… And even some of their most social-media-engaged colleagues are losing all sympathy:
Yep. Biden, wanting to Uphold the Norms, agreed to keep on a Trump-appointed prosecutor who was probing his son. Created a special counsel to probe his own post-VP document retention. Kept on Durham so he could finish a Trump-ordered probe of 2016.
What did he get? Nothing. So here he goes.— Dave Weigel (@daveweigel.bsky.social) December 1, 2024 at 7:45 PM
Trump will never have to pardon Jared for his two billion dollar Saudi deal since it was never investigated.
— Schooley (@schooley.bsky.social) December 2, 2024 at 3:28 PM
A norm that restrains only one side isn't a norm at all–it's a trap.
— Garrett Epps (@garrettepps.bsky.social) December 2, 2024 at 12:03 AM
Another reason for their Big Sad:
“Leaving X because you don’t like Elon is the kind of purity politics that landed Democrats in this mess to begin with.”
— Michael Kruse (@michaelkruse.bsky.social) December 1, 2024 at 10:13 AM
As far as I can tell they think the broad public is virulently ignorant, hateful, & bigoted, & engaging with that is how you mark yourself as Objective & Open-Minded. X brings the Cletus Safari to them, & they love that
— Chatham Harrison is tending his garden (@chathamharrison.bsky.social) December 1, 2024 at 11:12 AM
Reminder, from a BlueSky commentor who ‘has requested their posts not be displayed on external sites’…
War for Ukraine Day 1,013: Scholz Visits Ukraine
Ramalama
Big media in disarray.
plus Michelle Wolf is doing the Lord’s work.
PS feeling very firsty
Jay
One of the funniest things that Our Media Betters hasn’t noticed is the recent flood of Maggots flooding to BlueSky because the only people left on the Dead Bird Site are Maggots, and it’s no fun if you can’t “Own the Libs”,
But BlueSky lets you block them in your comments and feeds.
There have been a few whingy articles about BlueSky being a bubble, but when I see those, I just flood the comments with Maggot idiocy and trash them for not engaging,………
Ramalama
@Jay: bubble shmubble . Think of the moves to Bluesky et al as choosing a neighborhood you want to live in where the property values are high . I say this as someone who has been actively teasing one asshat neighbor by leaving my no functioning Subaru in the driveway collecting pine needles. And from years of painting trim on the house with Oops paint. Our house can’t be seen by the dirt road we live on, so it’s mostly just him who can see that I let the grass get a little high. Maybe I don’t do anything about the leaves from fall until spring. Wow. I am a hillbilly.
PS I mean I am in favor of bubbles.
Ramalama
OH and yesterday walking my dog, met another person with dog who very politely asked me about the differences between Canada and the US and I completely FORGOT America had elected Hitler. Bubble 1, Ramalama 0.
Baud
They’re acting like slaveholders who have lost control of their runaway slaves.
Gretchen
Washington Post had 6 articles and 6 opinion pieces about the pardon on the front page yesterday, mostly handwringing about how Biden shouldn’t have made this “controversial” ( their word) move. No mention of Kash Patel publishing the enemies list of people he plans to use the FBI to go after. Apparently that’s not controversial. That’s the last straw for my subscription. They’re too smelly to wrap day- old fish in at this point.
Jay
@Ramalama:
I come here, and comment here, because it is one of the few places on the Web, where one can read most of the comments.
TBone
Heather Cox Richardson is a reliable source when I’m trying to keep an even keel, trying to stay level headed and not succumb to outrage fatigue. She gets to the heart of the matters at hand without resorting to the usual journalistic malpractice, and allows me to stay current without losing a sense of proportion.
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/december-2-2024
In other words, a national treasure.
Nukular Biskits
@Jay:
I come here because Baud said pants were optional.
TBone
‘The Bottom Man’ is a short parable that sings to me. May be an enjoyable, short read for you too. But it is not about anatomy, or pants. It is about navigation and more.
https://www.robertleefulghum.com/the-bottom-man/
Jay
@Nukular Biskits:
On the web, as Covid and wfh proved, pants are always optional,
Not introducing me to your pets on Zoom is just bad manners.
