Trump’s been president for one week and already my 401(k) is down, eggs cost more than ever, and America has lost its lead in artificial intelligence.
— Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias) January 27, 2025
Elect a Republican, Hell Florida freezes over!
Meanwhile in Pensacola, Florida, snow covered orange trees. ?????? pic.twitter.com/dO3j8q4f0I
— DK?????????? (@1Nicdar) January 22, 2025
The story of this first week is corruption. Billionaires seated on the inaugural stage in front of the cabinet, crypto pump and dump, and the illegal firing of IGs. The media is acting like this is too chaotic and bewildering to interpret, but they are just afraid of sounding shrill. It’s corrupt.
— Brian Schatz (@schatz.bsky.social) January 25, 2025 at 10:15 PM
WIC. They are pausing WIC.
That's the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children. Last time I checked (a while ago), every dollar spent on WIC produced over a dollar in savings *in the same fiscal year.* For most people, though, feeding infants and mothers is enough.— hilzoy (@hilzoy.bsky.social) January 27, 2025 at 11:30 PM
WIC & SNAP are also key for sustaining grocery businesses, especially in smaller towns.
The reason they boosted SNAP during COVID was as much to support retailers as to support hungry people.— eleanorcamino.bsky.social (@eleanorcamino.bsky.social) January 28, 2025 at 12:25 AM
THE PRESS NEEDS TO STOP DESCRIBING IT AS A “PAUSE!”
Pause implies an eventual resumption. In most of these cases where money has been cut off there’s no indication the funding will resume. Trump may be trying to shut down NIH, PEPFAR, foreign aid etc _FOREVER_— Dana Houle (@danahoule.bsky.social) January 27, 2025 at 4:59 PM
A bunch of Dem governors got the birthright citizenship order blocked like hours after it came out.
This was a front page story on essentially every news website.
If you never see Dems do *anything* you are not looking. https://t.co/66jrw8zOq8
— vituperativeerb (@vituperativeerb) January 27, 2025
because they have trained themselves to think of politics as a social game in which they are participants, and not as something that determines whether people live or die
— BeijingPalmer (@beijingpalmer.bsky.social) January 27, 2025 at 7:58 PM
One side effect of the strengthening and expansion of the right-wing conversational bubble is that many of its members sincerely don’t seem to know when prominent voices are hustlers or dopes because criticism doesn’t make its way in from the outside and doesn’t originate from within.
— Philip Bump (@pbump.com) January 22, 2025 at 8:29 PM
I got a DM from a prominent right-wing media person once expressing amazement at the research I’d done to debunk a segment — research that probably took like 30 minutes. I was like, oh, right, being accurate has no value in his media economy so there’s no investment.
— Philip Bump (@pbump.com) January 22, 2025 at 8:31 PM
I get it, only Democrats have agency. Only Democrats can ever fix it. But, man, this country just turned over the keys to the car to Toonces the kleptocracy cat and his buddy Captain Ketamine who enjoys nazi salutes. Maybe we focus on them for a while, you know since they run everything now.
— Jason Karsh (@jkarsh.bsky.social) January 21, 2025 at 6:14 PM
The Trump administration is now in a "race against time" to subvert electoral democracy.
They know their agenda is deeply unpopular. There's a good chance Trump causes or worsens an electoral shock, e.g., an economic crash, a pandemic bad enough that it can't be hidden by falsifying the data.— Dan Nexon (@dhnexon.bsky.social) January 25, 2025 at 12:35 AM
Trump's old. It seems pretty clear by now that he can't, or won't. transfer his charisma to a successor. Without him the GOP is looking at an epic factional struggle.
So this is their window, and they know it.— Dan Nexon (@dhnexon.bsky.social) January 25, 2025 at 12:44 AM
I will support Democrats through all of this.
Not entertaining bullshit about 'They need to fight and/or do something' they did.
They ran a Black Woman with a progressive agenda.
Democrats need your support.
The bad guys aren't popular.They have now. That's it.The future is not at all certain.— Greg Proops (@gregproops.bsky.social) January 26, 2025 at 5:41 PM
How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. How do you review, cover, and criticize a blitzkrieg of anti-American totalitarianism? One order, one law, one executive act at a time. Pace yourselves.
— Domestic Enemy Hat (@kenwhite.bsky.social) January 21, 2025 at 11:14 AM
Baud
Republicans control everything. Never stop blaming them for everything.
MagdaInBlack
I’m with Greg on the 2nd to last one. And “pausing” WIC and SNAP is really gonna get some notice. Looking at you, red states. Here ya go.
Geminid
Thanks, Ms. Laurie. AI<AL
Jeffro
“pausing” all government grants everywhere is one of those things that sounds great to psychos like Russ Vought and Kevin Roberts…maybe more Americans should know who they are?
sab
Yes that will get notice. Cutting food off from children is their new brand.
Not really new. Right to Life ends at birth has always been their unspoken motto.
Jeffro
speaking of psychos…the Orange Airhorn is claiming that the US military has ‘entered’ California and ‘turned on the water’ from the amazing Pacific Northwest (maybe someone can put up his late-night tweet?)
“ENJOY THE WATER, CALIFORNIA!”
hoo boy, it won’t be long now folks
MagdaInBlack
@Jeffro: I was laughing/scratching my head at that one too. Mentioned it in the now dead overnight thread. WTF?
p.s. “Orange Airhorn” is good.
Baud
@Jeffro:
I’m going to be optimistic and believe that’s his way of backtracking on imposing conditions on aid. No need for conditions if God Emperor fixed everything.
MagdaInBlack
@sab: My hair stylist (don’t that sound fancy?) is raising her 16 y/o daughter and 6 y/o grdaughter with the help of both WIC and SNAP. And she voted trump. This should be interesting.
Baud
FWIW, some of this probably will be a pause. Trump is cruel, but he also backs down a lot. A lot of his victim/supporters will probably give him credit for making the money flow again.
sab
@Jeffro: As a Great Lakes adjacent resident, this makes me very nervous.
Ohio passed some free enterprise nonsense by constitutional amendment about ten years ago. Freed our landholders to do whatever the fuck they wanted with “their” water. Broke our great lakes protection treaties with Canada.
I had conservationist relatives who voted for this because “freedom” with no idea of its ecological effects. Water will be sent 2000 miles to California. And Great Lakes is kind of a closed system. Once our water goes it will be gone.
Basically to enrich one psychopath in the state legislature. Tim Grendell. He wanted to sell water rights from his land to a Swiss water bottler. Google him and you will get an eyeful on Republican bad behavior. In the legislature and now as a judge.
Ohioans really have no standards on acceptable behavior by our elected officials. Stick the right partisan logo on and we will vote for anything.
satby
@MagdaInBlack: A lot of Trump voters rely on both. As do small farmers (like the ones who sell at farmers markets). Indiana, not at all a progressive state, had a program for SNAP and WIC recipients to get double the face value of benefits ($30 for $15 in benefit $) to buy fresh fruit and vegetables locally grown at our market that ran from mid-summer into fall. I assume other states have similar programs. That was a direct subsidy to farmers, not really the SNAP and WIC recipients, because the prices tended to be higher at the market than at stores.
BTW, lots of senior citizens get SNAP benefits too.
Baud
@satby:
Tell the Trump voters they’re Marxist.
Maxim
These fucking fuckers. My desire to stay informed is directly at odds with my need to not be constantly enraged.
prostratedragon
@sab: Shit, you had to remind me. But technically it’s far from doable just overnight, especially considering the two mountain ranges. I used to be much more worried about Ogalalla areas.
sab
@MagdaInBlack: Yikes! My hairstylist is a sensible 73 year old black man with a grown up kid thriving in California.
My stepdaughter is a white single mom raising a mixed race ten year old autistic daughter in Ohio. She needs whatever help she can get from SNAP or wherever.
satby
@Baud: I’m staying away from most of the market lately 😉 I go in to my friend’s booth, drop off my soap, maybe help for an hour or so if he’s busy, then leave. His booth is right next to an entrance. I don’t trust myself not to tell quite a few people what I really think of them right now.*
*Edit: the market is private property, and I would get myself banned. At least.
MagdaInBlack
@satby: Yup, this is a BFD. My mother was on these programs btw. I suspect Baud at # 10 has it right tho.
Gloria DryGarden
@Jeffro: entered
penetrated
f___d?
so, he’s um, penetrating the country….?
Matt McIrvin
@Baud: Republicans are the new Sithrak, who hates us and can be blamed for everything
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
We should be so lucky.
Chief Oshkosh
@Baud:
Yep, I keep trying to do that. Thanks for continuing to remind everyone.
dc
All this “pausing” shit is retroactively vetoing laws passed by Congress and as such should be challenged. Agencies founded by legislative action can only be eliminated by legislative action, money and programs determined by legislative action, like passing budgets, ditto.
Baud
@dc:
It’ll be challenged.
Geminid
@Jeffro: Politico has an article on that titled, “Trump says the military ‘turned on the water’ in California. Not quite.”
This morning’s Politico Playbook starts with a long review of Trump’s activities this past week titled Trump’s massive power grab. The authors get in into details of many of them including the legal, political and budgetary aspects.
The last figures in a later story about a meeting of Republican Congressional leaders today at Doral Country Club:
sab
@satby: OT: I still need to get a camera, and also text their former person.
The rescue cats you gave me are thriving. Moose boy comes upstairs a lot when pitbull is sleeping. Moose boy likes to sit with husband and watch sports on tv.
Shy little Echo is no longer afraid of the pitbull. They nap on the same bed a lot. She is mostly upstairs and seems happy in her shy way. All the boys are afraid of her. Pitbull is a girl and just wants to be friends.
Seven cats here. I had no idea how general the male cat deference to female cats is. Hilarious to watch. Any tiny little female cat glares at or hisses at a male cat and that boy is gone!
