This isn’t timidity. This is Schumer focusing all the blame on Repubs when it happens.
— Dana Houle (@danahoule.bsky.social) February 10, 2025 at 1:35 PM
Because somebody has to defend our team: Yes, it would be much more satisfactory if Chuck Schumer was standing in front of the Washington Monument with a tiki torch and a mob of angry college kids, but would it be more effective? A dispiriting percentage of our fellow Voter-Americans are only vaguely aware (if at all) that President Trump has made Elon Musk his Grand Vizier (or vice versa), ergo for them, Bipartisanship is still the best & highest goal. Dems vs Repubs, Eagles vs Chief, it’s all a good old-fashioned All-American game, amiright, gang? But when the gubmint checks don’t show up, or the only hospital within an hour’s drive shuts down… that’s when we have the mules’ attention.
Everybody needs to take their xanax and understand that the Democrats are not going to say "We want to shut down the government to stick it to the president" in any interview they give for the next two years. They're going to say they want to be bipartisan and centrist, as they should.
— Damned Robot (@supremerobo.bsky.social) February 10, 2025 at 1:41 PM
No, I am not saying they should be bipartisan and centrist. I am saying they should be ruthlessly partisan and say publicly that they're bipartisan and centrist
— Damned Robot (@supremerobo.bsky.social) February 10, 2025 at 1:43 PM
Very different message here from Politico after reframing the article. This is a lesson that complaining about bad headlines (presumably from Schumer’s office) can actually improve them!
— Craig Harrington (@craigipedia.bsky.social) February 10, 2025 at 7:08 PM
Senate Democrats are detailing how they plan to fight back against President Donald Trump’s administration — and warning Republicans against a go-it-alone approach on government funding.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer sent a “Dear Colleague” letter to his caucus on Monday that detailed four strategies to counter Trump: investigations, litigation through the courts, legislation and party messaging. Unlike other Democrats, who have recently warned that that GOP can’t count on their votes to avert a shutdown, Schumer isn’t going there yet.
Instead, while Schumer made clear that his party would support a bipartisan government funding deal, he also put the onus on Republicans to negotiate with them. Republicans had accused Democrats of walking out on talks last week, though a person with the private talks said late last week that House and Senate Republicans are still not aligned on their topline offer.
“Democrats stand ready to support legislation that will prevent a government shutdown. Congressional Republicans, despite their bluster, know full well that governing requires bipartisan negotiation and cooperation,” Schumer wrote.
“Of course, legislation in the Senate requires 60 votes and Senate Democrats will use our votes to help steady the ship for the American people in these turbulent times. It is incumbent on responsible Republicans to get serious and work in a bipartisan fashion to avoid a Trump Shutdown,” he added.
Senate Republicans will need at least seven Democrats to get a government funding bill through their chamber. And while Speaker Mike Johnson could get legislation through the House without support across the aisle, he’s been forced to cut a deal with Democrats on spending repeatedly because of divisions among his own members…
People, this is Jeffries putting all of the blame upon Republicans. Because Johnson can't get his side in order. And everything that is going wrong and will go wrong will because the Republicans cannot govern.
This is a spectacular message. REPEAT IT.— Jill Sargent Russell, PhD (@jsargentr.bsky.social) February 10, 2025 at 1:35 PM
Baud
Ah, the age old conundrum: can you really be a Democrat if you’re defending Democrats?
hells littlest angel
I wish people would understand something that should be obvious: Republicans are divided, at each others’ throats even. Democrats mustn’t do anything to drive Republicans together. Stay defiant, but calm and civil, and let them damage each other. Republicans united would be a disaster for us.
Baud
Pete Buttigieg is ready to be liked.
https://bsky.app/profile/petebuttigieg.bsky.social
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@hells littlest angel: Indeed, if they GOP had someone half as good as Pelosi leading them, the Democrats would be irrelevant because the GOP could pass the budget with their own votes.
(I am allowed to mention that here, right?)
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@hells littlest angel:
The House GOP did all fall in line to re-elect Johnson Speaker, though
zhena gogolia
Thanks for your feisty framing of the issues, AL. I appreciate it.
Baud
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
Still might. We are irrelevant unless they decide we are relevant. That’s what being in the minority means.
Anne Laurie
My interpretation of that: The House GOP is more than happy to let Pastor Mike Johnson be the guy standing between a government shut-down and an angry mob of Republican voters looking for their ‘hard earned’ gubmint checks. Who better, than a wet little dweeb with no history of bacon-bringing and apparently no actual friends?
tobie
Thanks for the wise words and choice selection of articles and skeets, AL. Dems are being set up to be blamed for a shutdown. I’m glad the leadership is aware of that and trying to counteract the narrative while not giving up on the leverage Dems have.
Now I’ll go back to celebrating the TROs issued today and wonder why Trump has told the DoJ not to enforce the law banning US persons and companies from bribing foreign officials. Who does he want to bribe and what is he expecting in return?
different-church-lady
Blog whiplash.
satby
@Baud: Pretty confident he’s already very popular.
different-church-lady
@Baud: You kiddin? It’s the very thing that defines Democrats!
satby
I appreciate this post AL, because it’s crazy making how both Jeffries and Schumer are getting dragged for telling the truth about the power of the minority party and trying to put everyone’s focus on the Republicans abdicating their duty. I thought Gen X was the Schoolhouse Rock generation, but maybe they all missed the third season on how our government works.
Kay
The DOJ dropping the Adam’s corruption investigation is a very bad development.
Anyone on Donald Trump’s team is immune to prosecution. There’s no check on these people at all and they are going to run with that.
Sad to watch.
HopefullyNotcassandra
This message has the extraordinary power of happening to be absolutely true.
This entire woeful mess is the sole fault and responsibility of the GOP. Nonetheless, we are all once more depending upon the democrats to clean up the GOP’s poo-poo.
Baud
@different-church-lady:
Dems are defined by defending Dems?
John S.
@satby:
Wow. When we met in person, I had no idea you had so much contempt for me because of when I was born.
I guess I’ll keep that in mind for the next BJ meetup around here.
HopefullyNotcassandra
@satby:
examine your priors please
Gen x here whatever that truly means. I agree with you.
TBone
Use every sleight of hand trick in the book, I say.
On that note,
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=E0Kv6vxZwL8
H.E.Wolf
My mantra continues to be, “wait 3 days”. A lot can and will happen behind the scenes in that timeframe. Jumping in, as righteous amateurs, with our hot takes? It feels very satisfying to us in the moment. But I’m a believer in doing the 72-hour work to make the riposte successful.
And by riposte, I speak as someone with a lot of experience with binds and envelopments. :) It is very, very satisfying to set up and execute a successful prise de fer, and watch your opponent’s sword go bouncing across the room….
Out for the evening. Good wishes to us all, hot take-ers and cold take-ers alike! We’re all working toward the same goals in our various ways.
PJ
@different-church-lady:
For some people, Democratic leadership is always wrong and not doing anything, or if they are doing something, it is the wrong thing.
Others think maybe Democratic leadership knows a little about politics (sometimes). I do think everything has to be pinned on Republicans – since they do control the Presidency, the House, the Senate, and the Supreme Court – and talking about bipartisanship while forcing Republicans to figure out how to stop the shit show they set in motion, and making them eat that shit, is how to reach the part of the electorate that is blissfully unaware of how fucked up things are and are going to get.
Lyrebird
@different-church-lady: Kidding? It’s the very thing that defines @Baud!
:-)
And may the Flying Spaghtetti Monster* BLESS YOU @Anne Laurie: Anne Laurie for bringing these comments to the front page. Neither Leader Jeffries nor Speaker Emerita Pelosi have delivery that makes me ooh and aah, but in line with what @Enhanced Voting Techniques: said, Yo these are political leaders who have pulled off near miracles, keeping Dems in a bloc which is sfaik the only way for them in the minority to have any impact…
*I am not sure what kinds of blessings Murphy delivers, sounds dangerous. Pastafarian blessings sound much more delicious and happy.
NeenerNeener
And now, for something completely different:
https://archive.ph/c0oE6
It doesn’t say who Nancy Mace is going to accuse of violating her, just that she’s mad at the South Carolina AG (a Republican) for not defending her honor like a good southern gentleman. Joke’s on her anyway, if/when Musk dissolves Congress her job will be gone and it won’t be coming back because all the icky girls will be replaced by members of the He-Man Woman Haters Club. She really needs to watch “The Handmaid’s Tale” on Hulu to see where she’s headed next. Not Governor of SC, but an Aunt Lydia, a Martha or a Jezebel.
