What goes around comes around. 💯👏🏽👍🏽 pic.twitter.com/hk5J9bqXu3
— ✭ 🅑🅤🅑🅑🅐 ✭ (@BubbatheOG) January 29, 2025
Not everyone can fight Trumpism and Trumpists directly. But remember this: kindness, decency, and fidelity to American values are defiance in the face of Trumpism.
So be kind, decent, and faithful, particularly to the many kinds of people despised and attacked by Trumpists. That’s revolutionary./1— Domestic Enemy Hat (@kenwhite.bsky.social) January 20, 2025 at 2:23 PM
/2 It’s something anyone can do. Caring about whether something is true or not, and calling out lies, defies Trumpism. Treating people as humans even if Trumpists don’t think they are is defiance of Trumpism. Refusing to hate and revile Trumpists’ targets defies Trumpism. You can do that.
/3 Fidelity to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and to us all being created equal and endowed with those rights, defies Trumpism. Caring about values and principles defies Trumpism (and also nihilists, but why should they care?). Affirming that how you act matters defies Trumpism.
/4 The rule of law, equality before it, and freedom of expression, conscience, and worship defy Trumpism — whether or not some people have given up on them.
/5 Openly caring about and adhering to values infuriates Trumpists. It spoils their joy. They will never be happy because of it. Keep doing it. Decency is a thumb in their eye.
/6 Coda: I’m not preaching at you to be nice to Trumpists, but if you react to this by “what about Trumpists” you are missing the point.
I strongly believe this has had a lot of disastrous cultural effects and is important to "treatlerism" becoming acceptable as an open ideology.
— Effy (@effinvicta.bsky.social) January 30, 2025 at 2:48 PM
Taking the President's symbolic roles as essentially being the central rituals of American civic religion, Trump's inability to perform them- to actually be presidential- signals that the civic religion is hollow and without power, that there are no consequences for blaspheming it.
— Effy (@effinvicta.bsky.social) January 30, 2025 at 2:52 PM
So people see this and conclude that civic-minded behavior is no longer enforced by anything with power, and thus slip closer and closer to the state of all against all. Driving worse on the highways, openly declaring they look out for number one, rejoicing that they can say slurs without guilt…
— Effy (@effinvicta.bsky.social) January 30, 2025 at 2:54 PM
He thought his dog was gone forever. Seven years later, the phone rang.https://t.co/52HdKljcys
— Ted Wilbur (@wilbur_ted) January 31, 2025
And a small treat for those of us who’ve ever opened our hearts, and our homes, to a Nasty Little Dog. From the Washington Post, “He thought his dog was gone forever. Seven years later, the phone rang.” [gift link]:
Damian disappeared May 4, 2017, and for more than 7 ½ years, his dad marked milestones he had hoped they would spend together. Paul Guilbeault finished his move from Massachusetts to Arizona, started a new life near Phoenix, switched careers to photography, met his future husband and then married him — all without Damian.
But the photos of him stayed up, although looking at them made Guilbeault sad…
Then came Day 2,814 — and a text from a mysterious number saying he had been found.
“I was like, ‘Shut the front door!’” Guilbeault remembered saying.
After nearly eight years, someone had nearly run over — and then found — his miniature Doberman Pinscher.
Guilbeault got Damian around 2012 when he was six months old. He had agreed to help a friend by fostering the dog for a few days, but when he went to pick him up, Guilbeault was immediately charmed by Damian’s affection and over-the-top theatrics. He decided to keep him…
In 2017, Guilbeault decided to move from Haverhill, Massachusetts, to Mesa, Arizona. He loaded his life into a U-Haul and, with the help of his father and a friend, started driving west as Damian cycled between laps in the front cab.
About two-thirds of the way through their 2,650-mile trip, the wayfarers made a pit stop in Oklahoma City and booked a room at a hotel for the night.
Guilbeault leashed up Damian, who was 5 at the time, and with his friend, he went on a walk along a frontage road near the hotel. For 10 minutes, Guilbeault and Damian battled. Damian, who preferred asphalt, insisted on walking in the road; Guilbeault, worried for their safety, kept pulling him back onto the grass. When Damian made his umpteenth bid to get back into the street, Guilbeault yelled at him for being so stubborn.
Affronted, Damian threw a tantrum, slipping out of his collar and bolting. Guilbeault and his friend gave chase, but Damian was too fast. He soon disappeared…
======
Then, on Jan. 15, he and Julian were driving their car full of clothes and other supplies from Mesa to Southern California to help victims of the Los Angeles-area wildfires when he got a call. Driving, Guilbeault used his Apple Watch to send it to voicemail. He got several more from the same number in quick succession, all of which met the same fate as the first. About 10 minutes later, he received a text message from the mysterious number. It said his dog, Damian, had been found…Chambers, 62, told Guilbeault that on New Year’s Eve, his sister had nearly run over the dog while driving down a four-lane thoroughfare. She stopped, got out of her car and tried to pick him up, only to be met with bite attempts and barks she compared with screams.
She grabbed and held him nevertheless. She worried about how her 150-pound dog would interact with Damian, so she gave him to Chambers. Chambers said that he could see the dog’s ribs a bit and that his claws were overgrown, having just started to curl under themselves.
