Four years ago, we faced unprecedented crises. President Biden understood the magnitude of the challenge and used the tools of government to meet the moment—including an infrastructure package that is transforming our nation. It will be remembered as this century's Big Deal. pic.twitter.com/W87KDTIQ2s
— Secretary Pete Buttigieg (@SecretaryPete) November 15, 2024
to do: investigate how certain Dems succeeded (e.g. Slotkin, Gallego, Baldwin); focus on policies' impacts not politics; abandon dumb media (Politico, all cable tv);elevate local and nonprofit media holding powerful accountable; examine the rightwing media disinformation racket; defend vulnerables
— Jen Rubin (@jenrubin.bsky.social) November 11, 2024 at 7:00 PM
Overall, Trump’s pick get a net negative response. We should share this graph widely!
How Americans view Trump’s nominees. www.washingtonpost.com/politics/202…
— Philip Bump (@pbump.com) November 16, 2024 at 9:06 AM
I agree with this retrospective conversation:
in retrospect bidens decision to do the right thing on Afghanistan was incredibly telling: he did the thing nominally leftist critics wanted, trump said he would do, and msm critics were demanding he provide An Affirmative Answer on and got pilloried from every corner as a result
— Victory Over the Sun (@hrtraulsen.bsky.social) November 18, 2024 at 1:09 AM
Underappreciated catalyst for our present moment & really the perfect storm: legacy media got excited because they had a "biden is fucking up" story, lefties never updated their priors about the forever wars, the right had a narrative about american decline & weakness
— Hemry, Local Bartender (@bartenderhemry.bsky.social) November 18, 2024 at 1:55 AM
yup bsky.app/profile/jeff…
— Michael Tae Sweeney (@mtsw.bsky.social) November 18, 2024 at 1:21 AM
fwiw I think Biden, based both on reporting and knowledge of what he's like, made the decision 100% on the merits of what he thought the interests of the United States were and wasn't really considering the politics at all, and certainly not counting on the anti-war left having his back
— Michael Tae Sweeney (@mtsw.bsky.social) November 18, 2024 at 1:19 AM
every Dem should read how Tammy Baldwin did it www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/202…
— Jen Rubin (@jenrubin.bsky.social) November 17, 2024 at 9:42 AM
(Ford’s “reasons“)
On The Road – Albatrossity – Big Sur Country
Baud
We now know we’re a minority. I hope we act like it.
Baud
Biden did a lot of things liberals asked him to do. I don’t know why people think we can’t lose credibility, but we can just like anybody else.
TBone
@Baud: My snark meter might be broken today.
Ramalama
Do you think Pete’s Big Deal video was a poke in the eye to Trump and infighting Dem consultants? It felt like a balm to me to see it.
Dr. Jakyll and Miss Deride
The fact that Stefanik, one of the most odious Trump toadies, and Miller, Trump’s Goebbels, score better with Democrats than the merely vacuous Rubio shows that even many Democrats don’t pay the kind of attention to politics we would like them to pay.
Baud
@Dr. Jakyll and Miss Deride:
Yep. I bet name recognition counts for more than we’d like to admit. More than substance.
TBone
Uh oh. Heather Cox Richardson discussing time schedules for trains today.
🤦♀️
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/november-17-2024
rikyrah
Good Morning Everyone 😊 😊 😊
Baud
@rikyrah:
Good morning.
rikyrah
Complete and utter BULLSHYT 😡🤬
Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) posted at 5:25 AM on Mon, Nov 18, 2024:
Joe and Mika went to Mar a Lago to talk with Trump over the weekend. First face-to-face meeting in seven years. “We didn’t see eye-to-eye on a lot of issues and we told him so,” @JoeNBC says. “What we did agree on – was to restart communications,” @morningmika says. https://t.co/lyWZWK4CwX
(https://x.com/brianstelter/status/1858471489906815033?t=fZ4bbZ-BLZsu0VvpPyb0TQ&s=03)
rikyrah
@Baud:
Hey Baud 👊🏾🤗
Baud
@rikyrah:
Back at ya. 👊
Baud
@rikyrah:
Our liberal media.
Betty Cracker
@rikyrah: Access must be maintained or the show goes dark.
Baud
I wonder if Dems should propose a bill to enact RFK, Jr.’s “Healthy Foods” plan. Call them out.
Jeffro
“abandon dumb media” would sell an absolute SHIT TON of t-shirts, I’m just sayin’…
geg6
@rikyrah:
Ha! I knew the ring kissing would commence. Fuck those two, sideways with rusty chainsaws.
geg6
@Jeffro:
I’d buy one.
Bruce K in ATH-GR
@geg6: For some reason I’m reminded of Vidkun Quisling, for whom the Norwegians reinstated the death penalty, assembled a firing squad, and then promptly banned the death penalty again.
TBone
@TBone:
GMA leads with story of armed Nazis marching in Ohio.
Baud
@TBone:
That’s good. Was the story factual, or was it “good people on both sides”?
Elizabelle
I have been thinking for several days now that Peter Baker of the FTF NY Times and Mrs. Peter Baker (Susan Glasser of The New Yorker) tore Biden apart over Afghanistan, and brought us Trump.
Fuck them both. Will never read either again. Deplorables.
Betty Cracker
Speaking of “dumb media” and armed Nazis on the march, there’s an Axios article with the title “Secret Trump voters have a post-election coming out party.” Haven’t read it and won’t, but I suspect they don’t mention the Nazis…
TBone
@Baud: the part I saw while passing by and stirring sugar into my tea was most decidedly not both-sidesed. But I didn’t watch the whole thing – it is telling that normie hubby is watching AM news again, he had checked out completely after the election.
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
Nazis are people too. I don’t blame them for celebrating their win.
TBone
Montage Mountain near Scranton on fire.
TBone
@Baud:
Stalin says dark humor is like food. Some people don’t get it.
evodevo
@rikyrah: Joe and Mika: Please don’t put US in camps!!
Liminal Owl
@Baud: The stories I’ve seen were not both-sides, and mentioned that the few who bear-sprayed a bystander were arrested.
The “Men’s March Against Abortion,” in Boston, was not explicitly Nazi (so far as I can tell), but unquestionably Dominionist. And Boston cops only arrested the counter-protesters.
Princess
@rikyrah: That’s a lot of fancy words to say, Mika fellated Trump while Trump forced Joe to watch.
I’m sorry — I know that’s quite an image for 7:30am.
Princess
@Betty Cracker: I’m not going to read that article either but I’ve noticed on friends’ FB pages that many of them have a number of their friends who are coming out to them as Trump voters. In general, they’re proud, defiant, and they don’t think Trump will do any of the bad things he’s said he’ll do. Everyone seems to think Trump will fulfill that one campaign promise they personally like and leave aside the rest. Everyone has a different promise they like.
lowtechcyclist
@Dr. Jakyll and Miss Deride:
Most of the time, I can’t remember who Elise Stefanik is, so I can’t blame anyone else about that. It’s not like being an obsequious toady is enough to distinguish oneself in TrumpWorld.
Stephen Miller of course is another story. I can’t see his name without thinking about the child separations and kids in cages.
ETA: OTOH, the fact that RFK Jr. and Elmo are far and away the two that Republicans love the most says volumes about how sick that party is.
Baud
@Princess:
The flip side is people cling to the one Dem policy they hate and that overrides everything else they might like about Dems.
ETA: I also wouldn’t trust them when they say they’re against the bad things.
Balconesfault
I have been pissed at a lot of fellow liberals for years for their embrace of the “screwed up Afghanistan withdrawal” story.
Out of 100 possible outcomes, probably 97 were worse than what happened, given the hand Biden was dealt. Yet too many liberals were ready to jump aboard the “attack Biden because it wasn’t perfect” train, instead of defending him because we finally got the hell out of there.
catclub
@Dr. Jakyll and Miss Deride: I will also say that nobody cares who Trump picks for cabinet secretaries.
Baud
@Balconesfault:
Yep. It’s always safer to criticize, and that’s what a lot of people opt for.
catclub
@Balconesfault: I clearly don’t run with many liberals, because I did not hear anyone even talk about the Afghan withdrawal. I did think that the Foreign policy blob hated Joe for doing it. Liberals?
mrmoshpotato
@geg6:
Yup! Mika’s really making her dad proud!
catclub
@Dr. Jakyll and Miss Deride: What is Miller nominated for?