Suzanne
@Baud:
This is a good observation. It’s one of those tactics he has that’s so shameless that we don’t have a response ready, and we get caught flat-footed.
I am going to continue to marvel at the staggering idiocy and cognitive dissonance required to cast a vote for Trump when you’re living on WIC and SNAP. In my neighborhood, a local church (liberals, of course) does some amazing work feeding and clothing our lower-income and homebound neighbors. Never will understand why people bite the hand that literally feeds.
TBone
@sab: thanks for the tip you gave me about puppy pee pads!
Geminid
@Geminid: This morning’s Playbook also featured some Deb Haaland news:
sab
@TBone: I forget what tip that was, but pee pads are the new duct tape. They can solve so many problems.
ETA You are welcome.
Baud
@Geminid:
I guess it’s nuanced.
K-Mo
Americans:
(votes Dems out)
” wait where are the Dems?”
Baud
Good advice for non Poles too, via reddit
zhena gogolia
@K-Mo: bingo
lowtechcyclist
@TBone:
Try saying that five times real fast!
Baud
@K-Mo:
I’m sipping my tea. If we’re all on the road to hell, I’m going to be gloating on my ride.
Ohio Mom
@satby: Disabled adults, with their paltry Social Security SSI/SSDI for living expenses, also depend on SNAP.
(I know I talk about Medicaid Waivers for disabled adults, which pay for services like day programs and transportation — that money goes directly to the service provider, the disabled person never touches it. Things like rent, utilities, phone. clothing, household items, sticking quarters in the machine at the laundromat, etc., comes out of the check from Social Security).
Ramalama
@Maxim: same.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Maxim: I got on here intending to say something similar. I had to turn off my computer last night. My blood pressure was going up. I felt overwhelmed by the evil.
K-Mo
An alternate version of Its a Wonderful Life where the people of Bedford Falls refuse the money from Sam Wainwright and elect Mr Potter mayor for life
lowtechcyclist
@Baud:
I’m sure they will be, but with respect to WIC and SNAP, maybe the good guys ought to wait a month or two before
riding to the rescuefiling their challenges, just to let some of the pain sink in. Fix it too fast, and nobody will even remember it happened by the next time they vote.Kay
Cutting off WIC is huge. I’m betting people have no idea how broadly distributed it is. In terms of immediate harm to millions of vulnerable Americans, that’s the top story.
I’m tempted to go back on TikTok to gauge the reaction but I think it’s censored.
Baud
@K-Mo: Bedford Falls was all white. Different dynamic.
@lowtechcyclist:
It won’t happen right away. It’s too soon to file a lawsuit. The “pause” was just announced.
Jackie
@Maxim:
Ain’t that the truth.
Princess
I think it’s worth regularly calling your reps and senators, pressing them on whatever your most pressing concern is that day. It’s worthwhile even for gop reps. And I’m not that interested in “why won’t they dooooo something” talk from people who aren’t doing that. Posting on Bluesky is not activism.
Baud
@Maxim:
And about 90% of the people who inform you also want to enrage you for “engagement.”
Suzanne
@Dorothy A. Winsor: You made the right call: log off.
I don’t know if this is a good attitude, but….. I have been reminding myself that by voting and donating to Harris, we offered a helping hand to our neighbors and fellow citizens. That was turned away. But that was the help we were offering, so now it’s wise to keep our time and resources more tightly held.
Princess
@Jeffro: Evidently this explains why water that was off is now on. Routine cleaning: https://bsky.app/profile/nothoodlum.bsky.social/post/3lgruce7xcs27
lowtechcyclist
@Baud:
How’s that? I’m no legal eagle, but there are certainly people with standing, who will be directly affected by this ‘pause’, in whose names the suits can be filed. And presumably they can seek injunctive relief, blocking the ‘pause’ from taking effect in the first place.
Baud
@Princess:
QFT.
I would also add, libs need to learn to utilize other centers of power outside of federal representatives. One thing that’s weakened us over the last few decades is overreliance on federal efforts to the detriment of state and private avenues IMHO.
Ned F
A freind of mine texted me last night about their federal funding for the Appalchian Trail being suspended. The money helps in trail reconstruction in the south wiped out by the hurricane. Along with FEMA and now recovery grants being halted should piss off a lot of people. It seems all programs and grants have to be “de-woked.” Trump cannot do this, only congress can allocate funds(?).
When signing to accept federal money you have to accept federal guidelines which a month ago probably were being an Eq oppo employer. This is a major screwup.
Ramalama
Does America really need to be in the lead of artificial intelligence? I guess yes but the willful part of me is not interested.
p.a.
Get ready for
“Where’s MY curtain rod? Where’s OUR sparrows? We were told we’d have curtain rods and sparrows, but we don’t!”
Too bad, so sad…
ETA: Rt I195 bridge closure/repair funds in Providence (already appropriated) on hold. Sadly, I’ve cut off contact to tRumpturd relatives so I can’t rub this in their faces.
CCL
Can we “pause” paying our federal taxes while we evaluate our return on investment??
Baud
@lowtechcyclist:
The problem isn’t standing. It’s that Trump does have some discretion with respect to timing of spending. It’s only if he refuses to spend that people have a claim.
It’s possible that someone will file a lawsuit right away in the expectation that the pause will be permanent by the time the court decides it. But as of this second, the claim would be a loser.
sab
@Princess: I am moderately hopeful about Husted. Right wing Republican but he has occassional glimmerings of common sense.
Bernie Moreno, on the other hand, is in the Musk mold. Not an idiot savant like Musk, but another extremely rich guy whose family had to emigrate because their political positions made life in their own countries unenable, or at least awkward. So they want to fuck up our country with the same policies as fucked up the country they fled.
Princess
@Kay: An awful lot of white people get WIC.
Kay
Not to be a stickler, but truth is important these days.
Yglesias was one of the online leaders of the centrist movement to bash DEI as “Marxist”. Can’t have a panic without the Right AND Center and he actively contributed to this lunacy.
We didn’t get here with just Republicans. Centrists in plum spots in media played a huge role in validating their various insane panics, on crime, on DEI, on inflation, on trans rights. That was Matthew Y.
satby
@sab: My smallest oldest cat for years ruled the roost until she passed away at 19. Barely 4 lbs, but she just stood next to any of the bigger guys and they would walk away from whatever she decided she wanted. Didn’t even hiss. Now the biggest muscle is Bitchleen, also the smallest. No scrapping goes on without her getting into the thick of it.
H.E.Wolf
Alas, it’s very human for gratitude and resentment to be closely-linked emotions.
Baud
@H.E.Wolf:
Truth. Especially when you have to be grateful for people you consider below you on the social ladder.
Geminid
@Ned F: I hear Republicans are working on a privatization scheme for the Appalachian Trail. A consortium of real estate developers is angling for a 99-year lease, along with a blanket waiver of permitting requirements so they can build condos and sell time shares.
Former South Governor Mark Sanford is the front man. He’s very Trail wise.
Matt McIrvin
@Baud: I was thinking of Sithrak the evil creator god of a cult in the very NC-17-rated fantasy comic strip “Oglaf”. They seem inspired by real-world Gnostics, who blamed everything on the world being created by a deranged Demiurge posing as the real God.
Ned F
@Princess: The same with the LIHEAP program, also suspended.
Ned F
@Geminid: Really? haven’t heard, but not surprised. I’ll certainly look that one up.
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
Finally, a religious theory more convincing than science.
Kay
@Princess:
Well, sure. There are many, many more white people than Black people. The food aid should be the top story but the coverage sucks- it’s vague and sloppy with no numbers. I don’t think that will matter in this situation. People will find out. Food aid in the US is everywhere – its ubiquitous.
It affects the whole chain too – farmers to processors to retail to consumers. We massively subsidize food in the US. Everyone’s prices are going to go up.
Baud
Republicans message to Republican voters.
prostratedragon
@Maxim: Somewhere in there is THE rotating tag of our time.
Matt McIrvin
@Baud: I think the point of a lot of this is basic personalist dictator tactics: you have to come begging to HIM and do his bidding to get the money turned on again.
But if you actually refuse, sometimes he does just back down.
prostratedragon
@Princess: Orpheus makes the sun rise!
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
Agreed. L’etat, c’est moi thinking.
p.a.
Pain, injustice, racial and religious bigotry aside (/s), trying to impose feudalism on a 21st century economic colossus is just 🤪
TBone
During discourse in two separate vet visits, I mentioned that Josey has just died and similar symptoms to those Noah suffered. I wondered aloud if it could be something infectious (hubby was taking care of neighbors’ dog during both onsets of illness and the dog had profuse diarrhea which could also be from a dead carcass) and said I hope it isn’t Bird Flu. The vet poo pooed me immediately – “It’s probably just a coincidence” like cats don’t hang out where the birds are or maybe even eat one when I’m not looking. “We don’t have that here right now.” Which is EXACTLY what my doctor said the first time I got Covid!
lowtechcyclist
@Baud:
Sounds like one of those ‘angels on the head of a pin’ things. At what point does a ‘pause’ effectively become a refusal to spend?
MomSense
I enjoy a good FAFO as much as the next person, however too many people who are vulnerable, like children, will be harmed.
I’m interested in how we break the cycle of Dems only getting elected to clean up Republican catastrophes. The Harris campaign did a great job of getting their message out but they ran out of time. We can’t wait until the last four months to communicate directly to voters. We need to be loudly and aggressively messaging all the time. We need to spread our message where people are – and it’s not cable news, network news, or newspapers. I am seeing very little good messaging by Democrats. Cory Booker has been good. AOC has been good. Warren has been good but we need to figure out how to boost their signals.
