… And have been a much happier seal!
This seal could have gone his whole life not knowing lizards exist pic.twitter.com/I84ZxHxTLX
— Nature is Amazing ☘️ (@AMAZlNGNATURE) September 7, 2024
That seal is my new spirit animal. Why did I need to know about gnarly lizards?
On it!…
Multiple agencies are working to finalize environmental rules and policies before President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration. https://t.co/uiyzxv0KRp
— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) November 9, 2024
Per the Washington Post, “Biden races to Trump-proof his climate legacy” [gift link]:
On the morning after Election Day, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Michael Regan convened several of his top officials for a somber meeting.
Most officials had woken up Wednesday to the news that Donald Trump, who once vowed to eliminate the EPA in “almost every form,” would return to the White House in January. Regan sought to reassure employees that their achievements under President Joe Biden would “stand the test of time,” and he encouraged staffers to “run through the tape” and continue making progress during the 76-day lame-duck period between Election Day and Inauguration Day, EPA spokesman Nick Conger said.
In just the past two days, the administration has finalized plans to limit oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and to save an imperiled bird — the greater sage grouse — by restricting drilling, mining and livestock grazing across nearly 65 million acres of its habitat in 10 Western states. Officials have met behind closed doors to wrap up work on a study justifying the administration’s pause on approvals of new liquefied natural gas exports — a pause that Trump has promised to end on his “very first day back.” And they are hustling to issue at least a half-dozen other significant policies, affecting toxic chemicals as well as California’s push to phase out gas-powered cars and trucks by 2035.
Across the federal government, Trump’s election has set off a scramble among political appointees and career bureaucrats alike to lock in Biden’s landmark environmental initiatives. Some staffers say they learned a lesson in 2017, when Trump swiftly dismantled some of President Barack Obama’s signature environmental achievements…
Perhaps no agency embodies the Biden administration’s lame-duck environmental strategy better than the EPA, which has emerged as an epicenter of the president’s ambitious climate agenda. Environmentalists said they expect the agency to take several major actions in the coming weeks touching everything from electric vehicles to toxic chemicals.
At the top of the list: Trump-proofing California’s transition to EVs. Under the Clean Air Act, California can receive a waiver from the EPA to set tougher vehicle emissions rules than those of the federal government. More than a dozen other states follow California’s stricter rules, collectively accounting for about 40 percent of the U.S. auto market.
Before Trump takes office, the EPA plans to grant California a waiver to enforce its rule aimed at banning sales of new gasoline-powered cars in the state by 2035, according to a person familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the plans are not yet public…
Environmentalists said they also expect the agency to finalize three rules restricting the release of toxic chemicals. One rule will ban most uses of perchloroethylene, a solvent widely used in dry cleaning that can damage the central nervous system. Another will limit the use of trichloroethylene, a chemical linked to kidney cancer that is used to make refrigerants and some household cleaning products…
With the exception of a plan to accelerate solar energy development on public lands, Interior has largely accomplished what it set out to achieve in Biden’s first term, said Aaron Weiss, deputy director of the Center for Western Priorities, a conservation group.
“From what we can tell, they’ve done a very good job lining this stuff up, so there’s not a whole lot at risk of getting punted into the next administration,” he said. “I think everyone learned that lesson in 2016.”
Baud
Lizard has seen some seals before, it seems.
PIGL
@Baud: lizards are phlegmatic creatures. It’s just being cool, not letting on.
prostratedragon
Aha. Reposting from the end of Betty Cracker’s post.
Passion is not always enough.
The demonstrations of the heyday of the Civil Rights Movement were organized by CORE,SCLC, SNCC, et al. with training for the sitters-in and freedom riders, and designated marshals where the demonstrations were larger and had more open participation. As a result there were few cases of infiltration by agitators, and police agression against the demonstrators was hard or impossible to characterize as anything other than what it was.
The Center for Nonviolence has a toolkit site that looks useful in this regard. Some key entries:
“Nonviolent Demonstration Safety & Training”
“Responding to Violence From Within Our Ranks”
Mr. Person is associated with the Freedom Riders Training Institute which should be opening next year in Anniston, at Jacksonville State.
schrodingers_cat
Balloon Juice and the liberal blog/social media sphere has to decide whether to continue being a sounding board for mostly white bloggers and commenters talking at their diverse coalition or be more representative and introspective.
NotMax
Music for the times?
Vaughan Williams, Satan’s Dance of Triumph.
;)
Quinerly
Alt National Park Service is back in action. If not familiar here’s some info. They were formed in 2017:
“People often ask, ‘What exactly are we resisting?’ So, we decided to keep a detailed list. From 2017 to 2021, the Trump administration reversed over 100 environmental regulations, affecting climate policy, air, water, wildlife, and chemical safety. Additionally, more than a dozen other rollbacks were in progress but not finalized by the end of the term, prompting questions about the potential impact of another four years. You might wonder what another four years could look like. Here’s a summary of Trumps last four years in office:
– Weakened fuel economy and greenhouse gas standards.
– Revoked California’s stricter emissions standards.
– Withdrawn legal basis for limiting mercury from coal plants.
– Exited the Paris climate agreement.
– Altered Clean Air Act cost-benefit analysis methods.
– Canceled methane emissions reporting for oil and gas companies.
– Revised rules on methane emissions from drilling on public lands.
– Eliminated methane standards for oil and gas facilities.
– Withdrew rule limiting toxic emissions from industrial polluters.
– Eased pollution safeguards for new power plants.
– Changed refinery pollution monitoring rules.
– Reversed emissions reduction during power plant malfunctions.
– Weakened air pollution rules for national parks and wilderness areas.
– Loosened state air pollution plan oversight.
– Established minimum threshold for regulating greenhouse gases.
– Relaxed pollution regulations for waste coal plants.
– Repealed hydrofluorocarbon leak and venting rules.
– Ended use of social cost of carbon in rulemaking.
– Allowed increased ozone pollution from upwind states.
– Stopped including greenhouse gas emissions in environmental reviews.
– Revoked federal greenhouse gas reduction goal.
– Repealed tailpipe emissions tracking on federal highways.
– Lifted ban on higher ethanol gasoline blends in summer.
– Extended deadlines for methane emissions plans for landfills.
– Withdrew rule reducing pollutants at sewage plants.
– Dropped tighter pollution standards for offshore oil and gas.
– Amended emissions standards for ceramics manufacturers.
– Relaxed leak monitoring at oil and gas facilities.
– Cut two national monuments in Utah.
– Ended freeze on new coal leases on public lands.
– Permitted oil and gas development in Arctic Refuge.
