problem is he wants to be a Nazi. For people on the right, the problem is he wants penis.
Geminid
@mali muso: I guess you have the same sloppy wet weather we’re having further down the Blue Ridge. Hopefully it will be a bright sunny day when you go to the polls to reelect Kamala Harris four years from now.
Baud
Some good news, via reddit.
Interesting how this story just went away.
Anyway
Ok, I cannot deal with talk of who’s who in the KH administration right now – the rollercoaster is heading doooowwwwwn
NervousNellies”R”Us
Mel
@mali muso: 💕
My great-grandma was a suffragette. She took my grandmother with her to vote when my grandmother turned 18. Grandma was a poll worker until she turned 80, and she and I went to vote together when I turned 18. She carried a photo of my great- grandmother in her purse when we went to vote, so that she could be with us.
hueyplong
@Baud: Dems Fear Springfield Rebuke May Be Fatal Blow To Biden Campaign.
Something like that?
mali muso
@H.E.Wolf: Yes, I had some flashbacks to how joyful I felt voting for HRC when pregnant with kiddo, so confident in a bright future for her – and how crushing everything was in the weeks prior to her birth.
@Geminid: Yeah, we are getting the system here “down” (up?) the valley. We need the rain, so I can’t complain. :-)
Baud
@Anyway:
It can actually be helpful to get people excited about Harris’s cabinet.
A lot of people hate Garland (rightly or wrongly doesn’t matter here) and are excited that Harris will get rid of him. I’m not about to tell them that most cabinet positions change after 4 years, and Garland would likely be gone even if Biden had a second term.
Jackie
@Baud: Another TCFG promised “In two weeks…” bites the dust. No surprise – except for the rarity of making a right decision.
Heidi Mom
I’d like to suggest an off-the-wall possibility for Pete: Ambassador to Germany. Reasons: Chasten was an exchange student there in high school, liked it, probably retains some knowledge of the language. It’s an LBGTQ-friendly, child-friendly country. It’s a critical ally whose support for Ukraine seems to be wavering, so Pete’s interpersonal communication skills would be put to good use. He would be well situated as Kamala’s trusted emissary to President Zelensky–to all of Europe, in fact. And it’s a role that would fill the perceived foreign-policy gap in his resume. Downsides: Distance from family in MI. Lesser perceived status than a Cabinet position, but given the personal brand that Pete’s built, I don’t think that matters.
TBone
@Mel: that story makes my heart shine, thank you!
Quinerly
@Baud:
Good one.
We used to have a commenter from Las Cruces. Haven’t seen him on here in awhile. I think his nym was “desertfriar.”
Baud
@Jackie:
Almost certainly a right decision by accident. He probably feared a hostile reception.
Kosh III
Buttigieg/AOC 2032
Kosh III
@Heidi Mom: Good idea. I assume German is one of the numerous languages Mayor Pete already speaks/
Scout211
Sorry, but I’m posting some “bad vibrations” in this morning thread. So many reasons to work to keep the Senate in a Democratic majority.
The legal arm of the religious right has found another friendly judge to strip individual rights of employees’ personal healthcare choices
Chris Geidner at Lawdork
TBone
Fran Dresher-esque parody tribute to VP Harris. (Fran really showed her Union mettle and is also a shero!)
https://youtu.be/RcUgbLEqvSk
PS LOVE the Chucks!
jonas
@Baud: Oh, I think they were fine with the Nazi and slavery stuff. The bridge too far was the trans porn kink.
It does remind me of one of the famous All Souls Oxford fellowship exam questions, often called “the toughest college essay in the world”: “Does the moral character of an orgy change when the participants wear Nazi uniforms?”
the pollyanna from hell
My name is Randy Chase. I often bring up my real name when there is some fragment of music or poetry I have created. This time I want to expose my shameful history of sock-puppetry.
Forty or fifty years ago I took a survey of career preference. The shocking result was that I failed the Veracity Score. I enjoyed too many things, or I hated the wrong things.
My preferece was moot, since I was too slow to keep up with the rat race in any field. Hard to believe? Just more sock-puppetry. Maybe a dozen times in my life I failed the Veracity Score and descended into sock-puppetry. Just ask my ex-wife.
When I met Gloria twenty or twenty-five years ago I was prepared to be suspicious, because I knew I didn’t deserve to meet someone with fewer character flaws than myself. She invited me on a camping trip to the homeland of her spirit. My suspicion was confirmed. What kind of con-artist uses metaphors like “Spirit” and “Homeland?”