I like Proops a lot but what he is saying doesn’t make sense. We lost by a very small margin and that doesn’t mean that the Dems who were elected and those who lost their races can stop now. I expect them to keep fighting and to use the platforms they have to speak out in defense of people who need help desperately.
Matt McIrvin
@Suzanne: People don’t like to be dependent on aid that is framed as “help for poor people” and would prefer to believe promises of eventual wealth. That’s completely understandable to me.
They actually don’t mind dependency on programs like Social Security and Medicare that are framed as “insurance you earned”, but they also assume those are safe regardless. Hence the Republican sleight of hand of referring to them as “entitlements” which makes it sound like they’re talking about something else which is a gimme to poor people, not the thing that’s actually for you.
Geminid
@Ned F: No, don’t bother looking this up. I was just having fun.
But I bet there are a lot of privatization schemes projected for other public lands. DeSantis tried that shit in Florida last year. He failed, but developers are a rapacious bunch and this is a lawless Administration.
Kay
This might roust some farmers out of the state of willfully deluding themselves.
WIC and SNAP are federal vouchers to purchase agricultural products. Producers of those products directly benefit.
This country has told itself feel-good nonsense for too long, IMO. Its time for some harsh reality on who benefits from the safety net – it isn’t just poor people.
Matt McIrvin
@MomSense:
I think maybe it just broke, and the new pattern is “Dems falling down elevator shafts”.
MomSense
@Matt McIrvin:
At least it isn’t falling out of windows -yet.
Bruce K in ATH-GR
@Jackie: Right there with you all – I exhausted my ability to deal with that crap for today at about half-past eight this morning (zero-dark thirty in the US, although these days it’s zero-dark thirty 24/7 in the US). I’m under a lot of personal stress that doesn’t need the stress of the US being dragged into hell on top of it.
My political philosophy these days, at least as regards Nazis and associated fascists, aligns closely with the views of Dr. Henry Jones (Junior and Senior) and William Blazkowicz.
Kay
@TBone:
Trump is a fucking contagious illness. Every time he’s front and center there’s some rapidly spreading plague. The goddesses are telling us something.
Another Scott
@Baud: As you point out in this thread, we’ve been here before.
He is again trying to convince us that he’s running the government (and the world) by EO and tweet. He wants his minions screaming at everyone that King Donnie has Taken Action and they must Fall In Line Now Now Now. But the rules and the law and the US Code says that there are processes that must be followed that he is trying to get us all to ignore.
EOs and tweets do not trump the US Code.
Trouble is, until he and his minions actually does the work of writing up what he’s actually proposing and doing, a court isn’t going to touch it. Because vague EOs and tweets aren’t the way the government works. In the meantime, he runs roughshod over the functioning of the federal government.
It’s a dangerous time. But, unfortunately in times like this, politics and government is slow. People will step up, and are stepping up, but it is going to take time.
Remember the history of his EO 13769 and 13780 (the “Muslim ban”) which went on for around a couple of months.
Hang in there, everyone.
Thanks.
Best wishes,
Scott.
Starfish (she/her)
@sab: Cutting food aide to children to depreciate racehorses faster.
Kay mentioned the race horse thing yesterday; and apparently, a temporary tax to allow you to depreciate racehorses faster expired in 2016, and Trump brought it back in 2020. So racehorses were being depreciated in 3 years when previously it had been seven, and then in 2024 they allowed racehorses to be depreciated in one year. This was a giveaway to Mitch McConnell with his state and its derby. Anyway, a lot of the racehorse stuff doesn’t make money like it used to, and a lot of racetracks are being turned into racinos. But with mobile sports betting, you think anyone is going to go to the racetrack to gamble?
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Geminid: Trump apparently was at that meeting last night defended the deportations, which I take to mean they are get getting push back against that from GOP donors.
TBone
@Kay: perfectly stated! The Evangelical health system here is chock full of Rumpers from the top down and a lot of the staff everywhere I go is SUSS too. One family medical practice I tried in an effort to search for a new doctor only let me see a nurse practitioner who had the Bible tattooed all over herself! “We don’t give vaccines here.” Out the door I went!
lowtechcyclist
@Baud:
Ha! Ain’t that the truth!
Enhanced Voting Techniques
I think part of this those in the conservative bubble hear the EO but don’t ever hear of the EO being void because of the laws involved, so they think Trump is kicking ass.
chemiclord
It’s not even that people aren’t looking. They don’t want to look because they want reality to reflect their priors, that Dems are feckless losers and as a result accelerationism is essential to getting their perfect socialist paradise (that when you really dig down into what a lot of these fauxgressives want turns out being merely a different flavor of authoritarianism).
Kay
@TBone:
I can’t be around fundie religious health people. I had a bad experience with a maternity ward nurse who was some kind of sick “women should suffer” cult member and that was it. I don’t think people should be subjected to them. It’s a violation of our right to best practices medical care.
Ohio Mom
I can’t see how all this doesn’t crash the economy, in one of those at-first-slowly-then-all-at-once ways.
WIC money, for one example, gets spent immediately. That money starts circulating around the larger economy. Same for everything else Trump just froze.
One of my pet peeves is when MAGAs insist we live in a Republic, not a Democracy. Well the hallmark of a Republic is rule of law. We don’t have that at the moment, we have rule of Trump’s whim. Well actually, rule of the monsters behind Project 2025.
Starfish (she/her)
@Geminid: Ooh. I like it.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
We have DEI because of the worker shortage means minorities and women have to be employed to keep the economy going. Corporations can’t have a Archie Bunker type starting a fight every day at work over something stupid. And way to go Yglesias to confuse you really are an unemployable ahole.
TBone
@Kay: I wish they would post Warning Notices so I could save time and trouble and gas and co-pay $.
Starfish (she/her)
@Dorothy A. Winsor: All I wanted to do was unwind after work, but all I kept seeing was all the stupid nonsense that had gone on yesterday. No one wants to pay attention to these psychos.
SFAW
@Baud:
Well, with the SCOTUS affirming that, can you blame him?
SFAW
@Geminid:
He can do that from Argentina?
Baud
@lowtechcyclist:
Yes, that’s what it is.
lowtechcyclist
@TBone:
There’s a few Bible verses I’d like to see tattooed on all of those fuckers.
TBone
@CCL: I told my dad that I was gonna do that during rethug administrations and he said “I hope you enjoy wearing an orange prison jumpsuit.” We’d have to unite and overwhelm them by sheer volume for this to actually work.
Ksmiami
@Bruce K in ATH-GR: we don’t need to understand fascists, just destroy every single one of them.
TBone
@lowtechcyclist: can I get an AMEN!
(Crap, I thought I fixed that typo.)
Kay
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
Another nepotism beneficiary worried about meritocracy. It seems like they are everywhere in media.
You saw they got rid of affirmative action but the legacy admit system remains untouched. Thriving! They’re all full of shit. Inconsistent sloppy thinkers.
Starfish (she/her)
So today, Trump is going to starve babies (WIC pause) and starve grannies (SNAP pause) while screwing over ag states, right?
TBone
@Ksmiami: that’s what my ancestors taught me & my lil bro!
p.a.
Well there’s an issue right there. Females. People of color. Why would anything they say resonate with real Murcans ™?
Starfish (she/her)
@MomSense: I think Warren is seen as a threat by men. You know, the type of man who can’t stand that there is a woman smarter than he is. So there is going to be a lot of misogyny stacked against hearing what she has to say. Her message needs to be reframed in terms of the freedoms that they are providing for the average person.
Mel
@sab: So glad to hear the good news about your kitties! The feline ladies do rule the roost, don’t they?
Our wee little 6 pound Pixie girl was a goddess- queen in the eyes of our two big 14 pounds each boys.
Ksmiami
@TBone: we are reaching that point. Rapidly.
Gloria DryGarden
@Ned F: I’m in the middle of applying for LEAP, R now. It matters.
Mai Naem mobile ¹
@Geminid: is this snark? There is no way federal $$$ goes to Sanford as long as Orange Mosquito is in office. Remember Sanford was a yuuge never Trumper. Does Sanford still hike the Appalachian trail with his Melania?
prostratedragon
The old tfg moniker having become rather ambiguous, I might give Moron Cakes a try.
Kay
I just got an email from a Dane who (now) personally hates Donald Trump.
“Why are you not doing anything?” They’re blunt people. Not a lot of chit chat.
Jesus. What does she expect me to do? Maybe “you” is collective – “you (Americans) not doing anything”
Kay
@Gloria DryGarden:
That sucks. Sorry. Hang in. He’ll pull it back.
Baud
@Kay:
Yeah, why didn’t France do anything against the Nazis? Oh yeah, because they tried and lost.
Starfish (she/her)
@Kay: Aww. They think we live in a functioning democracy. It is sweet if you think about it.
Phylllis
@Kay: I don’t think it will take long for General Mills, maker of Cheerios, Kraft cheese, Nestle and other formula makers, as well as dairy farmers to push back on this. I’m sure there’s a place to find out how many thousands of boxes of Cheerios are moved each week just from WIC vouchers. As well as how many gallons of milk, cans of formula, etc.
Baud
Credit where it’s due.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@Kay: One of the four horseman of the apocalypse is plague / disease.
2liberal
America’s slumlords.
Kay
@Phylllis:
I lived in a poor neighborhood in east Toledo for a time in my ear!y twenties. WIC delivered then – they may still, I don’t know. Just about every stoop had gallons of milk and boxes of Cheerios once a month after the WIC van came. Brand name Cheerios! Woo-hoo! :)
Chief Oshkosh
@Baud: Mais, après moi, le deluge.
hueyplong
@Baud: And if you want the “France tried, but lost” argument to really resonate with Kay’s Danish pal, substitute Denmark for France.
Nukular Biskits
@Princess:
That’s assuming you can get those republican officials to answer the damn phone
Ksmiami
@Kay: this administration intends to starve poor people and cull the population. Yes, they are fucking fascists.