Bill Arnold
Have said this both before and after the election: the Rules of Opposition under authoritarianism (/fascism) are different; ruthlessness (largely within the law, because the law (as interpreted by authorities) very much still applies to the opposition) is proper behavior.
schrodingers_cat
@satby: Online leftists blame Democrats for what Republicans do, never give them any credit for what they do achieve. We saw this dynamic play out with Biden too.
At the very end when Pelosi and Podcast Bros were sticking their knives into Biden, they didn’t join them. But that was too little too late. And here we are.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@schrodingers_cat:
Just my opinion, but I think Biden was more than likely toast anyway
Leto
Trader Joe’s limiting customer’s egg purchases. Thanks
ObamaBidenJeffriesSchumerTrumpov!rikyrah
Powerful video by a woman explaining why Samuel L Jackson as UNCLE SAM hit her so hard.🥺
https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZP8YUoPq8/
MagdaInBlack
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): ahhh…. you probably ought not touch that nerve.
UncleEbeneezer
If Dems wanna say centrist/bi-partisan shit, and then push for the most Progressive policies they can get, I’m perfectly fine with that. The Republicans pretend to be moderate then pass extremist shit. It’s the smart move, given our electorate and we should do the same and allow our politicians to do so. To me, that’s what “going low” and “just win, baby” really means in practice.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Anne Laurie:
Not a bad theory
satby
@John S.: Fascinating that you thought my comment had anything at all to do with you personally.
Leto
@Kay: with the administration signaling that they’re also going to ignore court rulings, I’m not exactly sure what we’re supposed to do here. Guess keep on keeping on.
Baud
@Leto:
Eggs are the new toilet paper.
satby
@HopefullyNotcassandra:
examine your priors please (umm, what?)
Gen x here whatever that truly means (Born between 1965-1980 is the standard definition)
Jeffro
So it’s “we’re trying to work with them, but they (and their demands) are insane…we’re sorry, America…the GOP, sorrowfully *sob* has left us no choice…”?
ok
I’m good with a little Kabuki provided that we’re the directors, for once
And hey, GOP? In the end, if you can’t get it together? “Rule or Ruin” works both ways
UncleEbeneezer
@satby: I’m Gen X and wasn’t ,in any way, offended by what you wrote.
MagdaInBlack
@UncleEbeneezer: Some folks sure to work hard to find a reason to be offended, don’t they?
satby
@UncleEbeneezer: Well snark doesn’t always hit well with everyone. Thems the breaks. 😉
Chief Oshkosh
@Baud: Clean up in aisle 9!
Baud
I picked a bad time to buy a book of Gen X jokes.
Kay
@Leto:
Right. That’s 1 and 2.
pajaro
@Bill Arnold:
Should Democrats be ruthless with respect to their voters, and support policies that will result in the furloughing of tens of thousands or more of federal workers? Because that’s what will happen in a shut down.
this is not about disappointing Republican colleagues or bipartisanship for bipartisanship sake. This is about whether Democrats should deliberately seek outcomes that will harm some of their constituents or the most vulnerable because it will also be a net loser for Republicans.
Baud
Via Reddit, science meme.
John S.
@satby:
Why wouldn’t I? I’m part of the generation you made a sweeping generalization about.
Fascinating that your response is to try and flip it around on me.
I guess it’s just too hard to say “Sorry, I was just joking.” Or some such thing. But you do you.
Librarian
Actually, there is cause to panic. Trump has ignored almost every court order issued against him.
frog
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
Sarah Longwell of The Bulwark ran some focus groups last year and came to the same conclusion.
Citizen Alan
@HopefullyNotcassandra: I’m a GenXer. And I did watch Schoolhouse Rock when I was a little kid. Which is why I knew more about the US political system at the age of 9 than anyone in the DSA or the Green party does today.
satby
@Baud: can always switch to boomer jokes, those appear to be evergreen.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Leto:
@Baud:
“tHeY’rE jUsT dOiNg ThAt To MaKe DeAr LeAdEr LoOk BaD!!!!”
pajaro
@Leto:
If a litigant willfully violates a court order, the next step is usually contempt proceedings. I have no idea how effective that might be, to be honest.
Leto
@Kay: give you one more for the night: Trump halts enforcement of US law banning bribery of foreign officials
TBone
@MagdaInBlack: Pepperidge Farm remembers.. Duck jokes, anyone? I hit the big I by accident, I swear.
TBone
@TBone:
Classic Gen X like a muscle car. 🎶
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=UZ1VZLMJ8D8
Leto
@pajaro: same. Guess we’ll all find out.
tobie
I have zero experience in PR, but I can’t help but think that Trump is putting out big announcements tonight–Eric Adams! tariffs! Tulsi Gabbard!–because he’s been getting bad press. The losses in court have rattled Republicans.
Don’t get discouraged and don’t stop making noise about the (f)Elon, the admin’s invasion of Americans’ privacy, the rationing of basic goods (eggs, milk) and so on.
frog
@pajaro:
If a litigant willfully violates a court order, the next step is usually contempt proceedings. I have no idea how effective that might be, to be honest.
From all the lawyering I have seen on TV, next is the judge issuing a summons for the violator to show up in court. Then failure to show up is followed by a bench warrant.
Unfortunately, the LEOs that go grab the perp are US Marshals, which are under control of the DOJ (Pam Bondi). If she tells the Marshals to stand down and do nothing, that is a good reason to panic. But maybe some state governors can put out arrest warrants ??? I am not a lawyer.
satby
@John S.: yeah, I’m not sorry, it was pretty obviously a joke. Have a good night.
frog
@Leto:
“For enforcement of this law against your competitor, please see the cashier at Mar-a-Lago”
billcinsd
A dispiriting percentage of our fellow Voter-Americans are only vaguely aware (if at all) that President Trump has made Elon Musk his Grand Vizier
That’s because the MSM won’t really cover it much if the Dems don’t fight back
Peale
@Kay: that and the EO today announcing that we’re no longer going to enforce corporate bribery of public officials overseas. This is basically a 2025 vision where the global wealthy stay connected through mutual formerly illegal “gifts” while the GOP is ripping up anything that looks like an accessibility ramp. I mean, quite literally the GOP is suing to get rid of wheelchair access to buildings.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@MagdaInBlack:
I don’t like talking about it, and try not to bring it up, because it’s a bad memory and and in the past, but I do feel it necessary to push back on this “Biden would’ve won if he hadn’t been stabbed in the back!” I see here. I’ve seen it twice today in the last two threads, by people who don’t agree on a lot (folks who are often critical of Dems/centrists, etc, and those like SC who are critical of the left, Bernie, etc), but seem to think Biden was going to beat Trump and that Pelosi et al shivved him.
I think all Pelosi and crew were doing were reacting to polling and trying to salvage what they could from the fallout of the June debate. I recall the reporting that Pelosi went to see Biden in July with new polls and he apparently hadn’t seen any new ones since like May or April. I wonder, honestly, how that could’ve been? It was a presidential campaign in the summer, why hadn’t he been briefed on more recent polling? Why wouldn’t he have made sure he saw the most recent data? It’s almost like he was being shielded or protected or something. Or his staff didn’t want to show it to him. It’s bizarre when I think about it
Lyrebird
@John S.:
Uh. Sure looks like you went from “Gen X” to “me” …and I thought we were gonna save the personalized slams against other commenters for MisterMix threads or something?
-From, a massive schoolhouse rock fan.
TONYG
@satby: Gen X kids were probably playing Super Mario Brothers and not paying attention to Schoolhouse Rock. Those kids! (Now in their fifties.)
TONYG
@tobie: No eggs and milk for the proles. But Trump will increase the Victory Gin ration from one ounce to two!
NotMax
@pajaro
A hearing and if found in contempt, court can impose increasing fines per diem. Ultimate step, if still a refusal to comply, jail.
Starfish (she/her)
@Baud: I love it when front pagers argue with one another.
Starfish (she/her)
@satby: In this climate, understand that everyone is getting dragged. No matter what.
NotMax
@Starfish (she/her)
“Why don’t they pass a Constitutional Amendment prohibiting anybody from learning anything? If it works as good as Prohibition did, in five years we will have the smartest people on earth.”
– Will Rogers
;)
Jay
I am not sure if I am suffering from seasonal depression, or if I am just aware of what’s going on.
TBone
@NotMax: classic!
bbleh
I am very confused about exactly which nuances of which public statement I am supposed to interpret in which way.
One of the things the Orange Guy’s cultists like about him is that he “knows what he wants,” by which of course they mean THEY know what he wants. He may be a terrible Fascist bigot, but at least he’s clear about his terrible Fascist bigotry. With the Dems and all their consultation and triangulation, I feel like I need an interpreter. (Or a consultant, lol.)