Princess
@Baud: I don’t trust them at all. I know too many people who say they vote GoP because of abortion but I believe it’s basically a cover for racism. But it’s interesting to me that they feel comfortable publicly claiming their votes for Trump.
New Deal democrat
I disagree that Afghanistan was the big reason for the decline in Biden’s popularity. Correlation is not causation etc.
While the withdrawal from Afghanistan probably did cause a short term decline, it coincided with the point where inflation overtook paychecks and income for several years:
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1BqQB
Q3 2021 is when wages, adjusted for the type of job, declined below 2019 levels for the first time. The decline did not reverse until late 2022 and even now has not entirely been made up. A similar situation is the case with real median household income, which only finally exceeded its 2019 levels earlier this year:
https://motioresearch.com/household-income-series/
Baud
@Princess:
They won, and they think other people will accept them, with good reason.
Gin & Tonic
@Liminal Owl: Boston cops being Boston cops.
Princess
@catclub: You’d think the anti-war people would have given Biden props for leaving, but bupkis.
TBone
@catclub: “Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy”
It reads better in the original German.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2024/11/11/stephen-miller-trump-white-house-deputy-chief-staff/76195963007/
Gvg
@Balconesfault: I didn’t even think the withdrawal was screwed up except for not getting out the people who helped us. That should have been done gradually over the prior years, not months but I knew it was hopeless with the rising xenophobia in this country. I still consider it a debt on our books though. I haven’t forgotten we are a country built on immigration.
Baud
@Princess:
The drone people went silent after 2016. I’m not sure how many people are actually anti-war.
Princess
@Baud: If you claim to be anti-war and you only protest Dem events, pro-tip: you’re not anti-war. You’re anti something else.
Betty Cracker
@Princess: I’m probably going to hear versions of that self-deluding bullshit when I join the wingnut side of the family for Thanksgiving. (My sister and I are the only liberals who attend that gathering, so sometimes they feel emboldened to gang up on us.)
They’ll also have amnesia about all the bad shit Trump did in his first term and will dismiss any facts that demonstrate his unfitness for office, such as the felony convictions (Trump-hating NYC DA!), attempts to overturn the 2020 election (Trump-hating ATL DA!) and the national security threat posed by the classified documents hoarding (anti-Trump DOJ!).
FDRLincoln
This stuff about Mika and Joe going to Mar-a-Berchtesgarden and secret Trump voters coming out….
Really none of us should trust anyone we are not 1000% sure of politically. We are still two months away from the leopard attacks and people are already preemptively conforming.
TBone
@Betty Cracker: I would do mashed potatoes like John Belushi in Animal House.
Anyway
<sob!> at losing all our hardworking talented cabinet secs – PeteB, Janet Yellen, Deb Halland …
The exception is the State Dept – will be glad to see the last of Blinken, Sullvan, Kirby — though they’ll likely end up with cushy gigs paid for with Saudi-Qatari petro$$$. there’s a lot of those sloshing around DC
TBone
@FDRLincoln: nominated (without the “r”)
I wouldn’t know that but I studied German language for 12 years and have been to The Eagles Nest in Berchtesgaden. My Dad liked to show dominance in certain situations. (I’m half Jewish.)
Baud
@FDRLincoln:
Agree.
Baud
Via blue sky
TBone
@Baud: 💙 a worthy cause who is so vital
Baud
Yesterday, Mistermix insisted that we name names when making assertions about the left. Today, he reposted this on bluesky
JML
@Princess: well, you’ll get a lot more coverage from the trad media if you protest Democrats and do a lot of performance art disguised as protesting.
It was a remarkable twist that it became more important to protest against the current administration than to try and elect the next administration to supposed anti-war activists. Some of who will still accuse democrats of genocide and blame them for not getting the desired result, despite a GOP administration that will almost certainly burn everything down.
TBone
There is no crying in baseball.
NotMax
@TBone
There are, however, peanuts and Cracker Jacks.
:)
narya
@Baud: He’s really one of the bright lights that have emerged, IMHO.
Baud
@narya:
Medal of Freedom if we get in again.
TBone
@NotMax: and sliders!
Geminid
@Baud: I guess Mistermix is entitled to try to set his own standards for discourse on his threads. He’s not entitled to compliance though. This could get interesting.
narya
@Baud: Oooooh, I like that idea! Lately, I’ve been watching MSNBC in the evening, often while doing needlework. I record it so I can fast-forward through anything that is annoying me; he’s one of the guests to whom I always listen.
TBone
Do not show me a young rebel,
whose eyes are bright
and whose tail is bushy.
Young rebels are fine and good,
but they are merely doing
what the young are meant to do.
Show me an old rebel.
One who keeps punching
when his hands are arthritic,
when her hair is white,
when his friends are all dead,
when her knees are shot,
when it hurts him to pee,
when her shoulders are so bad
that it would be much easier to punch down
than to punch up.
Show me an old rebel
who keeps standing up after being knocked down
over and over again,
year after year,
decade after decade,
who after the thousandth blow
merely spits out a tooth
and says “Son, you have no idea what you’re dealing with,
do you?”
Are you a young rebel?
Are you Sticking It to The Man?
Are you upsetting the gray brainiacs
and knocking over their word castles?
That is fine.
Youth will youth.
But show me a young rebel
who became an old rebel,
who stuck with it through the setbacks
and the beatings and betrayals,
who watched the hippies become yuppies
and the protesters become pundits
and still kept a fire lit
amid the monsoons of infiltration
and the hurricanes of heartbreak.
Who will close their tired eyes for a final time
without ever once having cast them to the ground
or peered up in imploring subordination.
That, my friends,
that is a true spirit.
If you are still a fiery rebel
even as everything is ripped away from you,
I will be humbled and awed by you,
because I will know that you will carry that with you to the grave.
And I will know that whatever you find on the other side
will be met
with that same defiant glare.
And I will sing your song when you are gone.
…
This got me into big hot water here when I refused to name the author, Caitlin Johnstone.
But it will always be one of my all time favorites.
Peale
@Dr. Jakyll and Miss Deride: Yep. Its a poll very much based on name recognition. Although I’m chuckling a bit at Ramaswamy. If anything, he is one most Trumpy Trumpers. But…there’s something about his name that the Trumper’s themselves just don’t like.
Betty Cracker
@Baud: Mistermix wasn’t wrong about naming names, IMO, but to be consistent, maybe he should have quote-tweeted MGG with “Seth Moulton (D-MA)” and “Tom Suozzi (D-NY).”
sab
@TBone: Spectrum (our cable company) News had it also, and the coverage definitely wasn’t both sides. Nazis marching with uniforms and swastika flags, breaking things and hurting people.
Jeffro
@Betty Cracker: sending you and your sister good thoughts – keep the faith! ;)
Soprano2
@rikyrah: Obeying in advance, expect to see a lot more of this from the press. They know what side their bread is buttered on, although I think they’ll be surprised this time when the viewers don’t come back. I may never listen to Morning Edition or All Things Considered again.
Jeffro
this is my thought for the day – thanks TBone!
Soprano2
@Betty Cracker: I saw that, it’s about TCFG voters in big cities showing their “true colors” now. I think it’s more about them thinking they’re jumping on the winning side. Boy are they going to be surprised.
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
It’s always meant to be selective. Even if we’re disciplined here, and we won’t be, the rest of the Internet is not going to follow our example.
Chief Oshkosh
@Jeffro: Jen Rubin saying that we should abandon dumb media, then naming Politico and cable news is…so WaPo.
Hey Jen, how about: abandon dumb media and abandon smart but incredibly evil, greedy, and cynical media.
Or would that hit too close to home, Jen-Jen?
Another Scott
@TBone: Thanks for that.
I like the idea that the struggle continues. I don’t like the (my interpretation) idea that youngsters are doing it rong and only the oldsters know the actual way forward. Too much of a “purity” vibe, to me.
Made me look. Her Medium site isn’t for me, assuming it’s the same person.
Everyone needs to do what they can, however they can. Democracy and a healthy society demands participation.
“Diversity is our strength. Unity is our power.” – Pelosi.
YMMV!!
Thanks.
Best wishes,
Scott.
sab
@Balconesfault: I know some actual soldiers’ families. They were all quite relieved when we withdrew from Afghanistan.