Gretchen
@TBone: Thank you for that link. It’s maddening that the media ( with the notable exceptions of Rachel Maddow and Lawrence O’Donnell) connect Biden’s change of position on pardons with Patels nomination and plan to torment Hunter.
TBone
@Gretchen: it’s the old “clicks and eyeballs” outrage trap. Again and again, they set the trap so they can sell advertising. A self-fulfilling prophecy for dollars, no better than the grifting televangelists at whose feet they studied.
Gretchen
Someone suggested that the Mar a Lago Thanksgiving dinner was a loyalty test. Are you willing to eat a dinner that would shame a turnpike truck stop? Same with these nominations. They feel like a fraternity hazing. Are you willing to sing the frat song in your underwear in front of the sorority? Will you eat hot wings and vodka until you throw up or pass out? Are you willing to approve Pete Hegseth and Kash Patel? How much humiliation will you swallow to be allowed to stay in the Trump club?
Gretchen
@Gretchen: don’t connect the pardon with the Kash Patel threat to Hunter.
p.a.
Have been off twiXter for several years, I guess I might consider Bluesky. Is Charles (LGF) Johnson there? He’s the one person I remember as worth checking out.
TBone
@Gretchen: why not? Am confused by your statement. Richardson’s letter today kinda makes that connection…the FBI may simply fabricate “evidence,” etc. based upon the popularity of the latest right-wing conspiracy theories…
Chris T.
@TBone: I think Gretchen is trying to fix a missing “don’t” in her initial comment.
TBone
@Gretchen: during Donold’s court appearances, we got a taste. Remember Joe fucking Piscopo showed up? And the Hell’s Angels dude? I named it the Flaming Clown Show.
TBone
@Chris T.: thank you!
Chris T.
@Gretchen:
That’s precisely what it was. You make someone eat shit (specifically your shit), and if they do it, you own them. Do it again and again and pretty soon they’ve convinced themselves that your shit is special food. If they won’t do it, you get rid of them because they won’t submit to you.
We’ve seen it over and over again: remember Romney? Then Really Fucking Kooky Jr on the plane, and now this.
Gretchen
@Chris T.: that’s right. I think Biden was responding to the new threat of Patel and his enemies list, while the media is trying to hold him to his promise not to pardon when that threat hadn’t happened yet.
Splitting Image
@p.a.:
Yes. Charles Johnson is on Bluesky now. A few other Little Green Footballs commenters are there as well.
https://bsky.app/profile/charles.littlegreenfootballs.com
WereBear
Short answer? Frat bros never grow up.
They just inherit stuff to ruin.
Princess
@Gretchen: I think that’s right. It’s a hazing. And everyone, from the media to the Republicans, to the Prime Minister of Canada (and I don’t blame him — going to Maralago was smart), to even some Democrats are rushing to comply in advance.
Rusty
@TBone: Heather Cox Richardson, and Josh Marshall have become the two voices of rationality I can follow in a sea of hot takes and badly considered ideas. The press really is a mess, we need them but in current form they are misleading at best and mere propaganda at worst. The last 6 months have stripped the “gatekeepers” of all their authority, showing them to be vain, illinformed and biased. Their moral structure doesn’t match ours.
Baud
@Rusty:
I’m proud to have fought the people who wanted to burn it all down. But the arsonists have won, and I accept that. Time to rebuild from scratch, and that includes the media apparatus.
p.a.
Socially & judicially we know tRump & the admin is gonna tRump, and that’s bad, but will the Big Money Boyz have any braking effect on the economic stupidity of tariffs and something I haven’t heard as much about as expected: the federal debt ceiling & US gvt default. This comes due 1/1/25, conveniently just barely within the timeframe of Dem’s still being at the table.
BretH
@TBone: Bookmarked so I can check out his other offerings, thanks!!!!
Rusty
@Baud: I’ve always felt a bit out of step with a lot of the US, but not alienated from it. I started seminary at night last spring, and have been reading and thinking deeply about, among other things, our dominant culture with its oppression, money obsession, white supremacy, misogyny, bigotry and more. Reading voices from the margins of society has been transformational, sharply clarifying ideas and feelings i have always carried. The entire ethical structure and priorities are deeply skewed. I’m not a butn it down kind of person, when that happens the people at the margins get it even worse, but we need major reform.