Phylllis
@Ned F: You know, this brings back a memory from when I worked for the county social services agency. We had access to United Way & other funds to help with electric bills. One of the employees at the board of public works was a neighbor, and would routinely make snide remarks to me about ‘how many deadbeats light bills are you coming to pay today?’. She shut right up after I shot back ‘if the money’s green and spends, why do you care where it comes from, as long as the bill gets paid?’.
Bex
@Geminid: Has Trump invested his (other people’s) money in the scheme?
Nukular Biskits
@Baud:
Bingo this Exactly the problem we face At least 1 of many
Baud
@Ksmiami:
At least we’ll find out whether eat the rich is a viable theory.
Starfish (she/her)
@Baud: Here we sit in a space with people who love to drag the DSA when the DSA was supporting things like mutual aid efforts where people will just donate small amounts of money to folks who are poor who need to make rent, buy groceries, etc.
People were doing things like mutual aid, buying medical debt, etc.
All these things are very small compared to what a functional government can do.
Quinerly
Kristi Noem is on an ICE raid in NY. Live tweeting it.
Not linking.
different-church-lady
That’s because they themselves are hustlers and dopes.
different-church-lady
@Quinerly: The
revolutiongenocide willnotbe televised.different-church-lady
@Ksmiami: You say fascist like people still think it’s a bad thing.
different-church-lady
@Kay:
The last thing we did was elect him.
Quinerly
Can’t stress enough….watch Missourian Ed Martin. Read up on him. Remember his name. Pure EVIL.
schrodingers_cat
This feels like a hostile takeover of the federal government not just another Republican administration. What is the endgame here?
different-church-lady
Just so you know: users can add data to Google maps. All we need is like ten thousand user spikes labeled, “Actually, it’s the Gulf of Mexico” to appear.
different-church-lady
@schrodingers_cat: Hostile? Nonsense, voters invited them right in.
Leto
Maybe this was mentioned a few days ago, but: Forbes: Republican Proposal Would Make College Scholarships Taxable Income
Another way to break public education.
schrodingers_cat
@different-church-lady: I know. I am talking about the behavior, the interfering with the day to day running of the government from WIC to NIH.
different-church-lady
Ah, this sounds familiar…
different-church-lady
@Leto:
“BUT BIDEN WOULDN’T DO ANYTHING ABOUT MY STUDENT DEBT!”
rikyrah
Good Morning, Everyone😊😊😊
Quinerly
My morning laugh. Local news posted about Google changing the name of the Gulf of Mexico. My favorite comment….”Google is officially changing it’s name to ‘Swallow.’
Baud
@Starfish (she/her):
There’s no substitute for a functional government, but we don’t have that. We should have other things we can rely on when we don’t have a functional government, as well as things that can help us restore a functional government.
Baud
@rikyrah:
Good morning.
LAC
@Dorothy A. Winsor: I am in week two of this feeling. In addition to all this, the insulting tone of the memos coming our way from Trump minions has made my retirement decision the best gift to myself.
Baud
@Starfish (she/her):
I’m pretty sure I haven’t seen criticism of DSA here based on this activity. If you’re point is that some things that DSA does immunizes it from criticism on other topics, I don’t agree.
Quinerly
Sen Gary Peters (D MI) just announced he won’t be running for re election.
Baud
@Quinerly:
I wonder if Whitmer will pursue it or run for president.
Hunter Gathers
@Leto: Gotta level the playing field for all those dispossessed young male porn addicts.
Waiting for the Make America More Babies Act of 2025, where woman are forced to mate with incels AND work full time jobs so dad can play video games and watch hentai all day.
Leto
@different-church-lady: I will forever love that man for that alone. It lifted such a burden from us, and I defended all those actions to anyone who ever tried to shit talk them. Which in my meat space was quite a few.
Avalune is talking to me about college financial aid stuff, and how all these actions are causing chaos because it’s going to fuck with all the federal funding that higher education receives. All those unseen actions that the election will cause because “eggs.”
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Starfish (she/her):
In other words, another day ending in “y”.
And another reminder of what bad-ass Dems in blood red states are saying:
stinger
@Kay:
A lot of people, when they think of farmers, think of agribillionaires. For true farmers, farming is a very risky business. If you have livestock, you’re always at risk of a new bird flu or hoof-and-mouth type of disease. If you have crops, there’s always drought, floods, plant viruses, etc. Rain or frost at the wrong time can ruin a harvest.
A given farmer may not use WIC or SNAP themselves, but as you indicate, all of them benefit from — and some rely on — the existence of those programs.
My dad and grandpa and brother were farmers. Most of my current neighbors farm but also hold off-farm jobs in order to survive, and their spouses also work off-farm. And none of them retire from farming at 65; most work into their 80s.
Leto
@Hunter Gathers: that’s the thing, it won’t level the playing field for them. If they make scholarships, as well as financial aid, taxable income, those dick slaps still won’t be attending. It’ll go back to a pre-1945 model where it’s just the rich elite attending. If they think it’s going to drive white Americans into the undesired immigrants roles…
Baud
@comrade scotts agenda of rage:
For those who want to follow her on Blue sky, as I just did.
https://bsky.app/profile/yreeveschong.bsky.social
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@schrodingers_cat:
As somebody characterized it last week: The Trumpanzees are in there ripping out the electrical wiring of the federal government.
It’s the nextGen approach to “drowning the government in a bathtub”.
That’s the endgame. Have a military to protect the billionaire’s property, mission accomplished! //
A Ghost to Most
Just another day in Gilead.
WTFGhost
I was pretty sure that’s what WIC was.
I saw a woman using WIC in the grocery store, couldn’t get the things she wanted, so I quickly bought a candy bar, walked around to her cart, said, very clearly, “I’m sure you dropped this,” and dropped $60 (all I could afford, but, what would *I* do with the money that was more useful or important?) into the cart, and did my best cartoon quick exit, before she could think of something to say.
WIC can support mom not needing formula, by having enough food to express enough milk, and, in any event, any breast feeding that can happen is a benefit; and, early infant nutrition is *extremely* important for proper intellectual development – those growing brains need food! If mom can’t breast feed, formula is *expensive*.
If there’s a kid who got an extra couple days head start in reading (READING of all things!) from a small gift from a stranger, that’s good, and if it did nothing, well, I bet a young mom found herself feeling a bit of confused relief.
Leto
@Baud: I like her pronouns.
Geminid
@Bex:
@Mai Naem mobile ¹: Yes, it’s snark as you have probably seen already at #78.
However, I will point out that the danger of privatization schemes is that they do not require federal funding, just prime federal public lands. They can even be pitched as revenue generators because developers will promise to kick back a pittance to the federal treasury.
This is something groups like the Sierra Club, League of Conservation Voters etc. will be watching for like hawks, but we’ll need to watch also.
These projects likely will not be proposed publically until Republicans have a bunch lined up and ready to go, like DeSantis did in Florida. Then they’ll flood the zone with them..
Baud
@Leto:
Haha. I didn’t even read her bio. Awesome blossom.
Dan
@Baud: ”
It won’t happen right away. It’s too soon to file a lawsuit. The “pause” was just announced.”
Some very large reimbursements to not-for-profits have already been suspended as of this morning. I work in this sector and am hearing from colleagues in several states. The States run programs like SNAP, WIC, TEFAP (tens of millions of pounds of surplus food that goes to food banks) and LFPA (millions more pounds of food) but they do so only through agreements with USDA.
We are considering suspending this part of our work because, if we don’t, we may be in the hole for hundreds of thousands of dollars we won’t get back. I’m figuring this out now as we speak.
catclub
This also reminds me of the planetary motion simulator, where if you pause, everything collapses.
The government does lots of important things and you cannot just stop it while you try to figure out what it is doing.
WaterGirl
@Maxim: @prostratedragon:
Ha! By the time I saw your comment, I had already made a new rotating tag. I changed “my” to “the”.
catclub
That’s the property of a libertarian (keep government off my stuff and my freedom!) billionaire.
WaterGirl
@Dan: Welcome!
Nukular Biskits
@Baud:
Love that bio!
schrodingers_cat
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: It is reminiscent of the East India Company’s takeover of Bengal.
Matt McIrvin
@Dan: I’ve already seen the theory that the purpose of the indefinite “pause” IS the lawsuits–that they’ll go to the Supreme Court, who will rule that the President has effectively independent power of the purse, contrary to the text of the Constitution and centuries of precedent. Thereby removing most of the remaining relevance of Congress
But, of course, if they don’t happen, Trump wins this anyway.
WaterGirl
@MomSense: Hey MomSense. If you have ideas about how to help make that happen, it would make a great guest post as part of the How Do We Move Forward series.
stinger
@Baud: Thanks!
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
They don’t need to pause everything to do that. They could be targeted.
Geminid
@WaterGirl: Here’s another one I ran across recently:
I guess it’s too long for a rotating tag, though.
Baud
@Geminid:
Two separate tags!
catclub
@Quinerly: I always felt that way about Mike Pompeo.
Mayyybe I was wrong. or he just didn’t get the right opportunities to express his talents.
Matt McIrvin
@WaterGirl: A thing I’ve been wondering about is the tension between the drive to boycott Big Social Media/Big Old Media for preemptively bowing to Trump, and the fact that in many cases that’s effectively deplatforming ourselves. With Meta and Twitter, the algorithm is deplatforming us anyway so it may hardly matter. But it’s hard to pull normies into new platforms unless they have a direct interest in it.
Quinerly
@Baud:
Let’s hope she runs for the Senate. We need to obviously hold that seat. Would love for BJers from MI to weigh in.
different-church-lady
Welcome to day nine of Every-Bit-As-Bad-As-You-Thought-It-Would-Be.