Soprano2
@Baud: Yep, they got the American people to vote for what they want even though I guarantee you most of those people have no idea that’s what they voted for.
TBone
@sab: were their faces covered up? I mean, how emboldened do they really feel?
I didn’t see whether they were wearing their full face masks or whether they were truly showing the “courage” of their convictions.
TBone
@Jeffro: yours in service,
💙TBone
Baud
@Chief Oshkosh:
Human beings prefer fake news to no news. Until there’s a viable alternative for them, most people aren’t going to abandon media.
Soprano2
I’ve been hearing stuff like that too. “No more taxes on overtime, that’s going to be great!”, crap like that. I hope they don’t come crying to me when they don’t get what they think he promised. That’s what happens when someone feels they can lie without consequence, they promise anything to anybody, which is one of the things people claim they HATE about politicians. They actually love it as long as the promise is something that’s important to them.
TBone
@Another Scott: she is the worst kind of tankie.
A woo tankie.
That’s why I stuck to my guns about not naming her AND what’s the entire point of the poem?!
Soprano2
@Baud: Like the people who know what the pro football coach should have done to win they game. They’re certain they know better than he does.
NotMax
@TBone
Did someone say rebel?
(Kudos due the fork lift driver.)
AWOL
@mrmoshpotato: Yup. From a country that capitulated to nazism and did all of the Germans dirty work for free.
Like the French and all the rest.
There were a few exceptions, but they were very, very few.
Whoever thinks anyone in the media—even those on “your side,” with very, very few exceptions—is not a total prostitute to the power of the billionaire’s and their dark vision is naive. They have no principles, only ego and money lust.
Just turn them off, and let Nicholle Wallace continue fellating GW Bush’s wonderful humanity on her sad little network.
Because these sad, little networks are just turning humanity into sad, little cells of insanity.
Soprano2
@New Deal democrat: Is that when all the stimulus checks had probably been spent? I know for awhile people seemed to feel really flush, probably because of that. I think the Afghanistan withdrawal more fed into a GOP narrative of “feckless Democrats don’t know what they’re doing”, and it gave the press a big stick to beat Biden with especially when a lot of Democrats didn’t exactly have his back on it. Then when people started feeling the pinch of rising prices, they picked up on the “feckless Biden” stuff and it fed the narrative even more.
TBone
@NotMax: ❤️ also too I like being a rabble rouser!
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=X2W3aG8uizA
Geminid
@Betty Cracker: I suspect Mistermix will name names today, and put Suozzi and Moulton in the stocks so commenters can pelt them with figurative tomatoes.
Chris T.
@Soprano2:
There will be no more “overtime”. You work 120 hours a week, you get paid minimum wage for all 120 hours. So, no taxes on the nonexistent overtime. Promise kept!
(And of course, if you don’t work 120 hours a week, you’re fired.)
Jeffro
@Chief Oshkosh: she’s knocked the Post for being old/dumb/legacy media before, and was appalled at their lack of an endorsement.
in the meantime, it’s a big platform. if she uses it to beat the ‘dumb media’ for a while longer, I don’t mind
sab
@TBone: People on the street photographed their license plates so their vehicles were stopped on the way out of town and the pepperspray and bear spray guys were arrested. It makes me hopeful that apparently we can still count on some of the police still doing their jobs.
Note to Bostononians: counterprotests are what the nazis want. Don’t do it
ETA Black Lives Matter had the good sense to stop when things turned violent.
lowtechcyclist
@TBone:
And fastballs, curves, changeups, knuckleballs… ;-)
Baud
I’m happy Biden and Harris tried to go around the media. It was a battle worth fighting, but it’s also a battle we lost.
TBone
@sab: Convictions!
I almost bolded that word in my comment. Wish I had!
Baud
@Geminid:
I blame Dems for naming those two the official party spokesmen.
TBone
@lowtechcyclist: 💜
Who doesn’t love to serve a good knuckle sammich?
Drunk MAGA uncle at turkey day table at my house would be passed out before his drink got ‘im.
Chris Johnson
People can approve of RFK all they like and he’ll still be a lunatic and wrecking ball for Putin. Similarly with Gabbard: people can be unaware of what she is, all they like, and the intelligence community will still know perfectly well.
This is looking more and more like a One Weird Trick victory. It’s supposed to wipe us out simply because the disinfo-ed masses are dazed and confused. I’m not seeing as much confusion in Washington. It’s looking more like Republicans want to keep their tactical victory, but deprive Putin of his would-be strategic victory.
Soprano2
@Baud: It’s a lesson for next time, although who knows what the media landscape will be like in two years.
TBone
@Chris Johnson:
Mary Trump:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=TTf-p7g-G3U
Jeffro
OT but this is worth reminding everyone about (especially GOP Senators): trump’s a lame-duck on Day 1
(and I refuse to enable the Cult of Trumpov by thinking, “well, SCOTUS will just make up whatever they want” or “trumpov’s going to insist on a ‘do-over’ because of ‘Russia Russia Russia’ ” or anything like that – nope. I am not-pre-surrendering and the wording is clear)
narya
@Baud: We still got useful information out of the effort, though. (I would have much preferred a victory, of course!) And I realized this morning that I’m feeling sort of the way I did 5-6 months into the pandemic: I’m looking for reporting I can trust (like Elias) and for outlets that prioritize people like Elias, and I’m also recognizing that dis/misinformation is rife. And I don’t expect even reporters or commentators I like to get it right every single time or completely avoid dumb takes/people. Even though we didn’t get a majority of votes, we didn’t lose by a lot (it just feels that way), and I’m trying to remain hopeful that some strategies, reporting, or other efforts will begin to emerge. Yes, this is wishful thinking; it’s what I have right now, along with my own principles.
H.E.Wolf
@Another Scott:
Thank you for your comment. It’s a welcome perspective.
For anyone who might be interested: PostcardsToVoters.org has addresses (deadline is this Tuesday, Nov. 19) for a run-off election for Supreme Court Judge in MS. Opponent is MAGA, so this is a way to stick it to the face-eaters. :)
There are a lot of Black Democrats in MS. As far as I’m concerned, they’re my neighbors, and I’m writing for them.
Starfish (she/her)
@Baud: I wondered about this. Was it that there was data transparency under Democratic presidents that we did not have under Republican presidents?
Chief Oshkosh
@Balconesfault: I’ve always considered that that was driven by the relentless hammering from the corporate media. Biden was simply too popular, and was actually making life better for everyone. That could not stand.
NotMax
@Soprano2
MSNBJ?
:)
H.E.Wolf
@narya:
Thank you for this viewpoint. I appreciate it.
Signed, a fellow long-hauler :)
PIGL
@Princess: there’s so many of the Russian apologists take cover as peaceniks. “We are opposed to war. War is bad. So Ukraine must surrender. So we can feelz better.”
Russia notably has no obligation to cease and desist.
New Deal democrat
The wording was equally clear on the Insurrections Clause, and the GOP6 insisted that it could only be activated by a Congressional resolution. It’s the easiest thing in the world to believe that they will handle the 22nd Amendment the same way.
Chief Oshkosh
@Princess: But how would we know? We’ve just been through a years-long campaign in which the voters who “won” are shown to be profoundly ignorant of just about anything to do with reality.
At this point, how would we know whether or not Biden got “credit” for ending the Afghan involvement? I don’t know a single liberal who dinged him for it. I know several who agreed with him doing it.
And I do know that if something was good for Biden or the Dems, it generally got one story on page 3 and that was that.
narya
@H.E.Wolf: Back atcha! ;-)
Starfish (she/her)
@Baud: This looks like it is about the people spreading the “AOC removed the pronouns” rumors. I have no clue where that started because I am not on BlueSky.
It looks like that was started by right wing chuckleheads who are bad a sports.
New Deal democrat
@Soprano2:
Stimulus checks were pretty much spent by the end of June. And of course gas prices and mortgage rates started rising at the beginning of 2022.
Afghanistan is when the honeymoon ended, but the permanent decline in approval is much better explained by the continuing inflationary hits to the economy.
(So yes I agree with your take.)
TBone
@New Deal democrat:
14th Amendment, Section 3 (we weren’t supposed to have a constitutional suicide pact, either).
https://www.msnbc.com/deadline-white-house/deadline-legal-blog/trump-14th-amendment-judge-luttig-rcna123336
AM in NC
@Soprano2: OOOOOoooooooohhhhhhhhh. THIS is ANOTHER fruitful idea for the sticking campaigns I’ve been promoting here.