I had never heard of the Needles, just out past Moab. We went back year after year. When I watched that long continuous opening shot of Koyaanisqatsi I felt a strong rush of homecoming, so I guess the place was at least the part-time home of my spirit.
Gloria never objected when I began to carry her water on the hiking trails. Years later the day came when four hours only took us two miles up the trail, and four more hours brought us back down to the car. That was our last hike together.
People like Gloria and me are extravagantly unique. This gives a sense of unreality which has nothing to do with any intention to deceive. Gloria is like the student psychiatrist who fails the Veracity Score over and over. Imagine someone who deals with childhood trauma by dispelling for the sake of survival every trace of self-deception. In that case the useful purpose of self-deception to reconstruct the illusion of normality is no longer available. We use the illusion of normality to reassure ourselves and each other that sanity is in charge.
Another version of this analysis notes that self-training in how to project normality can trigger a return of the old PTSD.
I would like to see a clinical description of sock-puppet which can distinguish it from a six year-old girl who is astonishingly five feet tall and infected with mono. I hope those who think such cases are too rare to be important take some thought to the matter of karma. But I wouldn’t know much about that, being just an old something you found in your sock drawer.
Gloria and I are separated by half the country. We talk every day. She is exactly as clumsy and naive and helpful and brilliant as she purports to be.
Baud
@jonas:
Yes.
Kay
@mali muso:
I don’t think there’s a general understanding or reckoning with how far the “stolen elections” narrative has penetrated the Republican Party, even among “moderates” or sporadic Right leaning voters. The GOP Board of Election employees talk about it here, how it’s a real impediment to them doing their jobs.
It would be a great political story if one of the multi billion dollar media industry outlets wanted to do something interesting and relevant. I quit pollworking in ’08 (after the Dem primary) and then picked it up for one election years later (2022 midterm). I was shocked at how radical they had become – all of them – voters, pollworkers, the whole GOP. They were actually disruptive at pollworker training – talking over the instructor, contradicting him, asking insane questions, impossible to train.
jonas
@Scout211: I’m hoping they find a judge somewhere to rule in favor of a Quaker-owned or managed organization that refuses to employ anyone who has served in the military or owns a firearm, or a Scientology-owned organization that refuses to cover psychiatric drugs in its health plan. Where does this shit end?
Anyway
good point. I’ll try to look at it that way …
I’m just so mad and nauseated by the way Dotard’s been talking about women – it’s sickening. And not once – he’s said multiple times he’ll be their protector, make them happy and confident (WTF?!) – it makes no sense.
Belafon
@Baud: He would be, but he might not want it, but he might think it would be a good place for him especially to shape the world his kids will grow up in, and he might be shooting for president and that’s a good stepping stone, and I guess we’ll find out in the next administration.
Edited
Geminid
@Baud
Personally, if I want excitement I’ll speculate about the Baud 20XX Cabinet. But I think you are right that anticipating a potential Harris cabinet can be a positive for Democrats, at least so long as the various prospects do not become points of contention. Not that any Democrat would allow that!
Heidi Mom
@Kosh III: It isn’t, but give him a few days . . . .
TBone
@Anyway: when I find myself getting upset by anything Donold says these days, I remember that anything he spews is merely the pathetic and only way he has to grab attention and be publicized. So it doesn’t upset me anymore. It’s horrific and insane but it is calculated to be just that (upsetting) and I just refuse to give him that satisfaction. I feel “meh” when I remember his stupid tactics, not upset. I just point and laugh.
Harrison Wesley
@Quinerly: So Plan B is already in place if Trump loses? I wonder how long Roberts and Noem have been planning their mail-order gourmet kennel-to-table Premium Puppy Parts line for the Haitian community.
Other MJS
@Quinerly: To be fair, he didn’t eat it.
Kay
Steve Neavling
@MCmuckraker
18h
Replying to
@jaketapper
I’m the reporter who interviewed Rashida Tlaib. She never said Nessel did this because she’s Jewish. Never. You’re spreading lies.
Nessel is the AG of MI. She absolutely hammered pro Paelstinian student protestors in MI – ridiculously overcharged with felonies. She can’t come up with a single example of protestors on any issue, ever who have been treated like this. So that’s the context.