Note to Dem “leadership”: we need LEADERS, not cautious wordsmiths. Thank you.
Leto
@bbleh: if you’re not using your chicken bones to interpret, then you’re not doing it right. Which is why I’m proud to announce:
LETO’S GOLD CHICKEN BONES! Guaranteed to give you the answer you want! Look at that quality craftsmanship! Nothing but gold on dem bones! No matter which way you roll, you’re guaranteed to see what you want! Act now, supplies limited, limit 2 per customer! Operators standing by! 1-800-867-5309! Jenny will take your order, tell’em Leto sent ya and get free shipping!
Ohio Mom
@Peale: Yes, they are trying to get rid of wheelchair ramps, and every other accommodation that allows disabled people to live full lives.
https://dredf.org/protect-504/
In my years as an autism mom, I’ve met a fair number of disability parents who are proud Republicans. They’d always insist no one would come after “our kids.” SMH
Jay
@Leto:
I am not falling for your scam,………………….
https://ganongchocolatier.shop/products/chicken-bone?srsltid=AfmBOoqeBE8sRcD5HZ0Dtl_HgFNtgXOr9zb0DopH2BgjGbUoIVVmkdTK
Ohio Mom
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): I don’t know if we’ll ever know the full story, there are no reliable sources, everyone has a strong reason to spin it.
It’s just a tragedy how it unfolded and it’s water under the bridge/over the damn. We’re adults, we have to learn to manage our feelings around things that are unresolveable.
Quinerly
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
Nicely worded.
AL’s post is the only one I read today. Scanned the comments here. Lots of the same old same old.
Was good to see your comment and a couple of others.
****
Looks like Fetterman (and Tillis) didn’t bother to show for the Tulsi committee/cloture vote.
bbleh
@Leto: NO! Please see my PASSIONATELY ARGUED Substack about why we should NOT be depending on chicken bones and instead should be focusing on joss sticks, and why it’s SO important that we make sure our Elected Representatives hear about WHY joss sticks are CRUCIAL to our Messaging and our Victory!
See also my website at DemJossSticks.net, and please Like my Instagram feed!
Belafon
@John S.: as a fellow GenXer, I guess I’m still on the lookout for others with thick skin.
Eric S.
Poking my head up to say (typing extemporaneously)
It can be hard to hear yourself denigrated regularly. I recognized Satby as joking and hold zero I’ll will for her comment, but I’ve occasionally had John S. reaction. I’m, GenX, White, male, white collar, property owner. But not all GenX White…
We are all stressed the f-out It’s hard sometimes. Even if/when we know the generalization holds true.
All of us, except for a few trolls, are in the same side. Be kind and don’t overreact.
Back to mostly lurking.
Wombat Probability Cloud
@Anne Laurie: Thanks for the gut chuckle on this one. I’m a bit preoccupied with other things at present, and not able to check in as much as I’d like, but this seems spot-on.
Belafon
Let’s say a few truths about GenX:
1. We’re the most conservative voting block in the US.
2. We have so many resentments, definitely mommy and daddy issues, that we’d rather cut off our kids’ noses than actually give a fuck.
3. We seem to actually miss the days of lead rotting our brains.
4. Every single thing is a slight against us.
Jay
@Ohio Mom:
You have to wait a few years for the books to come out.
Quinerly
So….we are back to calling the Army base in Fayetteville, NC Ft. Bragg per Hegseth.
FT. ROLAND BRAGG
https://www.cbs17.com/news/local-news/cumberland-county-news/fort-liberty-is-renamed-to-fort-roland-l-bragg-after-world-war-ii-soldier-pentagon-says/
Quinerly
@Jay:
Oh….I think the full story will be written within a year.
Captain C
@Leto:
Republican bones have memecoins on them.
Jay
@Belafon:
Gen X is not accurately defined.
Despite being born in 1961, I identify as Gen X.
My 1 year older brother graduated into a thriving economy, from High School, and went to University.
I graduated into the Regan Recession, no jobs, and University seats had been cut by 60% and tuition had doubled, so no University until much later in life.
Shalimar
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): My anger over Biden isn’t at Pelosi and all the politicians who reacted after weeks of constant attacks online. My anger is at all the people here and especially the front-pagers at LGM who fell for what was obviously a Russian disinformation campaign. Biden had a bad debate and he should have done better, but he did not have advanced dementia or all the other shit people made up.
It worked out. Harris ran a great campaign and did as well as a Democrat could do given the anti-incumbent mindset. But most of the people pushing for Biden to drop out did not say they would support Harris. They were trying to create chaos.
pajaro
@bbleh:
Schumer is a leader, of the Democratic Minority in the Senate. He did not run for, nor was he elected, to run the resistance, and I can’t think of any Congressional leader who has done that well.. He’s done a good job of representing his caucus, which is why he keeps getting elected.
What those of you who are condemning the Democrats in Congress totally fail to wrap your heads around is that the things that you want the Democrats to stop are mostly not coming from Congress, and therefore, that they couldn’t stop even if they had power, and the things that they might be able to stop are things, like having a budget so that government workers can stay employed are things that they don’t want to stop.
Ohio Mom
@Jay: Yes, there will be books but why would you believe any of them, the writers will all have agendas.
Sorry to hear you are feeling down.
I have no words except hang in there.
Quinerly
More about this asshole….New hire at State Department
Darren Beattie, the State Department’s acting undersecretary for public diplomacy and public affairs — a senior role that represents American foreign policy to the world — has repeatedly voiced support for mass sterilization of “low-IQ trash.”
“Population control? If only!” he wrote in May 2024. “Higher quality humans are subsidizing the fertility of lower quality humans.”
In 2023, Beattie questioned why abortion is legal and “well within Overton window of public discourse,” but the “idea of offering feral populations financial incentives for voluntary sterilization is completely taboo.”
Later that year, he responded to a video of people in an Atlanta neighborhood by calling for a sterilization program.
“When a population gets feral, a little snip snip keeps things in control,” he wrote. “Could offer incentives (Air Jordans, etc.).”
Beattie made another post in March 2021 in favor of promoting better genes, which he suggested again in 2024: “Pay smart people to have more kids, disincentivize stupid people from having kids,” he wrote last year. “So simple but molds destiny on deep intergenerational level.”
He also said far-right conspiracy theories that a grand population-control scheme is already happening aren’t accurate because “all I see is trash multiplying.”
Beattie, a die-hard MAGA ideologue, was once a speechwriter for Trump. He was fired in 2018 after speaking at a conference attended by known white nationalists. A NOTUS review of his writings found that he has often expressed support for repressive policies to combat crime in the United States and frequently praised the Chinese government. His posts about population control and sterilization conflict with Rubio’s long-standing opposition to such programs in other countries. Rubio has called China’s former one-child policy a “grotesque violation of basic human rig
Beattie has repeatedly disparaged different populations, and his posts often focus on race.
In September 2023, he responded to news about migrants from Africa who rioted in Israel by suggesting that the Israeli government “literally just round them up and drop them in the ocean.”
“Let the ‘human rights groups’ whine… drop them in the ocean too!” he wrote.
It isn’t “politically correct to say, but low-iq, low-impulse control populations lack higher reasoning and moral faculties,” he wrote in another social media post. “They require strict corporal punishment and threat of violence to function properly within a society. Instead of anarcho-tyranny, we need Singapore for the dumb and violent, and Sweden for the more elevated.”
In April 2023, he responded that “birth quality matters too,” after tech billionaire Elon Musk mentioned declining birth rates.
Rubio has demurred when asked about Beattie’s many social media posts, including praise for Jan. 6 rioters. He told reporters last week that Beattie was selected by the Trump transition team and he was focused on fighting censorship in his new role.
https://www.notus.org/whitehouse/trump-state-department-darren-beattie-feral
tobie
DOJ under Bondi is either incompetent or serially dishonest or some combination of both. Justice filed a new notice tonight acknowledging that they had misinformed the court about the admin’s actions at USAID.
From Marc Elias at 10 pm:
HopefullyNotcassandra
@satby:
I know the age groupings. What practical value (outside of marketing) such age groupings have is my quibble.
tobie
@tobie: And there’s more from Elias. Marko Elez wasn’t a Special Govt Employee afterall!.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Quinerly:
Thanks for that run down as it provides a stark reminder of just how many people of that ilk are gonna infect the federal government.
We really are in a cold civil war.
TBone
@tobie: “inadvertent misstatements” – I have a feeling that old line is gonna be popular. I can’t remember if a Verification (legal document signed by the attorney to testify to the veracity of the document & attached to the pleading being filed) is required by Federal Court or whether that’s a Rule of Civil Procedure peculiar to certain locales.