“But he looked pretty good and looked pretty healthy,” Chambers said. “He wasn’t stinking stinking, so somebody had been taking care of him.”…
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Interesting, the Church of Later Days Saints issued a statement on immigration
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has reiterated principles and communicated guidelines to local leaders in the United States regarding immigration issues.
“As disciples of Jesus Christ, the following principles guide the Church’s approach:
Sounds like Trump just lost one big group of supporters.
rikyrah
Good Morning Everyone 😊 😊 😊
Trivia Man
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: Ill believe they split from trump the first time they tell the flock to oppose him. They say they follow the law but gods law is always higher. Even when Romney opposed trump it was very superficial opposition and had zero effect. He voted to impeach on just one charge and went out if his way NOT to persuade anyone else to convict.
Dorothy A. Winsor
Wow, that guy can preach.
Jackie
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
AFTER helping the FFOTUS get elected.
Mr. Mack
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: Already saw two posts today on a local FB page asking for “non-Mormon private school suggestions” in the wake of our newly passed voucher program. Related? Who knows.
Baud
@rikyrah:
Good morning.
Soprano2
I try to live by what Popehat is saying – I try not to let other people’s behavior dictate how I behave. I’m not always successful, but I give it my best shot.
Update on my new cat Lewis – he’s a real sweetie. Sometimes he sleeps on my pillow by my head. Once I had to push him off my face when he tried to lay on it! It didn’t take him long to get comfortable with us and the dog. Learning to get along with Half Pint, however, is another matter entirely. They are still hissing and growling at each other, and sometimes fighting, although they don’t seem to be inflicting any wounds on each other. Lewis sometimes actively provokes Half Pint, which belies the idea that female cats are dominant. I guess it depends on their personalities. I don’t know if they’re having territorial disputes, but they can lay on the couch within two feet of each other and sleep, but once they wake up and see each other there’s hissing, growling, and running away. Next time I get a Feliway I’ll get the ones for cats who are fighting! I hope they eventually learn to get along better. Sometimes I give them a break from each other by putting Lewis in our bedroom for awhile. Also, Lewis caught a mouse last night. He was playing with something on the bed this morning while I was putting on my makeup. I thought it was a toy, but it was a dead mouse! It had a “burial at sea”. Poor Lewis, he was still looking for it when I went downstairs.
p.a.
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
“Give us a one-handed economist…”
On the one hand: when conservatives lose LDS…
On the other hand: saying what you’re about =/= doing what you’re about.
Works define faith.
satby
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Can’t he? I love that video.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@satby: I want him to preach to me so I can take heart
Bupalos
One of the hardest things about combatting the kinds of post truth lies that Trumpism is built on it that those lies are designed to corrupt the conversation as much as to establish an alternate truth.
A good example we’re seeing today is all of the well meaning folk crowing about how there were no minorities involved in flying the helicopter. We think that conclusively defeats the implied Trumpist lie that it’s just common sense that the cause of the crash was minorities being allowed to fly helicopters.
Functionally though that isn’t really Trump’s post-truth intent. It’s simply to tap into and weaponize the feeling that there is something wrong much more broadly and nebulously with the idea of minorities flying helicopters. So it’s a really bad idea to come back at that triumphally announcing that the helicopter wasn’t being flown by a minority. That it must have been a different problem.
Trump absolutely is aware of this heads-I-win, tails-you-lose dynamic in the way we try to counter him. To fight effectively you have to meet his narrative with a different narrative. You can’t stay in his framing. We should be saying something like “the cause of the accident was wealthy people stealing tax money and leaving government defunded, AND that Trump blaming DEI here is part of that scam.
Soprano2
Here’s another beauty from the pardoned January 6th criminals.
Soprano2
@Mr. Mack: Lots of Christians believe Mormons aren’t Christians.
One of my comments went into moderation – too many links in the story, I guess.
Soprano2
@Bupalos: This I agree with. Don’t buy into their framing of anything.
Matt McIrvin
Trump seems to put out his most tyrannical and disturbing EOs (like the “prosecute teachers who use singular they as child-fuckers” one) late in the day when I can learn about them just in time to disturb my sleep. Whether he consciously intends that effect or not, it’s actually a psychological assault on the whole country. I suspect I can keep it from physically hurting me too much by trying to unplug from political information after 5PM.
Bupalos
@Soprano2: It’s actually a lot more difficult that we seem to be able to grasp. A big part of that is people refuse to take Trump’s particular genius seriously and have a need to insist that “you don’t know anyone as stupid as Trump.” In a lot ways that’s true, but as regards his eye for weakness and manipulation, he really is a bit of a stable genius.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@p.a.: Keep in mind LDS support for the GOP goes back the American Civil War.
And speaking as ex-conservative, the process is not a Road to Damascus moment. It also results in a I will never vote for the Republicans again mentality.
satby
@Soprano2: you may want to get the bedding off that bed and into the wash ASAP. Mice are the primary way indoor cats get fleas. And fleas abandon ship pretty quickly when the host dies.
I can’t risk an infestation, so while the bed was stripped I’d also spray this on it and any rugs or areas that the mouse carcass might have been. It’s safe for humans and animals once it dries, but kills fleas and has a growth inhibitor that kills any larvae after they hatch for 6-7 months.
zhena gogolia
I saw “dog” and a name beginning “Guil” and I thought now we were going to hear about Kimberley Guilfoyle torturing dogs.
satby
@Bupalos: Good point.