– Opened land for drilling in National Petroleum Reserve, Alaska.
– Lifted ban on logging in Tongass National Forest.
– Approved Dakota Access pipeline near Sioux reservation.
– Rescinded water pollution rules for fracking.
– Withdrawn rig decommissioning cost proof requirement.
– Moved cross-border project permits to presidential office.
– Altered FERC’s greenhouse gas considerations in pipelines.
– Revised ocean and coastal water policy.
– Loosened offshore drilling safety regulations post-Deepwater Horizon.
– Weakened National Environmental Policy Act.
– Revoked flood standards for federal projects.
– Eased federal infrastructure project environmental reviews.
– Ended financing for overseas coal plants.
– Revoked directive to minimize natural resource impacts.
– Revoked climate resilience order for Bering Sea.
– Reversed public land-use planning update.
– Withdrawn climate change consideration in national park management.
– Limited environmental study length and page count.
– Dropped Obama-era climate change and conservation policies.
– Eliminated planning system to minimize oil and gas harm on sensitive lands.
– Withdrawn policies for improving resources affected by federal projects.
– Revised Forest Service project review process.
– Ended natural gas project environmental impact reviews.
– Rolled back migratory bird protections.
– Reduced habitat for northern spotted owl.
– Altered Endangered Species Act application.
– Weakened habitat protections under the Endangered Species Act.
– Ended automatic protections for threatened species.
– Reduced environmental protections for California salmon and smelt.
– Removed gray wolf from endangered list.
– Overturned bans on lead ammo and fishing tackle on federal lands.
– Reversed ban on predator hunting in Alaskan refuges.
– Reversed rule against baiting grizzly bears for hunting.
– Amended fishing regulations.
– Removed commercial fishing restrictions in marine preserve.
– Proposed changes to endangered marine mammal injury limits.
– Loosened fishing restrictions for Atlantic Bluefin Tuna.
– Overturned migratory bird handicrafts ban.
– Reduced Clean Water Act protections for tributaries and wetlands.
– Revoked stream debris dumping rule for coal companies.
– Weakened toxic discharge limits for power plants.
– Extended lead pipe removal time in water systems.
– Eased Clean Water Act for federal project permits over state objections.
– Allowed unlined coal ash ponds to continue operating.
– Withdrawn groundwater protections for uranium mines.
– Rejected chlorpyrifos pesticide ban.
– Declined financial responsibility rules for spills and accidents.
– Opted against requiring mining industry pollution cleanup proof.
– Narrowed toxic chemical safety assessment scope.
– Reversed braking system upgrades for hazardous material trains.
– Allowed liquefied natural gas rail transport.
– Rolled back hazardous chemical site safety rules.
– Narrowed pesticide application buffer zones.
– Removed copper filter cake from hazardous waste list.
– Limited use of scientific studies in public health regulations.
– Reduced corporate settlement funding for environmental projects.
– Repealed light bulb energy-efficiency regulation.
– Weakened dishwasher efficiency standards.
– Loosened efficiency standards for showerheads and appliances.
– Altered energy efficiency standard-setting process.
– Blocked efficiency standards for furnaces and water heaters.
– Simplified appliance efficiency test exemption process.
– Limited environmentally focused investments in 401(k) plans.
– Changed policy on using sand from protected ecosystems.
– Halted contributions to the Green Climate Fund.
– Reversed national park plastic bottle sale restrictions.”
Quinerly
Website
https://ourparks.org/altnps
The website has been under assault by bots. I think they are getting it under control.
karen marie
I really hate this “resisting.” McConnell was right when he complained about the inimitable Sen Warren that “she persisted.”
We are not weakly resisting an unstoppable force, we are strong and persistant. We are the unstoppable force.
Biden is not resisting, he is persisting.
Stop being a bunch of helpless losers “resisting” your vanquishers. Assert yourself and persist in doing what needs to be done.
Math Guy
I wonder how the seal would have responded to a marine iguana dropped into the tank.
When I feel overwhelmed by all the awful shit going on, I tend to retreat to a single issue and then try to deal with the world from that perspective . For me, that is climate change: if we don’t have a habitable planet, then it’s going to be difficult to convince people that the electoral college needs to be eliminated. On the other hand, I can connect my opposition to cryptocurrencies to the fact that crypto-mining is generating tremendous amounts of waste heat. (Crypto = increase in entropy.) Expansion of renewable energy and all of the jobs associated with it is based on environmental concerns. Environmental justice becomes my entry point to social justice.
And so it goes.
karen marie
@Quinerly: And maybe I am just irritable because I am sick and tired of this “resisting” bullshit – persist, please, motherfuckers – but really long cut and pastes in comments are annoying. A synopsis with a link for people who want to read a ten page list would be more considerate.
artem1s
The white privileged children who thought it was fun to vandalize building and set things on fire weren’t trained. They refused to listen and follow the example of those who were non-violent. They didn’t want to be trained. They wanted to grab the microphone out of the hands of those whose lives were most at stake. They wouldn’t listen to John Lewis or any of the other ‘OLDs’ even if they were still around.
Same goes for the Gaza astroturfers who were on our campus last week vandalizing buildings and spraying anti-Semitic graffiti all over the place.
prostratedragon
@NotMax:
Now you’ve done it!
Vaughn Williams keeps rising in my estimation, having started out pretty high. Maybe something for Vets Day later.
Soprano2
I’ve been thinking, was there ever a time that the working class thought the government cared about them and addressed their concerns? It would be an interesting research project, because I suspect the answer is “no”.
New Deal democrat
OK looks like this thread will shortly devolve into a shitstorm.
Here’s a little something constructive:
Dana Houle has now migrated to Bluesky:
https://bsky.app/profile/danahoule.bsky.social
So has legal eagle Renato Mariotti:
https://bsky.app/profile/renatomariotti.bsky.social
I forget which commentator (I think a historian) wrote this over the weekend, but this gist of their analysis was that this election was one of the most consequential in all of American history, and ranks with the 1876 election which finally ended Reconstruction, began the erection of Jim Crow, and took an entire lifetime to recover from.
Officially today is Veterans Day. This year I am treating it instead as a somber Remembrance Day.
See you all later in some other thread.
Quinerly
From AltNational Parks Service:
“Update: Websites have been archived as a safeguard against potential information removal. Why was this necessary? In 2017, just hours after Trump took office, all mentions of climate change vanished from WhiteHouse .gov, replaced with a page outlining Trump’s ‘America First Energy Plan,’ which prioritized oil, gas, and coal, with no reference to climate change or renewable energy. Shortly afterward, reports indicated that the EPA had been directed to remove its climate change section. A spokesperson for the Trump administration, stated they were ‘sprucing it up a bit, putting a little freshener on it, and getting it back up to the public.’ However, the EPA page that once provided answers to frequently asked questions about climate change had disappeared.”