Quinerly
@catclub:
Laughing Devil emoji.
different-church-lady
@Geminid:
And that someone is Trump.
Matt McIrvin
The Technology Connections guy has been pointing out (sometimes in cranky posts he later deletes) that “they all knew what they voted for” is in fact NOT the case: anyone paying attention could have told that Trump was endorsing everything *in* Project 2025 while disavowing Project 2025, but the average low-info normie was probably not very aware of that. Lots of very naive “Trump will fix it”. I think the thing many of them were really voting for was just a return to the status quo ante just before COVID hit, around 2019. It was a fantasy that they’d ever get that, but emphasizing the disconnection could help with public opinion (whether we have a functioning democracy or not–even most tyrants eventually have trouble when things really start to fall in).
Jeffro
@Geminid:
GOOD. It means even they are starting to get scared about where this is going. GOOD GOOD GOOD
mrmoshpotato
@Maxim:
Well put!
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
Many of them heard us. They chose not to trust us and to trust Trump instead.
Leto
Avalune talking to me about the immediate chaos these actions are having in the higher education financial aid offices, hers specifically. Students are starting to reach out asking if their aid is affected, and they don’t have answers at the moment. It’s causing distress (which is putting it mildly).
Quinerly
@Baud:
Re Peters
https://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/politics/2025/01/28/michigan-democratic-senator-gary-peters-will-not-run-for-reelection-to-us-senate-seat-2026/77985876007/
WaterGirl
@Matt McIrvin: I don’t know what the answer is, but it’s a good question.
Steve LaBonne
@different-church-lady: Every bit as bad? I’m a pessimist and this is going downhill much faster and worse than I imagined.
mrmoshpotato
@Matt McIrvin: Where’s he making these posts?
Matt McIrvin
@Baud: Yeah, but if the “find out” phase of FAFO hits hard enough some fraction of people will actually get fed up. It was all theoretical during the election campaign.
The people who win going forward maybe can’t be the same Democrats who were in charge before, maybe electoral politics isn’t the way forward at all, but hearts and minds come first and it might take a long time.
Matt McIrvin
@mrmoshpotato: Bluesky.
Jeffro
Condos and time shares…along a 2,000+ mile stretch of wilderness?
Well, that will solve America’s housing crisis AND get many of us a whole lot fitter, I guess?
Are they planning on making money off of concessions or something? Maybe corporate sponsorship? “This stretch of what used to be one of America’s greatest outdoor adventures is brought to you by the good people at ExxonMobil”
next up: Bryce Koch Industries Canyon!
Starfish (she/her)
@Baud: I have never seen anyone here say anything nice about the DSA.
Princess
@Ohio Mom: The main cause of the crisis of 2008 was illiquidity at the top end — money/credit stopped flowing. Could illiquidity at the middle (farmers) and bottom (hungry people) cause something similar? Combined with all the other freezes? I’m not an economist.
mrmoshpotato
@Matt McIrvin: Got a link to his profile?
Jeffro
see, now that is some quality inside baseball there…pro stuff ;)
wasn’t that approximately 400 years ago? LOL
sentient ai from the future
@different-church-lady:
biden, in fact, took a ton of meaningful action on student debt that directly benefited me – i have a LARGE amount (i’ll never be able to pay it back, and the interest alone would take up most of my lower middle class wage right now), was in default, wages were being garnished. i got out of default, into SAVE, and THEY RETROACTIVELY TOOK ALL THE NEGATIVE CREDIT REPORTS OFF MY RECORD. so i got a bank loan and bought a used EV.
it was genuinely magical. i was crying on the phone to the DOE person. because I DID IT ALL OVER THE PHONE.
so i’m pretty salty when people use that particular whine.
Matt McIrvin
@WaterGirl: A lot of the calls to action I’m hearing are just “boycott Facebook/Meta, boycott Google, boycott Apple, boycott Microsoft, boycott all the newspapers”, and all these are coming from reasonable places but it leaves you with tiny outside megaphones available only to the alternative-minded. The Internet interprets boycotts as damage and routes around them.
Unless the answer is just to use big Chinese social media instead which feels like jumping from the frying pan into the fire (and the TikTok saga proves they’ll bow to Trump if necessary).
Jeffro
Right!
(But don’t forget to add the ‘why‘ to everything he does. Voters need help connecting the dots, and if we don’t add the ‘why’, half of them won’t get it…and Fox will lie to the other half and say it’s our fault)
Ex: “Today, trump is going to starve babies and starve grannies while screwing over ag states…BECAUSE…the super-rich need more tax cuts”
narya
Federally Qualified Health Centers and the Ryan White Care Act for services to people with HIV are funded by grants. It’s a shitshow among my clients, who don’t know if they’ll get paid.
Almost Retired
My initial impression was that the WIC “pause” would be felt hardest in the red states. But about five minutes of googling proved me wrong. The bluest states have high rates of participation, with Vermont (for example) having a 70% participation rate among it’s eligible population. In Arkansas, only 35% of eligible WIC recipients are receiving benefits – undoubtedly because of red state roadblocks to participation. Fuckers. Let me reemphasize that point. Fuckers.
https://www.fns.usda.gov/research/wic/eligibility-and-program-reach-estimates-2021
Matt McIrvin
@mrmoshpotato: https://bsky.app/profile/techconnectify.bsky.social
Hunter Gathers
@Leto: It’s a really good way of shoving women back into the kitchen. The amount of women attending college offends a lot of men, who feel they are being left behind with all these ambitious women trying to better themselves and put themselves on solid financial footing without having to rely on a man who will dump them for a younger model who hasn’t had kids yet at the drop of a hat.
Jeffro
Yup. The only reason to stop it all at once is to destroy it.
If they want to evaluate each federal grant in existence, great. Show us a realistic plan for evaluating them in a timely manner with the staff you have. Only ‘pause’ what you can evaluate in a short time while the rest continues.
Otherwise, you’re just trying to destroy the American government…just like Putin and Xi.
sentient ai from the future
putting down a marker:
one-eye rhodes was on the dais with shitbird, i’ve heard, in las vegas at a rally this past weekend.
betting he’s there at marlago for the gop “retreat” to intimidate folks since he is banned from DC.
JML
@Quinerly: I hope Whitmer goes for it, even if she wants to run for President. She can do both. Camping out in someplace like Iowa for 4 years doesn’t get you more than a 2-day story if you win one of the “firsts” and being a senator gives you a platform to keep yourself in people’s minds.
Plus, Big Gretch would be a great Senator.
There go two miscreants
@Matt McIrvin: Always nice to see another Oglaf reader!
JML
@There go two miscreants: lol, Oglaf is very funny (and very NSFW).
Tazj
@schrodingers_cat: The fact that no one knows the end game is half the fun for the monsters in the Trump administration. They are certainly creating chaos in the Federal Government and potentially ruining people’s lives. Is the end game lawsuits that make their way to the Supreme Court or will he suddenly restore funding to some things like the great and powerful Oz?
It’s hard to get any information about what’s going to happen.
Maybe it’s changed by this morning but I turned on MSNBC late last night to find out what was going on and they had a round table discussing how savvy Trump was to have his immigration round ups televised. This was on Stephanie Rule’s show. Maybe she had something on later but I was so aggravated I turned it off.
UncleEbeneezer
@Starfish (she/her): DSA (assuming you mean Dem Socialists of America) gets rightfully dragged because they do everything they can to prevent Dems from winning razor-thin margin races, allowing monsters like Trump to get in power and destroy everything we have achieved over the past century. We lost everything we owned in the Eaton Canyon Fire and our renters insurance will only cover about half of that. Now the supplemental aid from FEMA that would’ve been guaranteed under Harris/Walz is probably never gonna happen because too many people like DSA spent 2024 endlessly bashing Biden (and then Harris) instead of putting their energy towards ensuring this fucker never got back into power. When I was urging people to go to the mat for Biden/Harris/Dems, precisely because of differences like disaster relief, that effect real people’s lives, DSA only wanted to scream about Genocide!!1! Fuck them (and anyone else who pulled that same shit). Full stop.
Chief Oshkosh
@Leto: Shit, Reagan did this with grad student stipends. Total and utter asshole move – and for what? Relative pennies went to the treasury, but a lot of students got put below the poverty level.
Luc
Unfortunately, the Democrats did not have any clear agenda for the last election, much less a “progressive agenda “. They did not stand for anything else but status quo.
schrodingers_cat
@UncleEbeneezer: Claps. Louder for those at the back.
And again we see that the same voices that pushed Biden out are being looked upon to provide solutions.
When you are white, you don’t have to be right
If I don’t hear from the PodCast bros ever again it would be too soon.
NutmegAgain
So, coffee, eggs, AND orange juice! No traditional breakfast anymore. Make Breakfast Great Again, no doubt. Thankful for my own breakfast habits of yogurt or oatmeal and tea.
schrodingers_cat
@Luc: They stood for democracy.
Baud
@Starfish (she/her):
No one has to say anything nice about anybody. DSA doesn’t have to say anything nice about us.
Baud
@schrodingers_cat:
Not popular enough.
Steve LaBonne
@Luc: I hope you and lots of other people are happy finding out what “not the status quo” actually looks like.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: So it seems.
TBone
@Ksmiami: I have been thinking that today too, every time I have to change the channel when I attempt to momentarily check in on the news or when I stray from here to read my usual blogs, etc. – I have been too overwhelmed by real life nursing of cat and lack of sleep to check in at Digby, who tells it like it is, but I’m feeling a bit stronger today as Noah is still periodically purring like a champ despite the indignities he suffers regarding the litterbox. Hope I don’t regret it when I do check in on such things again!
catclub
@sentient ai from the future: You might need to adjust your sarcasm meter on that post from different-church-lady
catclub
It is not good when you prefer checking the litterbox to checking the news.