Let’s start making a list of the insane promises that he’s NEVER going to keep:
And make up the stickers to slap everywhere.
REPUBLICANS promised us no more taxes on our Social Security checks: REPUBLICANS LIED TO US.
REPUBLICANS promised no taxes on overtime pay. REPUBLICANS LIED TO US.
Betty Cracker
@Baud: Can’t argue with that. People have been constructing and knocking down strawmen since time immemorial and will continue to do so. But I think the occasional reminder that it’s a bullshit technique isn’t a bad thing.
Another Scott
@Jeffro: +1
He talked about a third term the last time around, but he talked about a lot of things. On that item, at least, people seemed to not take the bait. The language in the amendment could not be clearer.
Reality always gets a vote.
I assume that he’ll probably set up a re-election campaign for grifting the rubes and to ward off bankruptcy and to try to gum up the courts. It’s what he does.
Thanks.
Best wishes,
Scott.
Starfish (she/her)
@Chris Johnson: When I saw that, I was pissed at the anti-vaxxers on both the left and the right because both sides do it.
tobie
Buttigieg’s statement was balm to the soul. Somehow Dems twisted themselves into pretzels in this election and essentially accepted the Republican spin that America is in decline and the economy sucks. I always wondered why Harris/Walz didn’t frame their economic plan along the lines of “That was then (2020), this is now (2024), this is what we’re going to do,” but it’s a pointless concern. We’ll have to figure out how to move ahead in dreadful circumstances and internal divisions won’t help one bit.
TBone
They delight in using our Constitution as toilet paper, except for cherry picking any word or words that serve them. Supremacists Court especially.
Learned in bible study.
Starfish (she/her)
@Jeffro: Do you think it was a coincidence that E. J. Dionne said fourteen words?
TBone
@Starfish (she/her):
good eye.
tobie
@AM in NC: Will we have Social Security in the future? That’s one of my biggest concerns. I’m 60 now; was hoping to start accepting Soc Sec when I turn 70. My retirement plans are now up in the air.
TBone
@tobie: the
lessdifferently abled and elderly will be liquidated so no payments will be necessary.jonas
@Dr. Jakyll and Miss Deride: Virtually nobody outside communities of geeky political junkies like all of us here pays any attention to news, politics, history or almost anything else you would think applies to basic good citizenship. They just don’t. I don’t know if there was ever a time when they did, but in the past political parties and institutions like the media were there in the background to make sure that the alternatives at the ballot box were usually not utterly unfit, felonious insurrectionists when the electorate got salty.
Soprano2
@AM in NC: Capping interest rates on credit cards at 10%. That would be really popular right up to the time everyone’s cards were cancelled by the issuers.
Geminid
@tobie: That was a good bill. I wish it had been passed earlier– May of 2021 instead of November– but that’s water under the bridge that’s being repaired. I thought we should have celebrated the Inrastructure bill more when it finally was passed though.
RevRick
@Baud: John Stoehr of the Editorial Board has a long thread on X about how the rightwing information ecosystem has overwhelmed all liberal efforts to explain the truth. #17. Voters who knew the facts voted for Harris. Voters who believed the lies voted for Trump. That is the new fault line in American politics.
Chris Johnson
@TBone: Well yeah. Not sure where I heard about the ‘Russia reminds Trump of his responsibilities to Russia’, but that’s a big deal. You know how big a deal it is by how little is said about it, but I have a feeling Congress finds it interesting.
It means they are fully aware they are set up for a giant fall. For Putin to win, America must fall, meaning they must fall, and Russia’s real desperate. So shit got very real, and very interesting, real quick.
p.a.
So… without a Fux, or hate radio, without the boot-licking MSM’s support, how does the Democratic Party appeal on a national (i.e. Electoral College) level to… stupid people?
Not really kidding: relying on an Iraq/Katrina/Great Recession disaster trifecta or a worst-in-a-century pandemic to reach these people is not a recipe for success.
Seeker
@New Deal democrat: Yeah – it don’t understand the hopium. It’s like people don’t fully appreciate the power the current administration has and the fact that they will be unafraid to use it.
Trump has the power to remain President as long as he wants. He can suspend elections as long as he deems it necessary to fulfill his presidential duties.
jonas
@Soprano2: The media are loving this. Every day it’s more drama, more scandal, more “will he or won’t he?” It sends tickles up their legs. And of course the whole operation will leak like a sieve for four years, which is gravy.
Soprano2
@jonas: I had a co-worker tell me she gets all her news from TikTok, from people who are “on the ground” where things are happening, because she doesn’t trust anyone in the media anymore. I didn’t ask her how she knows the people she’s watching are trustworthy or know what they’re talking about. If it comes up again I’m going to bring that up. I think it goes back to when people hear things they agree with, they think they’re facts. This was one of the hardest things I had to teach when I tutored people, the difference between fact and opinion.
tobie
@Geminid: There was so much rancor about Build Back Better that the Infrastructure Bill got coded as a milque-toast compromise that gave away too much to Reublicans. The Squad voted against it. Jubilation about the bill became all but impossible.
https://clerk.house.gov/Votes/2021369
RevRick
Will Bunch offered an important and crucial for us to understand editorial in the Philadelphia Inquirer about how Trump is creating a new and dangerous reality with his Cabinet picks. There’s a link over at Dailykos under the abbreviated Pundit Roundup.
New Deal democrat
@Another Scott:
But the GOP6 get the majority vote.
tobie
@RevRick: Yup. And the generation that is most tuned into social media and ripe for propaganda is GenZ. Boomers shifted left this election; GenZ shifted right. We have a problem.
satby
@Baud: If you haven’t read it already, Timothy Snyder gets into the nitty-gritty of exactly how targeted the disinformation was here.
Worth the click, I promise, and have I ever let you down Baud?
K-Mo
See if I understand this:
1. Biden’s approval declined during the second half of 2021 and the first half of 2022
2. Inflation hit America hard at basically the exact same time period.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/273418/unadjusted-monthly-inflation-rate-in-the-us/
3. Ergo, inflation had nothing to do with Biden’s drop in popularity.
Am I doing this right?
Another Scott
@New Deal democrat: IMO, the insurrection clause and the relevant amendment situations are different. One can make a good faith argument that if one is going to use the insurrection clause, then it has to be after a relevant conviction in a relevant court. That hasn’t happened yet, and may in practice never happen, no matter what we saw with our own lying eyes.
The amendment is math.
Of course, I recognize that lawyers can and do argue about anything from any side – it’s their job.
FWIW.
Best wishes,
Scott.
Soprano2
@jonas: True, but I don’t think they’re going to get the viewers and readers this time that they got last time
ETA – we got our Covid shots yesterday, and boy does my arm hurt!
zhena gogolia
Morning cheer-up, Isto & Son singing “She Loves You.” You won’t regret watching this video!
lowtechcyclist
@New Deal democrat:
Also, the 22nd Amendment does have one spot of ambiguity, because it strictly talks about eligibility to be elected President. And that isn’t the only route to the office, the other one being promotion from VP on the death, resignation, or impeachment and conviction of the President.
Since it doesn’t exclude that route to the Presidency for someone who has already been elected to and served two terms, there’s no reason to think that Trump couldn’t be VP on a Bootlicker*-Trump ticket in 2028 since Trump would still be Constitutionally eligible to be promoted to President on Bootlicker’s resignation at 12:15pm on January 20, 2029. And by that same logic, he wouldn’t be “constitutionally ineligible to the office of President” per the concluding sentence of the 12th Amendment, so the 12th wouldn’t bar him from being VP for those 15 minutes.
If I can find that loophole, you bet the Scummy 6 can find it. Not that they need it, as you note, given their treatment of the 14th Amendment, but they’d use it since it’s there.
(I’m not actually worried about this, since by 2028 he’ll be too deep into dementia for all but the most devout MAGAts to support for the GOP nomination.)
*Replace with a name of your choosing from the voluminous supply of Trump bootlickers.
suzanne
@FDRLincoln:
Agree.
If there is anything this year taught us, it’s that there are a lot of silent Trump voters. They want to keep their friends and they want to be considered normie and they don’t want to wear red hats. They want to conform to the semiotics of polite, educated society while fucking people over.