And
“In 2017, the Trump Admin. cut 1/3 of the resources to protect the environment almost overnight. They also implemented a ban on what could be said about the environment……….”
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c51ywwrq45qo
Aziz, light!
I retired from the Forest Service research branch, but many of my colleagues still at the Pacific Northwest Research Station expect to lose their jobs. Every federal science organization that works on climate change assessment and mitigation, as we routinely did, will be targeted. We endured budget cuts and meddling during the T1 maladministration, but T2 will be out for blood this time.
WereBear
Two things on my mind.
Imagination is an incredibly powerful tool, but apparently there IS a dark side, as when we just use it to pretend in real life.
Defence mechanisms are like opiates. Life enhancing when carefully used in controlled ways.
But people act like it’s a Swiss Army knife they can always carry.
Quinerly
@karen marie: sorry that you feel I was inconsiderate to you. Granted, it’s a long list. Feel free to skip over, don’t read, dismiss, ignore, and/or pie. I was providing info. I actually had forgotten all that Trump did and tried to do to the environment. Really hard to break down in a “hot take.”
RaflW
The Senate should be confirming judges as fast as possible. But I’ve only seen news about two possible confirmations so far.
I know Biden, Schumer and Dems (except when sabotaged by Sine-Manch) have done a lot. But there are I think 28 open slots, and this is an all hands on deck emergency.
Quinerly
@New Deal democrat: 👍
NotMax
@prostratedragon
Astor wasn’t no disaster. ;)
Unusual combo serves up Piazzolla.
bluefoot
@artem1s: here’s a co-sign on that: A friend of mine leads an anti-racism initiative at her suburban church. She says it’s mostly been about white people’s feelings and them trying to work on their own stuff through the meetings rather than actually doing the work the initiative was created for. Which was to work with social justice groups, partner with minority churches to support people and services, etc. My friend has been incredibly frustrated. She notes that both she and the other POC are routinely not listened to. That is, people “listen” but then completely ignore what they’re saying.
Aziz, light!
@Quinerly: I appreciate your conveying the depth of all the attacks on environmental policy. Others who don’t, scrolling past is easy.
Bupalos
@schrodingers_cat: What do you as the impacts and outcomes if these online spaces make one or the other decision?
It doesn’t seem to me that increased inclusion and identity-focused introspection in the polarized online space would have any potential positive effect outside the culture of these blogs. Which isn’t to say not worth working at. Just these days I think we’re more in the mode of “how do we defend freedom from complete devastation” rather than “how do we plump up our online nests”
bluefoot
Less seriously: That seal seems to be all “what the hell is that thing?!?” Like the lizard doesn’t fit into its worldview at all.
karen marie
@Quinerly: “Just scroll past this unending list.”
Get a blog.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Quinerly:
Good for them. They were a bright light during the First Dark Times, now they’re back for the Second.
I also have wondered about how the next (mal)administration would handle all the programs in the pipeline, particularly given my last years at DOT.
While Chao was a hack, she wasn’t mendacious, vandalizing hack like DeJoy, DeVos and others. Nonetheless, I know plenty of cities have started projects with Biden monies and while some were fully funded, others would depend on a steady stream of monies that could be rescinded by Hair Furor’s appointees in combination with a (R)-controlled House.
I’m soooooo glad I finally retired when I did. I would *not* want to be in any of the offices I support come Jan 21. Not that my offices were any hotbed of liberalism, far from it (outside of the one here in CO), but they valued what the did and how well they did “program delivery”.
RaflW
@Aziz, light!: It’s a horrendous prospect.
And while I don’t expect every laid off Forest Service (or any agency) worker to stick their neck out in the dark days ahead, one of the things we will need in droves is people with expertise using non-MSM means (and them, too, if they’re functional and not just running the ‘puke funnel’ of propaganda).to explain & communicate.
If a forest fire destroys 150 homes when T is president (or V), blame the guy. When a food borne illness sweeps thru Chick FilA, blame T and the Republicans.
Make them own everything, every single bad thing that happens. The next several years need to be the ultimate “You wanted this? It’s fucking yours.”
There will be a ton of people who know how government works who can clearly and calmly point out what Mike Johnson, John Cornyn (? said to be vying for Sen Maj Ldr) and of course Trump have wrecked.
Bupalos
@Aziz, light!: agree, I appreciated the list very much.
TBone
Dedicated to all of our brave and courageous souls who spit in the eye of fear 🎶🐾
https://youtu.be/JY__agG_eXc
satby
@Soprano2: Yes. Thanks to FDR and the New Deal, working class (whites) felt like someone was working on their behalf. He got elected to three terms remember, yes, as a war time president but also because people trusted him. In 8th grade, I had a science teacher who still had FDR’s picture hanging in the classroom, 25 or so years after his death, and as my teacher introduced the class to the room and his expectations for the year, he tapped the picture with his yardstick (it was high up on the wall) and announced “FDR was the greatest President this country ever had”.
Of course, that teacher never lived long enough to see Biden. Who has been the greatest President of my lifetime.
gene108
@Quinerly:
This is what any Republican president would do regarding environmental protection.
Trump-ism has become what Republican politicians aspire to try and emulate, probably without getting a felony conviction.
schrodingers_cat
Many liberal white (and white adjacent) people have decided either to join the Trumpers or lay down arms. Resistance, persistence are just semantics. Votes of the white and the white adjacent say otherwise.
satby
@bluefoot: No surprise, it happens here too.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@bluefoot:
@artem1s:
I’ll co-co-sign on that. UncleEbeneezer had this to say back during the effort by Tonya Harding Dems to oust Biden and it remains pertinent in a general sense:
I see it frequently here when local black activists work with and/or push back against white transplants who demonstrate the most incredible racial tone deafness even when working toward common goals. Long-time white residents in such areas “get” exactly what’s said the above quote.
schrodingers_cat
@satby: FDR also interned Japanese Americans and many working people were excluded from SS benefits. That’s why the WWC liked him is my guess
They like socialism but only for themselves. The moment those they deem inferior get the benefits they are against the said programs.
prostratedragon
Tartini and the Devil
TBone
@NotMax: not today, Satin!
😆
bluefoot
@schrodingers_cat: I’ve been thinking about this. As we – POC, LGBTQ+ people immigrants, non-Christians, etc – are squeezed out of public life or are forced to retreat from it for our own safety, where can we be heard? How can we be heard? How do we counter the prevailing white supremacy and Christian nationalism if there isn’t room for us in public and semi-public spaces?