Baud
This should make people happy.
Shalimar
@Luc: The 2024 status quo is going to look damned good after Trump takes a wrecking ball to it along with tens of millions of lives. We will see whether information disseminates accurately enough for people to figure out who to blame.
TBone
@catclub: LOL!!!
So funny because SO true!
(It’s the bathing of his hind quarters and underbelly that hurts his pride, he burrows his face into hubby’s side after when we put him on a big fluffy towel in hubby’s lap.)
lowtechcyclist
@Jeffro:
And the rich people get to do whatever they want in a nation without a real government. Feature, not bug.
Back when it seemed that the plan was ‘just’ to Schedule F the top ~50,000 non-political Federal workers (which would have been the Senior Executive Service plus a good chunk of the GS-15s, IIRC), I was thinking about the spoils system, and why it wouldn’t work now, or anytime in the past 80 years for that matter.
Since all this bureaucracy exists to do the work involved in executing the shitloads of laws that Congress has passed over the decades, if you replace them all every time there’s a change of Administration, you start off again with your replacement army of bureaucrats who have little idea of what the laws even are that they’re supposed to be doing the work that they require. So for a few years at the beginning of each Presidency, therefore probably most of the time, the laws wouldn’t be executed in any reasonable sort of manner. It would veto Congress by means of incompetence.
This ‘pause’ seems to be doing the same thing, only maybe for a shorter time, and leaving the bureaucrats in place, at least for now. But its purpose is quite clearly to throw a monkeywrench into things.
Old School
@Shalimar:
Gerry Connolly?
frosty
@different-church-lady: Still says Gulf of Mexico on my computer. More bullshit, this time from Google? If they say they did it he’ll believe it and it’s on to the next stupid thing.
Ksmiami
@TBone: I think we need to rally our people and Dems in power to start acting like an army against this shit. Plus Congress controls the purse, not the president – start becoming steel against the Republicans. And hound the neighbors who voted for this
TBone
@frosty: you give me hope that they are wily enough to do just that!
cain
@Geminid:
That’s what I was thinking… Trump’s entire ICE thing requires a shit ton of money to process to the level of mass deportations. That takes money away from giving it to oligarchs and what not. Plus, success means a labor shortage that will tank the economy.
Hildebrand
Yesterday we were told Democrats weren’t fighting back, or messaging the right way, or whatever the ‘Dems Aren’t Doing Anything’ notion of the day was. Well, was just on BlueSky and read a thoughtful and provocative thread on the cutting of foreign aid by Senator Chris Murphy. Clearly, he was trying to highlight the perfidy of this cruel and devastatingly short-sighted decision.
Most of the responses are either of the, ‘yes, but what are you doooinnng about it?, variety, or they are whining about Murphy voting to confirm Rubio.
To the first complaint, well, folks, he is doing one of the things you folks say you want, he is messaging, he is getting it out there, and he is doing it with some really tough language, he is pulling no punches. He is trying to get the story out into the churn of the news cycles.
To the second, jeez, yes, Rubio is craven, a dolt, and a wimp, but in comparison to the rest of the gang of dilettantes, bigots, and those who get off on cruelty, he is hardly worth a lot of energy.
On another post I saw folks rightly decrying Trump’s attempt to freeze funding, but they blamed Biden for not protecting it far more than they dragged Trump for being a cruel asshole.
Maybe, just maybe, we can support the Democrats who are trying to fight the good fight, and stop the incessant dragging of Biden even now that he is out of office. Maybe, just maybe, we can aim our fire at the damned fool breaking things,.
MagdaInBlack
@schrodingers_cat: It feels like a hostile takeover because it is.
Geminid
@Princess: You can throw a crypto-currency crash into this scenario. That industry has thrived through 14 years of positive growth. What happens if there is even a mild recession? Could a crypto crash turn a mild recession into a deep one?
These are some of the reasons I worry more about the next Debt Ceiling standoff than I did in Spring of 2023. I was confident we’d make it through the last one without too much damage, and we did. Next time could be very different, what with a shakier economy and a chaos agent in the White House.
TBone
@Ksmiami: I’m with you on that except for hounding the neighbors – if we present a united front of take no shit solidarity that includes banding together to train up IRL at highly publicized locations and meetings, they’ll be freaked out enough that they won’t need hounding!
cain
@Suzanne: Because they think it doesn’t apply to them. Only the people who are cheating the system. They never believe everything and as well somewhere.. deep down they think Dems will save them and the programs, it’s happened every time.
Ksmiami
@Luc: the status quo of anti trust measures, promoting the general welfare,and being a leader in biomedical research and development. Sounds good- also remember Republicans in power means death for many. So, yeah I wistfully wish we could go back to the status quo
tam1MI
As a BJer from Michigan, I hope she runs for Peters seat also. (And if not her, then Buttigieg).
TBone
@Hildebrand: from your lips to the ears of ALL teh gawds!
Matt McIrvin
@cain: Won’t happen if we’re dead or in jail.
Ksmiami
@Matt McIrvin: I’m not going down without taking a few with me…
Kay
@UncleEbeneezer:
Nonsense. Not you or anyone else knows “DSA” lost the election for Harris. Maybe centrists went over to Trump. Maybe Kennedy crunchy MAGAs lost it. Maybe our ordinary base didn’t come out. You provide no data, links or facts at all, ever.
You disagree with the Left side of the Party ideologically so you blame them for everything.
Richie Torres is all over Right wing media trashing Dems. He’s a Right wing Dem. But you didnt see that in your little bubble where “DSA” is the all purpose boogeyman and your theories are stated as “truth”
I disagree with Torres. I think he’s a Right winger who is only nominally a Democrat. But I don’t run around screaming that Right wing Dems were determinative.
TBone
@Ksmiami: me neither.
Matt McIrvin
@frosty: I think they said they’ll change it when the official government names database changes, which it hasn’t yet.
I’ve been following the debate about this on OpenStreetMap: someone immediately tried to change it and got reverted in an edit war. It sounds like they’re leaning toward descriptively adding metadata for “Gulf of America” as an alternate or “government” name for the Gulf of Mexico rather than as the default common name that will show up on the map in English, acknowledging that some people use it. Demanding that they make no acknowledgement of it at all is probably a non-starter because they don’t see themselves as partisan, but that’s something.
The Thin Black Duke
@Shalimar: Don’t feed the troll.
Sister Golden Bear
Rough morning. We trans people knew Felon 47 would ban us from the military, but last night’s order doing so was even more vitriolic than expected.
Meanwhile, the usual rightwing suspects are reveling in their anti-trans slurs while celebrating this. BTW, referring to trans women as “trans-identified males” is directly borrowed from TERFs in the UK.
May or may not be here much today.
Matt McIrvin
@Shalimar: Fucking around and finding out actually moved the needle in 2020–just barely, and for a limited time only. We might not get to have as free an election next time though, and that’s saying something given a bunch of guys Trump just pardoned tried to violently reverse the result.
But remember, Trump will be in effective control of most of the media interpreting what’s going on. Autocrats are often genuinely quite popular for that reason. They generate drama and entertainment and the media tell people their shit doesn’t stink. The bad things happening to you are somebody else’s fault. It’s possible but hard to push against.
Kay
@schrodingers_cat:
Well, actually, you dont know that Biden not stepping down would have won either.
But it supports your weird obsessive hatred of the Left side of the Party so you state it over and over and over as fact.
If Biden had stayed in and lost you would just turn to your all purpose unsupported theory, that the “Left” aka anyone who has ever criticized Joe Biden lost it.
Your tiny little circle of people who agree with you on Twitter are not “truth” or “facts”
Belafon
@Suzanne:
Too many think it’s magic, and don’t understand how stuff happens. Sort of like why anti-vaxxers say that they haven’t seen polio, so why do they need to be protected.
Matt McIrvin
@Sister Golden Bear: I’m sorry.
frosty
@WaterGirl: Thanks for adding these. Are you deleting obsolete ones like a bunch of them about the election?
I love the pictures you’re finding in the Media Library. The jackals are good photographers.
Hildebrand
@tam1MI: Seems that Pete is definitely thinking about running for the Senate seat. That would be good.
I think Whitmer has a solid chance in 2028 in the presidential race.
My bigger concern is for Michigan Democrats to rally around Benson for Governor, because Detroit mayor, Mike Duggan, being a fool, has decided to run for governor as an Independent.
Mai Naem mobile ¹
@Quinerly: must have been on a farm so she could get off on shooting some animals.
sentient ai from the future
@catclub: I understand it’s sarcasm, it’s very close to the bone though, and I want to make sure folks here have real world examples
Belafon
@MomSense:
Trump may be about to fix that. My observation is that the recession during Bush 1, the Great Recession of Bush 2, and Covid all happened late enough in their terms that people didn’t really have to deal with them because Democrats moved in and fixed them. This time, everything is happening early.
tam1MI
I have sen posts here which repeatedly recommend the Philadelphia Inquirer as a newspaper to subscribe to.
TBone
Aw ferchrissakes I checked in elsewhere momentarily and now I won’t be able to eat lunch. Weed to the rescue!!!
I’m gonna hafta continue to stay right here at BJ while we’re in such a state with sick kitty midnight feedings and all the stress that administration of the correct doses of the correct meds at the correct times of day and night brings . . .
I usually revel in being able to travel all over the internet but NOT TODAY, SATAN!
Exhibit A
https://crooksandliars.com/2025/01/dangerous-bird-flu-enters-next-worrisome
CDC cannot communicate with W.H.O. legally anymore.
https://crooksandliars.com/2025/01/are-republicans-and-project-2025-trying-0
zhena gogolia
@Hildebrand: Dream on.