A local MI reporter – Muckraker- interviewed Tlaib about it and Tlaib said some institutions in the US are anti Palestinian. Now, you can agree or disagree with that – I think it’s blatantly obvious and I would start with the US State Department, who don’t appear to believe Palestinians are human beings, but YMMV.
Jake Tapper and Dana Bash took this statement about anti Palestinian bias in the US and turned it into a smear against Tlaib, claming Tlaib said that Nessel hammered the protestors because Nessel is Jewish.
Nessel never said anything like this, Bash and Tapper invented a smear out of whole cloth, so the reporter who interviewed Tlaib called CNN out for employing liars.
Tapper has now (sort of) admitted he smeared Tlaib but Bash doubled down.
They just suck – they’re terrible at their jobs. They invented a quote.
BellyCat
@H.E.Wolf: I think I mentioned this before here, but worth sharing again regarding children and the 2016 election.
My son was nine months old then. When his mother and I learned the result, at o-dark-thirty, we were stupefied the entire next day. Twenty-four hours later, my son woke us up in the middle of the night (which was all too common, unfortunately). I get up, go to his crib, and (gulp) witness a HUGE diaper explosion. It was then that his mother and I realized that we both were in such a profound state of shock that neither of us had changed his diaper for an entire day.
Elections certainly do have consequences! LOL
Belafon
@Heidi Mom: Sorry, becoming an ambassador after starting your rise in the ranks is a way to derail that trajectory. See what happened to the Republican Obama made an ambassador after the guy was seen as a potential future challenger.
Secretary of State is as much about interfacing with Washington as it is the rest of the world. Who I want in there is someone smart and willing to learn. They’re going to have the ambassadors to help them with the individual countries. They also need to be someone that can work with the president and not undermine her.
Kay
For example, I think Joe Biden is anti Palestinian. Most of the GOP in Congress are anti Palestinian. So it certainly isn’t limited to Jewish people, and it works the other way too – some of the pro Palestinian activists and advocates are Jewish.
Now, Dana Bash and Jake Tapper know this. So why would they go so far as to invent a quote (when there’s a real reporter who did the interview RIGHT THERE with a transcript!) ?
They’ve really proved Tlaib’s point, I think.
BellyCat
That’s easy, oui?
A: Only if some of the participants are Jewish.
Lacuna Synecdoche
@Kay: Glad to see you’re here this morning. I was wondering, how is this Trump/Vance bullshit about Springfield playing in Ohio? Does it help put Ohio in play for Harris/Walz, help Sherrod Brown, or otherwise increase our chances there?
Or is it being treated just like any other Trump/Vance propaganda rather than a specific attack on Ohio?
trnc
@Baud:
Wait, DT actually agreed to do something that someone else wanted? Where’s the endlessly combative asshole vibe in that? Either the dude is slipping or his campaign fund is in worse shape than we thought.
Denali5
My sister says I get too emotionally involved with politics. Yes, it has always been my thing. I have ordered my lawn sign and sent out postcards.
But the Middle East is just too complicated. I don’t think we can solve it. It’s been ongoing for too long with too many atrocities. The Israelis lost me with the exploding pagers. That is just terrorism. But I will say no more.
BellyCat
@the pollyanna from hell: Very touching, true or not.
BR
@Kay:
I saw people arguing about this on social media yesterday. And TBH my reaction was the AG and congresswoman are adults and they can sort this shit out between themselves. In just about a month we’re going to have an enormously important election — maybe they can get their act together and act in the best of the party for a month? Voters can do and say what they want, but I expect political leaders who are supposed to be allies of each other and of Harris to do better.
Omnes Omnibus
@BR: The point is that Tlaib did not make the comment about Nessel that she was reported as having made. That’s not on Tlaib or Nessel.
Starfish
@Suzanne: When I first saw the Harris/Walz hats, I didn’t know they were a play off the Chappell Roan Midwest Princess hats because I didn’t know who Chappell Roan was.
Matt McIrvin
@Kay:
A thing that haunts me sometimes is that I think the left contributed to this with its speculations about rigged elections in the early 2000s (ultimately sparked by the debacle that was the 2000 presidential election).
There were genuine concerns about electronic voting machines, but Greg Palast in particular spun it into this narrative formula about every single vote count being manipulated in some way or other that made the difference, that then metamorphosed into the claims that the DNC rigged the 2016 primary against Bernie Sanders, and Trump and his friends just took it and ran with it.