Considering my lived experience as a WOC, I’m not hopeful about surviving the upcoming administration. For instance, I’ve been held at gunpoint by a cop in broad daylight in a sapphire-blue area for walking while brown….and that was during the Obama years.
Omnes Omnibus
@karen marie: I get that long posts can be a huge pain if you are on a phone, but might you have been able to remind people of that with a bit more kindness? BTW, resistance is a word with a long history wrt political opposition to tyranny. People us it for a reason.
Phylllis
Sitting here thinking about the fact that Nixon signed the EPA into law and smh.
Also, greatly appreciating the pie filter these days.
schrodingers_cat
@bluefoot: We have to create these spaces, support each other first.
Omnes Omnibus
@RaflW: Blame them for everything. Gas prices, traffic jams, paper cuts… Everything.
TBone
@Omnes Omnibus: I know that last sentence is a typo and I like the “us it” anyway.
bluefoot
@schrodingers_cat: There’s this willful amnesia about how bad it can get. Not only were Japanese-Americans interned in prison camps, their money, property and businesses were taken away. Like civil forfeiture just for being of Japanese ancestry.
Even into the late 90s, one could get evicted in San Francisco if one was HIV positive.
just last year I was looking to move here close to Boston and the comments I got from realtors, and apartments that suddenly became unavailable once they saw me or I spelled my last name over the phone….
gene108
@schrodingers_cat:
Unfortunately, catering to white people is a winning electoral strategy, to the exclusion of other groups, in this country.
The issue is why most white people are so overwhelmingly conservative.
jonas
@Soprano2: For years we’ve been hearing that the government doesn’t “care” or “doesn’t listen to” or in various ways somehow neglects the (esp. white) working class in Rust Belt states, Appalachia or wherever. What I’ve never been clear on is, exactly, what they *do* want government to do? I’m not sure, but from what I can tell based on interviews with guys in diners, it’s “protect us from the vagaries of global capitalism and cultural change.” So some form of Soviet communism, but with more evangelical Christianity and guns, or something? Maybe the dream ticket is actually Trump and Bernie Sanders.
Old Man Shadow
@RaflW: Schumer doesn’t strike me as the sort of guy who is up to the fight if it means abandoning tradition.
Suzanne
I came across this this morning, and found it pretty pertinent and illuminating.
The Worst Housing Affordability Ever?
About a year old, but the trends described are similar.
prostratedragon
“Le diable matou [Devil Cat]”
Omnes Omnibus
@jonas:
You know how rikyrah always talks about “white socialism?” So, yeah.
NotMax
@Omnes Omnibus
Not to mention the price of crudités.
//
Ohio Mom
@schrodingers_cat: WWC, can’t figure out what that stands for.
The older I get, the more I learn about FDR’s flaws. He was far from perfect. But he saved this country from itself. You just have to look at who hated him (the 1% of the 1%) to know he deserves our admiration.
Omnes Omnibus
@Old Man Shadow: People can surprise you.
jonas
@gene108: Yep. The second LBJ extended the benefits of FDR’s antipoverty programs to Black people (after first allowing them to vote), that’s when everything started to blow up politically.
TBone
Aesop excerpt:
gene108
@RaflW:
@Omnes Omnibus:
The problem is Republicans built a massive media operation, which will easily drown out anything we can complain about online.
They’ve adapted it to social media and podcasts.
We need to throw some money down to compete online and pay Facebook, Google, etc. to make their algorithms more favorable to us.
UncleEbeneezer
@New Deal democrat: I think today is the day I will finally move over to BlueSky. Twitter was already full of bots and Nazis and today it looks like the problem is only getting worse. I’ll keep my Twitter account for a little while since I need it to make a list of all the good accounts I need to look up and follow on B-sky. But I’m effectively done with that hell-space.
schrodingers_cat
@gene108: But we can’t discuss that openly here. We get defensive comments
#notallwhitewomen
and diverting attention to economic problems. There is a reluctance on the part of many white liberals to come to terms with the bigotry in the own social groups.
Yes its not unique to white people. I see the same reluctance in upper caste liberal Indian spaces too when the discussion turns to caste prejudice
Privileged groups don’t want to acknowledge privilege then they can’t pretend that their achievements are all based on their own merits
Betty Cracker
In my desperation to find distractions, I’ve started watching “Yellowstone.” Jesus Christ.
Kayce — who I guess is supposed to be the good guy we are rooting for? — can’t go to the corner store without performing a mercy killing after a meth trailer blows up or shooting human traffickers in self defense.
The psychotic sister is amusing but disturbing. I have to use subtitles because the cowboys are so goddamn mumbly. On the other hand, pretty scenery and horsies!
ETA: Also, maybe Jimmy would have been better off as a druggie.
Suzanne
@jonas: I actually think you hit the nail on the head.
Undo globalization, return to a male-head-of-household model of the family, etc.
When I steelman the arguments, I can understand the discontent: it takes a lot more hours of work, more self-funded education and training, and a lot of luck to have the kind of lifestyle lots of white families used to have. I do think that a huge percentage of people are financially precarious, and that’s really not grounds for any sort of positive social development.
Where my sympathy utterly crashes into a wall, though, is with the racism, sexism, transphobia, etc. underlying their preferred “solution”.
jowriter
@RaflW: Agreed. Afford these collaborators no quarter.
Starfish
@Bupalos: She is not engaging in thoughtful discussions about race.
She is engaging in “You are racist because you don’t agree with me” behavior which is very different.
It is more akin to how evangelicals feel oppressed because you don’t like their forced-birth agenda.
Another Scott
@Math Guy: They probably just wanted their own soft, flexible scratching post, is my guess.
Could be wrong!
Thanks.
Hang in there, everyone.
Best wishes,
Scott.
schrodingers_cat
@Ohio Mom: I admire FDR especially for his economic policies and reining in Wall Street.
But many leftier-than-thous gloss over his actual record to create a caricature.
Ohio Mom
@Ohio Mom: Well, on further thought, maybe my comment just proves S’sCat point.
But let’s not forget that many of Roosevelt’s errors were corrected later. We couldn’t have expanded Social Security to include Black domestic workers if there was no SS to begin with.
satby
@schrodingers_cat: yes, he did. And it was almost 100 years ago. We can remember both, and do; but I was answering a fairly specific question. And as we’ve recently seen, racial attitudes aren’t that much more enlightened these days. It’s a multi-generational battle and it so far has taken centuries and will take more; because people are tribal and even people who look just like each other commit genocide on the regular.
Chris Johnson
@prostratedragon: Yo, infiltration by agitators is incredibly important to be aware of. I’m happy to see those words because it’s so important to remember.