Peale
@Mr. Mack: noem cancelled hundreds of millions of dollars for assistance programs for “migrants” given to ngos. I’m assuming that this is resettlement funds. This will include a lot of religious organizations. Her extra drama shittiniess was her complaint that these places weren’t using the funds to tell the immigrants about Jesus.
i think USDA funds to run food banks will hit the same snag. Lots of those are run by churches who don’t really have the funds to set up a system to check immigration status or much willingness to report the undocumented to ICE.
AM in NC
@Bupalos: YES. I reject their framing and substitute my own.
Republicans giving our entire country away to the rich while cutting vital services for American citizens caused this problem. If we fully fund air traffic control, these accidents are avoidable. But Republicans want to make sure Elon has another tax cut. Se we don’t get enough air traffic controllers. It’s choices. Republicans choose tax cuts for Elon. If that’s not OUR priority, we can’t choose Republicans.
Soprano2
@satby: It only got on the comforter cover. I need to change it anyway. Thanks for the info.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Here is Bella of the Ranch talking about the GOP House failing to come up with a plan to implement Trumps budget.
p.a.
DEI caused the crash!
DEI caused the Titanic!
DEI caused the Hindenburg!
DEI caused the Tacoma Narrows Bridge!
DEI caused the AndreaDoria!
DEI caused the Great London Fire!
DEI caused WW1! and 2!
DEI caused the 1873-1879 Depression, the Panic of 1893, the Great Depression, the Great Recession!
DEI caused the Boston Molasses Flood!
DEI caused the NY Shirtwaist Factory fire!
DEI caused every mine disaster! every plane crash throughout history!
DEI caused halitosis!
jimmiraybob
They didn’t solve all the injustices of their time but they passed on the keys to the bus.
“As mankind become more liberal they will be more apt to allow, that all those who conduct themselves as worthy members of the Community are equally entitled to the protection of civil Government. I hope ever to see America among the foremost nations in examples of justice and liberality.”
– George Washington in his letter to the Roman Catholics in America (1790).
trnc
@Bupalos:
Yup. Instead of feeding the “minority pilots” discussion, dems really need to start hammering on understaffed agencies leading to disasters being a direct cause and effect. Senators need to demand that the administration actually justify the firing of any worker and start pointing out the obvious effect of driving career people out of air traffic control, food safety, infrastructure inspectors, etc.
Kay
@Bupalos:
I agree with you on “DEI” – it absolutely plays into their game when people say “it WASN’T a woman” or “it WASN’T a Black person”
They are trying to drive Black people and women out of public life except in narrowly defined, subservient roles. That’s the end game. They want to make every employer afraid to hire us – too much risk. They want to drive down the self confidence of Black people and women, trigger imposter syndrome, make us afraid to compete because if we do and something goes wrong we will be blamed.
Don’t play. If media or Republicans say “this was due to DEI” say “no, it was due to Republican incompetence and corruption”
Soprano2
@Bupalos: FFOTUS has the instincts of what he is, which is a really good con man. I worked with a guy once who wasn’t book smart, but he had a lot of native intelligence. If a guy in the factory didn’t want something messed with, he put a sign with a couple of misspelled words on it, and everyone thought that guy did it! Ironically, his wife was president of the local school board!
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Their churches are chosen for defensibly, because they were one of The Others back in the day and never forgot that.
Eunicecycle
@Peale: I volunteer at a food bank and we are very worried about this. We have been extremely busy, like double the traffic we used to get. Several people have told us their SNAP benefits were cut this month, which had to be in anticipation of what Trump would do.
Elizabelle
@Bupalos:
Has the added benefit of being true. All those half-staffed airport control towers? ….
Kay
Also disabled people. They want to drive disabled people out of public life. They want to make it so no one will hire them, so no one will use interpreters, so they can’t participate in public life at all.
Trump has been vicious and hateful toward disabled people forever. Remember when he attacked the disabled reporter? He wants them invisible and unemployed.
Starfish (she/her)
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: The churches are suing because they served as sanctuaries for people Trump was trying to deport, and now Trump has told ICE they can go into the churches.
TBone
When I cannot walk, you all carry me. Gratitude.
Soprano2
QFT
Soprano2
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: I know, I live in Missouri. It used to be legal to shoot Mormons here.
Soprano2
@Kay: I think disabled people gross FFOTUS out. He doesn’t want to have to look at them because it reminds him that there are imperfections in the world. He thinks everyone feels the same way as he does.
different-church-lady
They now going to loot the Treasury, LITERALLY:
Bupalos
@AM in NC: That’s what I feel we’ve been missing. “I reject this narrative” isn’t enough, and maybe isn’t doing anything at all. We have to have a counter narrative that is more true but more importantly is emotionally stronger. This is where we frequently fail.
I think in this sense even your framing there maybe isn’t enough. I think we have to go beyond “Trump wants to help rich people and carelessly hurts us all to do it” to “the rich want to eat us, and see us suffer as slaves. The very reason they want to hoard the money they could never even notice is to create suffering.”
we need to use as much of the emotional energy available in this destabilized age as we can.
TBone
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: thank you for sharing that.
Soprano2
@different-church-lady: So that’s super alarming.
TBone
@jimmiraybob: awesome
TBone
@Kay: he told his family to let his own nephew die rather than pay for care
It will be a cold day in hell if he is ever able to silence this disabled person again.