They aren’t entitled to access to you.
bluefoot
Serious question: What’s the best way to react when Nazis come marching through your town trying to wreak violence and havoc? What’s the best response when it’s the government rounding up brown people?
I don’t mean what will give me, personally, the best personal outcome (i.e. safe and physically uninjured), I mean what response will have an impact on slowing authoritarianism even if it’s just on the micro level. Will resisting encourage other people to resist or cause them to fear more and comply more quickly? Will it encourage people to sell out their friends an neighbors like the so-called liberals reporting people to ICE in response to the election?
At the moment, I don’t have answers, and I think it will depend on the specific situation. but I want to think through the alternatives ahead of time since I’m a person of color. So, thoughts?
jonas
This is absolutely it. The proliferation of online “news” sources has meant people can find an information silo they’re comfortable with and stay there, regardless if it’s remotely reality-based. What it’s going to take to puncture these bubbles of magical thinking people are in, I don’t know.
rusty
@Elizabelle: I didn’t understand it at the time, and I still don’t understand now why the elite media was so invested in staying in Afghanistan. We were burning vast amounts of money, the military was tied down, and we were regularly losing soldiers and killing lots of Afghan civilians. I couldn’t fathom the reaction from the press like the NYT and WP, and still don’t understand it. The alternative to leaving was an endless low level war with no possible good outcome.
Belafon
@New Deal democrat: When you’re operating a saw, do you think “I could get cut by the saw” or do you think “I am going to get cut by the saw”? If you get cut by the saw do you think “Well, I got cut by it, so I’m just going to bleed”?
kindness
Big MSM spoke large in this election and Big MSM loves them some Republican Daddies. They sanewashed every gibberish Trump or Vance uttered. They treated Trump’s outrageous statements as polite respected opinion. They used Republican framing for every issue, not limited to calling out all of Biden’s verbal slips but piling on when one happened.
The NY Times and Fox News won this election for Trump.
Geminid
@tobie: Yes, the Infrastructure bill itself was blamed for the “uncoupling” of it from the Build Back Better bill. Decoupling was a tactical decision by Democratic leaders, just like coupling the bills together in the first place was a tactical move. But some people chose to portray it as a major strategic defeat.
I think the resulting controversy kept a lot of Democrats from seeing that the Infrastructure bill was good, progressive legislation in its own right. Instead, many were taken in by the distortions and downright lies spread about the bill before and after it passed.
gene108
The withdrawal from Afghanistan was a mess because whoever was telling Biden about the capabilities and resilience of the Western trained Afghanistan Security forces and the government we supported was incredibly, incredibly wrong.
Biden thought they had more time, but when the Taliban quickly captured Kabul a whole bunch of people wanted out of the country fast and the USA had the one open airport in Kabul.
For reasons I do not understand, the MSM took the failure of evacuating their friends they made while in Afghanistan, the interpreters, etc. ahead of the Taliban’s rapid advance personally, like Biden personally peed in their corn flakes and then kicked them in the nuts for good measure.
The MSM gave Biden no benefit of the doubt about responding to something unexpected on a tight timeline.
Starfish (she/her)
@bluefoot: Someone mentioned a Nazi rally in their town. I told them to write it up for It’s Going Down, and they balked at the idea of working with an anarchist/antifascist organization.
TBone
@Chris Johnson: I wonder if anyone in the DNI is setting bear traps. No time like the🎁
jonas
Yeah, I don’t see him really being a factor in 2028. If the world hasn’t completely imploded, it will be Vance as the torchbearer and Trump will shuffle off into the sunset if he hasn’t shuffled off the mortal coil entirely by then, inshallah.
Soprano2
I don’t know either, my experience was that this was the hardest concept to get through to people. To a certain extent we all think the things we fervently believe are facts, even if they aren’t. It’s a hard thing to resist.
Michael Bersin
@catclub:
“…What is Miller nominated for?”
Reichsführer-SS.
TBone
@RevRick: it didn’t paywall me
https://www.inquirer.com/opinion/commentary/trump-cabinet-gaetz-rfk-gabbard-20241117.html
jonas
@gene108: I don’t think Biden was misled about how shaky things were. Things were already falling apart well before the withdrawal deadline. But he had a choice: either reinvade Afghanistan with thousands of American troops to stop the government from collapsing and face the full fury of the Taliban (and dozens or hundreds of dead soldiers or Marines), or just get the hell out as quickly as possible.
lowtechcyclist
@satby:
Thanks for sharing.
How the devil does one defend or counteract against that?
Especially when it happens in the last few weeks of the campaign. By the time the Harris campaign took the fake Harris ads’ funders to court and got an injunction, the damage would have been done.
Elizabelle
@kindness: I think so too. And we need not give them our attention, eyeballs, clicks, or subscription money going forward. Fuck ’em.
Doug R
@Peale:
With apologies to Mr Rock, EVERYBODY HATES VIVEK.
TBone
@satby: thank you. That is 🎯
TBone
@bluefoot: one proven method:
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2021/01/far-right-nazis-proud-boys-humor-laughtivism.html
Put on your clownshoes!
It has worked in the past to defuse the propensity to violence.
It disrupts them.
UncleEbeneezer
@satby:
And I’d wager big money (if I had it) that they did/are doing the same thing with Gaza. That’s what it sure looked like to me, all this past year.
Doug R
@sab:
Although those terrible racist protests in Britain stopped when more counter protestors showed up.
Raven
I don’t know if it’s capitulation but I’m down at the beach fishing!
RevRick
@TBone: Thank you. I am incompetent at doing links
K-Mo
@K-Mo
Whoops I see @New Deal democrat already made this point.
:
TBone
@satby: I wish everyone here would take 5 or 10 to READ this.
p.a.
Looking abroad, German gvt collapsed day after tRump’s win. Elections now in Feb.
https://youtu.be/_ywqDbHiMrs?si=2ZjyTLUgW61nG98y
TBone
@RevRick: I enjoy all of your commentary and like to assist in any way I can.
TBone
@Michael Bersin: 👍😤
frosty
@TBone: Look on the bright side (which isn’t 4:30 in December!). At least when we’re having arguments about Daylight Savings we aren’t citing “the immutable law of God” any more!
Doug R
@PIGL:
It fits with the corollary “Only American bombs are bad™ “
narya
@bluefoot: Okay, this stuck with me. My grandfather–an actual anarchist, btw–said, when the Nazis were marching in Skokie, that one could ignore them or kill them. I’ve thought a lot about that over the decades–he was not a violent man and was not advocating violence–and I think that if there is a way to document what they are doing and just not engage, that might be a strategy. They WANT to start shit; deny them. But DO document (license plate numbers, any other identifying info). If there is a trustworthy entity (e.g., if in a blue state, the governor, for example, or, apparently, in Columbus, the cops) they could be notified. Or publish the info in any space that will take the info. I could be very wrong here; I’m thinking about (a) denying them oxygen, (b) avoiding open conflict if that is dangerous, (c) identifying the Nazis AS Nazis. Especially if we aren’t sure which side the cops are on. But, again, I may be wrong.
TBone
@Raven: not capitulation at all. A necessary skill that works in myriad ways – refreshing exhausted soul, relaxing in nature, exciting at times, plus you can EAT.
bluefoot
@TBone: That helps. It is also in line with a thread the other day about guerrilla art. One can make art to make the white supremacists, etc look ridiculous and therefore less powerful.
The hard part will be when it’s the police or some other government agency rounding up people who fail the paper bag test. Or something like EO 9066 where our assets and properties are seized and we’re taken to camps.
And as we’ve seen by the number of Democrats who stayed home this election, despite the stakes, too many people will be bystanders and let others take the consequences for them.
TBone
@TBone: de-escalation works.
jonas
@New Deal democrat: Agreed. The Afghanistan withdrawal hysteria was a MSM thing. I don’t think it moved the needle that much overall. It was inflation.
TBone
@frosty: aaaarrrgghhh! 😆
eemom
Drove into DC today for the first time since the election. Depressing as fuck.
Also my 2020 bumper sticker, now in the back seat, of Joe in shades driving a convertible, caption: “Get in! We’re taking back America!”