The regime ABSOLUTELY needs examples, scapegoats, not just of passive victims but they need fiery hotheads to use as examples. If they can’t have real ones they’ll have to make ’em up with AI, and that can go wrong and lead to mockery, and mockery of them faking shit is an effective counterweapon in the way that ‘resistance’ isn’t.
I’m not saying don’t resist, I’m saying I personally won’t even use that language because the pressure to blow something up into ‘the enemy within, just like we promised!’ is SO HUGE. They so desperately need to back up their claims, that they will do anything. Anybody who is able to unironically, earnestly, step back and be good and live your best life with your unchanged values, while they flail and step on their dicks and do stupid things… you should step back and be good.
Literal millions of people think maybe you’re a crazy radical worth all this fuss, and maybe you’re just the harmless neighbor. They’ll easily believe there’s pictures of the real crazy radicals heroically being destroyed by the Trump faithful, but not if the pictures have fuckin’ extra arms and shit, twelve fingers. Nobody likes being taken for a fool.
Don’t let right wing agitators infiltrate you and then run towards the cameras screaming like a lefty Nick Fuentes. They DO this. They sneak in and try to prod dispirited leftists, despairing trans people, into ‘heroic last stands’ for the cameras and the benefit of the regime. It’s a trap. Don’t. Just like you didn’t see someone getting an abortion, and you didn’t see any immigrants around here.
Things are peaceful in these parts. Unless THEY fuck ’em up.
NotMax
@Betty Cracker
Tried Joe Pickett on Prime (formerly Paramount+ exclusive).
Won’t be everyone’s cuppa yet there’s a lot to draw one in.
Suzanne
@jonas: The formulation that I have seen going around is “socially conservative, economically liberal” to describe the current mood of Americans….. and I just find it so fucking depressing.
Why do people care so fucking much about others’ personal lives? It’s just so goddamn panty-sniff-y.
rikyrah
Good Morning Everyone 😊 😊 😊
Baud
These “the working class is angry” hot takes never seem to explain why the working class never votes overwhelmingly for Dems in response to Republican failures to improve their condition.
Barbara
@karen marie: Resist or persist, it depends on the matter at hand. But I do think more reflection is warranted than I am seeing so far.
I am getting inundated (Robert Reich, Chris Murphy to name two) from people telling me that “the problem” is money in politics (yes, agreed), and the perception that political process is stacked against the little guy (mostly don’t totally agree). And so a disproportionate share of workers, mostly but not all white, vented their resentment by voting in favor of the political party that has enshrined money as speech and done its level best to exacerbate income inequality and stack that process higher and higher against them.
Insofar as I can tell they are just going to keep ping ponging back and forth until someone finds a way to talk to them. I actually think that was Joe Biden’s gift, with a whole career of actions large and small to back it up.
I think I will go back and reread Camus’ the Myth of Sisyphus.
ETA: Note the progressive measures that actually won — abortion rights in multiple states including Missouri and minimum wage hikes. Note the states in which Democrats won locally and statewide, such as North Carolina. The problem with both doomerism and boosterism is that it looks for the “one neat trick” that solves everything without focusing on the particulars that will make things better in many places but not all.
Baud
@rikyrah: Good morning.
Barbara
@Baud: But they do — the media just defines out of the working class those people who don’t fit their central casting view of the working class circa 1973.
Baud
@Suzanne:
I’ll believe the “economically liberal” part when the get mad at Trump and Republicans for tax breaks for the rich and deregulation.
schrodingers_cat
@satby: We can always find points of difference as human beings for bigotry. I used your comment as a jumping off point no criticism was intended.
Mr. Mack
@Betty Cracker: Very few good guys in that series. It is ok as escape fare but it is, at its core, an extended Dodge truck/Orvis clothing commercial.
Baud
@Barbara: Yeah, I know. I think the actual working class is split about 50/50, but I don’t know that I’ve seen recent stats.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: White is silent in the working class discussion in the media. Don’t Ds usually win the votes of those making under $50,000
satby
@UncleEbeneezer: repeated from John’s thread, and I’m fine with disagreement. My calculus hasn’t changed:
gene108
@Old Man Shadow:
Neither does Biden.
I hope younger Democrats realize this is a fight to win and nothing much matters besides beating Republicans and maximizing any advantage we have when in control.
@Ohio Mom:
I think a lot of liberals, in trying to be open minded, get too focused on the negatives of past leaders, because so much of what people were taught made past leaders to be flawless and perfect.
In doing this we expect a new sort of perfection from our leaders that becomes judgmental of what we perceive as missteps that most people (“normies”) don’t notice.
Makes a hard dynamic for building a national political identity.
Ohio Mom
@schrodingers_cat: I would not assume that knowledge of Roosevelt’s wrongdoing — other than the interment camps — is particularly widespread.
For example, I don’t think the way Social Security was structured to exclude Black workers, or Roosevelt’s reluctance to take action that would have save more Holocaust-era Jews are widely known.
Most people’s framework is, Roosevelt saved us from the Depression, won Workd War II, and is the reason presidents can only serve two terms. That may be more detailed than their knowledge of other aspects of our country’s history.
satby
@schrodingers_cat: none was taken. But the long arc of history, even if it bends toward justice, takes fucking forever.
Right now, different tribes of Somalis are slaughtering each other, as are Abraham’s children in the Mideast and Slavs in Europe, and they all look exactly alike. Sometimes we should be pleased with how far we’ve come even as we lament how very far we have to go. Edit: and fear how far we may fall back.
gene108
@schrodingers_cat:
Traditionally this is true, but looking a bit closer, non-college educated white people making under $50k are overwhelmingly Republican.
kindness
@gene108: Yes, but…. remember Air America? I do.
Suzanne
@Baud:
But, like, the working class was a pretty reliable Dem cohort until fairly recently. Maybe not overwhelmingly so, but significantly so.
But as for why that support isn’t overwhelming…. that is where I suspect sexism and racism re-enter the chat.
Gloria DryGarden
@Quinerly: send that man a case of gmo ketchup from non organic tomatoes, made w water from flint Michigan. Send him buns made from gmo wheat sprayed w lots of roundup, and serve him hamburger w gmo non organic soy tvp. Like the rest of us get at our .McDonald’s
when this boy arrives at life review study hall, after he exits his body and passes away, the karma department is gonna sit down with him for a big big meeting.
Those national monuments in Utah are beloved treasures, full of archaeology, and beauty, tremendous beauty.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
My normie wife asked me yesterday “What’s the opposite of a Cletus safari?” Or some new variation of one. She asked because those good folks at Totebagger Radio went out to find male Latino voters who voted for Felonious D (55% of them did by last exit polling data).
One was very succinct about why: Illegal immigrants are here to take away my job. Basically, the kind of work he did (she didn’t catch that) was easily given to illegal immigrants because, and we all know the answer to this, they could be paid less.
From this guy’s perspective, he was legal, on the books, etc., and thus potential employers would have to pay him legally, meaning pay him more, than off-the-books illegals.
Trump was gonna fix that.
He’s in for a rude awakening.
Suzanne
@gene108: I heard on some podcast I was listening to this weekend that Dems won the group of voters making under $30K this time, but lost the next two income brackets.
Mr. Mack
Does anyone here subscribe to “The Week”? It’s expensive but I’ve been picking up older issues at my local thrift store, and I like what they do. Mysteriously, one showed up in my physical mailbox with my name as a free issue and an invite to subscribe at a lower cost. All very curious.
satby
@Suzanne: Recently was the 1972 election of Nixon, so actually 52 years ago. And that was the backlash against civil rights AND college kids “brainwashed” against God and country into opposing the Viet Nam war. Reinforced 8 years later when Reagan won.
Quiltingfool
@Betty Cracker: In my neck of the woods, if your gravel driveway is long enough, you can give it a street name. “Train Station” is the name our neighbors gave to their long gravel driveway. (If you watch Yellowstone, you know what “train station” means.)
I don’t think I need to tell you which political party they embrace. The husband is a former special ops guy. You wouldn’t know that to look at him, though. Small guy, but he probably knows how to kill people with a spoon.
Soprano2
@satby: I hadn’t thought about that. It’s awful to think it takes an economic crash of that magnitude to get that result. I think it would be a lot harder today, because in the ’30’s they were able to exclude non-white people.
prostratedragon
“Le diable et la beauté”
TBone
Anthem for the thread 🎶
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=VOS7OiLE11c
satby
@Soprano2: We may find out. Our new money billionaires are just as high on their own supply as the gilded age rich were. We keep seeing that they’ll keep the convict from blowing things up too badly, but I don’t count on that at all.
Gloria DryGarden
@Quinerly: thank you for your long daunting list of all the stuff about land and climate that was changed during T1. Very useful reading, and pertinent.
i rarely click on links, as I feel I’m falling down a rabbit hole. Just my pov.
Another Scott
@Ohio Mom: Not to be “that guy”, but I think we have to be careful about all simple explanations of why and how things happened in the past. Circumstances and history and attitudes and political realities were different back then. “The past is a different country.”
I have no idea how well-argued this piece is and how compelling the cited evidence is, but it’s something to think about, I think.
Complex systems are complicated. Change is hard. Humans don’t like change. it’s a slog to make progress, and always has been.
While we absolutely must look at what happened in the past, there’s often only so much it can teach us beyond being a cautionary tale. We have to push forward in the circumstances we find ourselves in now.
FWIW.
Thanks.
Best wishes,
Scott.
Bupalos
I’m not going to judge people who aren’t ready to accept half-smurfs. And let’s be honest, the Asian spelling of Bluefoot is an obscenity.
Belafon
@Suzanne: They were reliable until they realized that Democrats were helping blacks. Texas was briefly a liberal state when Democrats shifted left in the 60s up until the 80s. Most voters here looked at the letter after the name and that’s how they vote. So it took a new generation of voters to realize that Democrats weren’t conservative anymore.
Baud
@Suzanne: I don’t have recent stats, but it seems like a large part of “working class” (i.e., white) abandoned Dems with Reagan, and haven’t come back. The intensity of their hatred has increased over time as Dems have become more diverse.
Citizen Alan
@Baud: wasn’t it a big point in classical marxism that the lower class aka, the lumpenproletariat would never rise up or play any real role in politics, because they had no sense of class consciousness and were too beaten down by the difficulties of lower class existence to be willing to risk revolt.
@Baud:
Suzanne
@satby: IIRC, the under-$50K income bracket has been Dem-leaning much more recently than that. I remember Obama won the lower income cohorts pretty handily.
Another Scott
@Mr. Mack: I used to get it for a while. It seemed like a decent publication, but I don’t remember if I detected any editorial slant. It certainly wasn’t Mother Jones or similar.
It’s part of Future PLC (a big UK publishing house).
It’s hard for print publications now. If you like it, you should subscribe if it makes sense for you.
My $0.02.
Best wishes,
Scott.
Gloria DryGarden
@TBone: what if you put the title, or named the music genre, on your music posts? I would find that helpful. because i dont click on everything.
i was mystified how people were doing it, but it’s a setting button to the R of the link paste-in box, once you click on the link icon in the menu bar.
You’ve so often given us music to cheer and brighten our hours.
No Nym
Marcie Wheeler at Wonkette has the best take I’ve read so far–the first one that made me laugh, anyway:
Suzanne
@Baud: I suspect that you’re right. The income bracket data I have seen indicates that the lower income cohorts have been Democratic-leaning, but that’s been eroding over years, and that’s probably due to white voters.
Raoul Paste
@Chris Johnson: I heartily endorse this, and I have very much enjoyed your comments over the last few days.
Betty Cracker
@satby: I’m not media shaming anyone, including people who stay on Twitter, who I assume have their reasons. But “turn tail and run when the bad guys show up” is a shitty and self-aggrandizing and inaccurate way to characterize the situation, IMO. The platform is owned by the goddamn oligarch who just helped elect Trump, FFS. Some of us find that motivation enough to skedaddle, no cowardice required.
Starfish
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: Illegal immigration impacts new legal immigrants in some very strange ways that you would not expect. This type of social security number bungling affects immigrants a lot.
Gloria DryGarden
Veterans Day. I forgot. So I checked my library website, and indeed, it’s closed for the holiday. BUT, the home page for the library is highlighting Kindness: Books, events.
what a great theme for the moment we’re in.
Fake Irishman
@RaflW:
those two have been scheduled for floor time when the Senate returns since September. Schumer will work with his caucus to get as many possible through. Reid did pretty well in 2014, but it all depends on the caucus. There are five appeals court nominees, one unfortunately likely won’t get through. The other four may though….
UncleEbeneezer
@satby: I just went to check on a couple Liberal, Jewish accounts that I follow (historians, journalists etc.) to read about the terrible attacks in Amsterdam and Sweden, and the responses are just loathsome with thinly and not-so-thinly veiled Anti-Semitism. As much as much as I’ve always understood “never read the comments” and largely practiced that approach, Twitter has always been about not just the initial tweets but the responses. Now 90% of them are just MAGA or Anti-Semitic (framed as “Anti-Zionist”). It’s worse than I have ever seen it.
Starfish
@satby: Twitter is not a source of news for normal people. It is a source of news for people who want to be the first know-it-all to know the news.
However, with the increased levels of disinformation there, it is also the source of news for the know-it-alls who are going to spread disinformation.
Disengaging with algorithmic social media is good for your brain.
A bunch of people are jumping on bsky. I am not going with them because I am going to sit here and read a book.
zhena gogolia
@No Nym: Right.
Hamlet of Melnibone
@schrodingers_cat:
The problem I have is that I’ve mostly culled the Trump voters from my social groups. I don’t interact with them socially anymore. Most of my interactions with them these days are in venues where politics are not discussed.
I have no idea how to connect with them because I don’t really want to anymore.
Bupalos
@Baud: well they did in the 1930’s. I think the operative concept here is that reality has to intrude. There has been a kind of economic frog-boiling of the American economic mobility over the last 4 decades, but it has coincided with a technological and macroeconomic revolution that means people are in absolute senses more comfortable. While relative economics ultimately matters more to society and to people’s freedom and happiness, I think it’s that bottom line physical comfort level that creates an political urgency or lack thereof. The Great Depression trailing into WWII was probably the last time reality intruded to fundamentally focus and reorient politics. I think climate change will be the next.
Tazj
Philip Bump “For all the assessments of Trump’s coalition based on exit polls, here’s what they also say: his voting base was older,wealthier and about equally white to what it was in 2020.https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/11/08/trump-coalition-looks-
Ceci7
@Hamlet of Melnibone:
It’s not just Trump voters. It’s very easy for white people with good intentions to get caught up in their own feelings; to perform anti-racism for each other; to cling too hard to the importance of being perceived and acknowledged as a Good Person. But good personhood is not the point. Speaking for myself, that’s requiring the most work to unlearn.
schrodingers_cat
@Ceci7: Thanks for putting it so clearly.
Baud
@Bupalos: If you’re right, then the people preaching at Dems to be more populist are off base, because the conditions do not allow that approach to be successful.
Bupalos
@Tazj: This seems to say something significant until you do the other side of the equation: Dem support also grew in the exact same terms and to a larger degree. Comparatively, Republicans became less white, less wealthy, and especially less educated (and less aware of simple objective truth.) Democrats became whiter, wealthier, and better educated.
This is quite simply what post-truth populism looks like. We’re going to figure out how and to what extent we’re going to play in this populist sandbox, or we’re going to get whomped.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Bupalos:
Hmmmmm…four decades….1981…hmmm again….what happened on Jan 20 1981.
Just like the Crazification Factor being a reliable constant, the inauguration of Reagan is another one.
Broad discussions about “working class” and “income bracket levels” can be very misleading unless race is considered.
Always race.
Bupalos
@Baud: I mostly agree with that, or at least agree that it’s a very difficult needle to thread. A responsible and effective left populism is really hard to figure out.
The part I don’t really agree with is that there is any real alternative. This coalition that stretched out to try and embrace everyone committed to the social and economic left PLUS everyone committed to our form of government just came up short. Amid overall good economic conditions. Against a generally unpopular candidate. I don’t think there’s a realistic “try harder at the same thing” lane.
Tarragon
There is a seal at the local zoo that loves to watch moving things. You can get her attention by pushing a car back and forth along the window sill. I juggle for her and she’ll come over a follow the balls back and forth with here whole body.
It’s an awesome thing.
schrodingers_cat
Lawyers of BJ can Trump restrict birthright citizenship by Executive Order.
Baud
@Bupalos: Sure, a schism is a possibility. I don’t happen to believe that there are enough economic populists who aren’t bigots in the voting pool to make economic populism an electoral force by themselves. More power to them if I’m wrong about that, however.
Baud
@schrodingers_cat: No. It would be the courts that would do it.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: I thought you would need a constitutional amendment to change that. Am I wrong?
bluefoot
@schrodingers_cat: IANAL but my understanding is no re Executive Order. But SCOTUS on the other hand has been happy to ignore black letter law.
Baud
@schrodingers_cat: An incorrect SCOTUS decision is the equivalent of a constitutional amendment.
schrodingers_cat
Here is Ro Khanna peddling nonsense.
I blocked him. This was a fundraising email I just got.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: Is this sarcasm or reality?
Rumor has it that T2 is going to issue an executive order restricting birthright citizenship to children of GC holders and citizens only.
Baud
@schrodingers_cat: Reality. If the Supreme Court interprets the Constitution the way Trump wants, the that’s the same as amending the Constitution in the way Trump wants.
Tazj
@Bupalos: I suppose you’re right. The Democrats lost the presidency and the Senate after all. However, I took some hope from it, in that, Democrats aren’t that far off in a difficult world wide post-pandemic environment that’s anti-incumbent.
I don’t want our politicians afraid of touting Democratic accomplishments and trashing everything because of this election or throwing marginalized people under the bus because some far left activists said controversial things.
Yes, Trump and the Republicans have made gains but it’s important that Democrats don’t enshrine Trump as a working class savior by trashing each other and separating themselves entirely from the Biden/Harris record that instituted many policies that helped the working class.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: Then we are fucked. Congrats Trump voters.
FWIW T1 lost in courts a lot.
Bupalos
@Baud: I think the idea that there aren’t enough left economic populists to make a difference comes from thinking in online terms, of the people we’ve seen speak for left economic populism. There aren’t enough Bernie bros (who pretty much all went to college and speak a very weird and complicated dialect of populism that is almost meta.)
I take Vlad Vexler’s definition of populism here – it’s not a politics itself, it’s more a political language of simplification and clarity. Biden/Harris could have used it, but essentially chose not to.
Baud
@Bupalos: For me, the idea comes from election outcomes. It’s a big country, and actual economic populism hasn’t won primaries or elections almost anywhere since I’ve been watching politics. Vermont loves Bernie as a person, but even Vermont isn’t all that populist, as evidenced by their Republican governor. If you can’t win anywhere, don’t expect people to believe you’re suddenly going to win everywhere all at once.
Baud
@schrodingers_cat: It could be a 6-3 or 5-4 win for the good guys. Don’t lose hope yet.
karen marie
@Omnes Omnibus: I am fully cognizant of the weak and sad antecedents of “resistance.”
Did the French Resistance win the war? No. Did they go on to lead France after the war? No. They waited for someone to rescue them. Encouraging people to adopt that mindset is how you lose.
karen marie
@Barbara: Well said.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: I am not. There will be a lot of hot air and bluster from T2.
Interstadial
@schrodingers_cat: A lot of that was because Trump and his people didn’t understand how the government works.