Kay
I DO think the comparison of qualifications between the Trump white man hires and Biden or Obama’s Black people or women hires is effective though.
If you want to compare Biden’s very accomplished Black Sec Defense to Trump’s piece of shit unemployable drunk white male Sec Defense I think that mostly lands with all but the Trumpiest because its so starkly and obviously true.
narya
@Kay: @Soprano2: As his own abilities/faculties decline, folks with disabilities remind him that we are ALL only temporarily “able.” And he’s scared.
Ohio Mom
@Soprano2: He probably had a learning disability, maybe dyslexia.
That’s a funny story.
Jackie
Who’s going to throw this back in The FFOTUS’s face?
narya
@Kay: Maddow did a very long piece on that last night. I know she’s not to everyone’s taste, but she’s been on fire lately, and it has helped me a lot. I record the episodes so I can skip anything that’s too much/too annoying, but I haven’t needed to do that.
Soprano2
@Kay: Plus, during the first crisis he had to handle FFOTUS’s Sec of Def acted like the Faux News host he was, not like the head of the Defense Department. The difference in quality of all these people is pretty stark.
Kay
@Soprano2:
It always works the same way. Some far Right media people float the idea of shunning disabled people. Rufalo has already done this. Then fuzzy headed media centrists who are bad thinkers and seek the approval of Right wing men “discuss” this ” topic”. “Have we GONE TOO FAR with civil rights ?”
They did this to trans people, Black people, women and now they will do it to disabled people.
The goal is to drive everyone but white men out of public life and higher paid work. They want us invisible.
Leto
@Kay: hey, this is OT: I have a YouTube video for you. Denmark: The State of Happiness. Discussing Danish life, but going over a lot of the things you (we here, generally) talk about: women’s issues, child care, infrastructure (city planning, specifically women on bikes). I thought it might be an interesting contrast to how your son views things. 60 mins in length.
Leto
@narya: her continually saying “mediocre white man hire” was just /chef’s kiss
different-church-lady
The only fucking reason Trump gets to destroy “the central rituals of American civic religion” is because the media refused to hold him to it.
Kay
@Soprano2:
They want you to see a Black or female pilot or surgeon or manager and say “no, I don’t want that one” so no one will hire us or promote us. They want those jobs reserved for white men.
Bupalos
@Jackie: We need to be aware that “throwing this back in his face” amounts to throwing the people this program aimed to help under the bus, while helping to establish a Trumpiam narrative and hollwing put our own.
If he even needed to, he could easily sidestep any blowback from that with “see how the deep state tried to sabotage me? I told you!” And that would be effective. Literally zero people are going to ever think of this as a plausible Trump policy.
different-church-lady
@Kay: I think they have no intention of stopping there.
RedDirtGirl
@Bupalos: Such a good point!!! Thank you for making it.
Baud
@Bupalos:
Join others in agreeing.
Bupalos
@different-church-lady: “The media” does not have this power. The broader loss of trust in the way norms and institutions function and who they benefit is at the root of democratic decline, and no “media” can counteract that.
Ohio Mom
There are more disabled Republicans than you might think. For some of them, it’s abortion, they are sure they would have been aborted.
Of course if they had been aborted, they wouldn’t have known it but there is no reasoning with the unreasonable.
There are also a number who are members of the leopards-wouldn’t-dream-of-eating-my-face contingent.
If some political scientist has researched political affiliation among the disabled, I wish I knew about it.
different-church-lady
I think we should stop debating the particular facts of the matter and start saying, “Hey, why is the President a racist piece of shit?”
Chief Oshkosh
@Bupalos: THANK YOU for
I just used it on a wealthy Trumper here in the office. Since he knows that I know a lot about commercial and military aviation, including ATC, it (probably only momentarily) shut him up.
different-church-lady
@Bupalos:
Bullshit*. The media uses it for entertainment content. They’re the only ones who care about the ritual. If they didn’t report it nobody would even know.(ETA: to be clear, I’m talking about the ritual, not the actual fundamentals.)
(*ETA2: backing off my aggressiveness a bit, because I now see we’re talking about slightly different aspect of the thing.)
Baud
Of course, with social media involving distributed content, it’s hard to get everyone in the same page in terms of how to respond.
different-church-lady
@Baud: “Incoherent rage” is a kind of page…
Leto
@Kay: WaPo article: Trump’s DEI purge guts Air Force team tackling obstacles for women
In a service where women were not permitted to fly in combat until 1993, adapting to a growing female population has been slow and hard-fought, advocates say.
The Thin Black Duke
We’re going to find out how many white people are willing to flush democracy down the toilet in exchange for the opportunity to put the “White Only” signs back up.
Kay
@Leto:
Thanks. We’re going in April. I love Copenhagen but boy those long winter nights are rough. We don’t go in the winter anymore.
There’s tons of anti American stuff from Danes now. I read their Reddit and I can decipher a lot of it. I’ve never seen this much bitterness towards Americans before. I knew they would be deeply offended by the belligerence but it really seems to have cut them deeply. They feel they have been nothing but cooperative with the US and this betrayal and disrespect is their reward.
different-church-lady
@The Thin Black Duke: All of them, Katie.