It wasn’t the only thing, of course. The conspiracy theories about Democrats trucking in undocumented immigrants to vote everywhere do go back further than that. But the whole Dominion Voting thing sounded to me exactly like the stuff people were saying about Diebold in 2004, just with the names changed.
JML
Buttigieg does have an interesting challenge coming up, assuming Harris wins: what job can he move into that keeps his profile up and is still on an upward trajectory? Because if Harris wins, she will almost certainly be the candidate in 2028, so Pete needs to determine a path forward for him to be ready in 2032 if that’s what he still wants to do.
Ideally, he’d become a governor or senator but that’s a little more challenging for him since he’s changed residency to MI…but doesn’t really live there and moved fairly recently. And it would be awfully tough for him to win back in Indiana both because of the state electorate and the fact that he moved to MI.
maybe Treasury? HHS? He looks to have been an able administrator and he’s an elite communicator. he doesn’t need to be a subject matter expert to do well at either post and they’d be high-profile jobs that would be considered a “step up”. I think it’s clear Harris would want to keep him around, but I don’t know what the fit is. UN Ambassador? (that would add a foreign policy component to his resume, but it’s arguably a step down)
He’s exceptionally gifted but that’s not always a guarantee. If he doesn’t have a platform from which to keep himself in people’s minds, the electorate will start dating someone else.
satby
Good morning 🌞
Gosh, I’m tired. Akron tomorrow!!
I have no news comments, I have no idea what’s going on.
Kay
@Denali5:
Saying it’s complicated is a dodge and a deflection, IMO.
Single issues can be analyzed without an entire history of the region. That’s what “laws” do – they address specific people taking specific actions. There are laws of war and there are US laws governing weapons transfers. Exploding pagers – that issue- can be analyzed legally. 50,000 dead civilians, 15,000 of whom are children can be analyzed legally. The “context” necessary is built into the law.
Hillary Clinton saying “there are Arab Israelis” shouldn’t change the legal analysis. The Israeli leaders who signed onto these legal compacts and treaties were obviously aware that “there are Arab Israelis”. That’s not the issue. The issue is if it’s lawful – the specific acts by specific people under specific laws.
If I haul you in on murder and you say “half my relatives are cops – I’m not the criminal kind” that doesn’t matter at all in terms of the factors of “murder”.
counterfactual
Open thread: for folks worrying about AI, there’s a deeply skeptical piece by Ed Zitron. There’s no obvious next BIG THING in the IT industry, so Amazon and Microsoft and others have seized on AI as a possible way to keep getting big growth. But Large Language Models are enormously expensive to run, and have so far not found any applications that are generating profits. He’s feeling the IT industry is like the real estate market in 2008.
https://www.wheresyoured.at/
https://www.wheresyoured.at
BR
@Omnes Omnibus:
Sure, that’s the media being the media. But I think it would behoove at least until the election Nessel to not do any politically sensitive prosecutions right now and Tlaib to not bring the fire in her public remarks on related topics.
Kay
@BR:
OMG. Here we go with the white knuckled grip on dialogue in the interest of the election. We must kill democratic norms in order to save them. After this election there will be a midterm. It will again be “pre election”. When, pray tell, are we allowed to discuss what’s happening in the world?
Bash and Tapper should apologize. I think Nessel ridiculously overcharging protestors will take care of itself – all of her charges are going to be pled down to misdemeanors because the protestors raise money for one another and they’ll have competent defense attornies.
Geminid
@the pollyanna from hell: You are a very reticent commenter, and I appreciate that you think this is important enough to share. Thanks.
Auntie Anne
Very OT and not intended to derail the discussion, but I have to express my deepest gratitude and thanks to all the jackals who donated to save my much loved cat. We hit the goal about 11 p.m. last night and closed the fundraiser this morning.
I feel as though the weight of the world is off my shoulders. So thank you, thank you, thank you!
Omnes Omnibus
@BR:
But that’s the reason there is a story right now. To my knowledge Nessel isn’t doing anything in particular right now and Tlaib isn’t upping her rhetoric on the issue. The reason it is getting any airtime at all right now is because Tapper fabricated a quote. That’s the story. The fabrication.
Dave
@counterfactual: I’ve been from my layman’s POV been treating “AI” as a new bubble that will have a period of irrational exuberance followed by the illusion bursting and after that there will be more considered use of it as advances are made in areas where it actually makes sense.