Jay
@p.a.:
That would be a no.
satby
@Gretchen And the timing of the pardon was probably because Biden left for Africa fairly immediately after. In case of disaster, he didn’t want any chance that circumstances would throw his son to the wolves. The media intentionally ignores what our actual President is doing to hang breathlessly onto every stray outrage the not actually president yet is doing.
Baud
@Rusty:
Good for you.
And I know what you mean.
Gloria DryGarden
@TBone: thank you for this trip to canyon lands; I love it so much there.
I’ve seen small floods there, heard the waters approach. I’ve hiked down a trail I had thought was where water used to go, and realized, when the whole place turned into tiny waterfalls at every lip along the cliff edges, that I had been hiking down a steep dry waterfall.
dry, beautiful, precarious, dangerous magic.
incredible metaphor.
i wish I knew how I might find higher ground.
and I’ve thought about reading Montaigne’s essays. Maybe after I figure out some higher ground. I need friends to brainstorm with.
WereBear
@Rusty: One hundred years ago there was this same kind of societal burndown, with the Great War.
Europe almost completely destabilized. The less “evolved” the government was, the more completely it fell.
This might be where our Laboratory of the States concept proves its mettle. We’ve got interlocking circles of government (NY has kept all of them since the “sale” of Manhattan Island) so there’s more to hold up under stress.
Look at the huge discrepancies in death rates between the different states. We ARE two different countries. Maybe we should act like it. We’ve got lawless mobs on our borders, all right!
The big disaster then was Prohibition plus Great Depression. Same fingerprints at the scene!
Gloria DryGarden
@Rusty: your reading list must be amazing. Bless you for the space you’re holding for others, even just by your broadening awareness and compassion.
narya
@Baud: that is the vibe. I’ve deleted my account, so I couldn’t see it myself, but apparently one of yesterday’s refugees was a woman who merely celebrated finishing her PhD and got dogpiled.
@Baud: can we keep Maddow? She was on fire last night.
Baud
@WereBear:
Oddly, events moved a lot faster back then. We’ve been moving at more of a slow burn. My guess is that’s because liberalism is stronger today and has been able to hold off disaster for a longer period of time.
Baud
@narya:
I don’t know if we can keep Maddow. The damage caused by seismic changes is unpredictable.
WereBear
@Baud: What a soothing insight!
And it’s true. I’ve grown up with the feminist movement of the Seventies, and got clear views of the Before Times.
Which sucked. My parents ritually gifted me a bank account in my own name at twelve. It was handy to deposit birthday checks in, but now I know that it was an artifact of the time someone else had to give a woman a bank account.
She didn’t quality on her own. Still true for me at twelve years old.
Betty
@satby: That is so enraging, ignoring Biden and talking about Trump non-stop. The New Yorker piece is the worst take on the pardon I have seen. Just shameful.
WereBear
@Baud: Rachel is independently wealthy and almost lost her partner during the Pandemic. And she has ethics.
If there’s a media anywhere in the US, she should have a home there. Even if we have to build it ourselves.
Gloria DryGarden
@Rusty: where do people get josh Marshall? Is he just on blue sky?
As I read Tbone’s comment about heather, it struck me, that she deserves a Nobel peace prize. But later, because I don’t want her to come under their notice. Her calm sane clarity has been life saving.
Gretchen, do you have this list of patel’s target enemies list? I think we need to see it and discuss. Even though, it’ll make me sick with feelings.
michelle Wolff, I knew I liked her, but this tops it.
narya
@Gloria DryGarden: I subscribe to Talking Points Memo (one of the things I did when unsubscribing elsewhere).
p.a.
Hmmmmm… check this out from Fred Clark (slacktivist)
https://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2024/12/03/take-back-the-web-whats-in-your-rss-feed/
Gloria DryGarden
@TBone: Heather “a national treasure.”
the Nobel peace prize.
K-Mo
Michael Kruse (and the hill staffer he quotes) has a profound misunderstanding of the human experience. I left Twitter years ago because it is a sucky experience and I don’t have an infinite amount of time on earth. Also: social media is skywriting.
If Dem PR people want to use the site to push their message, have at it. If publications want to tease their stories there, feel free. But I’m not a PR professional and no one is paying me to fauxcialize with the X-verse.