(/s. I hope…)
Soprano2
I don’t think they want us to be invisible as much as they want to drive all of us into lower paid work so they don’t have to compete with us for the best jobs. They want to go back to the time when women were secretaries, teachers, nurses and clerks in stores. They want to go back to when professional black people only worked for other black people, never white people. They want the “Mad Men” world back, where it’s just white guys competing with each other for the high paying jobs, while they’re waited on by everyone else. I mean, men don’t want to do administrative jobs and stuff like that.
Belafon
@Kay: Specifically, this is the result of Republicans gutting the funding for federal agencies, which means that most airports have too few air traffic controllers.
different-church-lady
@Soprano2: Wrong TV show. Think Handmaid’s Tale.
jimmiraybob
@TBone: Please feel free to pass it on. We inherited the keys. The Trump/MAGA party has completely rejected all claims to Lincoln. Lincoln worked with Frederick Douglas and his moral resolve strengthened. They both recognized the principles hand down and we got the 14th Amendment, as well as the 13th, 15th and, eventually, the 19th. Historians view this alignment as the 2nd Founding.
Dave
@The Thin Black Duke: Far more of us than I’m comfortable with that’s for sure. There actually was a bit of a period where the “white guys are alone now lets share our real very racist opinion because obviously you agree and don’t have to pretend now” vibe attenuated but the backlash to the Obama winning a second term coupled with how extremely ubiquitous and toxic online spaces are has brought it back in all it’s pathetic glory.
scav
@Leto: Mmmm. I think some may overestimate how butch the need for “real” pilots to only wear onesies is.
Soprano2
@Belafon: It’s actually my understanding that this has been a problem ever since Reagan fired the PATCO air traffic controllers in 1981. It’s a hard job that a lot of people couldn’t qualify to do. They told us no one over 30 can apply for the jobs.
Leto
@Kay: very understandable feeling. Not sure what the other side of all of this will look like for us, but fingers crossed and all.
Kay
@Leto:
My son and his family live in a very nice neighborhood on the strait. It’s a lot of ex pats – you’ll hear like three languages in the elevator. But my husband and I took their 3 year old to school on the metro the last time we were there and we like her school neighborhood. Its very Danish, very middle class and in the older part of the city. Its all rentals, only 20% of people own their apartment, so that’s where we’ll be renting. Its actually more affordable than NY, where our daughter lives :)
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@The Thin Black Duke:
Tens of millions, easily.
Belafon
@The Thin Black Duke: Lot’s of my fellow whites have little imagination, especially when it comes to stuff like democracy. “Why do I need it?” They’ve never personally had direct contact with the consequences of losing rights, especially since the system is rigged in their favor. They also tend to prefer the “Give me someone to look down on you and you can take my money” world. The one consequence of oligarchy is a few more of them are going to feel it than before.
Bupalos
@The Thin Black Duke: The trend in recent elections the Republican Party becoming less white and lower income, the Democratic Party becoming more white and higher income. Mostly as a function of education. I expect that trend to continue unless we can change the dominant narrative on our side.
MazeDancer
Just played back Rachel Maddow’s podcast of last night’s show. A great listen if you missed it.
She kept inserting “white make excellence” into her rundown of the day.
Had never heard Lloyd Austin’s entire resume before. Wowza. Especially next to Pete Hegseth’s nothingness.
Also did not know that the military has a Big Effin Rule that for 24 hours you do not say a word, not ever obliquely, about a member of active service who dies.
You. Do. Not. Do. It.
And Hegseth is on camera the morning after giving the exact ranks of the helicopter crew.
White male excellence.
Matt McIrvin
@Kay: I’ve said it before: A lot of people on the right seem viscerally disgusted by visibly disabled people, and are offended at anything that means the rest of us have to look at them. It’s not just opportunistic bully behavior, it’s some kind of instinctive revulsion. Trump clearly has this to a great degree.
But this eventually collides with the fact that a lot of them ARE disabled people. Especially as they age. Just about everyone eventually acquires some kind of disability.
different-church-lady
@Belafon:
Sparrows and curtain rods all the way down.
Kay
@Belafon:
I like the specific framing better. I work with college educated Republicans – 90% of the lawyers here are GOP and 100% of the judges and they HATE to be portrayed as incompetent. They’ll blow off “racist” as liberals being too sensitive but calling Republicans incompetent really lands. So if we want college educated, upper middle class Republicans that’s the approach we should use.
They didn’t mind invading Iraq and killing half a million civilians and thousands of US soldiers – they minded that it was handled incompetently. They think of themselves as better managers than Democrats are. They want to keep believing that.
different-church-lady
@Matt McIrvin: Guaran-fuckin-tee you the moment a white MAGA has a bad back that idiot will start shouting about how the government won’t help, yet still have zero empathy for “the disabled”.
different-church-lady
ZOT! You know what’s going on here? We’ve been spending way too much time waiting for everyone else to become disgusted with him.
Kay
@Matt McIrvin:
Its disgusting to me partly because it’s so shallow. Its so weak minded and petty, basing everything on appearance. A lot of Right wing “thought” is just fad following and worshipping rich celebrities. Unfortunately that’s a lot of “centrist” thought too, so they mainstream it.
Leto
@scav: I mean, there’s a lot of practical reasons for a one piece in a cockpit, BUT these things need to be re-evaluated with the inclusion of women. We can have both practicality and functionality, but we need to include the people (aka women in this case) in this decision making process. It’s like how the NASA couldn’t do an all-female spacewalk in 2019 because they didn’t have two women’s suits, even though there’s more than two women on the station most of the time. I can’t remember which female astronaut told the story of, when she went to space for a week the all male engineers packed 300 tampons for her because they’re idiots and don’t know female basic female biology. All of this shows how, even though we parrot the line of “inclusion,” a lot of it is still just lip flapping.