And while I’m sure there are some (unlike crypto and NFT’s) I also as a layman have no idea what those will be.
It would be best to mitigate the damage caused by the irrational exuberance and the inevitable bubble bursting but I am worried that ship has already sailed.
Matt McIrvin
@counterfactual: I’m *in* this business, tangentially, and I’m deeply skeptical. I personally (speaking only for myself) think that the applications of machine learning that are going to stand the test of time are by and large not going to be the simple “throw an LLM at it” stuff, which is often spending gigantic amounts of energy and expensive hardware to brute-force an inaccurate calculation that you could do better in some simpler but more actual-intelligence-intensive way.
The reason the money guys like it is that they imagine it’s going to be cheaper than paying workers. I don’t think they’re going to get the results they want.
Matt McIrvin
@Dave: LLMs can be genuinely useful to coders for the same kinds of things we tried to use code templates for–spitting out a lot of boilerplate for some application or some test suite that can serve as a starting point. But it only really gets you past the blank screen, step one. Making sure it’s all right is the hard part and takes actual scrutiny. And I do worry about the same dangers there as in generating answers to questions, that LLMs are very good at making something that looks plausible but is not right–that’s fundamentally what they are, automated hallucination machines.
RaflW
@trnc: Springfield probably required a lot of money up front, plus a honking surety bond to be willing to permit anything larger than a meeting in the Mayor’s office.
The security risks for the city would be massive. IDGAF about Trump’s safety — secret service will do that at no cost to Springfield. But I bet the visit cost caused the near-broke campaign to balk.
Chris
@mali muso:
I mean, that’s pretty close to true. 2000 was stolen, and most of the subsequent elections have taken place on ground that’s more and more tilted against the Democrats. The slant takes various forms, from the antidemocratic features built into the constitution (electoral college, Senate) to the structural but not constitutional issues (like the fact that voting’s not a national holiday) to the issues that are straight illegal but not punished as such because the judges refuse to enforce it (the voter suppression laws of the last fifteen years) to the way various outsiders to the process put their thumb on the scale (media bias, and even interference from actors like the FBI from time to time).
Of course, the people you heard complaining were unlikely to be talking about any of that.
Trivia Man
@Matt McIrvin: I am still skeptical of Ohio results in 2004. The OWNER of the company that makes the vote counting machines said “I guarantee Bush will win” – that at least raises questions. It would be irresponsible not to speculate.
different-church-lady
@counterfactual:
SCENE: MICROSOFT BOARD MEETING
BOARD MEMBER #1: “So, everyone’s talking about Google and Meta and X. We don’t have any buzz anymore. What can we do to really really grab people’s attention?”
BOARD MEMBER #2: “What about if we make a deal to re-open a nuclear power plant that everyone associates with disaster in order to power something everyone associates with dystopian fiction from the 50s?”
BOARD MEMBER #3: “That’s kinda dark, isn’t it?”
BOARD MEMBER #1: “There’s no such thing as bad publicity! Let’s do it!”
Frankensteinbeck
@Matt McIrvin:
MBA culture worships the idea of zero labor cost. They will chase any buzzword that gives them the giddy hope they can fire all their workers and make money by pushing a button.
The only two reasons LLMS and the art equivalent are hanging on is that desperate hope, and porn. Since the companies operating the AI are losing money hand over fist and surviving solely on new investor money, Hell if I know what will happen when those investors run out.
Hoodie
@Matt McIrvin: AI seems to be going the way of blockchain, with a bunch of hucksters promising all kinds of killer applications that never materialize and make no sense from a energy budget point of view. Blockchain has some practical uses, but they’re pretty limited. Hence, it’s mostly devolved into crypto bullshit. The LLM stuff really seems to be best for applications where you have limited data sets with a lot of data integrity, such as genetic sequencing or other operations that require a lot of brute force searching. In more general applications it often generates gibberish and is a waste of time and resources. For example, I have a journalist friend whose management is “encouraging” them to use AI to generate stories. He says he spends more time checking for rampant factual errors in the text it generates than he would have to just research and write the damn thing himself. His general, non-scientific observation is that it lacks the “that has to be bullshit” filter typically possessed by people with experience in a particular field.
different-church-lady
@Matt McIrvin:
Oh no need to worry about that, nobody cares if it’s right anymore.
lowtechcyclist
@the pollyanna from hell:
TL;DR, especially given the ‘big block of text’ effect.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@different-church-lady: (Geekery warning)
I’ve always been angry at Microsoft for the way they break industry standards and because of their marketing might, make the rest of the industry have to follow their lead instead of standardizing.