For example, early on they routinely violated the Administrative Procedures Act (a law that restricts “arbitrary and capricious” actions taken without sufficient advance public notice and input) and then got slapped down in court.
Once they got the hang of it they started being more effective with big policy changes, but then they ran out of time.
This time I expect they are going to be effective from the start.
zhena gogolia
@Baud: I AM VIRTUALLY CERTAIN THAT THIS IS CORRECT
zhena gogolia
@schrodingers_cat: That’s the Bernie line. Chris Murphy is taking it up now too, and I’m going to give him a piece of my mind. (I’m sure he’ll be shaking in his boots.)
Layer8Problem
@karen marie: “Did the French Resistance win the war? No. Did they go on to lead France after the war? No. They waited for someone to rescue them.”
Uhm, what? Kind of a apples and oranges thing. France was under Vichy and their friends the Occupation, Petain was still venerated as the Hero of Verdun, De Gaulle was in London, and the Second Front with the best will in the world was not going to happen through the Resistance.
Omnes Omnibus
@karen marie: Enjoy trying to make fetch happen.
Soprano2
I was listening to the Pod Bros show – they had Sarah Longwell on. She’s worth listening to. She said voters have been telling them for over a year that they feel that Democrats want to give things to everyone except ordinary working people, that they care about immigrants and gays and Trans people and Ukraine and Israel, but not about them. She said the immigration issue is a big problem for Democrats because to the average voter they don’t seem to have a position that cares about Americans. She also said the anti-trans ads were effective because they were actually an economic message – “she” wants to spend “your” tax money on they/them, TCFG wants to spend it on you. We all know that’s a lie, but people believed it because they feel like no one cares about them or their problems.
Ksmiami
@Omnes Omnibus: inflation is going to spike massively. Blame it all on the GOP. Every last bit of it. Oh and the rural hospital/health systems will collapse. The voters have chosen death.
Baud
@Soprano2:
That’s what people who vote Republican always say. Sometimes it gets them enough votes. No one has figured out how to refute it without throwing people under the bus.
Soprano2
@Baud: I know, but she does lots of focus groups with these voters so I think it’s worth listening to it. To me the big elephant in the room is racism, and I don’t know how to address that.
gene108
@schrodingers_cat:
The first part of the 14th amendment is “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”
United States v. Wong Kim Ark was a case from 1898 where the Supreme Court ruled in favor of recognizing Mr. Ark as having birthright citizenship, even though his parents had Chinese citizenship.
No one has bothered with this interpretation since. In 1924, Congress extended birthright citizenship to Native Americans. Due to tribal lands technically being semi-autonomous, there was a question as to the what jurisdiction Native Americans were subject to at birth, tribal jurisdiction or U.S. jurisdiction. A lot of the debate was based on racism and if non-whites, excluding the former slaves who were already here, could become Americans.
Since granting birthright citizenship is based on being All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, there’s some wiggle room in deciding who is subject to U.S. jurisdiction at the time of birth.
Diplomats and their families, for example, are not subject to all U.S. laws (diplomatic immunity), so their child born in the USA won’t be granted citizenship.
The debate as to what nationalities fell under U.S. jurisdiction, while residing here, was the major point of contention until the Ark case. Even in the Ark decision there was a dissenting opinion that stated Chinese nationals could not be U.S. citizens, because they were bound to the sovereignty of the Emperor.
I think that’s more than enough wiggle room for this SCOTUS to overturn Ark and create narrower qualifications for who gets birthright citizenship.
Baud
@gene108:
Of course, that would affect green hard holders also.
gene108
@Baud:
It will affect a lot of people. I think absolute birthright citizenship will get overturned, if Miller and his Nazi pals can find a case. I mean I don’t think there’s a lot of case law on questioning birthright citizenship in the past 100+ years. I’m not sure what they’d have to do to create the basis for a case.
I guess Republicans start passing laws requiring parents to show proof of legal status before applying for SSN’s for their babies, thus barring U.S. born babies to parents here illegally from getting SSN’s. Then they get sued over it and the case goes to SCOTUS.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@schrodingers_cat: The exit poll analysis that was shared last week showed Harris won 100K+ and <50K, losing the middle.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@Soprano2: Considering just how many programs are in place to help these people, that they don’t seem to know they are benefiting from I don’t know how it’s possible to combat that attitude. The same f-ing people are angry about how many people rely on government benefits.
Another Scott
Not minimizing the challenging and scary and awful days that are probably ahead, I decided to look back at this famous speech today:
The future is still unwritten. Our words and actions can help make it better. But, of course, it will not be easy; we still have agency and can still do our part to try to create the future we want to see.
Best wishes,
Scott.
N
The US Is a Civic Desert. To Survive, the Democratic Party Needs to Transform Itself. | The Nation
Chris Johnson
@Betty Cracker: Absolutely. It would not be unreasonable to say that continuing to use Twitter, knowingly, while it’s twisted to propagandize as extensively as possible and all revenue directed to the Trump campaign even while it implodes, is unethical.
Acting otherwise is normalizing the situation, and that’s no good.
On top of that, I caught some speculation over the new arbitration stuff: that Twitter-related stuff gets sent to a particular Musk-aligned judge in Texas. Someone had the hot take that, in some way, this facilitated a path to MUSK being able to sue people who said mean things about him on Twitter, IN that court. Which doesn’t have SLAPP protections.
The fact that someone was thinking this was enough for me to delete my account, risking impostors in future etc. because if some complete bozo possibly on drugs thinks of this notion, well then our man Musk might also think of it.
Wouldn’t stand up for long in other courts, but that’s what SLAPP protections are for. Protection against a rich guy using the legal system baselessly, like a cudgel. And I’m not continuing to use his services in that way under that risk. The userbase is imploding with absurd speed anyhow. Twitter’s already dead.
schrodingers_cat
@N: Russian mouthpiece says what?
artem1s
@Soprano2:
People who hear ‘we’re going to protect this group and this group and that group’ and interpret it as ‘we don’t want to help Americans’ are the problem. We are all immigrants but clearly some of us are REAL American and some won’t ever be Americans.
If their viewpoint is “X wins/Americans lose” that’s not a messaging problem anyone can solve. It’s racism. It’s misogyny and homophobia. This is a ‘fuckyouI’vegotmine’ problem. Any person who hears that drug prices have come down and thinks that hurts them (REAL American’s) because they don’t use that drug is not someone you can reach with any positive message. They have made it clear that they want to know who the candidate is going to target as the losers.
PIGL
@gene108: I don’t think there’s enough money in the world to do that. Googles and Facebook’s owners are getting what they want.