Belafon
@Bupalos: The Democratic party is becoming less male.
Leto
@Kay: they talk about this in the first 10 mins of the video, and the specific reasonings (city/gov planning) why they did this. I mean, this is a pretty darn informative video on a host of issues. I think you’ll really dig their wind turbine and farming section. There was a lot of thought about how do we get buy in to the program and cooperative methods. It’s interesting.
I know the dark winters would probably get me, but man, to live in place where I could safely bike everywhere I needed to go would be amazing. We were spoiled during our vacation times in Belgium.
Kay
@Belafon:
Since they’re all Right wingers and supposedly hate government yet are employed by the government and I’m not, sometimes when I am retained as juvenile defense I walk into the pretrial and COUNT aloud how many of them there are compared to me – one person. Its always like 6 against 1. I do it just because it drives them crazy.
Matt McIrvin
@Belafon: “I wouldn’t mind a dictator if he got things done” is something I’ve been hearing ever since the 1980s, generally from white people of conservative sympathies.
Yeah, OK. Even assuming that the things you’re thinking of are benign, what do you do when he doesn’t? What’s your recourse? What happens when the guy dies–now you just have to deal with his layabout failson? There’s a succession struggle?
Fantasies about the right to revolution don’t cut it. It’s such a wasteful option.
Lobo
Tag(minority humor) : I told my partner I needed a break from the past two weeks and needed to watch something more uplifting. It was Blade Runner.
ArchTeryx
@Kay: He wants them DEAD. It’s that simple. He just isn’t yet at the point of rounding them up and shipping them to death camps. He’d rather just take away all our supports, our ability to keep from starving, our medical care, and let us die quietly out of sight.
The person in a wheelchair arrested right in front of the press during the ACA repeal debate did exactly the right – the ONLY – thing. Civil disobedience or death is what it came down to.
Belafon
@Kay:
I word for a government contractor with the same type of people, and they think this is just an overreaction to DEI and not a reaction to Civil Rights.
Bupalos
@Belafon: Also true.
Probably the important thing to notice is that alignments are changing and can be changed. One of the things I react badly to (and I think it’s mostly from coaching) is when people, in the context of losing, harp on things that have not changed and are less changeable, while ignoring the things that have changed and are changeable.
Leto
@MazeDancer: I knew about his resume, but just the side-by-side comparison was really good. I hope more normies see it. And yeah, “white male excellence.” Definitely showing Republican “meritocracy” in action. Kay mentioned at #87 that Republicans believe they’re better managers than Dems, but that’s the thing: this is the best management they can offer. W and his admin was the best they could offer. This current dumpster fire is the best they can offer. At this point, they believe they should rule just because they’re white dudes. They’re all incompetent assholes, and every metric we can measure by continues to show that.
scav
@Leto: There’s also a bit of a deadend to a mindset that sees the onesie as already perfected, symbolic, and clings to it, rather than evaluating it as a constellation of properties that could very well be evaluated individually and recombined, adapted and gasp, possibly even improved in unexpected ways.
Kay
@Leto:
I really enjoy the biking, but they’re strong riders. 80 year olds or a woman hauling 2 kids fly by me. Their bikes are heavier than ours, too. My son has the little enclosed cart he pushes on his bike – they use it to transport their daughter or groceries. It looks like a miniature Amish buggy. Copenhagen metro is excellent, so I don’t have to bike. Its not cheap though – I understand why thrifty (cheap as shit) Danes use their bikes :)
Betty
@Matt McIrvin: Sundowning. My husband’s disconnect from reality starts around five.
Nancy
@Bupalos:
I appreciate your suggestion. I had a funny feeling about that defense but didn’t put it into words. You did that quite well, and I can think of variations on the message. Thank you.
TBone
@jimmiraybob: this morning MSNBC played a split screen of Raygun giving speech after The Challenger rocket disaster comparing with Donold farting out of his anus mouth about the air catastrophe that is HIS FUCKING FAULT and the difference is so stark it almost made me long for Raygun (but NO that fucker changed my life in a very bad way). I will share your thoughts & posts with my peeps when I check in – some of them need that boost very much right now!
NotMax
Methinks you mean Illegitimi non carborundum in the headline.
Matt McIrvin
@Betty: crap, I never thought of that.
TBone
@The Thin Black Duke: I will fling poo at every opportunity IRL at any of those fucks. Maybe not real poo. Oh wait. Yes. Cat poo! I’ve got some at the ready!
stinger
@The Thin Black Duke:
Also, per the comment immediately above yours, we’re going to find out how many men are willing to flush democracy down the toilet in exchange for the opportunity to put the “Men Only” signs back up.
Matt McIrvin
@Leto: It was Sally Ride. There hadn’t *been* a US spaceflight with a woman on it before.
Kay
@ArchTeryx:
I’m not on TikTok anymore but I was for about three months after the election and there was a liberal mom with a disabled son who was really getting through to Trump voters with disabled children. Her account is about accessing services and supports for disabled people. They seemed taken aback by what they had done (voting for Trump) after she explained what it could mean. It made me think that if Harris had had more time we could have reached and swayed some of them.
TBone
@satby:
@Soprano2:
Also mice are primary carriers of Lyme infected ticks! The ticks can be so tiny you can barely see them. Proceed with caution and keep all other pets away from the area! Do a self check with a magnifying glass if you can!
Enhanced Voting Techniques
And then they will start redefining what “white” means. White as in “Christian, conservative, totally NOT gay, male with a mono syllable last name, Liberty University graguate”
TBone
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: yep
I am here to say
I DISSENT
Matt McIrvin
@Belafon: “DEI hire” (or earlier “affirmative action hire”) is definitely the socially acceptable way to sneak in just plain old bigotry. The implication that a meritocratic workplace would be white men is blatant and what we’re seeing now isn’t really a reaction to DEI so much as a Woodrow Wilson-style re-segregation effort.
Leto
@Kay: yeah, those styles of bikes (cargo bike/bikfiets) are becoming more popular here in the US. They’re seen as kind of upper class, hippy alternative life style thing, but they’re just plain common over there. They made a really conscious decision to move away from a car-centric reality, focusing more on bikes/bike paths/public transport for a host of reasons.
I bought one of those bikes when I was over there, and brought it back with me. Not the cargo bike, but a heavy steel, fully bombproof bike designed for commuting. I love the thing and will never part with it. I could go on and on about this but need to get back to school work!
Leto
@Matt McIrvin: that’s right! I couldn’t remember, so Ty!
Soprano2
@Kay: In general we tend to think attractive people are smarter and more successful. MAGAs are even worse about that than the average person.
VeniceRiley
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: they’ll rather you out for number one, but make sure your whole family goes in fresh clean clothes and you get fed, I guess?
cain
@Matt McIrvin:
Why stop there, isn’t old age nothing more than a disability? Should we also keep very old people out of the public eye?
What astounds me is when people like Noem starts talking about “do they know Jesus” – like MF, Jesus means nothing to you. Christianity means nothing to you. Religion is just a method of control. The GOP christians are the least Christian of the bunch.
Geminid
@Kay: This happened to the Women’s Air Service Pilots in WWII. The WASP’s were established in 1942 when the rapidly growing Army Air Corps needed pilots. The organization was inspired a similar British outfit and enlisted several hundred women who had learned to fly in the pre-war years.
WASP pilots tested and delivered Air Corps planes of all types. General Hap Arnold was a big proponent. One time, a group of male pilots training on the B-29 went on strike; they said the new bomber was too unsafe to fly. General Arnold had WASP pilots deliver the next set of B-29s, and the pusilanimous pilots backed down and did their duty.
But the WASPs were disbanded in the Fall of 1944. There were enough male pilots by then, and detractors complained that these women flyers were taking jobs properly belonging to men. The agitation was led by a Washington, D.C journalist by the name of Drew Pearson.
Later, Senator Barry Goldwater led a push to win veterans benefits for the woman flyers who’d been left high and dry when they were no longer needed. Jimmy Carter signed the legislation into law in 1977.
I learned of the WASPs on a trip to New Mexico, when I stopped at the WASP Museum just outside Sweetwater, Texas. It’s worth a visit. Those who can’t can still purchase the WASP Museum’s calenders. They feature photos of these inspiring women with the airplanes they flew.
Matt McIrvin
@cain: And they also have major figures like Greg Abbott who uses a wheelchair, and Sarah Palin who has a kid with Down syndrome. Doesn’t seem to matter.
I got relentlessly bullied in junior high school but I didn’t get the worst of it, the kids who got it way worse were the ones who had cerebral palsy. Even less chance than me of successfully executing the inspirational “just need to punch the bully in the snoot” story.
One of them had a big brother who was a real piece of shit and parents who, based on remarks from my parents, were exactly this kind of right-wing shithead. Somehow, he turned out all right, a really nice guy. I think about him a lot.
Matt McIrvin
@Kay: Trump has the disgust reaction even with war wounded. Which is taking it so far it even sabotages one of the traditional hero narratives the right uses.
George
@Soprano2:
I harp on this a lot, but FFOTUS is not a conman. He is a psychopath first and foremost. A conman could, if the circumstances call for it, show, or fake, empathy. A psychopath who has reached the level that the FFOTUS has reached has no need to show, or fake, empathy. FFOTUS has gotten to where he is because, as a psychopath, he has engaged an army of flying monkeys to do his bidding.
Given what we’ve seen with FFOTUS and his minions over the past nine or so years, I’ve realized that most if not all fascist leaders probably were/are psychopaths who simply use power to aggrandize themselves. There always will be a wide and deep pool of flying monkeys to dip from, as well.
Matt McIrvin
@Soprano2: One of the narratives they’ve been using for decades is just that conservatives, and especially conservative women, are hotter than liberals. They have to be hot in a very particular way, of course. Fox News putting Barbie-doll-like women all over the screen (and shooting them to show off their legs) is one of the major draws to the channel.
Not to get too gross about it, it’s one of the reasons Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez drives them insane.
Dorothy A. Winsor
The idea that DEI leads to lower quality workers is deeply illogical. If we assume intelligence/competence on a bell curve, it’s distributed across the population (allowing for opportunity and education, of course). So limiting power to white males, means limiting it to maybe 35% of the population. (I don’t know the percentage) That means we’re hiring from lower down the competence pool.
trnc
@Elizabelle:
Artificially low taxes for billionaires and strangled funding is absolutely a problem, but tax policy hasn’t changed yet under Trump and AFAIK, ATC wasn’t understaffed 10 days ago.
What HAS changed is that Trump spent 10 days chasing people out of govt. That had a direct impact on ATC staffing and the cause and effect of that is simple and not in any way abstract.
Miss Bianca
@Kay: Hoo boy, you want to set them off, get going on Afghanistan. Rub their noses in it that despite what they think, Biden actually handled the shitshow *their* boy Trump handed him about as competently as he could, and certainly far better than T-rump himself would have.
Miss Bianca
@Geminid: Marge Piercy’s Gone to Soldiers is where I first learned about the WASPs, among a lot of other nuggets of WWII history.
(It’s a fabulous book, btw – well worth reading. Or-rereading, come to think of it.)
...now I try to be amused
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
Ralph Peters, of all people, made that argument (he was talking about women’s employment in the economy, but it’s the same kind of thing) in one of his books before he became a complete RW nutjob.
Matt McIrvin
@Dorothy A. Winsor: But if one is a complete fucking racist and sexist and believes that in fact competence is limited to white men, then the claim becomes logical. “It isn’t racism if it’s true”, etc. (and of course every racist by definition believes it’s true, so…)
Chief Oshkosh
@AM in NC: It’s way too early to know, but so far it looks like ATC was not the problem. Again, it’s very early, so a controller mistake, or a mistake by someone else in ATC, may have added to the outcome, but so far it doesn’t look like it.
That’s not to say that the FAA (and almost all other gov’t entities) isn’t underfunded. Such underfunding may have prevented better system or process upgrades at DCA that resulted in too many compromises in final airspace design and management. As has been accurately surmised, the holes in the Swiss cheese slices aligned.
It’s a never-ending battle to find those holes and fill them. Previous heads of Transportation and FAA were working hard on that. Going forward, probably not so much.
Matt McIrvin
@Chief Oshkosh: The damage Trump has done to aviation safety organizations may, however, make it harder to extract any actionable lessons from the accident–and that process is the main reason air travel is as safe as it is today.
Sister Golden Bear
@Soprano2:
I partially agree, but they’ve made it extremely clear they intend to drive trans people out of public life — if not drive us out of existence period. LGB people will be next.
Sister Golden Bear
@AM in NC: The lack of a second ATC was on of the holes in the Swiss cheese that contributed to the crash, but all evidence known right now points to error(s) by the helo pilot.
Most likely the helo pilot mistakenly focused on the jet behind the one that was hit. (I wrote out this in detail in the late night thread.) It’s an unfortunately all-too-easy mistake to make given the factors at the scene. ATC checked at least twice to confirm the helo had visual on the intended jet, which the helo pilot said he did, and then the helo pilot asked for, and received ATC permission, to maintain “visual separation” himself. At that point it was the helo pilot’s responsibility to avoid the jet.
The second key error is that (for reasons currently unknown) at the last minute the helo ascended above the required 200-foot max ceiling of the helicopter transit path through the airspace up to 400ish feet, where it hit the jet.
Juju
@Leto: Except his “mediocre white man hire” wouldn’t qualify as mediocre as much as sub mediocre.
Alce _e_ardillo
@Matt McIrvin: I think that is because by evening his cognition does a nosedive, he starts sundowning and puts out his drug addled brain sharts on truth social. His lucid moments are becoming increasingly short, fewer and far between….
...now I try to be amused
@Matt McIrvin:
The worst thing anyone (not just Trump) could do is replace a culture of quality with a culture of blame, i.e., a culture of CYA. You don’t get the truth when everyone is CYA.
Citizen Alan
@Matt McIrvin: that’s because Republicans select for hotness over overcompetence is in the women. Hotness being relative of course; generally conservative women repulse me. But if you start with the premise that there is absolutely no possibility of a woman being more competent than a man, you end up with the idea that a woman’s sole reason for being around is ornamentation. So why shouldn’t you just pick whatever bleach blonde telebimbo you find most attractive when hiring.
RevRick
@Kay:
@Soprano2:
Trump’s attack on DEI has a two-fold purpose. First, it implies that any woman, minority, or disabled person must be incompetent and was only hired out of misplaced pity. Second, it reifies white male supremacy, and so these attacks can rightly be called The Mediocre White Guy Reassurance Act.
rikyrah
@Kay:
truth
Don’t know about other women , but, Black folks aren’t falling for the okeydoke. We already exist in a world that doubts us..this is nothing new for us.
rikyrah
@Kay:
Not just him..
go down the list…
One unqualified mofo after another.
Barney
Leavitt has gone full racist in public:
https://x.com/Acyn/status/1885396140465807378
“When you’re flying with your loved ones, do you pray that your airplane lands safely and gets you to your destination or do you pray that the pilot has a certain skin color? I think we all know the answer to that question, and as President Trump said yesterday, it’s common sense.”
I want to know how the media in the room reacted. It’s like dropping the N word.
rikyrah
@Soprano2:
The delusional world of Mad Men.
Where they could pretend that they were big fish in a big pond.
But, they were the only fish in a pond where everyone else was locked into sardine cans.
Nobody’s going back into those sardine cans.
rikyrah
@Kay:
Kay,
How long are you staying that you have to rent an apartment?