I recently found out that extends to mathematics.
I do a lot of math advise on Reddit. Students are constantly asking why typing -2^2 (the negative of 2 squared) gives -4 on their calculator instead of 4 (which you’d get by squaring -2). And people are constantly explaining that the rules of math say that the minus sign comes last. -2^2 means you square the 2, then you take the negative. It doesn’t mean you’re multiplying -2 by -2.
Guess what Microsoft Excel tells you if you type -2^2?
This isn’t an industry standard, it’s centuries of accepted mathematical practice!
Cheryl from Maryland
@Heidi Mom: Excellent idea. Stuttgart, Germany is also the headquarters of NATO.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@different-church-lady: Well, except for the occasional global shutdown of computers and grounding of aircraft worldwide because of a buggy security update. Cost of doing business.
Chris
@Denali5:
I don’t want to solve it (I think we’re vastly too compromised to solve it, for one; would anyone accept Iran as an honest broker in an Israel/Palestine peace deal? That’s what we are, on the other side). I just want to get the fuck out of it.
Sure Lurkalot
@Trivia Man:
I have an acquaintance that “knows” the machines were rigged in Ohio in 2012 to change Obama votes to Romney but some Dem operative flipped the switch. Which was why Karl Rove had that freak out on Fox when Ohio was called for Obama, because he was in on it.
lowtechcyclist
@Starfish:
I’ve only known who she is for about a month now, but I’ve become a big fan.
zhena gogolia
Damn straight I’ve got white knuckles.
Frankensteinbeck
@Hoodie:
The useful applications you mentioned aren’t LLMs. They’re much older tech that get lumped under the term AI because Buzzwords.
Belafon
@Hoodie: You’re kind of mixing a couple of things here.
LLM stands for Large Language Model, which is a particular type of machine learning application that is designed to produce output that resembles human text. It is one application of the general class of machine learning algorithms built around neural networks.
Another application is the one you’re describing, which learns from data sets to specifically look for patterns in DNA. The overall idea of any machine learning algorithm is to attempt to learn the patterns in the data through any noise in it, such as trying to figure out what hand writing says.
LLM’s were designed to sound like people. They aren’t concerned with the truth in their statements, only that the gullible human on the other end accepts that the output sounds human. I have seen some useful applications of them, especially when I can ask one about something with an incomplete description and it fills in the missing data for its search. But I argue that anyone using one should be required to take a course on how they work and what their limitations are before they are allowed to use one.
Matt McIrvin
@Sure Lurkalot: It’s so easy to imagine these things and then the stories take on a life of their own. Every single presidential cycle since about 2004 or so, I’ve heard *someone* say that the Republicans aren’t even bothering to campaign well because they know the fix is in. The story goes around every time. But they don’t win every time. So I guess they have to imagine something happening to thwart the conspiracy at the last minute, and that explains this or that.
In the end I put this kind of thing in the same box as QAnon–they imagine an evil conspiracy and a good conspiracy battling in the shadows, with all sorts of drama we don’t know about that *really* determines what goes on
I think a lot of what really skews elections is stuff that happens right out in the open–draconian ID laws, insufficient voting machines in strategically chosen places, extreme gerrymandering. It’s Jim Crow stuff and they’re not shy about it.
lowtechcyclist
@JML:
State, Defense, AG, and Treasury have long been considered the Big Four of the Cabinet posts. AG should be an attorney, and he’s not ready for State or Defense IMHO.
Treasury would be the one of those that he’s least unqualified for, and after seeing how he’s handled Transportation, I’m reasonably confident of his ability to grow into it quickly. Any Cabinet post besides the Big Four would be a lateral move, IMHO.
Omnes Omnibus
@lowtechcyclist: The best move for Buttigieg politically is to move back to MI and start preparing to run for Governor. As an ex-Cabinet member and sitting Governor with his talents, he will be the front-runner when Harris is ready to leave the stage.
ETA: If he doesn’t win the governorship, then he may end up as one of the eternal cabinet people of the Dems.
Kosh III
“Does the moral character of an orgy change when the participants wear Nazi uniforms?””
Will the Nazis be the sub and enjoy being beaten with chains without a safe word?
NotMax
@Heidi Mom
Ambassador to the U.N.
Mike in Pasadena
@TBone: Damn, that was refreshing to hear again. Simple Song Of Freedom sung in such a low key, friendly way. Corny? It brings tears to my eyes.
Matt McIrvin
@Ceci n est pas mon nym:
I think the consistency of the “PEMDAS” rules is way less solid in the actual mathematical literature than is implied in secondary-school curricula. In this case, the question is how to handle “unary minus” as distinct from the minus sign used for subtraction, and while most computer languages will give that lower priority than exponentiation, I’m not entirely surprised that it varies. It’s a case where parentheses are definitely called for.
I’ve seen a lot of professional physics papers where they have an inline expression with a fraction bar like “ab/cd” where it’s implicitly understood that you’re supposed to read it as “(ab)/(cd)”. That’s wrong according to school-textbook PEMDAS! (At least in the United States–my impression is that it varies in different countries’ curricula.)
mali muso
@Chris: Yeah, I didn’t think he would appreciate me agreeing that it seems fishy that losers of the popular vote managed to get installed in the White House.
TBone
@Mike in Pasadena: 💙
Kay
@zhena gogolia:
Well, it isn’t going to work. If you’re 20 years old this is how the country is. They don’t know any other political environment. Telling them they can’t express an opinion on US foreign policy unless the US returns to 2004 just isn’t going to work. They never knew that world.
That Democrats are cheering protestors getting ludicrously over charged with felonies in order to shut down dissent on US policy in Gaza and now Lebanon is truly disturbing.
Richie Torres told them yesterday the only place they’re permitted to protest is outside the Israeli embassy. What an embarrassing, insane statement. They’re Americans! They’re opposing US POLICY. They’re opposing the US “partnering” in the slaughter in Gaza. The US says they are “partnering” in it. It’s offocial Biden Adminstration policy.
Demanding that they go protest Israel is ridiculous. They’re not Israelis.
The felony charges probably won’t stick, because Nessel overcharged them. That doesn’t change that the Democratic Party is now enthusiastically supporting charging 20 year olds with felonies to quash dissent.
Geminid
@JML: Pete Buttigieg has the elements of a formidable politician. If Buttigieg decides to run for statewide office he will be competing with other talented and hardworking Michigan politicians, and I think that’s a good thing.
Similarly, if he runs for President in 2032 Pete Buttigieg will face Democrats every bit as formidable as he is. Some of them are well-known, and there are prospects people generally don’t even think of. I am thinking here of some House members who have not yet moved up to Senator or Governor but will soon. I suspect there will be others as well.
But since only one or two of these many talented Democrats will be President next decade, I try to value them most for what they accomplish as Governors, Senators and Cabinet secretaries.
Torrey
@Auntie Anne:
Lots of good comments in this thread, but this is my favorite by a very long shot. I hope you keep us up to date with Chunk’s progress.
JML
@Omnes Omnibus: complicated, because I expect Big Gretch to run again in 2026 (she might not have if Biden was re-elected; could have decided to spend 2 years running for president) now, which might set her up to run in 2032. And Pete’s not going to challenge Big Gretch in 2026.
Omnes Omnibus
@JML: My understanding is that she is term limited.
SteverinoCT
That reminds me of the early days of spreadsheets: after the results were generated, they would be gone over by hand to verify them. So one step automated, as it were, then back to basics.
I have been using perplexity.ai for searches regarding router and switch issues. It boils down the results from all the papers and formal instructions and community forums, and then links to the source so that you can get the exact answer if you need it. That’s a very limited “super-search” use case.
dww44
@Baud: exactly my thought last evening when the endorsement withdrawals started being announced. If Robinson’s skin color had been white this would not have happened.
tam1MI
What the fabricated quote is hiding is the fact that Nessel, in no uncertain terms, condemned a political comic showing Tlaib with an exploded pager on her desk, the implication being that Tlaib is a terrorist.
Sister Golden Bear
@Dave:
It’ll be unsexy, utilitarian things like summarizing Amazon reviews, helping provide users avoid creating service desk tickets by analyzing their description of their problem and suggesting ways to solve themselves when possible (a project I did last year, to help users of a particular enterprise software package with “routine problems” that were kind of the equivalent of needing their passwords reset).
Sister Golden Bear
@Frankensteinbeck:
The AI company shuts down. Already happened to one of the big ones, although I’m insufficiently caffeinated at the moment to remember which one.
WaterGirl
@JML: Gretchen Whitmer has been elected twice, and 2 terms all you get in Michigan.
Kay
@tam1MI:
An insanely racist cartoon. Tlaib is right, IMO. A lot of US institutions are anti Palestinian. I think in 20 years we’ll look back on this and be ashamed, in the same way we’ve evolved from bigoted nehavior towards other minority groups. It’s blatantly, obviously bigoted and it’s pervasive.
Felony charges for protestors are nuts. Nessel will never back down – prosecutors never, ever admit it when they overcharge – but she should explain why these particular protestors got such serious charges. Every single one of them should take it to jury trial unless they get a deal where they’re reduced to “trespassing” or “criminal damaging” – the ordinary misdemeanors protestors are charged with.
dww44
@Kay: This is not surprising to read but it is disheartening as I just don’t know the solution. In 2020 and 2022 I was a pollworker. Had a conversation after the 2022 one with a long experienced elections worker and relative in another county. When I said to her that we know there wasn’t any fraud here (GA) she replied that while we know there was not any in our locales we don’t KNOW that about the rest of the state.
She’s educated and otherwise sane, but years of consuming Fox and other rightist media has rendered her and too many others incapable of recognizing the truth. Too many AA poll workers here retired after 2022 and we’ve had a mess in that office. Chaos reigns supreme… thanks to the MAGA GOP.
sdhays
@Frankensteinbeck: I’ve read that the new investor money is tiny, and pretty inadequate to drive LLM development, compared to the vast costs they require. The vast majority of money being spent is from Google, MS, and Meta because they all print money they can light on fire due to the various monopolies they own.
tam1MI
Prosecutors also overcharge as a matter of course so they can get plea deals.
Meanwhile, the Republicans have been very explicit about accusing every Muslim-American in sight of belonging to terrorist groups. Witness this exchange between Louisiana Senator Kennedy and Maya Berry.
Kay
@dww44:
I took pollworker training in 2022 with the husband of one of the (Republican) women in my book club. He was my oldest son’s Scoutmaster – a very nice man. He has a PhD in plant science and works for one of the big ag companies – does really well.
“Five acres and a pond” as lawyers say here – he has the requisite mini mansion and spread with all the toys that college educated rural people who are financially successful aquire.
He talked over the pollworker training person, asked over and over about whether the tabulators were “connected to the internet” – insane shit. I was just shocked. Just the rudeness was shocking. He used to be really polite and soft spoken.
Chief Oshkosh
@Baud: So one would think, but one would be wrong.
The answer is clearly “maybe.”
different-church-lady
@SteverinoCT: Wouldn’t it be easier to just link to the exact answer right away without all the AI stuff underfoot?
Adam Lang
To be fair, that’s because Democratic political professionals hate, fear, and/or do not understand AOC (and are also almost uniformly unconsciously sexist.)
As for the Republicans, well, he’s white, male, and has good hair. The only thing wrong with him from their perspective is that he’s out of the closet, unlike half of the Republican politicians.
dww44
@Kay: Like I said, it’s so disheartening. This ridiculous bonkers state election board we have is a gift from the Republican state house whose upper chamber is chaired by one Burt Jones, one of the 2020 fake electors whose charges for his participation brought by Fanni Willis have just been dismissed by another prosecutor.
IMO in a sane world he wouldn’t have been eligible to be on the ballot in 2022 and therefore not in a position to facilitate the MAGA takeover of the board.
All is a testament to what happens when ALL the levers of power at the state level are in the hands of the GOP.
Heidi Mom
@NotMax: Definitely another possibility.
pluky
@JML: The Secretary and his spouse didn’t move to Travers City, Michigan on a whim; they settled there to be near Chastein’s family. So the potential charge of ‘carpet bagger’ is a bit blunted. In any case, his chances of statewide office in Indiana are miniscule.
Gloria DryGarden
@BellyCat: Actually I was 5, in kindergarten, when I had mono.
It was thanksgiving, I remember the decorations on the hospital bed across from mine, an enviable paper turkey.
I wonder what my inner state was to be so sick, so young. When I doubt my horrible memories, I take note of such things, from a “what is wrong with this picture” angle