It is to weep.
catclub
@Jeffro: yeah. great poem
narya
@TBone: @bluefoot: Okay, you are both providing a tactic I neglected: mocking. They haaaaate it.
jonas
@Soprano2: Very true.
TBone
@bluefoot: it is for the brave and courageous who do not have any fucks left to give.
I fit right in. Me and Grittney!
https://www.phillyvoice.com/gritty-grittney-riot-rogers-london-philadelphia-flyers-mascot-2020-election-trump/
🎶📣😎
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=sVzvRsl4rEM
TBone
@narya: 🎯❤️
catclub
The heck we aren’t! If the King James English is good enough for Jesus its good enough for me. Also Greenwich Mean Time.
bluefoot
@sab: Re BLM stopping when things got violent: Where I pause right now is that the government is what promises to become violent against out-groups….and that definition of out-groups is ever-expanding. What then?
@Doug R: Yeah, exactly. How do we encourage collective action? It can make things more volatile, but also can increase chances of success.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@Princess: Sure, racism is part of it. Misogyny a good bit as well. I don’t think we talk enough about just pure resentment of especially blue collar white people against the set of college educated who are doing well in this economy. They always thought they were better than the egg heads, and now the egg heads have everything they feel like they deserve.
White evangelical Christians who want to force our secular nation to be explicitly Christian (by their definition) are the biggest part of the Trump coalition, though.
Quinerly
@Raven:
Good for you! Enjoy!!!
I capituated yesterday under my electric blanket looking at restaurant menus and histories of the wineries in the areas for my Southern AZ trip. Nogales, Hereford, Bisbee, Elgin, Sonoita, Tubac, Green Valley, Patagonia, and Tucson.
I love to look at detailed road atlas with the covers piled on. Planning is almost as fun as going.
Have a great week, Raven!
frosty
@TBone: That was really good, thanks! As an aside, I’m pleased that I don’t have ALL of the markers of the old rebel! Yet.
Karen
Trump announced he will declare martial law on his first day in office. What are we going to do about it? https://www.axios.com/2024/11/18/trump-mass-deportations-military-national-emergency
H.E.Wolf
@narya:
30 years or so ago, one town in the Midwest – and it may have been Skokie – held a “scrub-in” after a Nazi rally, and washed the steps of the city hall where the rally had taken place. Complete repudiation, without violence or in-your-face activity (thus taking the wind out of the Nazi’s sails).
In 2007, a KKK rally was completely overset by a group of clowns. http://sojo.net/blogs/2012/10/01/ku-klux-clowns
narya
@H.E.Wolf: Yes, thank you, exactly what I’m thinking about.
TBone
@frosty: 💙
I just peed my pants for the first time ever because of a violent cough the other day 😆😭 Serves me right for smoking weed, I guess…
JML
@Soprano2: Unfortunately we’re asking people to change beliefs, which as anyone who likes Kevin Smith movies knows is much more complicated. And while Dogma may not have aged well in some ways, in others they got it very much right. It’s very difficult and complicated to change someone’s beliefs, even when it seems like all you’re asking them to do is accept facts. If the facts don’t align with the worldview they have, people have so much trouble believing that they are indeed factual.
Back in my political consulting days, I used to tell people that if you were trying to persuade someone using facts and figures and their response was “I don’t believe that’s true” then you’ve lost them. And I still struggle with this, because things like stats matter to me, and I’ve changed my mind on things that i was convinced were true based on stats and analysis, so it’s harder for me when people refuse to be convinced when the numbers might be very very clear.
But this plays into the “vibes” aspect on the economy in the last election. There were a lot of people who are probably doing “ok”, but finances aren’t easy for them. And they’re hearing from one side the economy is awful and everything is terrible and inflation is ruining their lives, and the other side is telling them that things are going in the right direction and the economy is great. If they’re numbers people, they might be persuaded that actually the economy is pretty good and things are going well. But if they’re vibes people they see the cost of their grocery bill and go “fucking hell, everything is so expensive!” even if they’re actually doing ok.
It’s funny, because Democrats for decades have been called the touchy-feely party in an insulting and sneering fashion, but we might need to work more on that touchy-feely vibe for how we talk about what we’ve done and what we’re going to do in order to shift people’s beliefs about things when persuading them to vote for us.
Raven
@Quinerly: Thanks!!
Quinerly
@Soprano2:
I got mine in Sept. I have actually been getting one every 6 months. (Well, a booster in March). Walgreens hasn’t stopped me.
In Sept, I think the new one had just come out. I got it the second day Walgreens was offering it. They gave me no info on when to get a booster.
Did you ask about your booster down the road? I probably won’t hang around now but if you see this or if anyone else has asked, maybe add to comments here. I will circle back around tonight.
Thanks.
(Sept was the only reaction I have had from any of them. Including the first one in March, 2021. I was kinda sick for 2 days in Sept. Good luck with everything with yours.)
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@Soprano2:
The GOP has wanted to kill PBS and NPR for years. They may finally get their chance. So you are right. You may not ever get the option.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@AWOL: Yet somehow you missed the important point that the number one indicator of how someone voted was where they got their news. People who get their news from right wing channels and social media voted for Trump overwhelmingly. The people who got it from the MSM didn’t. There is NO EVIDENCE that the MSM is causing Trumpism. Yet you people keep beating the wrong dead horse.
RaflW
Can’t read the WaPo about Tammy Baldwin. I’m going with Dan Shafer’s take at Recombobulation Area (astute MKE/WI based politics blog): She didn’t run a ‘handled’, poll-tested campaign. She was very much herself and voters, at least at that level of contact and granularity respond to authenticity. I’ve literally chatted with her personally, it’s not that hard to be in spaces with her when she campaigns.
This is not to say Harris or, especially Walz, are that ‘handled’. I know VP debates don’t swing elections, and I know Tim said debates make him nervous anyway, but as a Minnesotan, watching that couple of somewhat cringy hours, I could tell Tim was doin’ his darndest to follow the campaign’s coaching and messaging. It didn’t work. He shouda been the guy we saw on TV and even sometimes ad libbing on the stump.
Anyhoo, authenticity isn’t a magic bean that gets us all the elections. But we as a progressive movement have to do what we can to get the DNC to jettison damn near all the consultants and poll-tested pablum hawkers.
BTW, that Shafer link is a really good read. Long but informative analysis.
Geminid
This is the first full week that Trump’s Cabinet nominations are being debated, and it looks like things are heating up on the Gaetz front. According to this morning’s Politico Playbook, attorney Joe Leppard will mske multiple media appearances today.
Leppard represents two women who have testified on Gaetz’s activities to a federal grand jury and to the House Ethics Committee. He and attorney John Clune, who represents another woman involved in the investigations, are pressing for release of the Ethics Committee report on Gaetz.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@Soprano2: Yes, and that attitude gets enabled by the constant drumbeat of leftists attacking the MSM. We may hate their columnists, but we need their reporters.
ARoomWithAMoose
@satby: We’ve known about the Cambridge Analytica database for microtargeting FB accounts since 2017. That didn’t go away. Did anybody in our expensive tower of campaign/media consultants spend any mental cycles on working out some sort of response to that in the last 8 years?
Another Scott
@bluefoot: I would say the best response is to show up and take lots and lots of pictures and lots and lots of videos. Bear witness.
Hang in there.
Best wishes,
Scott.
Quinerly
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony:
THIS X 1000.
tobie
@p.a.: It was pretty clear that the ruling coalition in Germany would collapse and not tied to the US election. Who will win the next election is very much up in the air. It’s possible that Alternative for Germany (rightwing fascists) and the Union Sarah Wagenknecht (leftwing tankies) will win. The stakes of the election there are as great as they were here.
Quinerly
@Geminid:
That was a good Politico piece.
Quinerly
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony:
THIS X 10,000
Another Scott
@jonas: +1, with the caveat changing “as quickly as possible” to “by the final agreed deadline”.
DJT intentionally tied Biden’s hands, of course.
Biden White House 12 page summary (from April 2023).
Best wishes,
Scott.
Soprano2
@Quinerly: No, I didn’t ask about a booster or when it might be available. I think they probably don’t know, and at this point I think no one knows. I’m a little concerned there won’t be any more Covid booster shots for awhile.
Soprano2
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony: I’m still listening to some of their podcasts, but I decided listening to so much news every day was not good for my mental health right now, especially when they do so much normalizing and sanewashing of what TCFG is doing. I just don’t have the tolerance for it right now.
p.a.
@tobie: I never said there was a connection, just noted the time.
Sure Lurkalot
@AM in NC: Here’s a list of some of Trump’s promises:
https://meidasnews.com/video/trumps-93-campaign-promises
Geminid
@Quinerly: I liked the part at the end, where the reporters quoted an unnamed Republican Senator:
bluefoot
@Another Scott: Honestly, I’m not sure bearing witness does much good if people don’t/won’t act. For instance: TCFG has already said he plan on using executive orders and the military to round up and deport “immigrants”. Like Chet and others here, I believe that will be anybody not obviously white. That’s his plan for Jan 21st. And even in my blue town in a blue state, it doesn’t take more than a couple of people with firearms to act like militias under the color of law, semi-officially. It’s not like I haven’t been the victim of racial violence and discrimination in recent history here.
Maybe a better question is: What can we do NOW before TCFG is sworn in to prevent/slow this?
Gloria DryGarden
@Quinerly: will you request my email from watergirl? I
said this the other day, but not sure you saw it. I’d like to follow up on possibly coming through your area, for a visit, or tea at least.
I need to get my next Covid booster. I’ve had Covid twice, and I’d really rather stay safer. It does put me in bed for a day…But the work with little kids means I get lots of exposure, to every virus going through town.
zhena gogolia
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony: The MSM depresses our turnout.
AM in NC
@TBone: HA! That’s me and “every woman of a certain age who has given birth” I know. Everybody crosses their legs when they sneeze.
Quinerly
@Gloria DryGarden:
Would be wonderful. I think you think I am in Taos, though. I’m outside of Santa Fe. Near the village of Lamy.
Would love to meet you sometime. Thanks for reaching out. Take care.
Quinerly
@Geminid: 😎
Quinerly
@Soprano2:
Thanks. I did circle back. Much appreciated.
Gloria DryGarden
@Quinerly: I’ve been down that aways before. Both to Santa Fe, and to a town s of Taos. It’s been a few years. I’ll look for an email
Another Scott
@JML:
I feel your pain.
“Facts are stupid things.” – W, supposedly.
“You can’t reason someone out of something they didn’t reason themselves into.” – Anon.
“The first principle is that you must not fool yourself – and you are the easiest person to fool.” – R. Feynman
Etc.
I’m with you, but I know I have blind spots, too.
That Socrates guy was pretty clever, asking questions and making students think up their own answers and discuss the implications. I get the impression that Nelle does her variation on that. Maybe we all need to do more of that…
Best wishes,
Scott.
Jinchi
I’m sorry but the takeaway that Harris lost because of Afghanistan has to be the stupidest one yet. No one outside the media bubble was thinking about Afghanistan this election.
Although it definitely would have been an issue if we’d stayed
Aurona
First it was Post and everyone was excited.
Second was Threads because it was another white guy billionaire’s site from his fragrant facebook remains.
Third was Blue Sky or BS and they all flocked there for a brief time.
Reading comments and commentators there now, I am incredibly unimpressed. But everyone enjoy your time there.
Too white. Tooooo….(haha) Joe & Mika; even if they’re not there, their spirit is there.
Since January 2023 I’m with Spoutible. More organic. Safeguards against the creepies getting in and fooking with our timelines. Black owner. No buzzy board of directors. Sorry I’m being impolitic here, but I’ve been a fan of Cole’s site if not an often-poster since the early oughts and I’d hate to not see it anymore. But I’m not going to another white escape pod. However, enjoy your time there! 🐋
the pollyanna from hell
FOWMAT
Part I. Foundations of Wisdom
I am a mystic philosopher. That means I am more curious about foundations of thought instead of foundations of knowledge, and more curious about foundations of wisdom instead of foundations of ethics.
Just for fun I play with my Foursquare Totemic Theory of Thinking. In reverse order I mention the First Honorable Omission from the list: the world of literal meaning. These meanings are carried in covert metaphors. The form of metaphor is invisible when it is working best. It obtrudes itself when it fails.
The Fourth Totem is metaphor, which I define as parallel reasoning. It runs from totem at the origin to explanatory metaphor at the extension. “Totem” is the word that Wetzal suggested to replace “sign-post metaphor.” It explains nothing, merely points at something that may be of interest.
Totem Three is unity. Could just as well be entity or duality.
The Second Totem is illumination. Experience or insight. Which begins as a lie. Because the first illumination comes before the struggle to reach for truth, and struggle itself requires creative narrative to meet the momentary need, no matter what was truth before. Illumination may be effective, rewarding, beautiful, even true if we’re lucky.
The First Totem is mystery. The seniority of mystery over illumination explains why the latter begins as a lie.
Wisdom is a better way to live. Wisdom is effective action which is also beautiful. Healthy and effective are mutually defining. To the perception of health aspiring human spirits, love and compassion are beautiful.
Some recent philosophers think the foundation of ethics is in its systematic development. I look for wisdom about fairness between free spirits to be only partly rationalized during its condensation into a summary. The esthetic dimension of wisdom might be eliminated from the summary, but why?
Goodness is invoked as a senior totem in the phrase “better way to live,” but in the subsequent definition it becomes derivative from “effective” and “beautiful.” So I’m saying that the goodness of a good result has an esthetic dimension just like wisdom. It is tempting to suppose that a good result is described in a trouble-shooting or critical-path or minimax analysis, but there are alway arbitrary choices unresolved by logic.
Illumination by esthetic intuition is a wilful lie. It takes a lot of indifference and self-control to receive experience without resistence or interpretation or exploitation. And it takes a lot of passionate lying to pass through objectivity into commitment.
The things we do not know outnumber the things that we do know by a ratio of infinity to one.
Illumination begins as a commitment to prevarication. A commitment to embrace the mystery despite the impossibility of that task. A commitment to defy the mystery despite the impossibility of that task.
Illumination is an active intervention often disguised as passive. It resolves some of the arbitrary choices, not necessarily with the greatest wisdom. Military glory and thriving of the tribe are good and pleasing, but people with a range of good results to compare often find that wisdom is more complicated than that.
Glory, thriving, love, and compassion are lies that you can try to make real. You will put the most effort into those that seem most effective and beautiful. The simplicity that naturally arises is not the same as the simplification that human language imposes. And spiritual qualities are often first observed in ceremony as non-verbal metaphors, so that natural arising is already a process of passionate prevarication.
Thriving is spiritual because you don’t know what your body is. Most especially you don’t know what your tribe is. Unity is almost as bad as mystery for throwing a wrench into the works.
It’s hard to talk about human mobilization of baseless fantasy to construct the world of literal meaning, because deconstructing the object language renders incoherent the meta-language, which is the same language. Cognition in higher primates shows itself as non-verbal metaphor marked by ceremonial quotation marks. A slow-motion dance of threat and defiance marks itself as only symbolic: language not required.
Esthetics is a structural component of cognition just as of wisdom because metaphor is a poetic art form with an esthetic dimension. Depression interferes with cognition because ugly metaphors seem less real and true. If the luck brings us break-through along with break-down we may see reality in wholesale reconstruction. And to really understand the power and freedom of the waking dream I should find myself lost and sinking on a lee shore, consigning every anchor and corner-stone of cognition to the jettison. (Gloria’s terrifying journey to cognition and wisdom both.)
It is naive to focus on how we know what we know. What burns down the world is what we cannot know, yet must act upon with all the passion we can muster.
Another Scott
@bluefoot: DJT says lots of things, mainly in the hopes of getting others to obey in advance.
While this Lawfare article points out there are problems with actual implementation (lawyers, after all, are trained to argue any side of any issue), there is a strong principle in the armed forces that illegal orders must not be obeyed.
Maybe look into an Indivisible group in your area? There are folks out there who are thinking about these issues.
Hang in there.
Best wishes,
Scott.
the pollyanna from hell
@the pollyanna from hell:
Part II. Meta-Analytic Topography
Having briefly introduced illumination’s unfortunate genesis in fable and fantasy, we could spend one or two hundred pages on the proofs and mechanics of a thorough deconstruction, filling in the mysterious gaps of my reasoning. Instead let us grant that falsehood and speculation can be assembled into a structure of hypotheticals that supports commerce with truth and congress with guiding spirits.