YY_Sima Qian
Interesting critique of Bidenomics from Jason Furman (was Chair of the CEA under Obama):
Link to X thread w/ additional charts:
I take issues w/ a number of Furman’s analyses, the key one being COVID-19 induced inflation was largely a supply shock made worse by businesses taking advantage of the situation to price gauge (“Sellers’ Inflation), except in consumer electronics & passenger cars (where there was a demand shock along w/ the supply shock). Even if Trump/Biden had “overstimulated” the economy in response to the pandemic, inflation could have been tamed by a combination of enforcement against price gauging, implementing price controls, & taxing profits (as Spain had done).
What I did find striking about Furman’s analyses is how much of the gains that Biden & the Congressional Dems were hoping for were washed away by price/cost inflation, which he presented in fairly concrete terms. Social benefits not indexed to inflation saw large cuts in real terms. Significant investment into repairing/constructing highways did not end up keeping pace w/ rise in highway construction costs, so it was a net reduction in real terms. The “manufacturing renaissance” has yet to translate into tangible goods produced in meaningful amounts. In the end, everything about the Biden economy looked great in nominal USD terms, but far less so in real terms, which would explain the “Vibecession”.
I agree w/ Furman that Bidenomics failed to confront the trade offs its policies inevitably invited. It is critical for the US to re-industrialize, for economic resilience, economic diversification, & to massive increase productive factors so that money spent for stimulus &/or investment is not washed away by price inflation or end up going to foreign exporters & produce their multiplier effects in foreign economies. However, one cannot try to re-shore manufacturing & try to “decouple/de-risk” from the dominant manufacturing superpower at the same time. The US can never increase its productive factors fast enough to catch up to the demand created by the stimulus & the investment programs, so it needed to be open to low cost imports of manufacturing inputs & capital equipment in the short to medium term to make the investment dollars go as far as possible. Chinese companies are the cost leaders across a broad range of industries, & are now technology leaders in an increasing number of key industries, too. The sane policy would have been to induce the Chinese players to invest in manufacturing in the US, require tech transfer, & hire unionized workers in so doing. But that is not the path the Biden team (or the bi-partisan majorities in Congress) took. I suppose the Dems believed that hyping the Sino-US Great Power Competition was the only path to garner bi-partisan support for a program of domestic investment, but that same framework dictated economic/technological “decoupling” from the PRC.
That is before we get to the human capital required to revitalize manufacturing, which the US education system & immigration policy is doing little to address, & what STEM talent the US does generate domestically are incentivized to go to finance & Big Tech in software. As Trump is expected to revive the “China Initiative” targeting Chinese & E. Asian academics, the brain drain will become worse.
Finally, Furman makes the often lost point that even a “manufacturing renaissance” in the US will probably not lead to a renaissance in manufacturing employment. The type of high cost, advanced manufacturing the US has some chance to recapture are also highly automated, capital intensive instead of labor intensive. They will create a relatively small number of relatively well compensated white collar jobs, not a large number of moderately well compensated blue collar jobs. There is a bi-partisan fetish w/ manufacturing jobs in the US, but Dems should be focusing far more on service sector labor, whose cohort is far larger & who also tend to lead more precarious lives than manufacturing labor. Even if the US succeeds in recapturing value by re-shoring some amount of advanced manufacturing, it will take significant government intervention to ensure that the value is then equitably redistributed through society. Likewise w/ the productivity gains from AI. The US accrued enormous benefits from the rapid expansion of global trade, but the value was concentrated in increasingly fewer hands.
tobie
@TBone: You are more well-versed in law than I am by a NY mile. What I gather is that if the DoJ is going to submit corrections to “mistatements” (cough, cough) on a regular basis, no judge will believe their claims moving forward without substantiation. Trump’s DOJ is floundering in court and Republicans know it.
Professor Bigfoot
@satby: Or, and bear with me here– considering the two demographics that went hardest for Harris were Black folks and Jews, maybe trying to push out the Jew who runs the Senate caucus and the Black man who runs the House caucus– both of whom were elected by their peers– just ain’t fuckin’ good enough for these good white men.
Redshift
@tobie:
Deutsche Bank has loaned TCFG a reported $2.5B over the years and is famously involved in many corruption scandals. I’m sure there are other beneficiaries, but that one seems like the most obvious.
Bill Arnold
@Quinerly:
We need to excise fascist scum like Beettie from the USA polity.
Melancholy Jaques
@schrodingers_cat:
Can we set a date after which we no longer have that conversation? Nobody is going to change their mind at this late date & continuing to pound it is distracting & foments discord. You’re a respected person. I’m not trying to censor you; merely suggesting that your considerable energy be re-directed toward something that might help us.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@YY_Sima Qian:
Fine to say but what inducements would cause the Chinese to do something they don’t do in the US? The Chinese never did that when re-industrializing toward the end of Deng’s tenure.
My (now admittedly distant) experience with China, tech transfer and factories from my intel officer days tells me they’d never agree to doing what you said. For example, BYD could do what every foreign car maker has to do to sell here in the USA w/o significant tariff restrictions, build plants in Canada or Mexico. Maybe they will at some point but it’s not as if the Biden tariff’s are pushing them speedily in that direction.
Also too, Furman is just another neoliberal hack akin to noted thinkers like Yglesias, Noah Smith, host of Atlantic “writers” and the rest of the new liberal clowns who consider themselves “progressives”.
MrPug
@hells littlest angel:
What the fuck evidence do you have that Republicans are at each other’s throats on anything. House and Senate Republicans are in lock step with DOGE and Trump. I’ve seen not a single slightest tiniest sign of of the divide you claim exists. The Senate head of the Appropriations committee is on the record saying that DOGE and the WH can and should just withhold Congressionally approved appropriations because a newly elected President can and should review those appropriations.
Every fucking thing DOGE has done is extremely wildly off the charts illegal and unconstitutional and the Democrats need to fight that fight, not pretend like it is 1982 or whatever year you choose where things were normal.
JFC, are the commenters here Schumer/Jeffries staffers?
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Quinerly:
Marco Robotio might want to look at the administration he works for, then
Glory b
@Baud:
@Professor Bigfoot: Louder for the people in the back (including mistermix).
schrodingers_cat
@Melancholy Jaques: We can stop talking about it when we have stopped living with the consequences of that fateful event. I don’t think there has been much introspection as to how we got into this position.
I know its an unpopular take and topic on this blog. I am not a good fit here. Where blaming Democrats for what Republicans do is what makes you popular.
MrPug
@tobie:
Bondi is most definitely a fucking liar, but she is not remotely incompetent in terms of carrying out the Trump/Musk/techbro agenda. The only people who are incompetent are the leaders of the Democratic party and the people in these comments who don’t get what the fuck is happening.
Wake the fuck up and realize what is happening. While idiots like Schumer and Jeffries dither (and again Jeffries still thinks he needs to get Silicon Valley money when it is clear they are 100% against supposed Democratic ideals), Musk will just continue to bulldoze the Federal government to the point there will be nothing left to save.
WAKE THE FUCK UP.
tobie
@MrPug:
Aren’t they fighting that in the courts and with one exception winning thus far? And aren’t they bringing it to the streets with protests at USAID, Treasury, Education and Labor?
ETA: It absolutely sucks being a minority party when you can’t control the legislative agenda or call hearings. I don’t know enough about Congressional procedures to give advice on what to do. There’s a protest planned for March 15. I’ll be there for it.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@schrodingers_cat:
Please keep pushing back at some of the “bullshit orthodoxy” that gets peddled here.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@MrPug:
Thing is, the Dems have actually stepped up in a lot of ways recently. They’ve been making noise about all the shit going down, and it’s getting covered by the news and I think the public is beginning to catch up. DOGE and what Musk is doing was front page, above the fold news in my local paper today. The headline was “DODGE Dodges Scrutiny” and the body of the article on the front page wasn’t complimentary of Musk and “DODGE”
I think at this point our anger needs to be more directed at the GOP, while still holding Dems’ feet to the fire if and when necessary
MrPug
Good God, while a lot of the front pagers here get it far too many of the commenters are just clueless.
I’m outta here.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@MrPug:
You seem nice
Aussie Sheila
@YY_Sima Qian:
The Furman article was very interesting. The nostalgia in the old ‘manufacturing’ economies of the West for the post WW2 ‘trente glorieuse’ is partly the reason for the authoritarian turn of the past decade, imo. However the left everywhere has been slow to recognise, organise and lift up, the employees of the service economy which has grown enormously since the PNTR deal of the 1990s.
These employees ‘enjoy’ lower wages, less conditions and greater precarity than any generation prior to WW2.
