BREAKING: Hurricane Helene weakens to a tropical storm with maximum sustained winds of 70 mph over Georgia https://t.co/xkvXNpxsY5
— The Associated Press (@AP) September 27, 2024
While we wait to hear about the last of Helene (see the top link on the right-hand sidebar), here’s a moment of Zen:
Opinion | Hillary Clinton: To err is human, to empathize is superhuman | WaPo | (This column was adapted from her newly published book, “Something Lost, Something Gained: Reflections on Life, Love, and Liberty.”) @HillaryClinton 📚 https://t.co/6SLwqQBYpS
— Vikki Marshall (@VikkiMarshall4) September 25, 2024
The Washington Post has an extract from Hillary Clinton’s new book, “To err is human, to empathize is superhuman” [gift link]:
… Shannon Foley is a former white supremacist who now works to deprogram and rehabilitate people leaving hate groups. Shannon took my daughter, Chelsea, and me canoeing near her home in Athens, Ga. It wasn’t lost on me as we paddled along that we weren’t far from the site of the last documented mass lynching in America, Moore’s Ford Bridge, where a mob of 20 armed White men shot and killed two Black couples in 1946. One of the women killed was seven months pregnant. To this day, no one has been held accountable for their murders.
Back in the 1990s, from the time she was 15 until she was 20, Shannon was active in the violent white-supremacy movement. She attended Ku Klux Klan rallies, tagged public property with swastikas, assaulted people of color, tear-gassed an LGBTQ+ nightclub and underwent paramilitary training to prepare for the race war her neo-Nazi leaders promised was imminent. Her comrades were white supremacists like the fanatics who years later carried torches through Charlottesville chanting “Jews will not replace us!” and like many of the insurrectionists who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
Then, remarkably, she managed to get herself out and change her life. Now, Shannon helps people escape violent extremism. She’s seen how the dangerous, hateful movement has metastasized. The rise of social media allowed white-power leaders to more easily reach and radicalize thousands of recruits. Hate-fueled memes and videos circulate online, evading detection in the dark corners of the internet with coded hashtags and innuendo. Things only got worse when Donald Trump publicly and proudly fanned the flames of racial resentment from the campaign trail and then the White House, emboldening white supremacists to emerge from the shadows…
Shannon is doing what she can to fight back. She rescues people she meets online, at white-supremacist rallies or through concerned loved ones. When she’s trying to deprogram white supremacists, her approach is not to try to change their politics but to help them address their trauma and move away from resorting to violence. “I’ve found you can’t argue people out of their deeply entrenched worldview. They just entrench further,” Shannon says. So she asks a lot of questions and patiently listens. What drew them to the white-power movement? How is it serving their life? Why are they afraid of leaving? What might their lives look like without hate? These connections can take a long time to develop, and even longer to lead to deradicalization. Disengagement, she says, is a process — not an event.
That’s how I found myself in a canoe with Shannon while Chelsea paddled next to us with a young woman named Samantha, who recently left the white-power movement with Shannon’s help. Samantha was introduced to white-supremacist groups by an abusive ex-boyfriend, an organizer of the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, whom Samantha would later testify against. Samantha helped me better understand how people like her are recruited into and radicalized by white-supremacist groups. Most people, she acknowledged, are not initially comfortable with racial slurs or Nazi rhetoric, so recruiters lightheartedly introduce offensive humor to appear less violent than they really are. But the more time members spend online in alt-right chatrooms and channels, the more they get used to the ugliness of the ideology. When you stop being shocked, you start being radicalized…
I’ve struggled with this myself. In 2016, I famously described half of Trump’s supporters as “the basket of deplorables.” I was talking about the people who are drawn to his racism, sexism, homophobia, xenophobia, Islamophobia — you name it. The people for whom his bigotry is a feature, not a bug. It was an unfortunate choice of words and bad politics, but it also got at an important truth. Just look at everything that has happened in the years since, from Charlottesville to Jan. 6. The masks have come off, and if anything, “deplorable” is too kind a word for the hate and violent extremism we’ve seen from some Trump supporters…
I do wish that back in 2016, people had heard the rest of my comments and not just the word “deplorables.” I also talked about the other half of Trump supporters, “people who feel that the government has let them down, the economy has let them down, nobody cares about them, nobody worries about what happens to their lives and their futures, and they’re just desperate for change.” And, I emphasized, “those are people we have to understand and empathize with as well.” That’s especially true because many are living with unresolved trauma in their lives.
Empathy for people you agree with is easy. Empathy for someone you deeply, passionately disagree with is hard but necessary. What Shannon does, feeling empathy for Nazis and Klansmen, is damn near superhuman. As a Christian, I aspire to this kind of radical empathy but often fall short. Talking about the “deplorables” in 2016, I said, “Some of those folks, they are irredeemable.” Part of me would still say this is objectively true. Just look at the lack of remorse from many of the Jan. 6 insurrectionists who’ve been convicted of sedition and other crimes. But another part of me wants to believe something else. I’d like to believe there’s goodness in everyone and a chance at redemption, no matter how remote.
On The Road – Captain C – Verzetsmuseum (Resistance Museum) – Amsterdam, October 2024 Part 2
Baud
Thanks for front paging, AL.
Baud
Via reddit
Let’s sweep on Election Day.
NotMax
Did someone say Friday?
;)
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: Anything that makes the gravedigger of American democracy cry is a good thing.
raven
Murder of Lemuel Penn
Good ol boys from Athens.
SFAW
@Baud:
Do you think Mitch would be willing to trade something, in order to keep the filibuster? Something like: his pleading Guilty to a charge of Crimes against Humanity.
Asking for a friend/country.
Tony G
Hillary Clinton should not be apologizing for calling these people “deplorables”. “Worthless, despicable assholes” would have been a lot more accurate terminology. But she means well, I guess. Honestly, fuck these people. Very few of them want to change; they’re happy to be ignorant, hate-filled people. Many of them have ancestors whose asses were handed to them by the United States Army in 1861-1865 — and they’re STILL whining about their fucking “Lost Cause”.
Baud
@Tony G:
How is this an apology?
Ken
@Baud: Really the Republicans convinced me when they said “The Democrats would guarantee healthcare and legalize abortion,” they don’t have to keep sweetening the deal.
Besides, I don’t mind if they keep the filibuster, provided they revert to the old system as immortalized in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. Go back to requiring they speak continuously without leaving the chamber. I think there also used to be a quorum requirement, so it forced a number of their colleagues to stay with them.
C-SPAN would be in favor, I’m sure — the drama of seeing how long Tuberville can remain standing.
Baud
@SFAW:
I’d rather have the filibuster gone. A Senate majority without Manchinema? Awesome.
Baud
@Ken:
Yeah, that’s the rub. They have to come up with some replacement rule.
SFAW
@Baud:
I think Tony G may have been referring to “It was an unfortunate choice of words.”
Which is not really an apology, but a halfway expression of regret, perhaps. [No, I’m not ignoring her subsequent paragraph(s).]
Tony G
@Baud: I’m sorry. Overreaction on my part. I didn’t read it carefully enough. (I shouldn’t read before drinking coffee.). I just feel like there’s been too much of a tendency during the past nine years to coddle and “empathize” with this fascists. Sometimes there is a sympathetic back story and on rare occasions a fascist can decide to change for the better — but I think that a lot of these people like to harm other people BECAUSE THEY ENJOY DOING IT. Sorry again for the mis-reading on my part.
Baud
@SFAW:
The media flogged it to help Trump, so I can see some regret.
ETA: What would have been nice is if a few more of our voters were inspired by her fight against racists to come out.
SFAW
@Baud:
I don’t disagree.
And, frankly, I would be OK with Mitch pleading Guilty, and then the Dems saying “Remember how you changed your bullshit ‘rule’ to get Amy Barrett installed? Yeah, about that — we’re still killing the filibuster.”
Baud
@SFAW:
I could see Walz pulling off an “I’m altering the deal. Pray I don’t alter it further.”
SFAW
@Baud:
I don’t disagree. Any minuscule “transgression” (verbal or otherwise) was immediately latched onto the MSM, led by the FTFTFNYT. As she noted, it would have been nice if the rest of her comments had been noted by those Guardians Of Democracy.
catclub
@Baud: Yes, sounds like a plan.
SFAW
@Baud:
Do we get Mitch in carbonite as part of the deal? I’d be OK with that, I guess.
Maybe Rupert and Lachlan, too.
And TCFFG. And J Divans. And …
stinger
I see photos of those Tiki Torch guys, the Confederate flag-carriers swarming up the walls of the Capitol, the smirking, raised-fist Josh Hawley, and I think, “Those are deplorable human beings. They are deserving of deprecation. ”
Hillary was right, as so often.
Ken
@Baud: When you think about it, the Vice-President is pretty much equivalent to the President, so the ruling about immunity for crimes — or rather, things that look like crimes to the layman but are really president stuff — should also apply.
sdhays
@SFAW: I would only accept those terms if ending the filibuster is part of his sentence.
He’ll suffer far more watching everything he built over the last decade plus crumble around him. He can die, whenever, knowing that he will be remembered as a villainous failure.
Chief Oshkosh
@stinger: Actually, they’ve self-identified as deserving a lot more.
Matt
Fuck their feelings.
They know that being racist is bad, that’s why they enjoy doing it so much and then lying about it.
Geminid
@Baud: I think that if Senate Democrats retain their majority in the next Congress they will come up a “carve-out” strategy, whereby they pass a few critical initiatives with a simple majority after a procedural vote exempting the subject matter from the 60 vote rule.
They tried this in the last Congress, on voting rights I believe. The rules change failed 52-48, with every Democrat except Manchin and Sinema voting for the carve-out.
Initially the strategy may be limited to voting rights and women’s health rights. The strategy could be progressive though, and include legislation in other areas later in the congressional session.
If this turns out to be the policy, I expect plenty of dissent from people who want to see filibusters eliminated entirely. This seems to me a good problem in that we’ll only have this controversy if we keep the Senate. Personally, I will back whatever course our Senate Caucus agrees on.
Another Scott
@Tony G: Hillary’s piece was good taken as a whole.
Her original comments were good, taken as a whole. The only mistake she made was saying “half” rather than “far too many” or something similar. Once she put a definite number on it, the monsters were going to nit pick it to death, and she should have known that and expected the backlash.
But, as we all know, it’s not the words or the message, it’s the fact that she was a powerful messenger against the GQP agenda that made her the target of the disingenuous attacks.
Have a good Friday, everyone.
Forward!!
Cheers,
Scott.
soapdish
I will always note that Clinton’s biggest error was severely underestimating the size of the container.
sdhays
@Ken: Indeed! I recall none other than that font of governing wisdom Dick Cheney posited that the VP was actually MORE powerful than the President because the position straddles both the Executive and Legislative Branches. It’s untouchable!
(The last part is not intended to be a factual statement.)
Baud
@Geminid:
I actually agree with Manchin that once you have one carve out, the dominoes will fall.
Ken
@Baud: But we already have a carve-out, made by the Republicans, for judicial appointments. And I might be mis-remembering and thus unfairly maligning Republicans*, but I think they also did one for tax cuts?
* Boo hoo.
Butch
Way off topic and I don’t mean to be too critical, but did anyone else notice the typo on the pet calendar? September 25, 26, 25, 28?