The liberation of scientific truth from the caverns of mystery is well understood. But the conception of the ideal truth of wisdom sooner or later gets into trouble.
For example, it is ideally true that a humanity that preserves a habitable planet is more beautiful and effective than one who trashes it. Yet my neighbor Lem disagreed, insisting that a young Earth would also be very short-lived, and therefore un-needful of preservation. I tried a brief sermon encoded with god-language to suggest a path toward illumination. I suppose he was willing to resort to violence to preserve his illusions, because he committed suicide sometime later. Unless death is an illumination and not merely a mystery.
Ideal truth is something we can imagine, but never entirely know, because the esthetic component is perceived by feeling instead of knowing. The foundation of knowledge is observed thru the lens of a simple analytic topology as long as you don’t go so deep as the roots of language and cognition. Even in that case observing the roots of wisdom requires the lens of a meta-analytic topology whose nodes include objects from esthetic, linguistic, and cognitive realms, because all the deconstruction of illumination that I have collected is used by warring factions to vitiate each-other’s vision of wisdom and ideal truth. If any humans in the topology act as free spirits instead of physical objects that also could force a meta-topology.
Examples of simple analytic topologies are listed above as trouble-shoot, critical path, and minimax. A meta-analytic topology is more like that thing called philosophy.
Yes, Gloria, I can hear your complaint even before you say a word. Too much jargon! A topology is exactly that mind map you called on when you were struggling with the unfamiliar “contradictions sufficiently heightened.” Of course you can lay it out graphically. And I might think of it as a list of mapping functions. The only difference is that it reminds me to keep track of distortions and transformations.
A meta-trouble-shoot identifies the disasters, catastrophes, and singularities of a meta-topology. For example, when a snarling mass of hydrophobic jackals, definitely not vitriolic, divides into two warring factions, I can see that the cognitive power train is losing its grip on the motivating sprocket. The compassionating economy is reaching for the same spike on the sprocket as the boosterizing economy, and the name of the contentious spike is “economy.” If I nominate another spike, the department chair calls this “make a distinction,” we could have economyC and economyB. Horribly inconvenient, but at least jackals might stop accusing each other of bad faith and vile intentions.
Part of our problem is that some distinctions are very hard to make. Yarrow talked about branding. My philosopher’s privilege is to demand that branding may be discovered to have always been the art and science of making impossible distinctions. I know it’s possible because editorial cartoons do it all the time.
Some folks have noted that exit polls elicit lies about the economy because more salient reasons are less acceptable. I would go further. Ideology follows the means of production. Even when we do honestly talk about the economy, we lie to ourselves and each other, because the invisible force fields of cultural distortion are supported by unconscious deceptions. They pop up where you least expect. I wouldn’t be surprised if ‘Cinderella’ were some kind of fairytale about means of production. I mean, fairy god-mother? Come on. What kind of production is that?
Those exit polls are further undercut by my observations in Gore, Chattooga on Sunday before election day. The conversations I heard were all about abortion. And that, of course, is another lie in its own way.
Let’s expand the problem space, add a few nodes so we can follow the money. The filthy rich instigator who pays for the anti-abortion campaign does not see yos path to power as marching through negotiated compromise with peaceful resolution. The designed product in this means of production is conflict. And the no-compromise forced-birth activist takes residence in the house of lies by failing to perceive the pull of money on yos own ideology.
Boosterism is a minor means of production, but easy to apply. Compassion is a major means of production, but hard (in this culture) and complex. Luckily we are many. We are legion. Our scouts have gone ahead to find out the way forward. To trace out the many divergent and cooperative pathways into the future.
I found out pollyannish is not always foolish when I studied vicious cycles. I worked out or was taught to always examine the workings of the vicious ratchet, looking for opportunity to find or build a parallel virtuous circle, and reversible ratchet. I have found out twice before that the low point of “history is the high point of jackals. Lead on.
Stillflame smacked into a vicious cycle and spent ten years as a self-identified psychpath. “Ender’s Game was a good book, but I am more like Peter.”
With invasion coming he dropped out of school and protested 24/7 in a camp at the center of campus. He came to me and said, “You did something to me. You made me feel this idealism.”
I didn’t think of it at the time, but could have answered the implied question by saying, “I lied to you by omitting the standard account of ethics as a set of rules, in order to more effectively lie to you by omitting the standard account of psychopathy as a kind of damnation.”
I called him on Friday and said, “You know my thesis about esthetics of wisdom. Is it possible that what I did back then was to let you see through my eyes the beauty of love and compassion?”
Stillflame replied, “In accord with the conventions of our multi-user dungeon [prototype] I looked for stories to incorporate into my character. The two I selected were: one, that I observed, of [the pollyanna from hell] observing life go by, watching in a spirit of hilarity and joy, and story two, that I heard, of the monk observing life go by, watching in a spirit of hilarity and joy.”
If there was one monk devotee of the Holy Order of Hilarity there must have been a hundred. For example:
The monk asked Joshu, “Has a dog the Buddha-nature, or no?”
Joshu answered, “No!”
“No!”
“No!” “No!” “No!” “No!” “No!” “No!” “No!” “No!” “No!”
[Exuent Joshu, wagging for joy, chasing monk.]
[Monk stands much later in another place, bereft, surrounded by ruins of his thesis, filled with hilarity and joy.]
O.K., I suppose that must be very silly, but I have altered the original, and this version is not accurate.
End FOWMAT
Geminid
@Jinchi: Afghanistan definitely would have been an issue if we had stayed. Our troops would have been mortar and missile magnets, and Putin would have kept the missiles and mortar shells flowing to willing proxies. It would have gotten worse once he invaded Ukraine six months later.
prostratedragon
@H.E.Wolf: Too good!🤣 An example to keep in mind.
PJ
@Jinchi: The argument is that pulling out of Afghanistan (and denying them the Forever War they craved) turned the press permanently against Biden. Never again would they report positively about him (not that they were ever pro-Biden) or his accomplishments, it would be “inflation/recession/BidenOld” for the rest of his term. That relentless negative press translated into unfavorability ratings for Biden, which, as his Vice President, transferred to Harris (despite the fact that the US had the best economy in the world and overall wealth of the working class had risen for the first time in years).
Gloria DryGarden
@ARoomWithAMoose: great question
Gloria DryGarden
@the pollyanna from hell: you seem to have unusual pronouns in here, like yos. Will you pls comment w a quick guide to your alternate pronouns?
Gloria DryGarden
@Aurona: there’s a link for blacks, on blue sky, which I assume is lik3 black twitter. A friend showed me a screen shot. Meanwhile, I’ll look into spoutible. I’m very used to Facebook, (and spread too thin already), but it’s gotten very sparse there anyway.
Gloria DryGarden
@rusty: last week, you offered to pray for folks, wasn’t that you?
Would you add me to your prayers/ prayer list ?
merci
the pollyanna from hell
@Gloria DryGarden: yo / yo / yos just non-binary
Kathleen
@TBone: WH Response:
White House condemns ‘sickening’ Nazi march
Will Trump supporters don hospital gowns and stick thermometers in their mouths in protest?
Kathleen
@Baud: I remember accolades for his student loan forgiveness…oh, wait. By then they had moved on to Gaza. Never mind.
Kathleen
@sab: I think Spectrum does a good job. They seem to be focused on facts and take their jobs seriously. I think I could watch them without without wanting to destroy my TV or alarm neighbors with my screams.
the pollyanna from hell
@the pollyanna from hell:
Part II title should be topology, not topography
Miss Bianca
@PJ: I’m with you on this one. I definitely thought Afghanistan was when the press turned on Biden and they kept up the constant drip-drip-drip of Nattering Nabobbing Negativism ever and always after that. And I maintain that that definitely had an effect on the normies whether they regularly consumed MSM or not.
TerryC
@Princess: I’ve got 2,740 FB friends and anyone who supports Trump has long ago learned to keep quiet or I have blocked them. Only people who’ve supported him so far since the election are my HS girlfriend and her sister-in-law. They are blocked.
And let me share that I do not block out of anger. I block because of the pain I feel when someone I care about is so intentionally misled and accepting of being so. It hurts too much.
superdestroyer
The Biden economics advisors put employment over inflation while failing to understand that everyone gets to experience inflation while only a small part of the voters get to experience increased unemployment.
And for years now, the issue is not there are no jobs available but that the open jobs to not pay enough.