On top of that, access to goods such as decent health care (in the US), decent affordable housing and affordable post school education everywhere, has been narrowed to the offspring of the better off middle class.
I’m dismayed by recent political events, but not particularly surprised. The idea that the worse things get, the better for the left is an old and idiotic trope. The worse things get, the worse they get, for everybody and everything.
Next go round if we survive the idiocy of the present, it might be an idea to drop the politics of the 80s and the economic ideas of the 90s and start to grapple with the 21st century and the working class that actually exists, instead of the one in people’s heads.
YY_Sima Qian
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: Chinese manufacturers will not transfer tech or hire union workers willingly, that is where US industrial policy comes in. They have to be induced, by both the carrots of market access & government incentives, & the sticks of legislations & regulations.
The Western MNCs were not particularly fond of transferring tech to their Chinese JV partners, either, & generally took care to only transfer trailing generation technology, while keeping most of the R&D back at HQ.
Nevertheless, what tech transfer that did take place, or just the act of doing manufacturing (after all, applied sciences are mostly learning by doing), helped to build the industrial superpower that the PRC is today, alongside longstanding PRC programs to develop human capital & build public goods. That is why the PRC courted foreign investors into greenfield projects for decades, despite misgivings about dependence on foreign tech. & having foreign MNCs dominate domestic markets. The US today has a far stronger foundation than the PRC in the 80s & 90s, & still retains (narrowing) leads in some important fields, there is no reason why it cannot leverage Chinese (& others) expertise to re-industrialize (in clean tech., for example).
dnfree
@satby:
I would say few (maybe none) of us like to be defined by our group as if our group is monolithic: not “all white people”, not “all men”, not “all women”, not “all boomers”, not “all GenX”, not “all millennials”, not “all straight people”, whatever.
Bill Arnold
@pajaro:
If the GOP does not believe that the Democrats are willing to go there, the Democrats will have lost their only strong tool of legislative leverage, other than the Senate filibuster. This sucks (including for me personally, fwiw), but we should not be in denial about the authoritarian (/fascist) nature of the majority in all branches of government, that Americans stupidly (IMO) voted into power. (Indirectly, with SCOTUS.)
The main leverage is in the House, basically, as David Anderson keeps saying; the GOP Senate Majority has been pretty unified so far. Hence the move (just dropped today, sigh) in NY State to defer the special election for Elise Stefanik’s former seat.
MrPug
@tobie:
Good God. You have to fight it in the court of stupid fucking social media. That is how Trump won in 2024.
Musk is ignoring court rulings. If and when USAID (to name one) funding is restored the damage will have been done. And why would Musk’s minions even reinstate the funding ever? Whose going to make them?
I hate this reality but the battle is in fucking stupid ass social media and the Democratic leadership needs to up that game by about a million. Instead of getting people who understand that fight into positions of power, the Democratic leadership has chosen people like Schumer and Jeffries who clearly do not.
Melancholy Jaques
@schrodingers_cat:
C’mon now.
MrPug
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
I’m fucking pissed is what I am. So, yeah, not nice.
dnfree
@schrodingers_cat:
The further we get from the “fateful event”, the more I think there were better ways to have avoided the “fateful event”, because the people around Biden should have had a better sense sooner than that debate that he was not up to another four years, and maybe not even up to the campaign. So minds apparently are not being changed on either side, I guess.
That has nothing to do with my respect for you as an individual and your opinions, which you are just as welcome to as I am welcome to my opinions. People can observe the same events and come to different conclusions.
Melancholy Jaques
@satby:
It’s not really their job to do that, is it?
Captain C
@MrPug:
Needs moar SHEEPLE!!!
dnfree
@MrPug:
Most of us are pissed, even fucking pissed. Picking on other pissed people doesn’t generally improve things.
Aussie Sheila
@schrodingers_cat:
If you think the criticism of Democrats here is too ‘strong’, you’d wouldn’t survive one minute of an ALP branch meeting, local, State or Federal.
Political parties that can’t or won’t, wage fierce internal battles over strategy and tactics, particularly after disastrous losses are guaranteed to make the same mistakes.
Quinerly
@comrade scotts agenda of rage:
Thanks. Hang in there.
All can be so overwhelming. Maddow was very good tonight.
********
****For those cooks out there, Penzey’s is running some great sales, and they are fighting the good fight against Trump and the Repugs on their site. I have been supporting them for years. Miss my bricks and mortar store in St. Louis. Great emails now and mail order.
The gift cards are discounted quite a bit. $50 cards for $35.
dnfree
@YY_Sima Qian:
I just want to say how much I value your thoughtful and informed opinions, on this thread or any other.
Marc
Just a reminder that BYD Motors has an existing plant in SoCal where they build electric transit and commuter buses, thus avoiding Buy American funding restrictions.
YY_Sima Qian
@comrade scotts agenda of rage:
On this point specifically, the Biden Administration banned passenger vehicles w/ Chinese sourced software from American roads. So, to sell in the US BYD would not only have to build factories in the US, but also has to redevelop the entire software package (infotainment/ADAS) from the ground up, that is an enormously expensive undertaking, when they have to compete w/ “Magnificent 7” & the AI big tech firms for quality programmers & program managers in the US. VW has had to collaborate w/ XPeng for the PRC & Global South markets, & Rivian for the US/EU markets, & that is not a leap that BYD or any Chinese automaker will want to take w/o much firmer assurance that US market access will be more than fickle & momentary. Not a surprise they will target lower hanging fruits in the Global South & the EU.
The Chinese battery makers who are trying to make inroads in the US face stiff political winds. The Gotion factory & the CATL linked factory (really a Ford factory licensing CATL tech.) in Mich. have been demagogued by Repubs on “natsec”/xenophobic grounds, & few Dems have raised their heads in their defense for fear of being wedged.
w/ these kinds of regulatory hurdles & political headwinds, no sane Chinese company will want to make green/brownfield investment in the US. Not to mentions the [justified] sanctions against Russia have raised the specter of their assets being seized should relations become much more volatile, which is guaranteed under Trump Redux.
Quinerly
@YY_Sima Qian:
Glad to see this posted. TY.
Read it early today and shared by email to some folks in my circle.
Doubt many here will take the time to read the entire piece, though.
tobie
@Redshift: Thanks for the reminder about Deutsche Bank. I had forgotten about them because they weren’t in the news for the past four years.
Aussie Sheila
@YY_Sima Qian:
Reindustrialising in clean tech simply won’t recreate the kind of economy older people pine for. It just won’t. For a start modern manufacturing requires an order of magnitude less people to produce an order of magnitude higher surplus.
Second, why invest even the abundant capital available in the US into such ventures when most of it can be imported? Decisions about the importing of Chinese made cars etc; can be changed by another administration.
The issue is the surplus capital sloshing around the place that needs to be scooped up and invested in people and things that people need in the places that they actually live in.
And by ‘scooped up’ I mean eye watering taxes. We will see if there is an appetite for this once the neo liberal state has been stripped down to the studs.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Marc:
Oooh, thanks for that. I didn’t know.
Also too, the workforce there is all-union, I’ll be damned:
https://www.busandmotorcoachnews.com/a-tour-through-byd-electric-bus-plant-in-california/
Finally, Warren Buffet owns 8.2% of BYD.
Glory b
There’s been another plane accident, this time, a crash on a runway at the Scottsdale AZ Airport.
One dead, four injured.
eclare
@Quinerly:
I am so pleasantly surprised we have a Penzey’s store in Memphis. And it’s only about fifteen minutes from me!
eclare
@Glory b:
That is the fifth under Sean Duffy.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@YY_Sima Qian:
Thanks for that. I like the dialogue on this subject.
Old School
@Quinerly:
I guess there weren’t a lot of Braggs to chose from. Congrats to the private!
Maybe the Hall of Valor will track down a picture!
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Aussie Sheila:
Never gonna happen here. The Neoliberal State is heavily baked into both political parties. Heavily.
Aussie Sheila
@comrade scotts agenda of rage:
You may be right, but I suspect this next go round with the revanchist US Right might force a rethink among some.
Quinerly
Not familiar with this particular site. Came up in my newsfeed tonight.
Former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon will plead guilty in his border wall fraud case in New York in exchange for no prison time, according to Law 360.Bannon faced charges stemming from allegations that he promised donors that contributions to the “We Build the Wall” campaign would be used exclusively for constructing a border wall. Launched in 2018, the campaign raised over $20 million and financed the private construction of several miles of fencing along the southern border. The Manhattan District Attorney’s office, led by Alvin Bragg, claimed that Bannon defrauded donors. Bannon denied the allegations.“It is anticipated that Mr. Bannon will plead guilty tomorrow under an agreement with the district attorney and the court that he will not receive a sentence that includes any jail time,” Bannon’s defense attorney, John F. Carman, said.
https://thepostmillennial.com/breaking-steve-bannon-avoids-jail-time-in-plea-deal
YY_Sima Qian
@dnfree: Thank you for the kind words!
sentient ai from the future
wow, look at all this pie!