Baud
@K-Mo:
Exactly. People scold us because they get off on scolding us. We don’t need to justify our marketplace decisions to them. If they want to interact with us, they know where to find us and how they need to behave to avoid being blocked.
TBone
@WereBear: Rachel is a worthy ‘Bottom Man.’ I wish I’d seen her last night but will look for her today online. I can no longer watch any news at night if I want to sleep, it’s a “sleep hygiene” maneuver because of awful insomnia that comes on in the winter season.
WereBear
But we can stand it. Our opponents cannot.
In fact, I think it was our joy — over helping people! — that lit the fires under their resentment.
How dare we not give this secret to them? When we keep gifting it and they keep throwing it in the trash.
WereBear
@TBone: How’s your Vitamin D? Get a sun box. Really helps.
You spend time on Balloon Juice anyway. Add one to your morning routine.
Gloria DryGarden
@p.a.: i stopped reading the Patheos articles that came on my Facebook feed. Here’s why
As I became aware of OAN and news max, and fox, and my beloved osteopath friend was messaging me her crazy talking points, I searched on Facebook for media bias, fact check. I found a page with a useful graphic.
The horizontal axis was L and R. The vertical axis was accuracy and truthfulness. The WSJ was up high, slightly to the right of center. Oan was way right, and way down, not much accuracy at all. Patheos, was a little down from the top, and a fair ways to the left. The articles made me feel good, and I realized it was telling me what I wanted to hear. I read one again to try to detect the slant, or bias, or subjectivity. It was harder to spot, because it was so much what I wanted to hear.
WereBear
@Gloria DryGarden: I left Patheos when they threw out all the “unofficial” religions, including non-belief.
Fred Clark was the only one I still read.
Elizabelle
@narya: What was Maddow’s show about last night? Hopefully not just about The Worst Pardon in History.
Baud
@Gloria DryGarden:
I don’t mind feel good articles as long as people realize it’s cheerleading rather than reality. We do need some pep.
Gloria DryGarden
@Baud: they get off on it. So we’ve become a kind of psychological pornography for them?
objects of their dopamine hunt, or weird predatory bullying behavior..?
Just trying to name it, frame things.
we do need to reinvent accurate media.
i further propose that every day we come up with some great ideas in the aggregate from all our exchanges here. Frequently the discussion digs down and deepens and leads to more clarity and ideas for what we think might help. Is anyone here giving a brief summary to some democratic legislators and policy makers? There’s a kind of wealth in the conclusions we put together here, pretty often. It might be useful if some of us knew whose ear to bend.
NotMax
@Elizabelle
She had on the writer of the scathing piece on Hegseth in The New Yorker.
narya
@Elizabelle: she did talk about the pardon, but she started with a story from her Ultra podcast about Joe McCarthy hounding people. And she then provided tons of detail about TCFG’s previous pardons and current antics. She was pissed OFF and it was refreshing.
WereBear
I have long felt that we never took stock of what radio meant. People who were lucky to find a roadhouse with a band were suddenly drenched in hundreds of years of music. Yes, plenty of “How Much is that Doggie in the Window,” but also Beethoven’s Ninth.
Come on. Who thinks that has no effect? Teens who grow up with earbuds…
And so, when a flood of other people’s imagination floods into brains (kept stifled, never shrunk) that aren’t used to the imaginations being activated in anything other than a “church setting” and expect nothing new to happen.
And… nothing is not what happened.
sab
@Gretchen: Me personally would have been highly controversed if he hadn’t pardonned his son.
Gloria DryGarden
@WereBear: they did? What religions did they keep? Besides xTian, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist?
i feel so marginalized. Sigh.
i did not know about this.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
He run Talking Points Memo and I like Josh myself because he knows what he doesn’t know.
Elizabelle
@NotMax: Jane Mayer! Love her.
Thanks to you and narya.
And yeah, that Isaac Chotiner New Yorker piece on the Biden pardon is whack. Have grave misgivings about a lot of New Yorker takes, although they publish some good (Jane Mayer) long form journalism too.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Bit of a confession Politico is just about trolling their readers.
p.a.
@Gloria DryGarden: Patheos =/= slacktivist. And I don’t share his religiosity, but we’d be a hell of a lot better off with his than with what passes as Xtianity now. But anyway, the advice abt using RSS might be worth a look.
Gloria DryGarden
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: gracias.
zhena gogolia
@sab: Me too.
NeenerNeener
@Gloria DryGarden: The Patel enemies list is anybody in the Obama administration plus any Republicans who ever said “No” to Trump.
https://www.nj.com/politics/2024/12/who-would-trump-fbi-nominee-kash-patel-target-he-compiled-a-lengthy-list.html
Gloria DryGarden
@p.a.: RSS? Slacktivist? Don’t know these yet.
I’ll look them up, and catch up. Soon.
Someone’s about to wake up &be on here telling me to be independent, and just google it.
Gloria DryGarden
@NeenerNeener: that sounds really comprehensive.
deep breath.
tobie
@Chris T.: @Gretchen:
OMG. Wasn’t this the whole gimmick in Joe Rogan’s Fear Factor? Make people do disgusting things to join the ranks of “winners”? Now Rogan’s stupid game show is the governing strategy of the US.
p.a.
@Gloria DryGarden: Use the link in my comment- #45
YY_Sima Qian
Preview of things to come, if anyone needed a reminder. The tat:
& the tit:
Mind you, this is w/ Biden still in the WH.
The Chinese ban of processed/refined materials is probably a signal to the incoming Trump Administration, that the PRC will leverage its supply chain dominance to impose pain on the US, to retaliate against the anticipated further escalations of the trade & tech. wars by the Trump Administration.
The below NYT article (gift link) has the gist of it:
TBone
@WereBear: thanks, I’ll get off my duff later today and actually order a light box. Everything IRL was conspiring to keep me from spending much time or money on myself this week (cats health, hubby health, plumbing repairs, etc.). Josey Wales of the Nicked Ear must go to vet today because he’s still losing weight and yesterday I found a bleeding, open wound on his side so I don’t know if he licked a scab off or what. It’s ugly but not large. Plumber ghosted me yesterday. UGH.
I thought I had to have a prescription to get a box and just now realized that my impression in that regard was years old.
https://www.health.com/condition/depression/best-light-therapy-boxes
I can just get one for myself online, duh!
rekoob
@Gloria DryGarden: The gist of the article is to consider using a Really Simple Syndication (RSS) feed instead of relying on the “For You” algorithms of social media. RSS feeds are static, and a throwback to the earlier Blogosphere. I use Feedly to this day. Not on any social media other than LinkedIn.
TBone
@tobie: good eye.
Gloria DryGarden
@TBone: verilux has them. They run sales. I get their emails. Also I see the light boxes at the thrift store sometimes.
back when we used incandescent light bulbs, we used to put full spectrum bulbs in a few fixtures, esp for those rare runs of grey days. In colorado, we just can’t take it. I have no idea if these led efficient bulbs do the same. Been paying attention to loads of other stuff.
Gloria DryGarden
@rekoob: ok, so i need to get TPM. AND then, feedly is on linked in? I missed the article about RSS. ( eta, just found it will read later) It does sound wise, After all those micro targeted articles during the first trump via Russian bots assisted election.
i barely use linked in, so I’m not sure I’d find a news feed on it. That’ll be a digging project for another day. Advice welcome
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Gretchen: Thanks for the correction. I thought Patel’s nomination and the pardon were likely connected. They would be for me. No way I’m leaving my kid in that disgusting situation
TBone
@Gloria DryGarden: me too on the paying attention to everything but me, that’s gonna change today! Thanks I will look into it today.
Chris T.
@Gloria DryGarden:
Not exactly the same, but functionally equivalent. The idea is to have a particularly-strong, particularly-bluish-frequency of light (“high CRI” will do that in general, and note that CRI stands for Color Rendering Index; see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_rendering_index; this is different from “color temperature” measured in kelvin, but sort of related). The blue light is supposed to trigger particular nerves in the suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN: see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suprachiasmatic_nucleus). This is then supposed to help with circadian rhythm.
(My own circadian rhythm has been busted all my life, but SAD lights might still do me some good anyway, since there’s more than just the rhythm going on here. Interesting side note I just noticed: the Wikipedia article says that humans disconnected from external stimuli keep about a 24-hr-11-min clock, but when I was in college, one of the students noted that my own personal clock was closer to 27 hours.)
WereBear
@Gloria DryGarden: Non-belief is a big category, but relies on personal guidance. New Age and Deconversion sites were particularly targeted.
Questioning. There was too much independent thought.
We can’t have that. This is the War Room.
Princess
@Elizabelle: Speaking of bubbles, there’s a certain kind of white guy, NYC-based in spirit if not in body, thinks of himself as liberal but critical, occasionally contrarian pundit type that absolutely is in a bubble. They read each other and always agree with each other and they don’t know or care that the rest of us think they’re wack. Unfortunately they have outsized influence.
WereBear
@Elizabelle: The good is the bribe. Then they leave lest their reputation be sullied further.
Gloria DryGarden
@TBone: cool.
”Let the sun shine… the su-un shine in”
Gloria DryGarden
@p.a.: thanks! Got it!
WereBear
@tobie: Rogan’s just sorry he didn’t run. “It looks so damn EASY! Where is MY brains trust?”
Elizabelle
@Princess: Truth.
Gloria DryGarden
@WereBear: no idea about de conversion. But new age, and personal guidance, how dare they toss that out? I went to the boulder massage school, for crying out loud. Colorado folk know about boulder.
Gloria DryGarden
@TBone: i wrote a little uplifting poem thing, I should send it to you. It makes me feel good when I read it, though it’s not great literature.
rekoob
@Gloria DryGarden: Apologies for the confusion. RSS feeds are available from a variety of sources, Feedly being one of them. I meant to state that *I* am not on any social media other than LinkedIn.
prostratedragon
@Gretchen: Just like that damned tv show, which I wouldn’t have watched for that reason alone even apart from numerous other things.
WereBear
@Gloria DryGarden: Helping people deconvert from a high control authoritarian version of their religion and accept a gentler, more compassionate version.
It’s hard as hell. That’s why they put hell in your head as a child.
catclub
@Nukular Biskits: I thought both these post were the start of a poem as found on bathroom stalls.
Soprano2
@Baud: Boy, that’s the truth. They’re having a big mad because their audience doesn’t want to put up with abuse anymore. They could go to Bluesky.
catclub
@Gretchen: exactly. submission and complicity of the GOP senators.
Soprano2
@Gretchen: Which is so dumb, because it seems obvious to me. I saw that list of Patel’s targets; sounds like a pardon list for Joe to me.
Geminid
@Princess: I’ve noticed the same general phenomenon. I’ve started to wonder though about this group’s influence. They certainly have an outsized presence, but they seem more and irrelevant, to me at least.
It’s like they’re just a bunch of guys– and they’re almost all men– arguing back and forth from their ivory towers. The discourse has little practical effect because it has so little to do with practical political questions.
Soprano2
@satby: But that’s what they wanted, satby; they wanted him back in the worst way so that they can do exactly what they’re doing now, except that the audience for that has dried up and they can’t understand what’s happened.
Trivia Man
@TBone: excellent, im sharing that widely
p.a.
@catclub:
There was a degenerate from Queens
Who had no clue what democracy means
He took over a Party
Was it hard? Not hardly!
When you’re Lord of Republican fiends.
Soprano2
@Baud: They’re mad because they’re losing targets to take their anger out on. People aren’t required to be punching bags.
Another Scott
@TBone: (For you and others – ) Look at the light output of the boxes and realize that much over 100 lumens per watt is hard to get. So don’t take claims of a bazillion lux seriously. Some earlier thoughts of mine are here.
An alternative is simply a decent bright conventional LED light bulb.
The bulb I found previously is no longer available, but this sounds pretty good.
HTH a little. Good luck!
Best wishes,
Scott.
Soprano2
@Gloria DryGarden: I’ve got a FB friend who periodically posts that graphic. It’s useful.
Ramona
@p.a.: Clap Clap Clap Clap Clap Clap Clap Clap Clap Clap Clap Clap Clap Clap Clap Clap Clap Clap Clap Clap Clap Clap Clap Clap Clap Clap Clap Clap Clap Clap Clap Clap Clap
Soprano2
@WereBear: I’ve thought about that too. Until the invention of recording, the only music people heard was either a concert or the music they created themselves. It was easy to go your whole life without hearing that much music. Now we can be absolutely drenched in it. It also sped up the delivery of news a lot, which was new for people.
Trivia Man
@YY_Sima Qian: I have a wild guess – Xi will butter him up and treat him like a king. The felon will agree to ANY demand and brag that his genius brought back access to these raw materials.
Trivia Man
@Gloria DryGarden: IMHO Linkedin is now facebook for ambitious business people. Still has value for professional contacts and job hunting, but its social value is ridiculous. Reddit has a sub called linkedinlunatics that highlights the absurdity.
Trivia Man
@Princess: their battle cry is TO BE FAIR..: (insert criticism of sanity to prove they are open minded. Exactly what killed “liberal” media, including NPR. So gun shy of bad faith criticism they bend over backwards attempting to hear both sides; and preemptively make the opposition arguments for them in advance.
Trivia Man
@Soprano2: player piano rolls were an incredible leap. And drove a huge boom in piano sales of all kinds. Sheet music for a quarter made access so much easier.
Ramalama
@TBone: Pretty good writing there – the Bottom Man. Plus, Robert Fulghum offers two free books from his site. Looks like a maybe!
Kay
I read MAGAs on TikTok – a platform I think is much more representative of the MAGA base than the DC/LA/NYC Twitter, and they expect Trump to arrest all their political enemies: Biden, Fauci, both Clintons, both Obamas, Bill Gates, Beyonce, etc.
Amazing to watch because 1. QANON is now completely mainstream in the GOP base and 2. Trump promised them the exact same thing in 2016.
Twitter is and always was a platform for media people – IOW, elites. TikTok is where the actual GOP voting base is.
Belafon
@Trivia Man: Trump lets the $12K electric cars in, crushing Tesla along with traditional US manufacturers.
Splitting Image
@Kay:
On the plus side, this makes me happy because they are going to be completely miserable when Trump doesn’t do any of the things that they want him to do.
On the other hand, none of them are going to be any smarter four years from now.
YY_Sima Qian
@Trivia Man: If Trump is a dictator, yes. However, w/ the cast of über-hawks around him (most of them desperately looking for any other enemy than Putin), as well as Great Power Competition w/ the PRC being the only thing resembling bipartisan consensus in DC, & the general moral panic vis-a-vis the PRC that has gripped most of DC, he is not going to be able to concede all that much to Xi (as he seems to desperately want to do to Putin).
Defying early expectations among many Dems & most China Watchers, Biden has largely continued & escalated Trump’s confrontational policies w/ the PRC (thereby completing the pivot of US strategy from “Engagement” to “Confront/Compete/Collaborate” only w/ very little of the last), & now Trump & more importantly the über-hawks around him are set to escalate even further, w/ greater unpredictability & heightened hostility.
I predict that the reactionary counter-revolutionaries will use hostile relations w/ the PRC & Iran specifically (Trump might still want his “beautiful deals” w/ Putin & Kim the 3rd) to wedge the Dems as “weak on America’s enemies”, just like they did during the Cold War 1.0 & the GWOT. I also predict that at least some of the establishment Dems & Dem aligned natsec professionals will say “Trump is dead wrong on everything else, but he is right about the ‘CCP’, so we need to demonstrate to the world that the USA is still functional & still able to assert ‘leadership’, by making Cold War 2.0 a bipartisan enterprise”, oblivious to the fact that the reactionary counter-revolutionaries will leverage the new Cold War to inflame xenophobia, suppress dissent, oppress workers, target “out groups”, further expand the MIC & the natsec surveillance state, & otherwise undermine all domestic opposition. You know, just like during the Cold War & the GWOT, & Trump’s 1st term.
If you want Exhibit A of such a nominally D aligned natsec professionals, look no further than Rush Doshi, recently of Biden’s NSC & one of the architects of Biden’s PRC policy:
He summarized his thoughts in the Twitter thread below:
What’s missing in his writings? The dangers posed by Trump & his band of circus freaks, carnival barkers & cynical charlatans, especially Trump’s über-hawkish natsec nominations, to liberal democracy at home, US standing abroad, & risk of great power war. No, “prevailing” in the Great Power Competition is the larger mission, the higher goal.
frosty
@Gloria DryGarden: talkingpointsmemo.com/
Pay for the membership and you get Backchannel from his Editor’s Blog, which covers everything people post from X and BlueSky. TPM is independent media, no ads, funded by the readers. It was the first blog I started reading in 2005.
His staff of reporters is great too. They’ve broken stories before the Big Media heard about them.
YY_Sima Qian
@Belafon: No, Trump will not allow imports of Chinese made EVs. But he might allow Chinese EV makers to set up JVs to produce in the US for the US market, while transferring tech. It would actually be good industrial policy, but Trump will likely manage to screw it up somehow.
jimmiraybob
Leaving the pig pen because you don’t like wallowing in pig shit is the kind of purity politics …. yadda, yadda, yadda ………
Gretchen
@Elizabelle: Maddow talked about a Senator Joe McCarthy targeted because of his son’s arrest. The senator died by suicide.
Bupalos
@Princess: We’re all in bubbles, that are getting harder to bust out of as our convenience options for self segregation among our particular tribes grow. It’s just a natural human urge to interact with the part of the world that already agrees with you. It used to be fairly difficult to bubble-wrap oneself, especially in America, a fact which provided American democracy with a lot of its strength.
Bupalos
@jimmiraybob: As much as I personally have railed against X since musk bought it, and as much as I encourage people leaving that platform and refuse to engage with its content, I do think “I want it to be a more carefully curated and ideologically aligned kind of pseudo-public square” is very problematic.
X needs to die solely because it is a curated and ideological pseudo-public square, it’s just controlled by a corrupt and inhuman mega billionaire. Social media presents inherent problems for democracy that ideological pooling won’t solve.
Kayla Rudbek
@Gloria DryGarden: check OttLite (sold at JoAnn Fabrics if you have any near you, the light is strong enough so that I can distinguish black from navy blue). Phillips used to have fluorescent bulbs (the long narrow ones that go in office ceiling lights) that were full-spectrum and easier on the eyes than regular bulbs.
Starfish (she/her)
Indivisible is having a rural caucus call tomorrow so for those of you in rural areas who want to get involved with what to do next, this is your chance.
Kayla Rudbek
@TBone: I have a Carex sky light with two settings that’s supposed to be natural light spectrum. It’s on my desk so I now use it in the afternoon when the sun isn’t shining straight into my office.
Soprano2
That one surprised me! LOL
Soprano2
@Bupalos: I was just talking to my therapist about that today, saying that one reason we don’t have a cohesive society anymore is because we don’t have common experiences; instead, we all wrap ourselves in bubbles that make us comfortable.
Bill Arnold
@Gretchen:
I’d connect it more to the Kushner pardon and then Trump nominating him as Ambassador to France.
Bill Arnold
@p.a.:
Yeah. I hadn’t been using a RSS reader for maybe 5 years. Set one up (actually it was already on this laptop, “liferea”, ubuntu/linux) and populated it a bit, and it is helpful for finding new posts.
Bill Arnold
@Gloria DryGarden:
I assembled these notes earlier; maybe useful. The Patel enemies list been hitting the news today. (Also a note on a fraud Patel was involved with.) A published enemies list should be disqualifying in any normal republic.
This has Kash Patel’s full enemies list from Patel’s 2022 book “Government Gangsters”, in text form.
‘Government Gangsters’: Trump’s FBI Director Pick Kash Patel’s 60 Name List Of ‘Deep State’ Enemies (Mediaite, David Gilmour, Dec 3rd, 2024)
From another source (image, retyped by me), the appendix is prefixed by
Kash Patel, nominee for FBI director, is a literal fraudster:
Kash Patel’s COVID Vax Detox Vitamins Have Three Times The Nothing Of Regular Supplements! (Wonkette, ROBYN PENNACCHIA, APR 17, 2024)
Note: it is mostly not vitamins. Has some vitamin D and a few essential minerals including zinc; both Vit D/Zinc deficiencies are correlated (causality is still being argued) with severe viral respiratory illness, so OK when kept below max safe levels (4000IU/40mg per day)
rikyrah
@Jay:
glorious :)
TBone
@Another Scott: thank you!