Matt McIrvin
@Baud: The filibuster became ridiculous because it’s not a filibuster–it’s a de facto supermajority threshold on all legislation. That wasn’t how the Senate worked until the 21st century. Pretending that it’s some hallowed tradition going back to the Founding Fathers is just ahistorical.
It is scary, because, just as Manchin and Sinema constantly say, getting rid of it for us gets rid of it for them too. Yes, they could use this to pass oppressive legislation.
But we need a functioning Congress at some point. Being unable to pass significant legislation just creates a power vacuum that is filled by an increasingly powerful executive branch and the courts–which are actually less accountable to the people, on balance. Making your votes for Congress count also helps restore the connection between cause and effect that makes it possible to have a functioning democracy.
Betty Cracker
@Baud: That’s probably right because it would expose carve-out supporters to uncomfortable questions about why some issues are worthy of a carve-out and others aren’t. I’m ready to junk the whole thing and feel strongly enough about that to make it a decisive factor in primary support. I think the main argument in favor of retaining the filibuster, that doing away with it would result in whipsaw changes to laws when power changes hands, is actually the strongest argument for junking it. It would rub the noses of even the dumbest and most disengaged voters in the two parties’ very real differences.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Betty Cracker: The Supreme Court has already decided that whipsaw changes in the law are good.
Baud
@Ken: No, we started the carve outs for appointments because Mitch was blocking both executive branch nominees and judicial appointments. We carved out executive branch first and then lower court nominees. Mitch then carved out the Supreme Court (after blocking Garland for a year).
Mitch ruined the “gentleman’s agreement” on how to use the filibuster to hurt Obama. That’s why we’re in the situation we’re in now.
The Republicans weaponized the filibuster to stop our agenda, have now delegated lawmaking to their Supreme Court justices (ETA: and the Fifth Circuit). If Dems are going to respond, we have to go to majority rule.
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
Very true. But it’s odd to say their evil fascists but also that they’ll respect the Senate’s filibuster rule. At some point, it’s up to voters in a democracy to elect people to pass laws.
Matt McIrvin
@Baud: One thing that the courts do a lot is to toss out or partially invalidate legislation on technical “this was drafted wrongly” grounds–with the argument that Congress has the job of fixing it and could do so at any time. But they’ll do this selectively to liberal legislation in the full knowledge that Congress is unable to pass the simple and obvious wording fix because a sufficiently large minority in the Senate want the law to die. That’s a broken system.
Baud
@Matt McIrvin: Yep, their judges know what they’re doing and how to do it.
Ken
@Baud: So I did unfairly malign Republicans. Ah well, I shall fall back on Aunt Polly’s defense when she punished Tom for something he hadn’t done: I’m sure you deserved it for something I don’t know about.
Matt McIrvin
@Baud: I actually think it’s interesting and a bit counterintuitive that the Senate didn’t immediately eliminate the filibuster when Trump took office with a party trifecta in 2017. That suggests that there really is some institutional inertia operating here rather than pure partisan reasoning.
JPL
@Baud: trump weaponized the government already and if to pass good legislation, then they should get rid of it.
BTW According to the Washington Post, Romney didn’t endorse Harris because he is not sure it would help, AND he’s afraid his family members could face threats.
yup weaponized
rikyrah
Good Morning Everyone 😊 😊 😊
hueyplong
Between AL’s posting of “after the storm” and the first comment, we lost power and have assigned blame accordingly.
Betty Cracker
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Fair point!
I generally find “heighten the contradictions” arguments unpersuasive, and people who take action to empower bad actors for that purpose are morally bankrupt, IMO. But the disconnect between votes and results and the power vacuum Matt M alludes to above are fatally undermining U.S. democracy. Time to let the chips fall where they may.
Baud
@rikyrah: Good morning.
Matt McIrvin
@Baud: What we have is to some extent what libertarians always used to say they wanted–a world in which the government doesn’t pass many laws at all. (They also want all the existing ones to sunset, of course, which under current conditions would basically leave us with nothing because Congress wouldn’t be able to pass the replacements. But the libertarian argument is that any law whatsoever is the same thing as a gun pointed at your head, because if you keep resisting enforcement of the enforcement, things will escalate at some point to you getting shot.)
But power centers other than the law, and other than government entirely, can be just as oppressive. Another thing that is the same as a gun pointed at your head is a literal gun pointed at your head.
hueyplong
@Matt McIrvin: Or it simply means the things they care most about are not currently subject to the filibuster.
Baud
@Matt McIrvin: Yes, I think a lot of Republican senators are cowards and want to hide behind the filibuster rather than hold themselves accountable to voters. Look at how they’re waffling on abortion, something they claim they’ve cared deeply about for 50 years.
But younger and newer Republican elected officials are more radicalized and aggressive.
Baud
@Matt McIrvin: Right, the big reason why libertarianism is a stupid theory is that it regards the government as the only evil power worth caring about (except when the government is protecting property and contract rights, for some reason).
Geminid
@Baud: I think Senate Democrats will proceed cautiously in this area. I could see them using carve-outs for voting and abortion rights in the coming year’s session, and maybe for judicial reform and immigration reform in 2026. They may leave further reform for the next Congress which hopefully will see a larger Democratic majority.
Senate Democrats need to be totally united on the legislation in question. This may be possible with say, gun control and immigration reform legislation but maybe not for other popular items like DC Statehood. That could change by the end of tbe decade.
Chris
@JPL:
Cry me a river, Mittens. Literally every Democrat faces threats to self and family members. Several have actually been shot at or assaulted. They still show up to work.
Can’t fault his first reasoning, though. It’s almost surprisingly self-aware for Romney, which is why I suspect it’s not actually true.
Chris
@Matt McIrvin:
“Everything the government does is exactly like being shot by a government enforcer. Except for actually being shot by a government enforcer, in case it’s your fault because you should’ve stopped resisting.”
Soprano2
I found this article at TPM about managing your polling habit interesting.
gene108
@Matt McIrvin:
Reality based Republicans, and senior Senate Republicans are reality based despite what they might say to the media about the latest GOP conspiracy theory, know their agenda is unpopular.
They want to get these regressive changes made without risking a vote. The filibuster lets them get away with this and punts the decision making on getting their agenda enacted to the unaccountable courts.
I think most Republican members of Congress would be happy to never pass any legislation. They get the perks of having power without any responsibilities. They just meet with lobbyists, talk to their wealthiest donors, and goof off all day. The filibuster makes this a reality for many of them.
Matt McIrvin
@Chris: I think it would help for Romney to endorse Harris. A lot of waffly and comfortable centrists who identify as “independent” still adore that guy, for reasons that escape me. They’re not a huge part of the population but they have money and influence. We need to create permission structures for RINOs and conservative-ish centrists to come over.
Soprano2
@Matt McIrvin: Having a non-functioning Congress also makes the executive more powerful, and it makes people tend to blame the executive even more for everything.
Soprano2
@Betty Cracker: Glad to see you posting this morning!
Chris
@Baud:
Without being one of them and while still thinking their ideology is pretty much unworkable, this is why I’ll always have more respect for anarchists than libertarians. They at least acknowledge that there are power centers other than the government, that those power centers are just as capable of oppressing people as the government, and that this oppression isn’t any better than the government’s. (The rich, the church, the aristocracy, etc). They don’t have any good plans for what to do about the problem, but at least they acknowledge the problem.
Whereas libertarianism is transparently just a stalking horse for those other those other power centers trying to exercise more direct control over society.
JML
Hillary has always been right about most things, but the message gets lost because she’s been forced to carry so much baggage inflicted on her by the vast right-wing conspiracy and a complacent and complicit media that never treated her fairly: not once, not ever. Sigh.
I hope that if Kamala wins, she gives Hillary the Medal of Freedom. I’m staggered at the level of grace and compassion she still has considering the insane amounts of abuse she’s taken over the years. I think it’s notable that we don’t hear much about whether a woman can be commander-in-chief in this election, and I have to believe that’s because Hillary already ran for president and put that question to bed (after being slandered and abused again, of course).
hueyplong
@Matt McIrvin: It seems pretty obvious that Romney-type voters would be influenced by a Romney endorsement and that his cowardly refusal to do so would encourage corresponding cowardice on their cowardly part.
Matt McIrvin
@Soprano2: Yes–I don’t think we actually want the low-info voter’s folk theory of the President as a kind of dictator whose word is law to become the truth.
Shalimar
Also posted in the Helene thread: Long-range storm trackers who were right about this one 10 days ago say there will be perfect conditions again for another storm that will hit October 8-10.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@JPL: If I were Romney, I’d be looking at Hunter Biden and thinking about my family being given the same treatment.
stinger
@Betty Cracker: I agree, when that is the intent. When empowering bad actors is a (deplorable) side effect of an action taken to do good, let the chips fall. Chocolate, by preference. I’m still thinking about your photo from yesterday. Any cookies left? she asked hopefully.
Bupalos
I agree with this and with BC
Counter-majoritarian institutions like the SC or this bit of Senate procedure lose their legitimacy when they cross the line from preventing majority factionalism to simply disabling the political system as a whole. And we’ve been well down that road for years now. The only policy legislating that goes on now has to fit under the democratically opaque “budget reconciliation” process. Our entire democracy has to be crammed into a kind of loophole. A lot of Democrats fail to recognize that regardless of the issue-context where the filibuster is raised, the mechanism itself now serves as a kind of fertilizer for authoritarianism and depoliticization. We don’t need an “issue” to “nuke” the filibuster over, and in fact it would be best to nuke it as far outside the context of any particular issue as possible.
Fake Irishman
@Ken:
GOP knocked down the filibuster for Supreme Court Appointments.
Harry Reid and the Dems blew it up in 2013 for all other appointments after Mitch blocked a few too many Appeals judgeships.
Central Planning
@SFAW: That’s a waste of perfectly good carbonite.
Denali5
@Betty Cracker: Second the good to hear from you. This means you have power? And are not flooded or evacuated?
UncleEbeneezer
@Another Scott: People were going to nit-pick it to death, no matter what she said or how she said it. The Media along with MAGAs, BernieBros and Stein voters were all committed to willfully misinterpreting her words to frame her as some sort of monster. And that’s exactly what happened. If the BJ archives were intact I bet we would see several people here, who now praise Hillary, were ripping her to shreds over that speech, at the time.
artem1s
@Tony G:
Understand that she’s not speaking from a political perspective here. She speaking from the perspective of her deeply held Christian beliefs and what she believes Christ commanded us all to do. Bill’s early childhood trauma lead him to compromise his core beliefs so he could stay popular with the ‘in crowd’. He’s talked about the failings of his ‘fat boy’ impulses a lot after he left office.
Part of Hillary political stance is to be always ready to listen and learn but that’s not the same as conceding. She may empathize and believe there is redemption, but that’s not the same thing as conceding political ground, promoting policies of exclusion or accepting a ‘agree to disagree’ stance when it comes to stochastic terrorism or legislation. She understood how dangerous Putin was and the teaparty astroturfing by America First and other Christian Nationalist movements way before most Democrats. It’s why the GOP and Federalist Society fought so hard to keep her out of the WH and tried so hard to discredit her work as SoS, especially the sanction against Russia when they invaded Crimea. They understand that her core beliefs know there is no political third way when it comes to what the GOP has become. Jimmy Carter would understand what she’s talking about – she’s reaching for and trying to teach families that have been torn asunder by this hateful, violent rhetoric. A lot of kids are going to need help escaping trauma and from their families trauma in the next few decades. Even if she can’t change their minds – if she (and others) can help move them away from hate and violence that’s a good thing.