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Professor Bigfoot: Yes, this, more so with all the language of describing them as emasculated.
Glory b
@eclare: I’m sure it’s some black guy’s fault.//
West of the Rockies
AL, I truly, truly appreciate your informative and optimistic posts in these disturbing times. Yeah, gotta eat the carrots of positivity when one can… an existence of just doom sticks can lead to despair, inaction.
YY_Sima Qian
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: BYD is not in CA w/ a fully unionize workforce because of altruism. It is rather notorious in the PRC for exploiting its blue & white collar workers to the fullest (decently compensated in terms of wages & bonuses, but shortchanges on PRC government mandated social welfare contributions, & pressure packed work environment w/ brutal hours).
It is in CA because the CA state government (followed by other Blue states) had/has created steady predictable demand for electric busses, & provided fat incentives. It has a fully unionized workforce because that is the CA state regulation.
The US has a lot of leverage to define (but not enough to dictate) the terms on which it engages w/ the PRC, whether at the CPC regime level or corporate level. The decision to disengage has been made based on moral panic & a fundamental loss of confidence, IMHO.
Quinerly
@eclare:
Such a great company.
I had bought a couple of those $50 gift cards for $35 a piece a few weeks ago. They have been running a special with their $24.00 “Woke Box” for $5 and their $45.00 “Rise and Shine Box” for $10.00. Added a few spices I needed tonight on my order and got to the free shipping…..hit the $50 and used one of the gift cards.
My smile for the day.
(Miss “Memphis in May”….Great festival. Had a 18 year run)
Quinerly
@Old School:
I’m really surprised that they didn’t go back to old Braxton Bragg.
Maybe Trump will find a body of water somewhere and change it to honor him.
eclare
@Quinerly:
I was on a barbecue team for the World Championship contest for about five years. Since we were mainly accountants our team name was The Pork and Bean Counters. It’s fascinating, and yummy, to get behind the curtain.
Gretchen
Jasmine Crockett (love her) and Malcolm Kenyatta (glad he hasn’t left politics – couldn’t we have had him instead of Fetterman?) were on Jen Psaki’s show tonight. Crockett pointed out that the House is 217-215 – they can lose only one vote. They’re in charge of the House, the Senate, and the Presidency. Go ahead and show us how it’s done, but she’s not selling out any of her constituent’s needs to make a deal. Make your own deal, guys. You have the majority.
Old School
@Quinerly: I believe Congress passed a law that bases can’t be named for Confederate soldiers, so there needed to be an alternative.
Marc
I’ve lived here a long time and I’ve never heard of such a state regulation. There was another electric bus plant owned by the US company Proterra (which no longer makes buses) that was completely non-union. The largest bus manufacturer in California (Gillig) has been unionized for at least 50 years, whereas the only major car plant (Tesla) is completely non-union. Unionizing the plant could have been agreed to in whatever tax incentive package California state government offered to construct the plant here. Or, maybe they figured out it would save them trouble in the long run.
Shalimar
@MrPug: I don’t really get how we can dominate social media in such a way that it will force Trump to follow court orders. How would that work? How do we measure domination? Do we get extra points for being assholes to random strangers? Because if it’s that last one, I expect Trump’s people have a huge natural advantage.
Aussie Sheila
@Gretchen:
Parliamentary manoeuvring is seldom understood by most people, because it’s intensely boring unless you are actively engaged in it, or have a horse in the race you want to promote for ideological reasons. However it’s also intensely important particularly in situations facing the Dem minority in the HoRs.
I am supremely confident that the majority of the Dems in the House have a plan and that it has been drawn up to yield maximum advantage to them and maximum disadvantage to their opposition.
As it should. Whatever people here think about their Dem HoRs, let me assure you, they know more about what they are doing than anyone here.
It’s their fucking job.
Quinerly
@eclare:
That’s cool. Would love to hear more.
I’m a huge fan of Memphis. Lots of road trips there over the years. Plus, always a stop when my group would head to Helena for King Biscuit or to Clarksdale.
“I’ve seen the bright lights of Memphis and the Commodore Hotel….”
(Love The Peabody!)
Gretchen
@Aussie Sheila: And the dems are just smarter than the r’s. I’ve been astonished the last few days, talking to Trump voters, how they’re both uninformed and gullible. I wonder how they tie their shoes before leaving the house.
YY_Sima Qian
@Aussie Sheila: Solar cells are probably a lost cause, as the EU has concluded. High tariffs on PRC solar cells & panels merely encourages final assembly in 3rd countries, increase cost, slow the rate of adoption of solar energy (especially distributed solar), & hurt employment for installations.
OTOH, wind turbines (especially blades) are not amenable for transoceanic shipment, likewise w/ battery cells/packs, & EVs, & eventually 4th gen nuclear power plants.
YY_Sima Qian
@Marc: I stand corrected.
I thought the Tesla Fremont plant was unionized, which is why Elon Musk expanded in TX. OTOH, I think unionization might have been a “price” BYD paid to ensure support from Dem politicians at the state & federal levels.
Quinerly
@Old School: Yep. I think in 2021. But, seriously, when did a law passed under Biden or Obama, for that matter, ever stop this crew?
Trump promised during his campaign to change the name back to Bragg so they found a private Bragg born in Maine.
All ridiculous. I’m born and “breaded”😁 in NC. It’s a disgrace that it was ever named for Braxton Bragg in 1918. We have to be the only country in the world that built monuments to and named military installations after losers and slave owners 60 years after the fact.
Disgusting.
eclare
@Quinerly:
The Duckmaster has some good Tiktoks…
https://www.tiktok.com/@duckmasterkenon?_t=ZP-8topMPnwBBf&_r=1
The downsides to Memphis are crime and poverty, but unfortunately those are big issues here. And the fact that we’re in a red state.
Aussie Sheila
@YY_Sima Qian:
Agree with that. I think 4th Gen nuclear will come into focus more in the next decade, ironically, or not, because the current US administration is so determined to skew clean energy policy towards the needs of Musk’s ventures. If the Chinese breakthrough with DeepSeek has real ‘legs’, that might not be a ‘thing’.
However, either way, better than the continued squandering of the future of the people on this planet by the continued use of fossil fuels. I don’t care for nuclear energy as such, but it is a much safer and better technology in it’s latest incarnation than fossil fuels.
Let the chips fall where they may.
Aussie Sheila
@Quinerly:
Never underestimate the power of nostalgia in politics. It’s the worst and most revanchist political emotion there is. It’s what made ‘Brexit’, and now the second trump administration. It also ushered in our trumpist Party avant- la lettre, One Nation.
It’s why the political left must always, always, point to the future and spend all their organising energy on those for whom the future is their whole adult life.
Not on those who are either at or near retirement, no matter how storied their political career.
The Lodger
@Old School: They should have named the fort after Billy Bragg.
Quinerly
@eclare:
I need to look up this Duckmaster. I’m not on TikTok. I met the older guy who I think had been there for years and years. This would have been mid 1990’s. This guy looks fairly young. I haven’t been to The Peabody since around 2007.
Red states….all those years I spent in Missouri….never considered myself being from Missouri when I traveled and folks would ask, “where you from?” I always identified as being “originally from coastal NC and living in the inner city of St. Louis.” Very Blue St. Louis. Covid Times did prompt me to flee from Red state Missouri to Blue state New Mexico, though.
Tennessee is such a beautiful state. Makes me so sad how it changed politically….Kefauver, Al Gore and dad, Julian Bond….and I used to have a lot of respect for Harold Ford.
Anyway
So many posts from you berating Yglesias, Noah Smith, LGM … can we get a couple about some of the good guys? Who are worth following for the right reasons? Krugman? Dean Baker?
Aussie Sheila
@Anyway:
The inability to cherry pick ideas which are sound from those who are otherwise political opponents is the mark of idiots. Ideological consistency is important in the realm of theoretical battle. In the realm of practical politics it’s the consistency of idiots and losers.
eclare
@Quinerly:
Yes, this Duckmaster took over from the one who retired. I was born here, so even though I have lived other places, I always say that I’m from here.
The political change here has been stunning. Up until 2011 we had a Democratic governor, Bredesen. Now we have one turning down $75M of federal summer food aid for kids. And of course Harold Ford is dead to me.