Citizen Alan
@Matt McIrvin: i i am no longer willing to forgive someone for being willfully pig-ignorant as opposed to actively evil. The “low information voters” who went for Trump because they didn’t realize he was going to do what he said he was going to do are basically idiots who stuck their fingers in their ears and screamed La La la whenever anyone tried to warn them. As far as I am concerned, they are every pit as culpable as the actively evil MAGAts and deserve to burn in the same hell for eternity.
zhena gogolia
@Sister Golden Bear: This is so sickening.
TBone
@tam1MI: I love it, but I’m from there so am accustomed to it not being perfect, just great.
Old School
eclare
@Baud:
Thanks!
Bill Arnold
@Princess:
Yes. Trump turned the water[1] off, then three days later turned it back on again, and is taking credit for turning it back on again. He is not taking the blame for turning the water off![2]
[1] one pumping station.
[2] :-)
Kay
Here’s Right wing Dem Torres trashing the whole Democratic Party and smearing Hochul as an anti Semite because he’s delusional enough to think he’s going to primary her and win. He’s in the WSJ because he hopes to raise money for his run from far Right rich people.
You won’t see this on Twitter or Bluesky blue MAGA, thats for sure. Runs contrary to The Theory where “the Left” is blamed for every loss.
Ritchie Torres: ‘We Should Break That Cycle of Insanity’ https://www.wsj.com/articles/ritchie-torres-we-should-break-that-cycle-of-insanity-democratic-congressman-c0bced53
Steve LaBonne
@Sister Golden Bear: It seems so inadequate to say that I am very sorry you and so many others have to live through this, but that’s all I’ve got.
The Thin Black Duke
@Kay: Maybe POC don’t “hate” the Left, but we’ve learned they’re not entirely “trustworthy” either.
Kay
Its just fucking weird that RFK Jr was pulling double digits in polling and his people broke for Trump and that’s never even considered as a factor on what is supposed to be a political blog.
Nope. The only possible valid factor is The Left. Again. Which was also the only possible valid factor here in 2016 too.
AM in NC
@Luc: Well Biden left office with a lot more progressive laws and EOs enacted than the Status Quo before him, so I think you are wrong bout Democrats about not moving in a progressive direction.
Also, even if you ignore all those laws and Exec orders:
in status quo vs. fascism, I’ll take SQ
in SQ vs. Gilead, I’ll take SQ
And reasonable person would take a Harris Administration and Democratic governance status quo over Trump/MAGOP chaos and destruction. THAT was the choice. That was always the choice.
Kay
@The Thin Black Duke:
Show me something on how they lost it, or admit that this is a personal dislike or ideological disagreement.
We can discuss it as a factor, but just ignoring every other possible scenario isn’t a real discussion, its a recitation of a belief system.
Spanky
@Jeffro:
The Thin Black Duke
@Kay: I’m just reporting on what the black media spaces I visit are saying. When all is said and done, it’s the majority of white people–all across the political spectrum– voting against their interests at the expense of black and brown people. The numbers are what they are and POC see that.
Spanky
@catclub:
I dunno. Us cat owners have our own version of “carry water, chop wood”.
Miss Bianca
@Sister Golden Bear: I am sorry. I know that’s inadequate, but that’s all I can muster right now. :(
Nettoyeur
@Suzanne: This is cruel but true, I fear. MAGAs who suffer deserve what they voted for, right in the neck. As Lenin said, things getting worse strengthens the opposition. My advice for the rest of us is to batten down the hatches, take care of those close to you, and watch the Trumpers reap what they have sown. The politically active should oppose, but hold back on making life easier for these f*ckers as they catch the garbage truck they have been chasing.
Kay
@The Thin Black Duke:
If you’re going to report on what Black people in media spaces are saying you could link to their work. If you mean “the Black people I read on my self- curated social media feed” say that.
TBone
@TBone: whassat way the violent wingers communicate? Telegram or Signal or somesuch? Yeah, whatever that covert comms stuff is called, we need to do that too:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=L397TWLwrUU
Chris Johnson
@schrodingers_cat: It is. Trump’s people are out of Russia. He’s being directed to break everything in the most granular and effective fashion. He doesn’t personally understand any of this, and the reason it’s happening so quickly is because it very much hurts Republicans and wealthy people and billionaires, too.
Why? Russia’s about to lose in Ukraine and collapse, so their only recourse is to wreck the US rather than simply control it. If they could ‘win’ this wouldn’t be happening, they’d be going for the same control they’ve had for years (remember Moscow Mitch, who now doesn’t feel he has to play along anymore?)
Miss Bianca
@Kay: I know plenty of self-identified Lefties who got all kinds of excited about RFK Jr.
Interestingly, a lot of them seem to be getting more and more right-wing as they get older. Their cool “leftiness” led them to trashing Clinton and Clinton supporters in ’16 and elevating Bernie Sanders as some kind of white-haired god who was going to impose lefty authoritarianism. When that didn’t happen, they started going more and more right.
Judging from my personal encounters with the left-wing folk that I know, they spared no effort to trash Biden or “yeah but” about anything the Biden Administration did whenever they could. In this respect, they were indistinguishable from the right-wing.
ETA: Need I add that these were *all* white people? The POC I know seem to be a lot more pragmatic and less dogmatic, as a rule.
The Thin Black Duke
@Kay: Nope.
It won’t make a difference.
But I’m not going to be invalidated because it’s an inconvenience.
I’ve had this conversation before: let’s see what we can do to get white people to vote for us this time. Again.
It’s fool’s gold.
schrodingers_cat
Fisking comment by @Kay:
But when you are a valued commenter you can say anything and the FPers will back you up.
Professor Bigfoot
@satby: Can I say— I so deeply sympathize?
It has become well nigh impossible to remain tactful with these dumb sonsabitches.
The Thin Black Duke
@schrodingers_cat: I wouldn’t waste my time, SC. But I got your back.
schrodingers_cat
@The Thin Black Duke: Her media feed is God’s word everyone else’s media feed is tiny and unrepresentative.
BarcaChicago
@The Thin Black Duke: Thank you for staying here in the face of willful ignorance and angry denial of racial realities. I am deeply grateful for the voices like yours on this blog.
zhena gogolia
@BarcaChicago: Seconded.
schrodingers_cat
@The Thin Black Duke: Thanks that means a lot.
schrodingers_cat
@Chris Johnson: Sounds plausible and my mind did go there. But I have no proof.
Hildebrand
@Kay: I’ve had many conversations with folks in my congregation (yep, it’s anecdata), a good number of whom live in Rep. Tlaib’s district, and they wonder why she has always spent more time trashing Biden and Harris then going after Republicans.
Now, this is simply their perception, but it is their perception.
They like her when she sticks to constituent services, which she is very good at, but, boy howdy, they’d really appreciate her not kneecapping the top of the ticket every single time.
So, while the sample size is incredibly small, I don’t think they are talking about this only at church, this has to be a conversation that is had around the dinner table and at the barber shop.
Hildebrand
@BarcaChicago: Thirded.
LAC
@BarcaChicago: Fourth and fifth!!! @The Thin Black Duke – Please do not let someone propped up by the BP tone police and fangirls tell you otherwise. It is greatly appreciated.
Leto
@Chief Oshkosh: this is a late reply to a dead thread, but apropos because I just sat down in my Reagan and Gorbachev class. Just an eternal “fuck you” to that sack of shit.
TBone
@Chief Oshkosh: he cancelled my plan to be an environmental attorney at law.
Belafon
@Luc: So, are you getting your status quo?
It’s so funny to think that people don’t realize how revolutionary three of the last four Democratic nominees have been. We could have had a woman leading the country, or a black woman leading the country, which would actually be quite progressive.
Quinerly
@schrodingers_cat:
Actually, Harris under performing is not a fact. She over performed by at least 8 points based on his poll numbers and what she got in the election in 2024. But carry on with your pipe dream.
Matt McIrvin
@Citizen Alan: What these people deserve does not matter.
People who don’t deserve it at all are getting hurt. If we ever want to make things better–be it through some kind of election or some other way–we need numbers. Committed MAGAs are lost souls. People who sort of sleepwalked into this and thought it wouldn’t be this bad are gettable. Especially if they were non-voters.
cain
@MagdaInBlack: It’s not really a hostile takeover, the american people voted for this. It’s not like they hid what they were going to do. He’s doing everything he said he was going to do. We all knew this was going to happen.
WTFGhost
@Kay: Friend, it sounds like you have a beef with some posters, and are complaining about the whole community.
Could you break down what factors you thought were more determinative, than the ones you’re discarding? Not as “fact” – you’re complaining about that very thing – but as “here’s what I think happened.”
I won’t lie – the entire election was messed up. The lack of faith and support of Joe Biden harmed him greatly; *maybe* the lack of a serious challenge to his renomination damaged things; *maybe* we ignored too much of the relentless hate messages, and/or didn’t find a good counter for them; with *NO* question, the “should we or shouldn’t we replace Joe Biden” was handled *hideously*, especially in light of the constant, relentless “Joe Biden is the ANTICHRIST!!!” messaging.
I think there’s a huge amount of blame to go around. The worst part is, news people would carry Trump saying crime was horrible, and immigrants were trashing towns, and they didn’t report “please note, there is no evidence that any of this is happening.”
Anyway: I think I see pain or frustration in what you’re saying, and I care about that, but I’m not sure what you want to say, what you want us to hear, that would ease frustration.
zhena gogolia
@Matt McIrvin: I’m hoping you’re right. But there will be a lot of suffering first.
FelonyGovt
@Matt McIrvin: I’ve had the same thought. I’m taking (and enjoying) a lengthy break from Facebook but that’s the one place I might come into contact with people who need to hear our message. The rest is a liberal echo chamber- delightful, but…
Chris Johnson
@schrodingers_cat: I mean, look the fuck around.
And then, don’t hang around people who are sick, because shit’s getting real very quick. One thing about it, it’s gonna kill off LOTS of maga. They are Americans, and they’ve signed up for this, thinking they were buying fascism.
Keep physical distance wherever possible. I still suspect that mask-wearing is going to become unsafe, with MAGAs somehow persuaded to target such people. I haven’t seen any confirmation of that and my contacts with normies who have contact with the other side are kinda faltering. I’m too mask-off, so I don’t get to peek into their silos after all.
schrodingers_cat
@Quinerly: I am not talking about the polls but comparing the 2020 election to 2024. You have to compare apples to apples. Not election results with polling with a small sample size.
emjayay
@MagdaInBlack: They said that payments to individuals would not be paused, so WIC and SNAP etc. seem safe for now.
Meanwhile where are the lawsuits or whatever can be done about the firing of IGs which is legally required to take 30 days notice to Congress and be for cause, not arbitrary? Or this next thing.
SFBayAreaGal
@The Thin Black Duke: Thank you for staying here. I value and cherish your voice.
emjayay
This place needs a commenting system that doesn’t put replies to comments 100 comments down from the one commented on, and also includes a thumbs up/down function.
Does Disqus charge and the others are free, or is it owned by China or something? (I don’t think so)
Matt McIrvin
@Matt McIrvin: I just realized I was basically just paraphrasing Gandalf there, sorry J.R.R.
Matt McIrvin
@emjayay: Most of the front-pagers and commenters here will never accept threaded comments. I don’t mind them, but Disqus’s implementation is terrible.
Matt McIrvin
@FelonyGovt: That’s the problem, right? I’m basically boycotting Facebook right now but that’s where people who I know in real life, and who might not be committed anti-Trumpists already, already are.
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
I don’t venture beyond liberal spaces on social media, but I wonder if many of us who do aren’t really good messengers.
Geminid
@Matt McIrvin:
🐍
Don’t Thread On Me
WaterGirl
@frosty: I do try to weed out the old ones, but I’m sure there are some that are not aging well. If you see any that seem like they are past their sell by date, send me an email message.
Glad you are enjoying the photographs in the sidebar!
Kay
@WTFGhost:
If your position is anyone who tries anything or takes any risk at all causes a loss without any consideration of the risk in not doing anything then you have halted all risk taking or new ideas of any kind.
There’s risk in trying things. There is ALSO risk in NOT trying things. There was a risk in Biden staying. There was a risk in Biden going. Nothing is without risk. But if the response to trying ANYTHING is going to be “ well, you better not, a loss will be blamed on you” then this party is dead and there’s no point in discussing anything. The answer to everything is “it’s perfect exactly the way it is”
Okey doke. But that’s a dead organization. It’s no longer a living, growing entity.
bluefoot
@The Thin Black Duke: supporting this. It’s been pretty discouraging how non-white points of view haven’t necessarily been derided (but that too), more dismissed, here and elsewhere since the election. I’ve had to really pick and choose when I comment. I’ve had to step away more than once.
Kay
Keeping Garland carried risk. Advocating to get rid of Garland carried risk.
Biden staying carried risk. Advocating for Biden leaving carried risk.
NOT doing things is NOT risk free. That’s a fallacy. And it’s a fallacy that serves to crush any new thinking or new ideas of any kind. It’s a death sentence for the Democratic Party. You’ll all be in agreement. There won’t be any acrimony or discord and no one will get their feelings hurt. But you’ll have shut out any opportunity for growth and you’ll get smaller every cycle.
Baud
Aren’t you guys sorry you abandoned Twitter?
Kay
If Biden had stayed in and we lost I would not pronounce that things not going my way was the CAUSE of the loss.
Because don’t know. And neither does anyone else.
I DO know that if any risk taking is punished and the only “safe” way to approach this organization is 100% rubber stamp then it’s no longer a growing entity and it exists only to avoid risk.
Im not interested in operating solely to avoid risk. I think that’s a loser and people perceive it as such. It doesn’t work anyway. We’ve lost PLENTY when we’re risk averse. Nothing is “safe”. Nothing.
tam1MI
That’s an awfully cavalier attitude to take when the failure of the risk you took results in the suffering of millions of innocent people.
Kay
We lost with the low risk candidate in 04
We won with the high risk candidate in 08
we lost with the low risk candidate in 16
We won with the low risk candidate in 2020
We lost with the high risk candidate in 24
This risk analysis is bad. It has no connection to actual elections. Sometimes low risk loses. Sometimes high risk loses. We’ve lost just as often playing it safe as NOT playing it safe. “Safe” is an illusion.
Kay
@tam1MI:
Keeping Garland carried risk too. Obviously. Look at the outcome.
Your belief that as long as you don’t question anything or change anything then you will be safe is a FALLACY – it is demonstrably and obviously not true. Your assumption that some kind of self defined status quo is a guaranteed win is just wrong. That’s not how risk works. You don’t start with the analysis as “if nothing changes I win” and “if anything changes that’s the cause of all bad outcomes”
WTF. That’s just nonsense.
Matt McIrvin
@Baud: I know I am a BAD political advocate. What I’m actually not bad at is teaching factual stuff, but that depends on the person I’m talking to being willing to learn something.
Once in a great while, I’ve actually changed someone’s mind on a politically loaded topic. Back in the 2000s I remember getting into a work conversation about global warming in which a couple of people were hemming and hawing about whether there was anything to it, asked me as the Sciencey Guy and seemed genuinely surprised when I just said “oh it’s real” and elaborated a bit. Seemed to actually take it to heart afterward.
Around the same time I had my proudest moment as a blog commenter: when I convinced a smart dude who should have known better that the nightmare scenario of “you make more money, you pass a tax bracket boundary and it makes you poorer!” was actually not real, due to how the tax code actually works. He made this whole stunned post about it explaining it in detail and credited me with changing his mind.
satby
@Professor Bigfoot: as well as several people here.
Kay
@tam1MI:
If Biden stayed in and we lost what then? Are YOU cavalier? Your approach “caused” the loss because you refused to change course. Your risk avoidance meant we stayed with a losing candidate.
That’s the other way the risk analysis works.
tam1MI
Except that my analysis is based on a concrete fact – we lost – and yours is based on an ephemeral “what if”.
Kay
@tam1MI:
But let’s do Garland using your fallacy.
I thought he was weak and should be replaced. You didn’t. We took the low risk option and kept him.
Is Donald Trump in prison? Well, then using Balloon Juice logic your risk avoidance lost the country. If I use your analysis I blame you because I can just invent a good outcome for my preferred approach. In my fantasy the Garland replacement put Trump in prison, just like in your fantasy Biden won.
tam1MI
Well, first off, I agree with you about Garland.
But secondly, your Garland example fails to take into account the state level cases that were brought against Trump. Was Fani Willis having an affair somehow Garland’s fault as well?
Kay
@tam1MI:
The status quo is not a guarantee of safety. Nothing is a guarantee of safety. This “don’t say anything and don’t move!” and the bad guys won’t find us is not a rational way forward. It’s not going to work. And no one worth anything is going to sign on to it because it comes from fear. I won’t operate from fear. I refuse. You’ll have to do that without me.
The Audacity of Krope
@Kay: God, you’re both right.
Kay, dumping Biden was an unforgivable sin against the voters. Even if he was a weak candidate, it sent a message of party-wide weakness to the general electorate beyond that which probably held us down at all levels. Plus it was wrong, wrong, wrong to do. Emphatically. Iraq AUMF level wrong.
SC, you do obsessively blame the left for everything in the world. Conjecture you would continue to do so is not out of line.
@schrodingers_cat:
WTFGhost
@Kay: Okay – I certainly agree we need to take risks, but it seems like there’s a lot of cross talk. I’m seeing some discussions of old battles that are moot, and, eventually, there will be lessons to be learned, but for now, they should be set aside. They’re too recent, the emotions are still raw.
Now, the most “conservative,” in the dictionary sense, of people want change when data grabs the null hypothesis from their hand, spits on it, stomps on it, chops it into a dozen pieces with a Light Saber, and then disintegrates the remains with a Phaser, to make sure we’ve accommodated both fandoms, because, *trust* me, they need appeasement.
The question will be what changes, when, and what data is definitive.
And… pardon me for saying this when we’re in a public forum, but you just looked *frustrated* in too many directions, and I was sure you had something useful to say – something I bet would be interesting to read, once you had it focused.
I read a parody once – “new SCOTUS justice is to be selected and Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson and Jim and Tammy Faye and all the other cast of bozos demanded, yes, *demanded* to know the new justices views on poverty.
“There is *NOTHING* our savior, Jesus Christ our lord talked about more than helping the poor!” shouts one.
“How could we even imagine giving tacit approval, without knowing their viewpoints on the most important topic in the gospel, excepting the crucifixion itself!”
I found myself feeling a strange elation… “they can’t beat us, the good guys, in this deba… oh, fuck, this is a parody, they meant ABORTION.
Do I hunger for change? Oh, yeah. I want to talk about how no child should be hungry, and if we put a few extra bucks in the hands of someone making $20k, WTF cares? Free school lunches? Did you ever *eat* one? Do you *remember*? A slice of bologna, a slice of Kraft pasteurized process cheese food (what cheese eats, to grow big and strong!), and a hamburger bun made of spun wheat starch. They’d give you a ketchup packet, for extra calories, and a half cup of fruit (unsweetened), plus 8 oz of milk. You really want to say it’s a big effing deal to give that to every student whose parents don’t brown bag them something *enjoyable*?
I’m ready for risks; I’m ready for changes; and I’m ready to take a real stand, on real issues, and choose the lives and welfare of Americans over the greed and cruelty of Republicans, any day.
And I think you’ve got something to say to help – I’d like to hear it.