I’ve had to make similar internal compromises with my own family members I can’t avoid. I don’t talk politics or engage when they are ranting. I only enforce one boundary – if they are engaging in misinformation or violent rhetoric, I remind them of those commandment they so insist they want enforced. Bearing false witness is a commandment too. Although I’m doubtful my brother is never going to be able to overcome his deep seated racism and homophobia, I honestly believe he has taken steps to reduce his feelings of hatred and tendency to become verbally violent. I can see the struggle and I honestly believe he’s seeing some things in a different light.
My sister however, I honestly never want to know where she and her husband were on J6 or even what they think about it. And I’ll never ask. They have never talked about it which is pretty unusual for them when it comes to current events. I made it clear when they voted for Trump the first time ( they said it was in part because they hated Hillary) what I thought about voting from a place of hatred and they don’t spout their MAGAt, talibangelist, disinformation in front of me anymore.
I have no intention of crowing in their faces when he’s finally dead and can’t hurt anyone anymore. I intend to be joyful and celebrate every legislative victory quietly with the understanding that it will help even those that hate us the most. And if those victories make them unhappy or miserable that’s on them. As long as they aren’t violent I’ll let them stew in their own juices.
lowtechcyclist
@Baud:
Actually, Mitch began the use of the filibuster in its present form – as a way of requiring supermajorities for everything, that is – in 2007, right after the Dems re-took control of both houses of Congress in the 2006 midterms.
It didn’t make much sense to me at the time, since after all, Bush could veto anything that Congress passed. But at the time, I figured the logic had to be that it would be less newsworthy for legislation to die in Congress by whatever means, than for legislation to pass Congress and be vetoed by the President.
But now I’m sure he was thinking ahead to the possibility of losing the White House in 2008, and getting everybody (especially the press) used to the notion that needing 60 votes was just the way it had always been.
Jeffro
@Baud: right??!?
thanks for the GOTV boost there, Mitch!
Kay
David Dayen
Really interesting.
USMCA is Trump’s trade deal with Mexico. Stellantis is outsourcing auto assembly work to Mexico under Trump’s trade deal and laying off US autoworkers in MI. Harris was one of only ten Senators who voted against USMCA – she said at the time it didn’t have strong enough protections for workers.
Trump has back to back events in MI today and this is what she chose to highlight.
No coverage of it at all in national political media – too complex for them, what with an actual law and all- but it’s real window into her Michigan campaign, I think. Labor unions are about 55-45 D. That’s skewed by police and correctional officers unions though – they are so far Right they cloud the union picture and make it look like private sector unions are more R than they are. She clearly hopes to shift that number towards D’s a bit in MI.
Belafon
Maggie Smith died. She was 88.
Baud
@Kay: Very interesting. I hope it helps.
TBone
@Belafon: 💔
Chris
@Belafon:
Nuts.
I couldn’t for the life of me get into Downton Abbey, but the one delightful aspect of it was her.
Jeffro
@Betty Cracker: Betty, I don’t know if you saw it or not but Jamelle Bouie made a related point in today’s column: with a bicameral legislature, staggered terms in the Senate, plus needing a presidential signature, there’s not much chance of ‘whipsaw’ changes/legislation anyway.
(for that you need something on the scale of W’s Iraq war fuckery PLUS a Great Recession 🤨)
Soprano2
@Matt McIrvin: It drives me crazy that so many people blame the president for things that are actually the fault of Congress.
stinger
@lowtechcyclist:
When the Dems had control of both houses, Mitch wouldn’t have been Majority Leader and couldn’t have changed the use of the filibuster. Can you help me understand what you mean here?
Ukai
Looks like someone actually has the (figurative) balls to publish the Trump campaign’s dossier on J.D. Vance that was accessed by Iranian hackers.
https://www.kenklippenstein.com/p/read-the-jd-vance-dossier
Surely the mainstream media will now pore over this like they did with the hacked information from Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign, right? (Don’t answer that, I don’t want to get depressed.)
Scout211
DNC announcement
More details and targeted spending at the link.
Denali5
@Kay: Thanks for covering this speech. The media is not doing its job, so people are able to complain that they don’t know where Kamala stands on important issues. Of course it’s just an excuse, like her emails, but it’s remotely plausible.
NotMax
@Belafon
Adieu, Aunt Augusta.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@Belafon:
@Chris: There are a couple of movies (Ladies in Lavender, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel) which she did with Judy Dench that are just delightful. The two of them together are so much fun to watch.
There’s also something called Tea with the Dames which is a conversation with them and other British greats. I haven’t seen that one.
Edit: Apparently there’s lots of other stuff they partnered in. While Googling Maggie Smith I came across this Playbill from the West End in 2002, where they did a play together. And it mentions the films A Room with a View and Tea with Mussolini, where they also joined forces.
TBone
@NotMax: She was so much more than Downton Abbey, thank you for that Graham Greene. So many delightful characters over the years. It feels like we lost an auntie today.
Chris
@Ceci n est pas mon nym:
That sounds like two actresses that would make a spectacular combo. I may have to track those movies down.
Probably my favorite movie of hers was Sister Act. Letting her and Whoopi Goldberg bounce off of each other works surprisingly well, it turns out.
New Deal democrat
Two different things …
Dr. Jeff Masters, the co-founder of Weather Underground, has been focusing on how global warming is intensifying weather events like Hurricane Helene. To wit, there has been a spike in the number of category 4 and 5 hurricanes making landfall in the Gulf in the past 10 years :
https://nitter.poast.org/DrJeffMasters
Secondly, on an economic note, this morning’s personal income and savings report was really, *really* good, and puts paid to any notion that we are weakening into a recession going into the election. Consumer income, spending, and saving are all in excellent shape.
Kay
@Denali5:
Successful Democratic Presidential campaigns tailor messages to specific swing states so I love to see it, and boy she is all in on the labor vote in MI.
It’s about half a million (possible) labor voters in MI. A lot even if you lop off police and corrections officer unions.
Melancholy Jaques
@Matt McIrvin:
I certainly couldn’t hurt.
Are normie voters aware of just how many Republicans are endorsing Harris? Or how many of Trump’s own administration are either endorsing Harris or saying they will not vote for Trump?
I feel like that should have more impact than it seems to have.
Doug R
@Baud:
@Ken: Require 40 votes to SUSTAIN, not 60 to overcome. And have a quorum rule and allow a vote call-if they can’t round up 40 votes, filibuster ends.
Geminid
Barak Ravid just posted some video from the UN General Assembly hall. The Israeli Prime Minister showed up for his speech, and a lot of diplomats decided it was a good time to stretch their legs by leaving the hall.
Matt McIrvin
@Betty Cracker: I don’t see opposition to the filibuster as an accelerationist “worse is better” argument; it’s more making democracy more responsive, which could be worse but could also be better, and generally with clearer connections between cause and effect. Ultimately any advocacy for greater democracy involves a certain leap of faith.
(As for accelerationism, that’s just abusive “look what you made me do” reasoning in the collective sphere.)
Sure Lurkalot
Cowardly Mitt Romney can just retire and fade totally away. He disavowed any good accomplishments he was connected to and touts his achievements in slicing and dicing up companies to oblivion and separating jobs and pensions from their rightful holders.
The picture of him groveling before Trump at a darkened dinner table should be his forever legacy.
And yet, he’s better than Nikki Haley who claims she’s flip flopped because of Trump’s policies, which are promoting hate for people like herself. Oh, living in an equitable society must tear her fickle heart to shreds. Not to mention JD, who we learn is nothing more than a windsock for money, power and cruelty.
artem1s
@Matt McIrvin:
Mitch knew they wouldn’t keep the Senate once they started enacting the GOP agenda to create an autocracy. But he knew they’d be able to keep enough red seats to defeat a veto. And the last thing he wanted was the MAGAt squad braying the quiet parts out loud from the senate floor the way they do in their House impeachment investigations. Best to enact the coup quietly.
jonas
One of my favorite columnists, Michael Hiltzik at the LA Times, has a great piece today on all the bullshit reporting on inflation over the past couple of years and why it feeds mass economic illiteracy among the pubic. A righteous rant.
Soprano2
@Ukai: Yeah, now that it’s out there surely they feel a duty to report on it. That was their excuse for amplifying the hacked DNC and Hillary campaign e-mails.
West of the Rockies
I’d not heard of the Moore’s Ford Bridge lynching. Trump really is a Talmadge-like creature.
bbleh
@Geminid: @Baud: I agree starting with “carve outs” is the way they’re likely to go, not least because it will keep the focus on the specific issues — which will be nearly inarguable for the MSM, such as voting rights — rather than the Filibuster Most Venerable And Sacred itself. And once there are enough carve outs, its eventual demise won’t be nearly as big a deal.
We WILL have to live with the near-certainty that some Republican Senate in the future will push through some truly odious measures, but the consensus seems to be that it’s worth it.
TBone
This is what P2025 will do to the NOAA and countless other vital institutions.
Links to The American Prospect:
How Walz Can Help Harris Woo Vet Voters
https://angrybearblog.com/2024/09/getting-veteran-voters-on-board
Betty Cracker
@Denali5: We came through pretty much unscathed, apart from some downed branches. Didn’t even lose power for more than a few minutes at a time. Thanks for asking!
Matt McIrvin
@jonas: Most human beings, when thinking about things that are somewhat abstract, don’t intuitively understand the distinction between a function and its rate of change (first derivative). I don’t know if introducing basic ideas from calculus earlier in the school curriculum would help or not, but they helped me.
Every single non-technical discussion of inflation seems to fall prey to this.
Betty Cracker
Maggie Smith died. She was one hell of an actor.
Geminid
@Matt McIrvin: Republican Senators like Lisa Murkowski want to keep the filibuster because it gives them power. She’s one one of the ten Republicans Democrats had to woo in order to pass legislation like the Infrastructure and Chips+ bills. I expect these bills treated Alaska well.
TBone
If my abusive partner is punching me repeatedly while refusing to “let” me leave, I’m damn sure not going with appeasement as the solution. This applies to the filibuster argument for me, as well as the mighty struggle against fascism.
3Sice
A UAW member got killed at Toledo Assembly that had to bid from the shuttered Belvidere plant.
Stellantis committed to reopen Belvidere during negitionations with the UAW and hasn’t.
Big issue with the rank and file.
Betty
@NotMax: One of my favorite books. I have never seen the movie. Thanks for the clip. She was a spectacular actress.
cmorenc
@Tony G:
Don’t get me wrong here – it’s immeasurably valuable that the Union did eventually crush the South and their armies. An alternate history in which the South won the Civil War is terrible to contemplate. But too many folks have a deeply fallacious impression that it was inevitable that the Union, with its material superiority and greater manpower, would successfully crush the rebels – when instead, the South came perilously close to succeeding.
Unfortunately, it was the Confederate Army, led by a larger share of the more competent officers produced by the US Military Academy at West Point than the Union, who were handing the Union Army’s ass to them for the first two years of the Civil War – which facilitates the “Lost Cause” nostalgia. But for Abraham Lincoln’s brilliant political skills keeping the Union effort going long enough for better generals like Grant (who graduated near the bottom of his class at West Point) and Sherman to emerge and displace hacks like McClellan, Burnside Halleck et. al. and finally effectively put the Union’s material and numerical superiority to effective use eroding the Confederate’s material, manpower and territorial resources, the South may have succeeded in exhausting the Union’s political will to continue the war. It’s the fact that the South came tantalizingly close to succeeding with the smaller, but better armies the first two years of the War rather than the second two years when the Union finally got the clear upper hand and progressively eroded and crushed the South’s ability to continue – that creates the historical basis for nostalgic view of the “Lost Cause” among racist-curious Southern whites a century and a half later.
The United States should be forever grateful for the NY regiment who barely held out at Little Round Top at Gettysburg, which enabled the Union Army to hold the better, higher ground rather than getting outflanked and swept off the battlefield. Or Grant, who kept the western Union Army from being trapped and overrun at Shiloh and then later hacked a way through the swamps protecting Vicksburg to circumvent and force a second big defeat for the Confederates at the same time as their loss at Gettysburg. But the deeper question to ask is why the South was still even in the game at this point, two years into the war, given the vastly greater Union resources?
TBone
@Betty Cracker:
https://youtu.be/CXA0N55c3iw
lowtechcyclist
@stinger:
He didn’t change the rule; he changed how it was used.
60 votes or more (used to be 67) had always been required to close debate. So the supermajority requirement has always been there; it’s just a question of how it’s been used.
Up to some time in the 1980s (I think) a filibuster of one piece of legislation prevented any other business from coming to the Senate floor; that bill was on the floor as long as Senators were willing to talk about it.
IIRC, Dem leadership, when they were in control, got a bit tired of this, and basically said, OK, the filibuster on that piece of legislation is going to just be treated as if it’s continuing in the background, because there’s other things we need to accomplish. So that’s when absence of a 60-vote supermajority could be used to shelve a bill if one party desired to make it so, which is technically where we are now.
But between then and 2007, there was sufficient comity between the parties that neither party used this ability on every opposition bill that came along; they saved it for a relative handful of bills that they considered important to block. Mitch changed that in 2007 by taking that power and using it on every Dem bill that might otherwise pass.
3Sice
@Betty Cracker:
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie is politically topical and quite good.
Geminid
@bbleh: The ability of Republican Senators to pass odious legislation will be limited if Republicans do not control both the House and the Presidency. I think they will lose the House this cycle and will remain in the minority into the next decade, so I see this more as a potential medium-term problem.
Kay
@Ukai:
I looked at it and one interesting thing. – they seem to think Vance’s anti Ukraine position was worth noting. They don’t come out and say it’s negative but it’s grouped with negatives. Vance underperformed in Ohio. Maybe Ukrainian Americans are a problem area for them. We all thought it would hurt them in Ohio then it didn’t seem to but maybe it DID and that’s why Vance underperformed
That might be useful to know.
CaseyL
@Betty Cracker:
She was terrific, and what a body of work she built!
I have so much respect for actors who can do drama and comedy equally well. Even better if they can carry off both in the same role.
Steve LaBonne
@Betty Cracker: Very glad to hear that.
Kay
@Ukai:
I think about how Harris just interjected that line about Polish Americans in PA into the debate – she’s been good about turning her existing positions into attacks on them.
BR
@Kay:
She has a huge opening to do the same on cannabis legalization. My experience is that young men, at least those I have mentored, care more about that one issue than almost any other (to the extent that they are single issue voters on anything). There was a surprisingly good op ed that said the same:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/09/17/harris-marijuana-legalization-trump/
Mousebumples
@Doug R: I agree! I’d rather get rid of it, but this works on the short term.
Jeffro
@jonas: that’s a great piece – thanks for sharing!
Matt McIrvin
@Kay: Particularly interesting given that Trump has always made a big deal of being protectionist/isolationist and insisting that other countries are cheating us in this or that unfair deal, and modern Dems tend to have the kinds of free-trade preferences that our own left grumbles about as corrosive neoliberalism. We have a case where Harris actually gets out ahead of him here.
Mousebumples
@Betty Cracker: glad to hear it!
zhena gogolia
@Betty Cracker: Oh, that’s so sad. I love her in everything.
PaulWartenberg
Apologies I don’t post as often, but here in Polk County FL it’s mostly downed tree branches and blown-over signage. We had heavy winds and some rain, not as much flooding. I’ve heard Pinellas County got hit bad, and some of the bay bridges are still closed this morning. Hope everyone got out safely. I gotta call my parents later this morning to make sure they’re okay.
PaulWartenberg
@Betty Cracker:
Dame Maggie Smith is the matron saint of Deadpan Snarkers. She’s gonna be dressing down the angels and bring them to heel the second she gets there.
zhena gogolia
@TBone: Thank you for linking to the Biden interview on The View. I thought it was far more informative and enjoyable than any interviews I’ve seen on the “serious” shows. They actually showed an interest in what he had to say. He did a great job talking up Harris.
And there was not the slightest sign of cognitive decline. I mourn the wisdom and experience that we are losing.
zhena gogolia
@Ceci n est pas mon nym: Tea with the Dames is very enjoyable, but Smith is a little mean to Eileen Atkins in it — she kind of sidelines her in every conversation. Maybe it was just edited that way.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@PaulWartenberg: Thanks for the good news.
dnfree
In political news from northern Wisconsin, the Republican Party gathering in Door County featured January 6 deniers and election result deniers as speakers, with a small group of Democrats protesting.
I have not been too enthusiastic about the most commonly seen Democratic sign up here. It says blandly, “Vote for Democrats / They vote for us”. Meanwhile, the Republican signs say “Save America!”.
https://doorcountypulse.com/demonstrators-protest-speaker-at-door-county-gop-event/
JPL
trump is talking about how good his relationship with Zelensky is. Afterall Zelensky said he did nothing wrong during the phone call that led to impeachment. He’s still talking about impeachment. omg the guy needs a therapist.
Another Scott
@Sure Lurkalot: Rmoney was terrible. Lots of other GQPers were worse.
Corn at MoJo:
Boo, hoo.
OMG, his words and actions might have people think bad things about him? Oh, the humanity!!11
Transcript:
My recollection is that he spits the word “entitled” out there, (but I haven’t listened to it recently.)
He was and is a creature of the plutocrats. He had fealty to the plutocrats. That’s it. His father George must have wondered what went wrong with him…
Grr…,
Scott.
jonas
@Matt McIrvin: Agree. It would also help if reporters explained that a lot of the increases in food prices were a direct result of climate change and disease, not Joe Biden’s War on Breakfast™. A multi-year drought in Texas and the southern plains decimated US cattle herds and the bird flu wiped out millions of poultry.
Eolirin
@Ukai: They’re already starting to talk about it. I doubt it’ll look exactly like what happened with Hillary, but a large part of the silence has been that no one wanted to be the ones to release the information. They didn’t with Hillary either, they all reported on the Wikileaks materials that had already been made public, never on anything they had recieved themselves.
laura
@Ukai: here’s the Dana Houle quick and dirty review on nitter: https://nitter.poast.org/DanaHoule/status/1839423852163547616#m
My hot take is that JD Vance is a shite-bag who Hates trump and that failson DJTJ is a complete idiot who convinced his pops that Vance would bring lots of money to the campaign. Little to zero vetting done.
Dave
@SFAW: I’d accept if he did this and then immediately afterwards the Senate decided to ignore the filibuster regardless. Satisfying and would serve Mitch right. Good long term don’t know but it would be damned satisfying.
Of course for this election I am prepared for anything from disaster to the joy of watching DJT take Cruz and Scott with him if pulls a Hindenburg.
JPL
@PaulWartenberg: I watching firefighters evacuate people from their fancy houses overlooking a creek. This happens every storm and I guess it might be time to charge them . Atlanta did have a lot of flooding.
Chris
@PaulWartenberg:
She took a character in Harry Potter who was already a pretty Deadpan Snarker on the page, and somehow managed to make her even more so, which is how you know you’ve got a good actress.
JPL
@Another Scott: My god, he paid his own way. In fact his wife said they had to sell stocks just to get by when they were in college.
See how that works..
Kay
@BR:
I’m anti weed legalization. I think it’s super strong now and not regulated properly. Other countries limit potency – we should do that.
But we in the court system are starting to think using weed might help opiate addicts stay “clean” (stay off heroin and fentanyl) – I have no studies and such to prove this but we keep seeing it and addicts are telling us this in drug court.
If it keeps them off opiates I might change my mind. They call it “California sober” – they smoke weed every day and thus stay off opiates/ meth/ crack (crack is making a comeback)
A lot of them are telling us they’re doing this.
Belafon
I love the way Smith delivered “I always wanted to cast that spell!” in the last Harry Potter movie. And the look Julie Walters – Ron’s Mom – gives here is just a great complement to it.
Geminid
@cmorenc: A minor correction: Ulysses Grant graduated in the middle of his West Point class, not the bottom.
Grant was best at Mathematics, and in his Personal Memoirs he said his math professor and he discussed his return to West Point as a teaching assistant.
Grant’s ambition was to eventually leave the Army and get a job teaching in a midwestern college. But as Grant wrote in his memoirs, “Man proposes, God disposes,” and Grant never became a Mathematics professor. A few months after he graduated and was assigned to 4th Infantry Regiment in St. Louis, Grant’s unit was sent south to Louisiana in the preliminary phase of the Mexican War.
lowtechcyclist
@Matt McIrvin:
This. With a filibuster, little gets done, so it’s hard for people to see what good it does to have one party rather than the other in nominal control.
But if we pass good shit when we’re in control that makes an actual difference in people’s lives, and they repeal it all when they’re in control – people may not notice the legislation we wanted to pass but weren’t able to, but they sure as hell notice it when you take stuff away from them and they’ll get mad if you take away stuff they liked.
Dobbs is a great example of that, even if it wasn’t legislation, and it may well make the difference in this election. At least on this one issue, the choice between the parties is crystal clear. And if the filibuster goes away, there will be more issues where the choice is equally clear.
Chris
@Another Scott:
For me, the real thing about that speech wasn’t even anything he said. It’s that it was one of the only times he ever felt like he really came alive and was speaking from the heart. You could tell that, in the same way Ted Kennedy really cared about universal health care and John McCain really cared about bombing people, “we, the elites, are carrying this entire country on our backs, and it’s just so deeply unfair that the moochers don’t appreciate us” was the issue that was important to Mitt Romney.
He really was everything his critics painted him as, and then some.
narya
@Kay: FWIW, when my ex got sober (minimum a case a day of beer), he kept using weed for awhile. Given that he was diagnosed w/ bipolar disorder a decade later, I suspect the weed also helped with some of those symptoms as well. I don’t use it myself–I quit in the early 80s when it started getting way too strong for me–but I know some people who essentially “microdose” with weed. I’ve long thought that some measure of strength–like ABV for alcohol–would really help people sort through the options. I know what a 5% ABV beer feels like versus a 10.5% ABV beer, and I choose my options accordingly.
Eolirin
@lowtechcyclist: There’s no downside because if they win the White House again, they’ll end our ability to vote in fair and free elections with or without legislation. And if they don’t they’ll never have veto proof majorities.
TBone
@zhena gogolia: 💙 it was great, and I’m glad you (we) could watch the whole thing – context matters.
rikyrah
The Dowager Countess![]()
![]()
RIP![]()
![]()
The Associated Press (@AP) posted at 8:19 AM on Fri, Sep 27, 2024:
BREAKING: Maggie Smith, the Oscar-winning actor known to millions from Harry Potter and “Downton Abbey,” has died at age 89, her publicist says. https://t.co/Y1CGV6tHNY
(https://x.com/AP/status/1839656008748089400?t=9UfeTYV_enTU_eOud9el6Q&s=03)
Wapiti
@Chris: I also thought Romney had an attitude that ALL of the moochers were Democrats – not voting for him. He didn’t consider all of the government resources that go to people on the Republican side of the aisle, or people in the mushy middle. Just totally blind to where money goes, and no excuse for his blindness.
Kay
@narya:
Right. The weed industry doesn’t care about you any more than the booze or tobacco industry cares about you. Regulate accordingly.
I would also ban gambling though, so I don’t think I’m mainstream. It was better when gambling was illegal.
The recovering addicts on probation are drug tested constantly so we know they’re negative for opiates, meth, cocaine and benzos but positive for THC. They’re telling the truth about what they’re using and the weed smokers are staying “clean” – it’s just wild how consistent it is.
TBone
@3Sice: this seems like important news. Just wanted to say I noticed.
Jackie
@Ken: 😂
I used this line more often than I liked with my “Pippy Longstocking” daughter! She never confessed to any wrongdoing – in case she accidentally confessed to something she wasn’t immediately in trouble about!
She now uses it on her kiddos 😁
SiubhanDuinne
@CaseyL:
I was lucky enough to see her on stage at the Stratford (ON) Festival in 1978, as Rosalind in As You Like It. And one of my all-time favourite actors, Brian Bedford, was the Melancholy Jaques in the same production. What a splendid memory!
Splitting Image
@PaulWartenberg:
I loved her in the two films she did with Michael Palin, especially The Missionary. But her CV is a long list of good and great ones.
cmorenc
@Geminid: Thanks for the correction about Grant’s standing in the West Point class. We can also be thankful that Lee’s prideful lust for military victory inhibited him from the insights about how a side with less resources can win a war by attrition and patience in choosing battles – which Ho and the North Vietnamese used to wear down the vastly superior arms of the US.
TBone
Not an obit, a celebration written while she was alive:
https://www.womansworld.com/entertainment/celebrities/maggie-smith-age-146676
Matt McIrvin
@lowtechcyclist: I have heard tell of low-info voters who believe that Joe Biden repealed Roe v. Wade, or that he intentionally “let it happen” (as if he had any power here whatsoever). Of course, it was actually the result of judicial appointments that were themselves the consequence of Republican Presidential wins going back decades, and we all remember the “extortion” pushback that we got back then when we warned voters that this exact thing would eventually happen. But the immense time lag between cause and effect obscured the stakes then and obscured the cause when it happened.
Geminid
@Kay: My friend Stephanie follows professional football very closely and she informed me that the NFL has effectively dropped cannabis from its list of banned substances. I think this was a concession won by the Player’s Association.
narya
@Kay: That’s actually fascinating–weed as harm reduction, essentially. I’ve known enough addicts (including working for a SUD treatment agency at one point) such that I believe that people’s brains are absolutely wired differently (e.g., more/less susceptible to addiction of any kind) AND some drugs rewire the brain pretty significantly, almost no matter about the susceptibility. If any of that is true, then figuring out what the real goal is becomes the important part; prohibition isn’t going to be an effective strategy.
stinger
@lowtechcyclist: Thanks.
artem1s
@cmorenc:
This is a Lost Cause Lie – largely promoted by West Point. The Union had plenty of competent officers. But it wasn’t in West Points best interest to teach actual Civil War history because so many of their graduates were traitors. The main reason the Union got their asses handed to them the first year was because McClellan wanted to stick close to DC so he could go to parties and court the northern Dems and GOP who wanted Lincoln to allow the South to secede.
Sherman correctly predicted the cost of lives, resources needed, and amount of time the war would last within months of SC seceding. It made vastly unpopular with the pro-secession Congress critters. They called him crazy and the press hounded him unmercifully. Sherman favored giving Grant the command of the Union Army because he knew Grant wouldn’t turn back to DC after every battle. He knew the only way to win and stop the pro-secessionist from giving up was to take the war to the South. Sherman was also a WP graduate. He was considered so competent that Lincoln wanted him as Sec of War. Grant was also a West Point grad but not a great student – likely because he wasn’t an insider Virginian but a westerner hick from
Ohio.
Lee, the supposedly competent military genius , never won a battle outside his ‘home’ country of Virginia. As long as Lincoln held to keeping the Union intact, the results were inevitable. The south did not have either the men or the resources to turn back an invasion.
Geminid
@cmorenc: One problem with the Confederate ruling class was that they read too much Walter Scott and not enough Clausewitz.
CaseyL
@Matt McIrvin:
“How dare you remind me that my own choices led to an outcome I now want to blame on everyone else!”
I’m not sure if they’re incapable of abstract thought, or only incapable of abstract thought when doing so conflicts with their opinions.
rikyrah
Tristan Snell
@TristanSnell
Imagine having to survive a Category 4 hurricane
– with no federally backed flood insurance
– with no NOAA or National Weather Service
– with no federal funds to help your state and local govts
That’s all in Trump’s Project 2025.
He’s rich enough to ride out a storm. Are you?
7:19 AM · Sep 27, 2024
https://x.com/TristanSnell/status/1839641097175265654
Belafon
@Kay: I think governments should be banned from being able to use gambling as a way to pay for their operations.
Matt McIrvin
@Kay: I know one person who uses cannabis for chronic pain and says opioids don’t work on them. Are just completely ineffective, for whatever reason. There are apparently some people whose nervous systems are so constituted that they don’t work.
(They sure work on me. To a degree that it scared me when I had reason to use them. If there’s something that really helps with long-term pain and isn’t that, it’s at least worth looking into.)
TBone
@rikyrah: 🎯
SatanicPanic
@Kay:
Why?
SatanicPanic
@narya:
THC content is on labels here in CA. In my experience it’s roughly accurate in terms of knowing how high you’re probably going to get.
tam1MI
An interesting podcast about how colleges across the country have cracked down on campus protest in the wake of the Gaza protests.
https://slate.com/podcasts/what-next/2024/09/how-colleges-are-approaching-protests-this-fall
TBone
My argument against limiting potency is that the less I have to imbibe, the better off my lungs feel. Eating/drinking it is too unpredictable for me. Of course, potency and product labeling (as with any other medication) is always warranted!
As with all things, moderation is key.
Comrade Scrutinizer
@New Deal democrat: I’m old. I saw Weather Underground and immediately thought Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn and wondered how they got involved in climate change activism. “Days of Rain”?
Kay
@Geminid:
It’s still banned for people on probation but we were all just sick at how many died with opiates so we’re all ignoring that they’re smoking weed, including judges. It was heartbreaking – we lost this whole group of people in the county to opiates. We were just desperate for something that might work. They’re not “microdosing” though- no reason to kid ourselves. They’re getting high every day. They’re just not dying.
narya
@SatanicPanic: My problem is that I no longer have any kind of yardstick, and I’d have to experiment to sort it out . . . and I have had some bad experiences with it, so my motivation to engage in that experiment is pretty limited. I basically want the radler of pot, and that’s not where the market was headed back in 1980-ish. I might try again someday, though!
Kay
@SatanicPanic:
Kids think it’s harmless and it’s not. They can’t get high every day at 15 and 16 and reach their potential. They tell me it’s harmless. It’s not. It will and does harm them.
They don’t think this about alcohol or tobacco – they know those are bad – but they’ve been kind of propagandized into thinking weed is like eating junk food or something – not great but okay to do every day.
Put it in the booze category. Tell them to avoid it.
Mr. Bemused Senior
@Kay: whether it’s gambling, drugs or just adrenaline there’s no doubt that some people are susceptible to addiction. Should that fact dictate prohibition? It has never worked out well.
Barbara
@Matt McIrvin: The cannabis industry makes a lot of claims in the absence of evidence. Limited, initial studies found cannabis to be underwhelming in mitigating chronic pain. It might depend on type of pain — e.g., pain associated with cancer might be more susceptible to cannabis than pain associated with, say, a herniated disc.
I am afraid cannabis is going to go the way of supplements, where no one has an incentive to actually undertake studies. This is where pubic funding of research can make a real difference, but I am not holding my breath.
narya
@Kay: I want to see someone develop a program that helps those folks transition from “gets high everyday” to “microdoses to manage the opioid addiction” to maybe even “gets a full-time job and is successful at it.” As long as they’re not driving or working with heavy machinery, etc., that would be so beneficial for everyone, including them. Harm reduction has been reducing overdoses all over the place, and this sounds like more harm reduction.
Chris
@artem1s:
It’s also a pretty East Coast centric narrative, IIRC. “The Confederacy beat the Union’s ass for two years, then the Union got its shit together and beat the Confederacy’s ass for the next two years,” to the extent that it’s true, largely applies to the Army of the Potomac vs Army of Northern Virginia theater in the east. Even in the first two years the Union was doing better in the other parts of the country.
Sure Lurkalot
@narya:
Pot shops do label with THC percentages. Alcohol intoxication has more variables than just ABV, like gender, what you ate, how much you weigh, etc. and so does pot. It’s left to the consumer to learn and make wise decisions that might vary day by day, as you have gauging the strength of beer you best enjoy.
The cat is out of the bag and I for one don’t want to return to lengthy and discriminatory prison sentences for possession, usage and minor dealing.
Kay
@narya:
Some of the cooler youngsters are rejecting commercial weed and going with homegrown lower potency. “Ditchweed” or “dirtweed”. It’s sort of the anti Big Weed Lefty approach. Buying it is uncool. They trade or grow it and give it away.
I just love all their weird little cultural quirks. Every time an industry thinks they have grabbed them they slip away.
Good! Run like hell, kids.
Mr. Bemused Senior
@Chris: both Grant’s and Sherman’s memoirs are available at Project Gutenberg and they are great reads.
SatanicPanic
@narya: Sure, but there is labelling and if you ask at the shop they can tell you roughly what to expect. Like 10% is mellow, 30% is going to get you super stoned. They also label CBD levels too. It’s really not that different from alcohol.
@Kay: I don’t think kids should use it. I’m just curious why you would limit potency.
Formerly disgruntled in Oregon
Re: Marijuana… you can’t have regulation, potency testing and labeling without LEGALIZATION!
Keeping marijuana illegal benefits organized crime, corrupt cops, and opioid-slinging big pharma. It harms the people who could benefit from it and society as a whole. Easy choice, IMHO.
Chris
@cmorenc:
Yeah, this is why I’ve always found the whole “well, the South was doomed to lose anyway” excuse baffling. The South wasn’t trying to conquer the North (as Lost Causers of all people will assure you!) any more than Ho Chi Minh was trying to conquer America or George Washington was trying to conquer Britain. All they had to do was hang in there for long enough and inflict enough defeats that the larger power would give up and go lick its injuries. This was doable. They weren’t doomed, they were just bad at their jobs.
narya
Completely agree on this. I’d like to see legalization, regulation, taxation, etc., honestly. I knew this issue was going to go this way when, in the course of doing my dissertation research, I discovered that there was a yearly survey of high school seniors that included the question “ever smoked pot.” The PEAK was over 75% yes, for 1976, the year I graduated from high school, which means there are a whole LOT of us who tried it at least once/a few times.
Formerly disgruntled in Oregon
@Kay: Yes, let’s let them do this legally though!
Dave
@narya: The legal stuff in NYS does have that now and it’s helpful for those purposes also the purposes of those looking for something more potent but what are you going to do.
I do support legalization but am by no means pie in the sky it will only bring good with it I just think that the negatives are less than the current situation. Decriminalization works for me as well but I’d rather it just be legal but regulated.
Not so regulated though that it keeps the black markets strong.
BR
@Kay:
Here in California most or all licensed cannabis states THC percentage and sometimes CBD percentage as well. They do sell very strong stuff but it’s all labeled. And I think the state may be close to regulating the chemicals in it too (pesticides and such from growing).
I don’t think there needs to be a nationwide regulation system but rather that like alcohol it can be allowed to be legal for 21+ nationwide with states deciding how they want to do it. Enforcement is still disproportionate / racially biased in states where it’s not fully legal.
Sure Lurkalot
@Barbara:
Oh please, like the Sacklers didn’t make claims that opioids were non-addictive? If people get relief from pot, whether it distracts attention, puts them to sleep or a simple placebo effect, does that not have some efficacy? The societal cost of misused pharmaceuticals and is much, much higher.
Chris
@narya:
My general theory is that there’s actually not all that many things that should be straight up illegal, but also not all that many things that shouldn’t be regulated. This seems like another example.
rikyrah
rolandsmartin (@rolandsmartin) posted at 1:53 AM on Fri, Sep 27, 2024:
ANY Black man or woman considering voting for Donald Trump should listen to ALL of this. This is the results of a Biden-Harris Dept. of Justice civil rights division investigation into the Lexington, Miss. police department.
There have been more than 12 such investigations by the Biden-Harris DOJ.
How many under Trump-Pence? ONE.
Trump’s attorney generals Jeff Sessions and Bill Barr said such investigations “hurt police morale.”
Here is what they discovered: these racist cops unlawfully unlawfully Arrests, jails and detains people who cannot pay fines or fees, without assessing their ability to pay; Uses excessive force; Conducts stops, searches and arrests without probable cause, including jailing people on illegal “investigative holds” and arresting people solely because they owe outstanding fines; Imposes money bail without justification or assessment of ability to pay; Jails people without prompt access to court; Violates the rights of people engaged in free speech and expression, including by retaliating against people who criticize the police; Discriminates against Black people; and Operates under an unconstitutional conflict of interest because LPD’s funding depends on the money it raises through its enforcement.
The ONLY way we hold cops accountable is ELECT HARRIS-WALZ. This will NEVER happen under Trump-Vance. They will let the cops run amok and BLACK PEOPLE will suffer at the hands of abusive cops. THIS is why we elected Biden-Harris. Let’s keep it up with Harriz-Walz.
https://t.co/UJu3iuW2Sf
(https://x.com/rolandsmartin/status/1839558869086789924?t=4yWT6wVLKNRNSsV-67cUJQ&s=03)
Ray Gundam Wing – Fella
@idgaf8020
Then when you realize that city is 72% black, and never had a black mayor or sheriff in its history, pyou can really start digging how that city used Mississippi felon voting loss to keep the Jim Crow spirit alive. Textbook disenfranchisement .
5:59 AM · Sep 27, 2024
https://x.com/idgaf8020/status/1839620915878928505
Formerly disgruntled in Oregon
That’s great, but not just. Is this grace extended to everyone equally?
Better to make it legal – that’s fair to everyone and removes the biases of the criminal system from the equation.
BR
@narya:
When I was younger I was interested in the science of psychopharmacology and read several graduate textbooks on it and also read the erowid experience archives. I came away with the general conclusion that:
1) synthetic drugs of all kinds are dangerous in their own ways (highly addictive, hallucinogen persisting perception disorder, etc.) — meth, fentanyl, PCP, synthetic cannabinoids, LSD
2) the biggest problem with plant-based drugs is the concentration of them (like Kay is saying, to an extent) — making them unnaturally strong
I think non-concentrated plant based hallucinogens should be legal — cannabis, mushrooms, peyote, etc. But concentrates should be strictly regulated. Synthetic drugs should be decriminalized but not legal and production/distribution strictly enforced.
Bupalos
@Kay: It did hurt them in Ohio, it just didn’t hurt as much as the way the entire campaign on our side was played as “we don’t necessarily think Trump is bad.” So whatever was gained in lower density areas we lost in cities.
Rathskeller
@Ukai: Space Karen has decreed that this will not be shown on Twitter/X. He’s already banned Klipperstein plus other accounts
Eolirin
@Kay: People with substance abuse problems typically have underlying mental health or chronic pain conditions or trauma related issues, and while weed can make certain conditions worse, some of the strongest data for effectiveness in symptom relief is for depression, pain, and with some important caveats, anxiety. So people self medicating with weed being able to succeed at staying away from other drugs more effectively broadly tracks.
This is why strategies that focus on punitive responses will never work for things like substance use issues; you cannot remove a maladaptive coping strategy, replace it with nothing, and expect a good outcome. Whatever underlying issues were leading to use have to be dealt with, they don’t magically go away.
I’ll also say I’m pro-legalization, but for two reasons: the criminal justice issues are very bad and extremely disproportionately effect minorities, so just taking that away from bad cops is a larger social win than the damage that can happen, and additionally you can’t regulate an illegal industry. We need strong and sensible federal regulations on weed. We won’t be able to get those as long as it’s illegal at the federal level.
Matt McIrvin
@Barbara: It’s the Wild West out there right now, but the criminalization regime we had before wasn’t effectively regulating anything, either, it was just putting users in jail for possession and giving cops an all-purpose probable-cause line.
So even though I don’t use the stuff and smelling it everywhere annoys me, I think we’ve moved forward.
I’m similarly leaning toward yes for the shrooms-legalization measure on the state ballot even though I know there are going to be real harms if it passes. These drugs are not harmless, their advocates are often flakes, but the War on Drugs way of dealing with them was clearly not working, so I’m willing to put up with a lot.
brantl
@sdhays:
@Matt McIrvin: The way the “filibuster” works now isn’t a fillibuster, it’s the threshold for a vote for cloture, a fillibuster hasn’t been done in at least 35 years.
Belafon
@Sure Lurkalot: They will need to be controlled to get it right. Here in Texas, weed is illegal but oils aren’t, as long as they’re below a specific concentration. A woman (who, as a black woman, was obviously just a target for the police that day) was arrested for buying oils from a CBD shop. They didn’t actually care at first that she had been told that the oil was legal, but when she finally convinced them to test, the concentration was 4 times higher than the state allows. It was her first buy, and her repeated questions to the store owner about if they were legal were answered with “If it wasn’t legal, I wouldn’t be selling it”, but, come to find out, the source wasn’t running their own testing. After a couple of years of her challenging it, the city, Allen, decided not to prosecute her, but it cost her time and money, and the only reason she bought it was that as a college student, she wanted something to reduce her anxiety and her friends had told her that it would help.
artem1s
@TBone: High THC is not required to ease pain or provide the other helpful results of using cannabis. Ratio products can be hard to find because consumers have been convinced by Legal Weed advocates that it’s the THC ‘high’ that’s providing the benefits. That’s not true.
Also, you may want to try low ratio THC topical products or tinctures that are easier to manage the dosage than edibles. Lung and throat cancer is a very real thing for weed smokers.
The Thin Black Duke
Dame Maggie Smith reminds us what we lost.
Kay
@Formerly disgruntled in Oregon:
Well, it’s legal. That isn’t the issue. The issue is they’re on probation and supposedly in recovery – it violates the terms of their order. But we’re “waiting and seeing” because we’ve come thru this absolutely horrible 15 year span where they were just dying and we’re desperate.
rikyrah
uh huh
uh huh
Dan Froomkin (PressWatchers.org) (@froomkin) posted at 5:46 PM on Thu, Sep 26, 2024:
In the last four days, the print edition of the Washington Post has had four Trump articles on its front page, and zero about Harris.
(https://x.com/froomkin/status/1839436311083839979?t=kM0pkHfTwNtdAyZ1dhjKzQ&s=03)
Geminid
The New York Post is having fun with Mayor Adams’ indictment. Ragnarok Lobster posted a screenshot of a Post front page with pictures of Adams, an airliner and a Turkish flag. The headline reads:
Barbara
@Sure Lurkalot: No, not necessarily. I am not asking for marijuana to remain criminal and I am not advocating that people not be permitted to use cannabis if they want to. I just don’t want people being lied to by cannabis purveyors. Ignoring deceptive claims because the “Sacklers did it too” does not strike me as a very persuasive line of argument. I feel the same way about supplements, which are less likely to trigger psychoactive effects than marijuana.
SatanicPanic
I would not be happy with decriminalization because I don’t want to have to buy from dealers. While I agree it’s not great to have everyone and their mother smoking weed all the time, it’s no worse than alcohol and I can buy that at the store. I don’t see the value in throwing customers into an underground economy.
Everything else I think should be legal but buying it should involve some sort of regulated process, like they have to buy from a clinic. We’d save a lot of lives by just making sure that people aren’t buying things laced with fentanyl.
UncleEbeneezer
@rikyrah: Aka Merrick Garland’s DOJ…he really deserves (but never gets) credit for this stuff.
Kay
@artem1s:
One can hear the hacking coughs echo thru the halls in juvenile court. Has a distinct sound. Then they tell me how harmless it is.
There IS a rejection of “commercial weed” though among America’s coolest teens, to the extent that they make their own edibles out of lower potency homegrown, so maybe they’ll save themselves. They’re pretty clever! Every time I think I have it figured out they throw a curveball.
Another Scott
@Chris: This is sorta where I am, and I think most of us are there.
People are going to get drunk/high. We need to make sure they don’t kill themselves doing it; we need to make sure that children and young adults don’t break their brains doing it; we need to make sure that stoners out in public or at their jobs aren’t endangering the rest of us while they’re doing it; we need to make sure that organized crime isn’t involved; we need to make sure that there are good treatment systems for those who cannot control their usage; we need to intelligently distinguish between medical conditions and dangers to society when deciding punishments for breaking the rules; etc.
I don’t think pot is benign – I saw too many stoners when I was younger. But I don’t think the criminal justice system, and destroying kids’ futures, is the way to address the badness. There has to be sensible regulation.
Cheers,
Scott.
3Sice
Western NC & SC are in a bad way.
“FLASH FLOOD DAMAGE THREAT…CATASTROPHIC”
JPL
@Kay: Why did methadone fall out of favor. It’s another lifelong addiction but it can help.
cmorenc
@Chris:
Among the baffling things about the Civil War is the stubborn persistence of so many southern grunts (not just officers) in the late stages of the War, when it was glaringly obvious the “Cause” was hopelessly lost. For example, a couple of years ago I visited the Bentonville Battlefield in eastern NC – it was the last large-scale battle a Southern Army was able to mount in mid-March 1865, where Confederate Gen. Joseph Johnston made a last-ditch attempt to stop Sherman’s army’s advance after the fall of Wilmington. There is an open farm field several hundred feet across where a company of Confederate soldiers charged a company of Union soldiers embedded in dense woods on the other side of the field, which visually appears to be a suicidally risky attempt. HOW, at a point where it was glaringly obvious to even the most die-hard southerners and Confederate soldiers that the war was hopelessly lost – did these rebel soldiers get the motivation to mount such a hopeless charge? Don’t get me wrong, I don’t say this out of admiration, but sheer bafflement at where their motivation came from at this point. This wasn’t a situation like Bastogne, where the bravery of a relative handful of soldiers stubbornly holding out could hold the tide for a critical interval – this was a situation where even had the Confederate Army “won” at Bentonville, Confederate retreat and defeat were soon inevitable as soon as the rest of Sherman’s corps caught up with the leading contingent of the Union Army.
BR
@JPL:
There was another approach, Ibogaine treatment, that needs to be better studied. There are a lot of signs that natural hallucinogens can have the effect of decreasing opioid desire among those who are addicted.
Eolirin
@Another Scott: Yeah, all of this.
rikyrah
Howard![]()
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![]()
(@HowardA_AtLaw) posted at 7:52 AM on Fri, Sep 27, 2024:
I am so sick of wealthy white Christians like Twitter Leftists and Chappell Roan claiming“ both parties are the same”.
I promise you, if you are not a wealthy white Christian, no, both parties are absolutely not the same.
(https://x.com/HowardA_AtLaw/status/1839649375150055584?t=ycLhcGIbGKT-l4WEUN7SsA&s=03)
rikyrah
JD VANCE is doing a TownHall with this man:
Right Wing Watch
@RightWingWatch
Christian nationalist MAGA cultist Lance Wallnau says Kamala Harris is under an occult spirit and blames her success on the seduction of witchcraft: “What you’re seeing now is a real Jezebel.” https://rightwingwatch.org/post/lance-wallnau-blames-the-seduction-of-witchcraft-for-kamala-harris-success/…
rikyrah
BAFTA
@BAFTA
We’re saddened to hear that actor Dame Maggie Smith, best known for the Harry Potter films and Downton Abbey, has died at the age of 89.
Dame Maggie was a legend of British stage and screen, winning five BAFTAs as well as a BAFTA Special Award and BAFTA Fellowship during her highly acclaimed career.
https://x.com/BAFTA/status/1839666693792047442
Sure Lurkalot
@Barbara:
I agree, but again, supplements are so barely regulated that they often contain harmful ingredients that can cause much more harm than psychoactive effects.
I wasn’t trying to excuse false claims based on what’s good for the goose but we live in a world controlled by the Mad Men. Public opinion based on clicks, pop up advertising, driving metrics for everything. Tests show this laundry detergent is The Most Effective on stains until the next new and improved version comes out. Everyone is selling something and caveat emptor should be everyone’s life motto.
Kay
I do think weed legalization folks are good political allies.
I early vote in Ohio last cycle so voted against the weed legalization referendum at the time I was working as a volunteer on the abortion protection referendum and then I had a guy come into the law office and tell me he voted for “mine” (womens rights) so I needed to vote for his (weed legalization). It was too late!
Weed passed overwhelmingly anyway, as did choice on abortion. I know it’s popular. I also know I need allies. I’m practical, at the end of the day.
TBone
@zhena gogolia: important PS: President Biden said he will be sticking around, which helps me stay confident and is a solace.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/biden-says-hell-continue-policy-work-after-leaving-office-im-not-going-away/ar-AA1rciw1
Sister Golden Bear
@Betty Cracker:
People who make the “heighten the contradictions” argument are never among the people who will face the brunt of the consequences of contradictions being heightened. (Or at least they think they aren’t, leopards, faces…) <Looking at you Bernie Bros and Jill Stein voters>
Frankensteinbeck
A major national voting rights bill would so completely change the political landscape that it’s hard to predict anything. The two primary Republican political strategies are gerrymandering and voter suppression, not ways of courting voters.
Baud
Weed should be mandatory. Like broccoli.
rikyrah
Lindy Li (@lindyli) posted at 6:13 PM on Thu, Sep 26, 2024:
You said Harris won’t do interviews
She just did
You said she wouldn’t win the debate
Well she did
You said she wouldn’t release detailed policies
Well she did
You said she wouldn’t raise enough
She raised about $1 BILLION
So where are y’all gonna move the goalposts now?
(https://x.com/lindyli/status/1839443317274431977?t=XvEKoUKUttvpXvDl55vdew&s=03) s
artem1s
@Chris: Yes, the East Coast/VA focus of most history books/scholars is part of the problem.The West was where the turning point of the War happened, not Gettysburg. Vicksburg surrendered on July 4th cutting off the Mississippi supply chain for the entire deep South, LA and TX. The very competent Union command had a whole strategy around the Vicksburg siege. The very competent USS Grant was in charge of the Western troops. ‘Cump was in charge of the volunteer army in the West. Lee was a failson slave-holding nepobaby whose gentile reputation was whitewashed into existence because of his marriage to the daughter of George Washington’s stepson. The reluctance to hang him for treason had a lot to do with his direct connection to the first president. Remember, both Jefferson and Adams were still alive when Lincoln was born. The Revolution’s heroes were still very close to those who were alive during the Civil War.
Baud
@rikyrah:
Harris won’t win back the white working class.
JaySinWA
@rikyrah: Woo-hoo, witchy womanSee how high she flies
JPL
@BR: That is interesting and might save some one’s life.
Frankensteinbeck
@Sister Golden Bear:
There is a small contingent I’m personally familiar with who used to be safe and just can’t let go of their “pox on both houses” mentality even though they’re now pointing a gun in their own faces with it. With the circles I move in, they’re young transgender communists. They drive the older liberal trans women who make up most of my closer friend group crazy.
Baud
@Frankensteinbeck:
Destructive political outlook, but great band name.
TBone
@Baud: 😆
Matt McIrvin
@Frankensteinbeck: I’m in a Star Trek fan group over on Facebook that has a lot of those people. I find their ideals inspiring and their insistence on dumping on liberals irritating.
There used to be a lot of weirdly focused bursts of complaining about how liberals were stanning for Taylor Swift even though she was a billionaire (haven’t heard as many of those lately). Every so often you get someone going off on an anti-gun-control rant because Marx wanted to arm the working classes.
Ken
She lacks
penisgravitas.OK, technically it’s not moving the goalposts, that’s where they’ve always been and the rest has been excuses.
SatanicPanic
@Frankensteinbeck: I’ve come to the conclusion that communism is cult. It’s basically impossible to talk to people who believe in it. Should have been discredited sometime in the 60s. Or maybe earlier.
cain
@Kay:
Once it becomes federally legal, you can bet that big Pharma or BiG Weed will try to restrict people growing their own, or use tactics like Monsanto did with corn.
Fair Economist
The filibuster is an absurdity. With the filibuster, we have effectively FIVE veto points where some group can hamstring the government – the President, the House, the Senate, the Supreme Court, and the filibuster (an additional restriction beyond the majority of the Senate.) No other major successful democracy has more than two (President and legislature, as in France, or two houses, as in Japan). Even without the filibuster we’d still have too much.
Baud
@SatanicPanic:
I view it like libertarianism. It’s a fantasy utopian ideology, and the fact that it’s unworkable is largely ignored.
Chris
@artem1s:
One thing you’ll hear a lot if you’re steeped in West Point lore is that Lee is the only person who ever graduated West Point without a single demerit. Which may or may not actually be true; a quick Google search seems to turn up some conflicting claims.
It occurred to me at some point, though, that if you want to be cynical about it, there might be more than one reason why you could come out of college with such an absolutely unblemished record.
cain
@narya:
We need to legalize the whole class of drugs that the ancient cultures have used – eg cannabis, shrooms, peyote, etc.
There are a lot of benefits to treating anxiety and so on.
I have mixed emotions with heroin and cocaine and so on. I think consumption should be legal, but selling should not be.
Build a society that can address human trauma, and we’ll be much better off.
SatanicPanic
@Matt McIrvin: Taylor Swift being a billionaire is one of the few examples of “don’t hate the player, hate the game” that I consider valid. Sure, she has a lot of money and I’d prefer that no one have that much money. But it’s not like she did anything particularly objectionable. She’s provided us with almost two decades of fun music. I don’t thinks she’s exploited anyone- in fact, there’s a good case that she was being exploited early on. Now she’s trying to do good things with her fame that provide her no material benefit. Let her be, leftists.
Chris
@SatanicPanic:
I mean, it was. The communists you still see today are a fringe minority too tiny to get elected to anything. That’s largely why its surviving members are such a cult; if after all that’s happened you’re still a communist, you’re pretty much a cultist by definition.
(Same with people who are still Republicans after everything that’s happened, come to think of it. Unfortunately, there’s a lot more of them).
artem1s
@Kay:
I’m not worried as much about the yutes that are clever and can do the necessary research themselves. It’s the woo-woo kids and rural youth who have been brought up on anti-vax nonsense. The opioid epidemic wasn’t just the Sackler’s fault. It was White people convincing themselves that their form of self medication can’t possibly be bad despite all the evidence they were clearly addicted. There was a great Whitewashing away of the Cocaine and Meth epidemics that swept thru rural America in the 90’s and 00’s. They were weaned on convincing themselves that “I’m not like those blah crack addicts and welfare queens”. Escapism thru drugs has always been a part of economic downturns in rural America. Alcohol or Hillbilly Heroin, using drugs to escape a deadend life has always been with us.
SatanicPanic
@Baud: And it takes a lot of ignoring!
Both philosophies reward people for more extreme ideas and the social capital people build up by adherents becomes too valuable to them to admit that they might be wrong at times.
Fair Economist
@JPL: I think methadone fell out of favor because buprenorphine plays a similar role but also provides protection against overdose (it’s both agonist and antagonist for opiate receptors, and in its agonist role blocks the extreme respiratory depression of high doses, both in itself and in other opiates). The antagonist role is even fairly long lasting, so if users miss a dose they still are less likely to kill themselves taking something else, and, even better, get less of a high from it.
artem1s
@Chris:
Sherman (sources confirmed from his own autobiography) famously graduated WP with the most demerits in his class. He hated riding boots. Wouldn’t wear them. Take a close look at pictures of him on horseback. He’s wearing shoes. And any picture of his hair will show you what his attitude was towards prioritizing personal appearances was. He was an odd duck.
Matt McIrvin
@SatanicPanic: There’s been a resurgence of Marxism (as well as socialism more generally) in various forms among the young for a variety of reasons– one is that the version of the Cold War we used to know that was supposedly all about communist vs. capitalist ideology (though honestly I think it was never about that) is long over. Another is that Marx’s critiques of capitalism still have a lot of validity to them and speak to people who are being shafted by the invisible hand. Another is that our conservatives keep bashing anything vaguely liberal or progressive as Communism or socialism to such a degree that people coming into the discourse for the first time can’t help but think that this Communism stuff sounds pretty good.
cain
@rikyrah:
Keying off the Haitian hate, by bringing in witchcraft.
Does accusation of witchcraft really work? They sound like morons screeching like it’s 1785.
Chris
@artem1s:
The obsessive-compulsive aspect of military life (until you get high enough that, like Sherman, you can just say “bite me”) would drive me crazy. During the couple semesters I tried out ROTC, it did drive me crazy. I do understand the logic behind it: “we need to make sure you have the discipline and attention to detail for petty shit like keeping your clothes and bed in a certain order, marching to a certain beat, and memorizing a weird series of gestures and exclamations and when to use them, because that’s how we make sure you have the discipline for actually important shit like how you handle your weapons and equipment and how you react to high stress situations.” But the fact remains that it would drive me crazy.
cain
@JaySinWA:
That should be her next intro song. I bet First Gentleman is a fan of the Eagles.
Ruckus
@Tony G:
It’s more than they enjoy it, it is that many of them feel fully obligated to do whatever it takes to return to a time when their hate was the accepted response/feeling.
It’s humanity, as the old saying goes, “It takes all kinds.” And that’s really wrong, it should be THERE ARE ALL KINDS. But people do not need to hate for hates sake, and yet many people do. Possibly a smaller percentage than in prior times but still, many people hate for hates sake. Racism, hate for hates sake, gender, and sometimes for power. There are other reasons but how many of them are reasonable? We have the emotion hate for a reason. Very often that reason is very unreasonable.
schrodingers_cat
@Frankensteinbeck: Internet tankies are beyond parody. They were both-sidesing the response to the AIDs epidemic. Most of them were born in this century.
Chris
@Matt McIrvin:
American anticommunism has always has an exceptionally loony aspect to it, because there were hardly ever any communists in America. Individuals who believe in it exist, but they’ve never been demographically significant enough to actually make any dent in politics. Even at the height of economic radicalism, generic populists like Huey Long were the ones who cleaned up, not commies. Which means American anticommunism has always had a very heavy aspect of “point at a random person and say the Bad Word” witch-hunting.
Eventually, people notice.
Favorite example of this is from years and years ago, when I was playing charades with a Republican friend, and when it was her turn to make me guess a word, she was all “oh – Obama! Pelosi! Hillary!” I’m like – liberal? Democrat? Politician? Liar? Evil? The word she’d drawn was “communism.” Didn’t even occur to her to say things like “Lenin,” “Mao,” “Castro,” much less “Marx” or “Engels.”
Chris
@cain:
Worked on Harry Potter and DND. At least for a little while.
Matt McIrvin
@Chris: It was more effective when the great Enemy, the USSR, was run by the Communist Party and professed to be spreading international Communism (and atheism!) to the world. The Russians aren’t even Communist any more–they’re more like fascists and running the old religious-conservatism okey-doke as well.
China, on the other hand, still professes to be Communist. It’s a weird kind of Communism that these days seems an awful lot like authoritarian market capitalism, all things considered. Just with more state-owned enterprises, I guess.
evodevo
@Comrade Scrutinizer: You’re not the only one…I mentioned some event I had read on Weatherunderground to my right wing military wife sister, and that was her first reaction LOL
Matt McIrvin
@Chris: It mobilized Christian fundamentalists against Harry Potter and D&D, but didn’t particularly succeed in suppressing them.
(Rowling outing herself as a virulent transphobe probably hurt the Harry Potter brand more, because of its target audience. I was wondering if conservatives would now embrace the books as “anti-woke” but I’m not sure that’s happening, though of course if they liked them in the first place they don’t care.)
Tony G
@Matt McIrvin: From my (probably incorrect) perspective, China has been an authoritarian capitalist country — not a communist country — since shortly after Mao died almost a half-century ago.
Tony G
@Ruckus: Yes, I agree. But my point is that after a while attempts to empathize with these assholes is counterproductive. Nazi Germany was defeated by massive deadly force, not with empathy.
Tony G
@cmorenc: Interesting points, that I hadn’t thought about. I had long been of the opinion that the South had lost the Civil War as soon as it started (and that Germany and Japan had lost World War Two at least two years before 1945) but you’re right. Nothing is inevitable.
TerryC
This brings to mind a thought that I have been having. We’ve had legal cannabis now in many places for years. Do we know how this has affected car accidents and other such things. I would expect to have had read about an outcry if bad things were resulting.
Tony G
@Tony G: An important point is that most of the battles of the Civil War were fought on the territory of the Confederacy. The Confederate forces didn’t have to invade and occupy the North. They just had to hold out until the Northern “invaders” withdrew from their “nation”.
Soprano2
@Kay: Just wanted to say that being able to legally purchase THC gummies is the only reason my husband weighs 130 lbs rather than 120 lbs, and now with the new med to treat his multiple myeloma that might get worse. I understand about needing to regulate it for potency. I don’t know how much they do that here in MO, but it is highly regulated in a lot of other ways, at least here. The feds need to do something about it, too many states have legalized it now. I agree about gambling though, I’ve read where pro athletes say that legal gambling on sports has made their lives a lot tougher.
Tony G
@Matt McIrvin: My opinion is that the right-wing in this country is basically opposed to the reading of ANYTHING. Videos directly manipulate emotions, which is what they want. Reading — even reading of propaganda — requires some degree of thought, which they certainly do NOT want.
Case in point (relevant or not) — as a teenager I decided to turn against religion after I went through a phase of actually reading and thinking about the Bible. Reading and thinking? Why, we can’t have that!
Matt McIrvin
@Tony G: They actually tell people to read the Bible, but the way they read the Bible is interesting–it’s as a collection of disconnected numbered verses that are interpreted through commentaries that sort of exegetically extract all sorts of meanings from stuff scattered throughout the entire collection of documents.
For instance, if you just listened to American evangelicals you’d think their End Times narrative with the Rapture and such is all in there. It’s not, really. There are a bunch of wild prophetic books that provided the source material for those stories, but it’s all freely remixed and reinterpreted as being about modern-day politics, in a very specific way
…I actually recommended that my daughter read the Bible, after she’d taken a class on Maya history that described things like the Popol Vuh. She said “the way you’re describing it, it’s more like an anthology of myths and laws from an ancient civilization.” Well, that’s exactly what it is.
Mr. Bemused Senior
Funny you should mention that. Alexandra Petri today
Msb
@JPL: Romney has more money than God. He can pay for security. Thousands of poll workers and election officials can’t, and they still do their jobs. Boo-hoo, Mittens.
Msb
@TBone: yep, see Alan Bennett’s The Lady in the Van. And if you rummage around on the Internet, you can find her playing Beatrice on b/w TV. she was old for a lot of my life. Shocking and delightful to see how beautiful she was in her youth.
Msb
@West of the Rockies: interestingly, I knew about it because Ty Seidule covers it in his book, Robert E Lee and Me. Excellent.
sab
@Kay: My step son is 5 years weed sober. He is almost forty and has been self-medicating for extreme anxiety since grade school, mostly with alchohol then with other drugs until he met heroin. That was unfortunate.
He has been contemplating suicide since kindergarten.
If the medical community had accepted the need to treat anxiety as a medical issue and not a character flaw he might have avoided twenty plus years of addiction.
He has a good therapist now (talk about unicorns) and medication which includes cannabis. He’s a normal happy person now. I wish he could have the first half of his life back with appropriate medical care.
sab
@sab: Kay: You ask for good medical research while knowing that medical research on cannabis has been banned or severely restricted for 100 years. Pull the other one
Sorry: “Pull the other one” was unneccessary snark. You in your practice see consequences of drug use. I in my life see the root causes and the consequences. But I always see the causes first however much the consequences have hurt my family.
Tony G
@Matt McIrvin: That’s right. But I was reading The Bible the Wrong Way — just reading the thing and then thinking about its various contradictions. But actually, at least during the time when I was a kid (sixties and early seventies), the tradition of the Catholic Church (the religion that I “grew up” in) was really not for “lay people” to read the Bible. The priest on Sunday would read out loud a few selected passages to the congregation, and that would be it until the following Sunday. The really crazy-ass stuff in the Old Testament was largely avoided in Sunday Mass. Reading it yourself and thinking about it was not explicitly forbidden, but it was certainly not encouraged!
Matt McIrvin
@Tony G: Yes, that’s one of the big differences between Catholicism and American Protestant evangelicalism–the latter are big into reading the Bible and say they’re all about “sola scriptura” unlike the Catholics, but actually they’ve got all these exegetic works that tell them what to think about it.
Tony G
@Tony G: In any event, The Bible (and, I imagine, any ancient religious text) is what it is — a largely random assortment of aphorisms, archaic laws, distorted histories and fairy tales that were thrown together by various writers over the course of hundreds of years, with a lot of it copy/pasted from other religious traditions of the Middle East and the Mediterranean, than questionably translated and re-translated many times. Trying to read it yourself — without the “guidance” of religious authorities — reveals it to be the illogical mess that it is. That’s why the religious authorities don’t want people to read it themselves.
StringOnAStick
@narya: That’s what edibles are for, you buy the strength you want and you know the dosage. I don’t smoke anymore because the strength varies too much but edibles are great and you can select types for sleep, for energizing fun, even for a rousing roll in the hay! The strong smoking strains of even stronger resins or shatter are for people with significant tolerance levels.
Tony G
@Matt McIrvin: Yes, that sounds about right. It’s probably not a coincidence that the dozens of Protestant denominations got their start after the invention of the printing press.
evodevo
@cain: See: Palin, Sarah…
Tony G
@Tony G: Being an Italian-American who has lived in northern New Jersey for most of my life, I’m pretty familiar with Catholic “culture” and pretty unfamiliar with Evangelical “culture”. (I’ve actually only met a handful of Evangelicals in my life — and I’ve avoided like the plague any discussion of religion with them.). Like most ex-Catholics, I have a pretty low opinion of the Holy Mother Church — but it’s the devil that I know, so to speak. Almost all American Catholics are “Cafeteria Catholics” — the biggest hypocrites in the world — which I think is great. The bureaucratic nature of the Catholic Church effectively encourages people to game the system — basically to see what they can get away with without getting caught. Sort of like high school. The practice of Confession — wiping way your sins with three easy prayers! — is part of that. I feel like it’s more tolerant of human weakness than the Evangelical alternative — not that I’ve wanted any part of it for the past fifty years!
TBone
@Msb: thank you! I will look for those. Always like to learn and see something new to me.
Citizen Alan
@Frankensteinbeck: i completely disregard anyone who unironically refers to themselves as a communist. It is the political equivalent of a toddler wiping his own feces on a wall and screaming “look what I did!”
Kosh III
The storm is not over.
Earlier today a dam in Western NC failed. The Tennessee town of Newport has been evacuated. The Pigeon River is waaaay over “flood stage” and still growing.
https://www.knoxnews.com/story/weather/2024/09/27/cocke-county-newport-tennessee-flooding-forces-rescues-french-broad-pigeon-rivers/75414025007/
columbusqueen
@cmorenc: it was the 20th Maine that defended Little Round Top under Joshua Chamberlain.
Geminid
@columbusqueen: The 20th Maine held the northern end of Little Round Top on the second day of the Gettysburg battle. They were part of a brigade that was rushed into the fight and the other regiments had to fight just as hard to defend the position. It was a collective effort.
Chris
@Tony G:
The city I was born in – Geneva, Switzerland – once fancied itself the Protestant Rome, and contains a Museum of the Reformation that I visited years ago.
Being raised Catholic, it was with no small amusement that I read a quote from Calvin saying that the masses had only the vaguest idea what they were reading, and that they needed pastors to take the Bible and “chew it up” for them into “digestible pieces.”
Tony G
@Chris: Calvinism. What a miserable, hateful dogma that is. I could never understand why anyone would want to be a part of that, but that’s missing the point I guess. A person is born into a religious tradition and usually just goes through the motions unless they reject it altogether. The only smart thing that I’ve done is rejecting all of it when I was a teenager.
Ruckus
@narya:
I believe this is true as well. I worked for a few years at a city mental health center as a therapist and while the number of different personality types of humans is not an insignificant number it really isn’t all that big a number either. And the types often overlap a bit. IOW it’s not a solid, wall between groups, as many have some characteristics from the group nearest the one we mostly fit into.