Barbecue fest is really interesting. We were a fairly low budget team, 10-12k, single story tent. One year a friend stopped by who knew a team that went all out with a three story structure, and he took me by there. It was a sight to behold, to be on the top floor, with a drink, on the banks of the MS. I have no idea how much they spent, I’m guessing 30k at a minimum
The tough thing is that you are not allowed to do any tear down until Sunday ( the judging is on Sat). So everything has to be broken down and carted off in hours. Have no idea how the more elaborate tents did that.
Sister Golden Bear
But, but… panic now and avoid the rush! /s
Quinerly
Speaking of name changes….Google Maps officially changed the name of the Gulf of Mexico today just for the United States.
Looks like everyone else in the world, including Mexico, will still see the Gulf of Mexico on maps.
Feels like something that would happen in North Korea to me.
Jay
@Quinerly:
Funny thing, none of the nav software has changed the nym.
So if you are a MAGgot and punched in “Gulf of America”, y”all are fucked.
Marc
It doesn’t much matter whether DeepSeek has legs, the cat is now out of the bag. The AI techbros were solving their performance issues by extending their hands for more VC cash to buy thousands of $50K GPU/AI cards rather than wasting time with simple optimizations to their code. “AI” has now been democratized, just about anyone with a large memory desktop, a few high-end gamer GPU cards, and open source software can achieve similar performance to ChatGPT running on thousands of larger GPUs. There are lots of smaller scale applications which are now practical to develop by anyone with the needed skills.
Aussie Sheila
@Quinerly:
It’s a mark of how much the rest of the world is contemptuous of the trump edicts. No one gives a shit, except for tariffs on their exports.
Everyone of course will try to ensure their nation’s interests aren’t damaged by the current administration’s idiocy. But renaming a U.S. geographical entity?
Give me a break.
trump and the revanchist US Right has managed to do what no other entity opposed to US geopolitical dominance has so far managed.
It has made the US State a laughing stock.
Note, not the US people, and their proper and laudable goals for justice for themselves and their nation, but for the pretensions of the US state and its apologists in the legacy media and the not so widely known propaganda media spewed across the democratic world.
Quinerly
Not breaking this down or summarizing it in detail.
Rep Nancy Mace on the House floor tonight accusing her ex finance and business partners of rape. Blames SC AG for not investigating.
The Hill and The NYPost covered her floor speech very differently.
https://nypost.com/2025/02/10/us-news/nancy-mace-accuses-ex-fiance-of-sexual-abuse-in-house-speech/
https://thehill.com/homenews/house/5137557-nancy-mace-abuse-floor-speech/
Aussie Sheila
@Marc:
Yes. Exactly.
It will be interesting to see how this plays out. There’s far too much easy capital floating around in the US. Far from being efficient, the ‘free market’ for capital has proved to be both wasteful, fraudulent and abusive of the surplus generated by US workers.
Time for some old fashioned, honest to goodness confiscation if you ask me.
Marc
I don’t disagree.
Quinerly
@Jay:
I mentioned a few weeks back that folks were arguing in FB (yes, I know) music groups about The Band’s “Up on Cripple Creek” and Jimmy Buffett songs….Trumpers were demanding lyrics to be changed.
The rest of the world is pointing at and mocking us.
YY_Sima Qian
@Aussie Sheila: Speaking of the DeepSeek moment, Josh Hawley is trying to turn back the open source flood:
by criminalizing import of open source AI tech. from the PRC, & export of US open source AI tech. to the PRC, essentially destroying the entire open source AI effort in the US if it passes w/ current language.
I don’t believe for a second that Hawley is convinced of the stated natsec rationale, or that he does not understand the nature of open source development. He is shilling for the SV centered military-technology industrial complex, which now includes Google, Oracle, Palantir, OpenAI & Anthropic.
The DeepSeek disruption is not because it built a reasoning LLM that surpasses the latest from OpenAI, but because it is a model that is competitive at the tech. frontier, cheap (in terms of capital investment & energy consumption) to build & operate, nearly free to use, & most importantly open source. That combination means small AI startups & academic research teams around the world can now leverage DeepSeek’s powerful open source model, modify/build on/improve on, & run the the evolved models locally on affordable setups. Platforms around the world (including Nvidia, AWS, Perplexity, Groq, Hugging Face in the US, & now everywhere in the PRC) are hosting local copies of the V3 & R1, & the ones outside of the PRC even w/ tunings to remove the CPC regime mandated censorship & biases.
Killing open source AI development will simply create a feudalistic structure when it comes to access to AI tools, creating scarcity to maximize the interests the capital owners that own the AI big tech firms, at the expense of slowing down development & adoption of AI. I doubt the ROW will sign up to refusing free open source tools from the PRC in the name of “natsec”.
That is different than installing DeepSeek‘s own App on government/military devices, which would be cybersecurity malpractice.
Aussie Sheila
@Marc:
If this revanchist regime keeps going, my money is on the US working class. I know that’s not popular here because ‘white males, something, something’.
But in my five decades experience of industrial and political organising I know that once roused and organised, little can stand in the way of moral and material outrage.
In fact, nothing can stand in its way. Absolutely nothing.
But it doesn’t just ‘happen’.
It needs organisational capacity and deep political empathy with all the ways the working class is deliberately disorganised.
But if a political faction is infused with contempt for its own ‘base’ and for the class it purports to represent, the result will be simply terrible, for all.
Aussie Sheila
@YY_Sima Qian:
Well of course! I was thrilled at the news of the development. And so is the investment community here in Oz.
Fuck Hawley and the rest of the idiots. Fortunately for the rest of the world, no one gives a shit what some US Senator from bumfuck US thinks. The cat is out of the bag. For a fraction of the capital that US VCs have plowed into SV.
I look forward to the next decade.
NotMax
@Sister Golden Bear
“Crap, where’s my towel?”
;)
Marc
Too late, the secret is out, a lot of people (like me) cloned the code as soon as it became clear it was not a hoax. There are already reverse engineered (from the papers) open source versions of the training and distillation code, which were not in the original source release. Plus, I doubt Hawley or most other politicians have any idea what all of this means, they’ll just ban what they can scheme out, starting with the internet accessible DeepSeek servers in China.
NotMax
@Quinerly
Erasing the Trans and renaming it the Department of Trumpsportation?
//
YY_Sima Qian
@Marc: The DeepSeek V3 & R1 are not the end of AI development. Plenty of advancement lay in the future, from the US, the PRC, & the ROW. What Hawley is proposing is shutting down open source research & development in the US, so that no AI advancement can possibly diffuse to the PRC. Academic research, too, since by its nature it is open source.
There is no reason not to benefit from open source developments out of the PRC, other than to advance the AI feudalism that the US Big Tech is trying to create, which is what killing open source in the US in general will do.
Aussie Sheila
@Marc:
Yep. Too late. As soon as the news hit here, I was on to my investment advisor. He was on to it. Billions of dollars, stolen from the future of US workers and their children, up in smoke, because the PRC knows what the US has forgotten. Applied manufacturing is the teacher of the next breakthrough in technology.
Who coodanode?
Aussie Sheila
@YY_Sima Qian:
It’s open source! For fucks sake.
Marc
@YY_Sima Qian: No can do, even the largest software companies (and colleges/universities), in the US are already quite dependent on open source for their applications, and have been for a number of decades. If they want to make the entire software/hardware industry in the US non-competitive with the rest of the world, cutting off access to open source code would be quite an effective move.
Marc
@Aussie Sheila: I and a lot of others suspected that they were running up the investment numbers in an effort to discourage smaller startups from even entering the field. The one thing a lot of us didn’t realize (until DeepSeek) was just how poorly designed their code actually was.
Debbie(Aussie)
@Aussie Sheila
If we are talking about the ‘real’ working class, wouldn’t that be those in the service industries (hate)? Maccas, waitpersons etc. this includes a great many more than white males. Which is part of the problem. Working class no longer means tradespeople/manufacturing. Aren’t they the ones buying $70000 trucks.
Aussie Sheila
@Debbie(Aussie):
Yes, exactly. But you try convincing people here about that. If it’s not some white working class male from bum fuck US it’s not real, and if it is, he is irredeemably sexist, racist and fucked.
That’s what comes of not working in practical politics and being so middle class you are like a fish who doesn’t know what swimming in water means.
MomSense
@Quinerly:
The arts are totally lost on fascists. Some may appreciate the status of a particular artist but they do not get the art at all. Has always been this way.
Thor Heyerdahl
@Aussie Sheila: The geographical name changes reminds me of a visit in the mid-90s to a city in the former East Germany that was in the process switching its name back to its original.
Karl-Marx-Stadt switching back to Chemnitz.
Now, if T___p starts building a wall to keep Americans in…
Aussie Sheila
@Aussie Sheila:
If governments can’t or won’t make the lives of people under 35 easier, then the current recrudescence of revanchism will continue. Affordable health care, post school education, housing and health isn’t much to ask from the richest nations in the world, but it seems it is, because ’immigrants’ from the petit bourgeoisie and the ‘racism and sexism’ of the working class from the soi dissant ‘centre left’.
It’s fucking mind blowing how the echoes of the 1930s repeat themselves here.
I never thought I would ever live the experience of my parent’s young generation, but here we are.
Aussie Sheila
@Thor Heyerdahl:
Heh!
YY_Sima Qian
@Aussie Sheila: Here is a great analysis of the PRC’s tech-industrial ecosystem, why it has become the industrial juggernaut that it is, how difficult it was to get to this position & how difficult it will be to assail its position, & how Biden’s IRA & CHIPS Act have to be seen as merely initial downpayment.
Revitalizing industry & manufacturing is critical if the US (or any other developed but overly financialized western economy) is to stay at the technological frontier in the medium to long term, & capture the value creation for its citizens from being at the tech frontier. Then it has to ensure the value captured is equitably distributed across its citizenry.
I think it is telling that the “hot” application in the US from the advancement in AI has been chatbots (followed far behind by taking the tedium out of writing codes), whereas the PRC (government, academia & corporations) have been focused on using AI to improve production of tangible goods & provisioning of tangible services.
Trump & Musk are throwing away what historically accumulated advantages the US had retained (deep cuts to the NSF/NIH, racial profiling against Chinese & Chinese American researchers working in the US, etc.). There is a seismic shift underway (& has been ongoing for a decade) at the tech. frontier across a broad range of industries & sectors, which the vas majority of American/Western citizens, & American/Western politicians, are largely oblivious to. American/Western businesses are now aware, but on the whole utterly unprepared.
The “China Shock 2.0” will have much greater impact on the West than the 1.0 version (which actually hurt the developing world more than the developed one, by delaying/reversing the progress of industrialization in the former). This time those threatened will be well compensated white collar workers in STEM fields.
Here is biotech/pharma (gift link to WSJ article):
More. Click through the link to X post w/ the slides:
Still more from someone in the competitive arena (click through the link for the full post, well worth reading):
All of this will be a huge boon to consumers & patients everywhere, but will trigger all kinds of natsec paranoia & protectionist urges in the US.
AxelFoley
@Belafon:
Maybe WHITE Gen Xers are, but definitely not Black Gen Xers. We grew up in the years just after the Civil Rights Era and heard all the stories. We lived through Reagan. We knew what conservatives were all about.
We ain’t with that shit.
Gloria DryGarden
@Quinerly: i didn’t think congress was the right place to bring rape allegations. I’m all for prosecuting rapes. But congress is not there for that. She needs to go to her home jurisdiction, or where it happened. Congress has other stuff to do.
Did you note that white fancy dress she’s wearing in some of the photos? It’s pretty, but what occasion is she dressing for?
YY_Sima Qian
@Marc: Why bother w/ the hard work of innovation & optimization when they can use the readily available investor funds (sloshing around looking for opportunities) to dig an “impregnable” moat? But they forget that human ingenuity will find a way.
If it weren’t for the Biden export controls on chips, Chinese big tech would be inclined to do the same to box out smaller players such as DeepSeek.
Aussie Sheila
@YY_Sima Qian:
Yes it will. Quite the conundrum for US elites. What is happening here is what happened to the UK in the late C19th re the rise of Germany and its phenomenal development in chemical, scientific and mechanical engineering.
The problem is that the antagonists now have nuclear weapons, and the alliance networks are even more imbricated in international trade networks than they were 120 years ago.
What a pity that the mistakes made by UK liberals in the late 19th century look like being repeated by the US, without the working class capacity for fuckery from below that ensured the insulation of the UK from full blown fascism twenty years later.
Geminid
@Quinerly: Besides fighting for a losing and terrible cause, Braxton Bragg was a crappy general. Bragg mismanaged every major battle the Army of Tennessee fought under his command. He just wasn’t very smart. A contemporary said it was painful to watch Bragg struggle with a map.
He was even worse with people. The only ranking Confederate who got along with him was Jefferson Davis, and Bragg was just about the only Confederate leader who got along with Davis.
Aussie Sheila
@YY_Sima Qian:
The US now re China is like the UK in the late C19th vis a vis Germany. Let’s hope it doesn’t end the same way with nuclear weapons this time. Christ the lack of historical knowledge, going back for all of 12 decades is really worrying and potentially deadly.
And enough with the generational nitpicking. It’s not your parents, children or grandparents. It’s the way the world works when you don’t control it!
YY_Sima Qian
@Aussie Sheila: Depressing precedent to think about. Many a think tanker has been drawing the parallel between the British Empire- Wilhamine Germany before WW I & Sino-US relations today in terms of the IR dynamics, but to my knowledge no one has drawn the parallel between US politics today & British politics at the turn of the last century.
Aussie Sheila
@YY_Sima Qian:
Well they should. And they should stop nitpicking about the way the contemporary working class has been organised, and organise people to reclaim their heritage. But of course that might interfere with the specialness of each and every one of the preciousness that can lay claim to the most opression.
JoyceH
@Jay: Brings up something I’ve been wondering about. Is there an actual constituency for renaming the Gulf of Mexico? I’d never heard any suggestion for it – first notice I got was when Trump announced it. I always assumed this was something he dreamed up on his own, because it’s so… childish!
YY_Sima Qian
@JoyceH: There is a constituency of 1, but plenty of MAGAs will cheer it on.
Aussie Sheila
@YY_Sima Qian:
But no one else in the world gives a flying fuck what the US chooses to call it. It’s a U.S. jurisdiction and they can name it how they like. No one else’s business. But the rest of the world isn’t obliged to follow suit.
YY_Sima Qian
@Aussie Sheila: I am pretty sure Gulf if Mexico is mostly international waters & not US territorial sea. Of course, countries are free to name even international bodies of water however they wish, despite long standing conventions created by the Euro-American colonial powers.
For example, Vietnam insists on calling the South China Sea the “East Sea”, & the Philippines call it the “West Philippines Sea” (the Qing Empire/ROC/PRC just call it “South Sea”). Both Koreas insist on calling the Sea of Japan the “East Sea”. Understandable given their histories.
Of course, such venality is unbecoming of a great power.
Geminid
@Gloria DryGarden: I started watching Nancy Mace in 2020, when she ran against Joe Cunningham in SC01 and beat him. One thing that struck me was her ambition. Ambition is a common quality among politicians, but Mace’s really stood out.
Now I think this might have been the sympton of a mental illness that is worsening now. I think Mace needs psychiatric care. I just hope she gets it before she harms herself or harms someone else.
Aussie Sheila
@YY_Sima Qian:
Well not quite. Open venality that screams ‘I’m scared of my opponent so I’ll steal from him/her’ is a sign of weakness.
Venality that manages to take a strength from an opponent and make it his/her weakness, is a strength. The PRC is managing the latter move quite well. The US political elite is simply ineffable at this point. They haven’t got a clue about about the disposition of SE Asia, including the internal politics of Australia.
Pay less attention to what our Ambassadors and leaders say, and more to where the electorates where sizeable immigrant populations live. The US forgets that voting is compulsory here, and electoral distribution is not up to elected fuckwits.
It’s arranged by a non partisan electoral commission here. With results that only focussed partisans can predict.
Geminid
@YY_Sima Qian: Iranians and Arabs call the same body of water the Persian Gulf and Arabian Gulf. This question of nomenclature was being debated last month in social media, so Turkish journalist Ragip Soylu observed that the Ottomans called it the Gulf of Basra back in the day.
This united Arabs and Persians alike. “Enough with this Turkish arrogance!” they shouted. “Why don’t you jumped-up nomads go back to Mongolia where you belong?” Of course the Greeks jumped in too.
I think Soylu knew what what he was doing, and was having some fun.
YY_Sima Qian
@Geminid: I don’t know, Gulf of Basra is pretty neutral.
Kayla Rudbek
@TBone: rule 11 sanctions are going to be thick on the ground
Geminid
@YY_Sima Qian: I read that Basra was Sinbad the Sailor’s home port.
Geminid
@YY_Sima Qian: So maybe Ragip Soylu was being serious and constructive. But Soylu also knew he was rattling some cages. There’s is a lot of reflexive animosity towards Turkiye among the other nationalities in the region.
Also among Europeans and Americans. If I had a nickel for every time I’ve seen someone respond to a statement by Erdogan with, “Why is Turkiye still in Nato?” I could pay for a trip to Istanbul.
@Geminid: