Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

The real work of an opposition party is to oppose.

Since we are repeating ourselves, let me just say fuck that.

When you’re in more danger from the IDF than from Russian shelling, that’s really bad.

The willow is too close to the house.

A snarling mass of vitriolic jackals

Let me file that under fuck it.

I am pretty sure these ‘journalists’ were not always such a bootlicking sycophants.

Of course you can have champagne before noon. That’s why orange juice was invented.

I desperately hope that, yet again, i am wrong.

I’m starting to think Jesus may have made a mistake saving people with no questions asked.

… pundit janitors mopping up after the gop

Prediction: the gop will rethink its strategy of boycotting future committees.

In after Baud. Damn.

The media handbook says “controversial” is the most negative description that can be used for a Republican.

Republicans: “Abortion is murder but you can take a bus to get one.” Easy peasy.

Second rate reporter says what?

It’s pointless to bring up problems that can only be solved with a time machine.

If you tweet it in all caps, that makes it true!

Fight them, without becoming them!

Some judge needs to shut this circus down soon.

I have other things to bitch about but those will have to wait.

Republicans don’t want a speaker to lead them; they want a hostage.

Giving up is unforgivable.

Cancel the cowardly WaPo and set up an equivalent monthly donation to ProPublica.

You are here: Home / Economics / C.R.E.A.M. / Schadenfreude Open Thread: Who Are These Leopards, And Why Are They Eyeing My Face?

Schadenfreude Open Thread: Who Are These Leopards, And Why Are They Eyeing My Face?

by | 235 Comments

This post is in: , , , ,

Now this is some unambiguously funny stove touching

[image or embed]

— James Medlock (@jdcmedlock.bsky.social) February 28, 2025 at 11:11 AM

That’s from Ben Smith’s execrably right-wing Semafor — “American business leaders are turning on Trump — fast”:

… CEO optimism is fading as Trump pushes ahead with trade restrictions, while business-friendly deregulation has yet to materialize. US consumer confidence in January recorded its biggest one-month decline since November 2023. The US stock market, long Trump’s preferred proxy for economic might, is lower than it was before his inauguration, trailing major indexes in Europe, China, Mexico, and Canada — all targets of the president’s planned tariffs…

Schadenfreude Open Thread: <em>Who Are These Leopards, And Why Are They Eyeing My Face?</em>

… The business community is having its own leopard-eating-faces moment. The stock market has not been the curb on Trump’s policy agenda that many hoped it would be, and so far they are getting a lot of the bad chaos they feared with little of the good chaos they wanted…

There’s a type of guy who should have known better but supported Trump entirely in hopes of weaker antitrust enforcement and seeing them immediately owned brings a smile to my face

[image or embed]

— James Medlock (@jdcmedlock.bsky.social) February 28, 2025 at 11:14 AM

that would be Ken "$100 million to Republicans in 2024" Griffin

— large language marge (@mcdonalds.help) February 28, 2025 at 11:17 AM

If only the Great Men stewarding our economy had been able to accomplish the incredible feat of reading what their preferred candidate said he would do & believing that he would do it

— Various Threnodies (@various-threnodies.bsky.social) February 28, 2025 at 11:13 AM

Or looked at a single business decision he'd made in his decades as a swindler who can't run a casino

— Erica Henderson (@ericafails.bsky.social) February 28, 2025 at 11:14 AM

Reader Interactions

Commenters

No commenters available.

  • A Ghost to Most
  • AM in NC
  • Andrya
  • Another Scott
  • arrieve
  • Aziz, light!
  • Baud
  • bbleh
  • Ben Cisco
  • BlueGuitarist
  • cain
  • catclub
  • Cheryl from Maryland
  • different-church-lady
  • divF
  • Doc Sardonic
  • Doug R
  • eclare
  • EntroPi
  • Fair Economist
  • Geminid
  • Gin & Tonic
  • Gvg
  • HinTN
  • HopefullyNotcassandra
  • Jay
  • Jeffro
  • John S.
  • Kayla Rudbek
  • Kristine
  • lamh47
  • Liminal Owl
  • lowtechcyclist
  • MagdaInBlack
  • marklar
  • Martin
  • matt
  • Matt McIrvin
  • MattF
  • moonbat
  • mrmoshpotato
  • New Deal democrat
  • NotMax
  • Nukular Biskits
  • Ohio Mom
  • oldgold
  • Other MJS
  • prostratedragon
  • RevRick
  • Ruckus
  • sab
  • Shalimar
  • Spanky
  • Steve LaBonne
  • Suzanne
  • TBone
  • Timill
  • trollhattan
  • waspuppet
  • WaterGirl
  • YY_Sima Qian

Filtered Commenters

No filtered commenters available.

    Settings




    Settings are saved immediately; press X to close the box.

    235Comments

    3. 3.

      Baud

      If only the Great Men stewarding our economy had been able to accomplish the incredible feat of reading what their preferred candidate said he would do & believing that he would do it

      They could have also looked at how well the economy does under Democratic leadership, but that would require them to care more about the economy than their socioeconomic status.

      Reply
    5. 5.

      different-church-lady

      I mean, literally the kindest thing you can say in their defense is, “You knew he was an agent of chaos and you just… didn’t… listen.”

      Reply
    10. 10.

      different-church-lady

      @Baud: They don’t care how well “the economy” does. They care how rich they get and how much control they can have.

      Reply
    14. 14.

      mrmoshpotato

      Who knew it would be bad for business  having a fat, orange, fascist manbaby, and an unelected South African Nazi shitstain destroying the US government?!

      Reply
    16. 16.

      mrmoshpotato

      @Baud:

      They could have also looked at how well the economy does under Democratic leadership, but that would require them to care more about the economy than their socioeconomic status. 

      What?  There’s only 45+ years of Democrats having to clean up Republicans’ messes.  How could they have known?

      Reply
    19. 19.

      Fair Economist

      I don’t actually recall Trump saying he would keep mergers restricted. I am very glad the leopards are eating this particular face because the last thing we need is more corporate concentration, but in this case I think it wasn’t a explicit promise to eat faces.

      Reply
    24. 24.

      bbleh

      @Baud: they know perfectly well under whom they got rich.  That’s what they pay attention to, all day.

      But they cannot ABIDE supporting the party that takes OUR tax money and gives it to THOSE people, out of sheer ego (and of course also what the people at the Country Club would SAY!)

      That is, it ain’t about “economic” status; it’s ALL “socio” status

      @Steve LaBonne: is THAT what that guy’s singing in Beethoven’s 9th?

      Reply
    26. 26.

      MagdaInBlack

      Fkn Ken Griffin, who tried to buy a governor in Illinois, failed and so decamped to Florida to buy that one, and a president, got what he wanted and now ain’t so happy with the results?

      Gosh darn, Ken, guess you’re not the big brain you think you are.

      ( bitter much? me? yes.)

      Reply
    27. 27.

      sab

      @lamh47: My niece wasn’t actually laid off. She has been there for about five years. But she was ordered to return to an office that has long since been leased out to others. So she has no functional office to return to.

      Reply
    29. 29.

      moonbat

      My guess is the merger stance is another prelude to a shakedown.

      “How much will you make it worth my while to allow you to acquire that company? Hmmmm?”

      Reply
    34. 34.

      HinTN

      @lamh47:

      Down in New Orleans where the blues was born / It takes a cool cat to blow a horn / On LaSalle and Rampart Street / Combos playing with a mambo beat.

      Mardi Gras mambo (x3) Down in New Orleans.

      Happy Samedi Gras

      Reply
    39. 39.

      Matt McIrvin

      From 2017-2019, Donald Trump inherited Obama’s economic recovery and didn’t do much to screw it up. Until the COVID pandemic hit.

      To Republicans, the story was that Trump inherited an economy wrecked by Obama and fixed it. This is because they were believing what was ideologically congenial. They literally believed the economic statistics during Obama’s recovery were fake until Trump came in; then they were allowed to believe that these numbers were real. So Trump had pulled off a miracle.

      If Trump had simply done nothing upon taking office in 2025, he possibly could have pulled this off again. Republicans believed that Biden had wrecked the economy. With Trump in, they could permit themselves to believe the good numbers and ignore the price of eggs. Trump’s solution for inflation could have just been to declare it solved. Another recession would come eventually, but the Fed seemed determined to stave it off.

      But Trump and Elon Musk and RFK Jr. couldn’t leave well enough alone. They had to deliver an actual revolution this time, by deliberately breaking everything.

      Reply
    40. 40.

      waspuppet

      Couldn’t run a casino OR a steak company OR a football league. But, you know, these are famously difficult things to sell to Americans.

      Reply
    41. 41.

      Steve LaBonne

      @sab: Not really, can read French fairly decently, a smattering of Lieder text and Wagner libretto German and opera libretto Italian, and that’s it. A sadly typical monolingual American.

      Reply
    46. 46.

      Steve LaBonne

      @Matt McIrvin: I had a work colleague who adamantly insisted that the economy got worse under Obama. I told him that he was entitled to his own opinions but not to his own facts.

      Reply
    49. 49.

      sab

      @Steve LaBonne: What no Latin? And you a lawyer.

      Your French is better than mine. I learned that factoid years ago.

      My older sister is fluent in four languages and can read a fifth, and it is Asian. But she has no Latin, and she can’t boil an egg.

      We all have our limitations.

      Reply
    50. 50.

      Matt McIrvin

      @Steve LaBonne: Remember ShadowStats? It was a website that popped up during the Great Recession and purported to be showing you the real un-skewed measures of unemployment and inflation and other statistics. A fair number of progressives took it seriously, maybe because they’d heard about the difference between U3 and U6 and such and thought it was untangling that. But actually the purpose of it, as far as I could tell, was to purport that Obama had made the economy worse. Its historical unemployment measures paralleled official ones like U3 and U6 through the 2008 crash up to the moment Obama took office, then they went nuts.

      ShadowStats claimed that real unemployment was worse in 2012 than in 2010, which is just crazy–I can say that from direct experience. But if you wanted someone to give you that message, you could get it from there.

      Reply
    51. 51.

      Steve LaBonne

      @sab: How dare you call me a lawyer! ;) I’m a retired forensic DNA expert, after having a notably unsuccessful academic career.

      Reply
    58. 58.

      lowtechcyclist

      @lamh47: 

      That’s right, this Tuesday is Fat Tuesday.

      My birthday is on Thursday, so it looks like I’ll be giving up Lent again this year.

      Reply
    61. 61.

      Steve LaBonne

      @sab: I can’t but I bet there are people in vet schools who can. We also have a large mutt whom we rescued from the street who is a large fraction of the size of a Maine coon.

      Reply
    62. 62.

      sab

      @Steve LaBonne: I am so so so very sorry. I confused you with ATL Steve. How could that have happened? Long day at work and I wasn’t so bright to begin with.

      This is embarrassing, I’ll get over it but I do apologize.

      So disregard my last few comments. I like you. I don’t know how I confused you two. It is not like I am not aware of you and your nym. Just not paying attention to the nyms.

      Reply
    66. 66.

      Geminid

      @NotMax: If this is the Semafor I’m thinking of, I’m not sure how I would label them. One of the principals is reporter Dave “Fu*king” Wiegel, and he leans to the Left.

      Wiegel’s the one who got that whole “Hakeem Jeffries children’s book tour” ball rolling two Fridays ago.

      Reply
    71. 71.

      Jay

      Exclusive: US intel shows Russia and China are attempting to recruit disgruntled federal employees, sources say
      Natasha Bertrand Katie Bo Lillis Zachary Cohen
      By Natasha Bertrand, Katie Bo Lillis and Zachary Cohen, CNN
      5 minute read
      Updated 9:36 AM EST, Sat March 1, 2025

      https://edition.cnn.com/2025/02/28/politics/us-intel-russia-china-attempt-recruit-disgruntled-federal-employees/index.html

      Foreign adversaries including Russia and China have recently directed their intelligence services to ramp up recruiting of US federal employees working in national security, targeting those who have been fired or feel they could be soon, according to four people familiar with recent US intelligence on the issue and a document reviewed by CNN.

      The intelligence indicates that foreign adversaries are eager to exploit the Trump administration’s efforts to conduct mass layoffs across the federal workforce – a plan laid out by the Office of Personnel Management earlier this week.

      Russia and China are focusing their efforts on recently fired employees with security clearances and probationary employees at risk of being terminated, who may have valuable information about US critical infrastructure and vital government bureaucracy, two of the sources said. At least two countries have already set up recruitment websites and begun aggressively targeting federal employees on LinkedIn, two of the sources said.

      Reply
    74. 74.

      Gvg

      @mrmoshpotato: more than that. FDR was cleaning up a Republican mess called the Great Depression and that was the 1930’s….so around 90 years and they haven’t figured out that regulation and things like audits are good? Plus forgetting that tariffs are bad? Oh boy….republicans had at least learned that when I was a kid.

      Reply
    76. 76.

      TBone

      @HinTN: that song sends chills up my spine!  Or is it down? Nah, it’s UP!  Like Debbie Reynolds sings in The Unsinkable Molly Brown.

      Reply
    77. 77.

      Ohio Mom

      @Steve LaBonne: Could you explain epigenetic changes, they make no sense to me.

      Say I’m bopping along and then I have a traumatic event and the tags on my dna change which genes are turned on and off, on all my dna, in every cell? And how is it possible to pass that on to children, my eggs were more or less formed before I was born, so before I was traumatized? It all sounds impossible to me.

      Reply
    79. 79.

      New Deal democrat

      @Matt McIrvin: I won’t copy your entire comment, but I think you pretty much nailed it.

      T—-p inherited an economy which was on the upswing in 2017. He let a few Wall Street types manage the Treasury, and because he didn’t know how to operate the levers of power, the economy pretty much ran itself except for his bungled tariffs in 2019.

      This time around he inherited an expanding economy that had problems (housing, inflation) and was decelerating. This time he has surrounded himself with lickspittles. And this time he knows where the levers are, so he is pulling them furiously right from the start.

      The result is likely to be akin to that experienced by investors in his Atlantic City casinos.

      Reply
    80. 80.

      cain

      @Nukular Biskits: ​
       
      Marco Rubio looked super awkward in the photos.

      I wonder when he’s going to be treated as “DEI” since you know he doesn’t look white. I bet it’s already happened, with Trump leading the whole thing.

      Reply
    83. 83.

      Nukular Biskits

      @Jay:

      I’m not surprised at all.

      If I was an adversary of the US, I’d definitely be moving in to take advantage of disgruntled federal workers.

      And all of this could have been avoided but no:  We wanted a president who could shit out cheaper eggs.

      Reply
    84. 84.

      cain

      @Matt McIrvin:

      Hilariously, the GOP thought they were following the same playbook. But nope. The playbook is dead and they took a near senile guy and a psychopath – both Russian agents and they are going to sell everything off and there will be war, between states, with our neighbors, and with everyone else.. except… Russia.

      Reply
    86. 86.

      Steve LaBonne

      @Ohio Mom: It has to do with chemical modifications to DNA which can then be inherited. The field that studies these things is called “epigenetics” in case you want to do some Internet research.

      Reply
    89. 89.

      sab

      Yes. 20°. I am right down the road from you in northwest Akron. You are in Medina?

      Our  2/2/25 rodent lied to us. Or they woke him up from hibernation in the middle of winter and he was confused.

      Oops. Deleted the comment link to Steve LaBonne. Scientist not lawyer.

      Reply
    91. 91.

      Nukular Biskits

      @cain:

      I can’t imagine me ever discarding every shred of dignity and self-respect like so many in Trump’s circle have done.

      To be so desperate for his attention you’d grovel. It’s disgusting.

      Reply
    92. 92.

      oldgold

      For damn near a century the country’s economy has done better when the Democrats are in charge; yet, the counter-factual belief persists that the Republicans are the party of prosperity.

      Reply
    98. 98.

      Matt McIrvin

      @oldgold: Of the 11 recessions since 1950, the only one that started during a Democratic administration was the 1980 one under Jimmy Carter, under pressure from renewed oil shocks and continuing stagflation. That one becomes the focus of a vast economic mythology.

      Reply
    99. 99.

      cain

      @MattF: Ah, a jwz fan eh? He was part of our GNOME desktop stuff during the beginning when everyone was thinking desktop when Linux first got started.

      He’s had some great quotes about us:

      https://www.jwz.org/doc/cadt.html

      ah, the dramatic days back then. Of course, now we have all new drama as GNOME devs fight with Linux distributions. Lot of stuff going on there. It keeps me distracted from this hot mess.

      Reply
    100. 100.

      Suzanne

      @Nukular Biskits:

      To be so desperate for his attention you’d grovel. It’s disgusting.

      It’s really staggering, how many of them have just, like, no self-respect at all. They don’t believe in anything except will-to-power, but they lack the actual courage for that. So it manifests as sucking up to an abusive daddy figure.

      Lindsey Graham, JD Vance…. I see you….

      Reply
    101. 101.

      cain

      By the way, we really need to retire calling GOPs “conservatives”, it’s dead. The ideology is dead. I mean, you’ve voted against democracy and the kind of things happening is illegal. Conservatives was all about status quo.

      Reply
    105. 105.

      trollhattan

      So here’s a feel-good story.

      Elon Musk fathered his 14th child with Shivon Zilis, with whom the billionaire already had three children, TMZ reports.

      Aww, cute, right?

      Fuckin’ weirdos, these people.

      Reply
    106. 106.

      sab

      @TBone: I had decided this year that the “alleged”  bonded pair don’t actually even like each other, but early this morning Big Boy came up from the basement into my bedroom, and Little Girl was under a dresser. And Big Boy went up to her and they rubbed noses.

      So they do like each other. They are just dealing differently with what life throws at them.

      Reply
    107. 107.

      Doug R

      @mrmoshpotato:

       

      What? There’s only 45+ years of Democrats having to clean up Republicans’ messes. How could they have known?

      I believe 1932 was about 93 years ago?

      Reply
    109. 109.

      cain

      @mrmoshpotato: ​
       
      I’m not sure how national security people are going to handle this administration – every secret is in the hands of a man who is not in govt, not born in the U.S. and has zero accountability.

      I mean, short of a bunch of assassinations, I’m not sure what levers they got.

      Reply
    110. 110.

      Nukular Biskits

      @Suzanne:
      Power, I understand.

      The “need” to abase oneself just to be close to it, never actually having it but almost touching it … that I’ll never understand.

      I have a lot of character flaws but subjecting myself to that level of humiliation just to be in close proximity to power is not one of them.

      Reply
    111. 111.

      Geminid

      @Baud: I first noticed Dave Wiegel during the Ohio special.election primary to fill Marcia Fudge’s seat, the one that Shotelle Brown won. I thought Wiegel was in the tank for Nina Turner. So I consider him on the Left at least when it comes to Democratic intra-party politics. Or maybe he just wants to stir up shit.

      Wiegel’s attempt to smear Hakeem Jeffries was consistent in that regard, but his timing was bad. That night Jeffries happened to speak to an audience at the Henry J. Kaiser center in Oakland, California. The speech was in part a Black History Month observance, and Jeffries’ theme was based on the writings of Dr. King: “Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community?”

      An examination of Jeffries’ other recent speaking engagements shows they were nothing like what Wiegel wanted his readers to believe.

      Reply
    113. 113.

      Matt McIrvin

      @New Deal democrat: I was trained as a scientist but I kept getting distracted by one of the things that I think fascinates me more than anything else in the world, which is all of the ways that people believe things that are wrong. Including when I believe things that are wrong (in science you have to try to pay close attention to this). Wrongness infuriates me, it mesmerizes me. Like a moth to a flame.

      In modern conservatism you have an entire belief system organized around systematized self-delusion. Not just faith in things unseen, which can be harmless enough depending on how you take it, but faith in things for which there is a mountain of concrete evidence against them. It’s very successful because lies can be anything they need to be to appeal. They’re unconstrained. They can tickle attack vulnerabilities in the human learning mechanism.

      The only problem with these ideas is that they’re not true. Follow them to make policy and reality will attack you. But if your core followers are deluded or distracted enough they may not care.

      Reply
    114. 114.

      cain

      @trollhattan: ​
       
      Not married, and just running around and getting women pregnant. The white christian male ideal! They won’t judge him, they want to be him!

      Reply
    115. 115.

      sab

      @Suzanne: Tim Miller the RW but not NJ has written a book. He divides all his former ilk into categories. And a big group is the just want to be at the table and in the in group.

      They don’t even want power. They don’t even have ideology. They just want to be in.

      Reply
    119. 119.

      TBone

      @sab: we have the exact same synergy here at Casa TBone.  It’s a love/not love thang.

      When Katrina saw the tube contraption, she gave Noah a VERY wide berth (she wasn’t at all upset during his absence).  But now they are nuzzling again sometimes.

      When they were babbies, they slept wrapped around each other.

      Reply
    120. 120.

      Baud

      @Matt McIrvin:

      Not just faith in things unseen, which can be harmless enough depending on how you take it, but faith in things for which there is a mountain of concrete evidence against them.

       
      This is well put.

      Reply
    121. 121.

      Matt McIrvin

      @cain: Movement conservatism has not been about Burkean caution in the face of radical change since 1964. They claim they are, but they want to roll shit way back often to a past that never existed.

      Reply
    124. 124.

      Geminid

      @cain: Oh yeah. The battle was fought all Friday afternoon and night after Wiegel’s story was repeated in a comment, and then all the next day when it was repeated in a post.

      Reply
    128. 128.

      Doug R

      @Ohio Mom:

       

      Say I’m bopping along and then I have a traumatic event and the tags on my dna change which genes are turned on and off, on all my dna, in every cell? And how is it possible to pass that on to children, my eggs were more or less formed before I was born, so before I was traumatized? It all sounds impossible to me.

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_aAhcNjmvhc

      Reply
    131. 131.

      Matt McIrvin

      @New Deal democrat: Trump’s admin was really starting to go fucko bazoo during the 2020-21 lame-duck period when the wheels were coming off, Trump was concentrating on trying to mount a coup to reverse the election and somehow getting revenge on Pfizer for not announcing their vaccine before Election Day instead of, like, one or two days after, when he couldn’t personally benefit. That was when all the plans to really dismantle the government got hatched. Nonentities were rotating through Acting Director of Whatever on a weekly basis as the administration wound down and refused to let Biden’s people into the building.

      What’s happened now is that Trump basically picked up where he left off, but with Musk as wrecker in chief.

      Reply
    132. 132.

      Suzanne

      @Steve LaBonne:

      “Trump dignity wraiths” 

      Except it sounds kind of goth and cool, and doesn’t convey the utter coolness/charisma void that these smarmy, out-of-shape, gross pieces of human trash really are.

      Reply
    134. 134.

      Suzanne

      @sab:

      They just want to be in. 

      There’s a song in “Hamilton” about this: “The Room Where it Happens”.
      They want to be power-adjacent. It’s honestly just pathetic and evidence of character so low that ants could step over it.

      Reply
    135. 135.

      sab

      @TBone: Cats are not good with change or disruption.

      Dogs are there for their buddies. Cats not so much. The difference is striking.Repeat possibly jumbled from Wearbear.

      Dogs are pack animals. The pack protects you always if you don’t fuck up.

      Cats are colony animals. They work as a team when it is conveniwnt, but when it isn’t they will turn on you immediately.

      Cats and dog live in completely different moral worlds. Cats know this. Dogs do not.

      Reply
    138. 138.

      Matt McIrvin

      @Suzanne: It reminds me of the monstrous husks of men who are left behind after they had their “yang energy” sucked out by the tree demon in “A Chinese Ghost Story.” These sort of stop-motion zombie-like creatures

      (awesome movie btw, it’s one of those films that has some of everything)

      Reply
    139. 139.

      TBone

      @sab: it’s a lesson well learned. Or should be!  Every time we lose a cat (3 so far) there is competition for the alpha throne.  This time, it’s a draw.  They looked for Josey for a while (he was low man on the totem pole but teamed with Noah), then decided to share.

      Reply
    140. 140.

      Matt McIrvin

      @Suzanne: Like the people who go to Black Friday sales and get in the crush not so much because they think they’re getting incredible deals as because they have to be where something exciting is going down.

      Reply
    141. 141.

      TBone

      Monstrous hot flashes have begun in earnest again, inexplicably.  I’m actually glad the North winds are kicking up!

      Reply
    145. 145.

      arrieve

      I’ve just had an unsettling experience, and am curious if anyone else has seen something similar.

      I teach English in a program in NY. It’s a small program — there are 7 teachers, two case managers and an administrator. We have a group text for the ten of us, where we communicate mostly about school stuff, with the occasional English teacher or language joke.

      Yesterday we several of us were talking (via text) about how upset we were about the Zelenskyy meeting. A couple of people said they were considering leaving the US if they could, and we made jokes about opening a language school in Europe.

      Today we received texts from an unknown number, calling us “ungrateful morons” and telling us to get the hell out of the US and go to Ukraine. It’s clearly a response to what we were texting each other yesterday–especially since only those of us who actually participated yesterday received the text. It’s not spam, or a bot–someone knows what we were saying and is responding to that.

      Has anyone heard of messages being hacked? I’d prefer to think someone somehow left an unlocked phone lying around than someone actually accessing our chat. I mean, we’re just a bunch of teachers. Who cares what we say?

      Reply
    147. 147.

      Aziz, light!

      Russia and China are focusing their efforts on recently fired employees with security clearances and probationary employees at risk of being terminated, who may have valuable information about US critical infrastructure and vital government bureaucracy

      Having once spent two summers doing it, I can share valuable information about swabbing out vault toilets, replacing toilet paper, and picking up garbage at U.S. Forest Service campgrounds, like many of Elon’s recent victims.

      Reply
    149. 149.

      Matt McIrvin

      @arrieve: Well, I don’t know but I do know that SMS texts are completely, utterly insecure and can be casually intercepted. It’s why both good guys and bad use Signal when they actually need privacy.

      Reply
    150. 150.

      sab

      @TBone: Wow. We have seven cats, but three of them are fifteen  plus yo, and two of those are feuding. Pissing all over the house.

      I used to yell at offending cats but that just upsets and confuses them. Now I go hiss in their face. They seem to understand that as a dis and not just bad owner being weird.

      Reply
    151. 151.

      Matt McIrvin

      @HopefullyNotcassandra: It is, to some degree, but it’s a social-engineering attack, like the way hackers usually don’t bother cracking security credentials by brute force when they can just trick people into giving them away by appealing to their most careless impulses. Putin is just using what’s already there.

      Reply
    152. 152.

      cain

      @Geminid: Weigel did his damage. I’m glad I didn’t participate in that bullshit. I could read the sheer rage going on between groups and it just turned me off.

      Everyone’s triggers lit up and everyone’s vulnerabilities exposed and their pain took form and was unleashed.

      Reply
    153. 153.

      lamh47

      @WaterGirl: Yes I still have my apartment.  I have enough in savings for next two month’s rent.  Some minor bills may not be paid until I start a new job, but at the very least I have March to fine and start work.

      I think I’ve said that I’ve got 10 applications pending…just waiting to hear from them.  Been almost 2 weeks for some so I might reach out to the HR rep for status updates.

      Reply
    154. 154.

      lamh47

      @sab: I work in the SF building and TBH they were supposed to have started construction, but now I have no idea what’s going on with that.

      Reply
    155. 155.

      Baud

      @arrieve:

      I’d prefer to think someone somehow left an unlocked phone lying around than someone actually accessing our chat

       

      That is more plausible to me, but anything is possible.

      Reply
    156. 156.

      Ruckus

      @mrmoshpotato:

      They could have pulled their heads out of their exhaust ports for 15 minutes and taken a 5 minute shower during that time and a lot of that brown stuff that built up on their eyes while it was parked in their dark, smelly brain hiding place, may have washed off, letting them see something besides the story of their lives.

      Reply
    157. 157.

      Geminid

      @sab: Wiegel does a lot of straight reporting. He’s been around a while and has good sources. The intra-party stuff is a sideline, but it creeps into his reporting some.

      The Jeffries thing was a social media post that spread quickly. The people propagating the story wanted to believe it, and I think that was why they did not check it out first.

      I would not say Wiegel is anti-Democratic Party. My take is that he would like to reconstruct the Party along more “Progressive” lines, or at he least sides with those who do.

      But reconstruction requires demolition. Tearing down and discrediting current leaders like Hakeem Jeffries– especially Hakeem Jeffries– is a necessary first step in that process. This has gone on since November of 2018, when Jeffries won the election for Caucus Chairman and became Nancy Pelosi’s heir-apparent.

      Reply
    160. 160.

      RevRick

      @Baud: As much as the Masters of the Universe might like a bigger pile of loot, their deep ideological want is to be a Master of the Universe. Ruling over a miserable world is just as psychologically satisfying as ruling over a prosperous one. As long as they rule. And while Ken Griffin’s $100 million investment in Republicans might end up with a lousy ROI, it still baptizes his fucked up white male supremacy worldview. And that is of far greater importance.

      Reply
    162. 162.

      matt

      I’d like for a reporter to ask Trump if Zelensky spoiled his plan for peace in one day and what Zelensky did specifically that did it.

      Reply
    163. 163.

      Jay

      @arrieve:

      Group texts can be hacked, if even one phone is compromised.

      As a group, spam the crap out of the “unknown number” with offensive messages until they block all of your numbers.

      Oh, and have everybody check their text records to insure a “guest” was not invited.

      Reply
    164. 164.

      Nukular Biskits

      @eclare:

      The one that has really surprised me is my senior US Senator, Roger Wicker.

      For all his faults, he has been steadfast on providing military support to Ukraine and, until recently, outspoken about the danger Russia under Putin poses.

      All until Trump declared Ukraine started the war.  Since then, Wicker has been absolutely silent about Ukraine.  I guess it’s a credit to him that he hasn’t joined with the bootlickers about how Zelenskyy “disrespected” Trump & Vance, but Wicker’s sudden silence is no less an endorsement of Emperor Trump than is the loud braying of the asses praising him.

      Reply
    165. 165.

      arrieve

      @Matt McIrvin:

      SMS texts are completely, utterly insecure and can be casually intercepted. It’s why both good guys and bad use Signal when they actually need privacy.

      Thanks. I just found it hard to believe that someone thought it was worth messing with some teachers who support Ukraine. And in this political environment it was quite terrifying in a Big Brother kind of way. We’ve moved to WhatsApp.

      Reply
    168. 168.

      HopefullyNotcassandra

      @Matt McIrvin: Did it start under President Carter?

      President Nixon was price fixing milk long before that.  Stagflation was in full swing too.   Americans waited, sometimes for hours, to fill their cars with (leaded) gasoline under President Nixon too.

      President Carter always seemed to get the blame for President Nixon’s policies, the simmering cold civil war in Saudi Arabia and the OPEC oil embargo.

      Reply
    176. 176.

      Ruckus

      @TBone:

      Don’t have hot flashes but do get nerve hits from odd places, at odd times and for no obvious reason. Often feels like a needle was shoved in some place and after a few moments it all goes away.

      Reply
    179. 179.

      RevRick

      @Matt McIrvin: I notice the curious cutoff date of 1950 in this which omit the short, but nasty recessions of 1946 and 1948 under Truman. The first was due to the huge reduction in government defense spending and the second from a rapidly overheated economy. But the flip side of the question is one comparing growth during administrations, and here Democrats far exceed Republicans. The sad reality is that for the first 16 years of this century, however, is that economic growth was pitiful and was robust only during Biden’s presidency. But that was overshadowed by inflation.

      Reply
    181. 181.

      WaterGirl

      @lamh47: Just getting back to the thread now.  Thanks for the info.  Sounds like you want to stay in CA now that you have moved there, yes?

      Reply
    182. 182.

      marklar

      @Ohio Mom: “Could you explain epigenetic changes, they make no sense to me.”

      I’m taking a few liberties here, but imagine a gene contained a ‘toggle’ that could be set to one of two positions. When it’s set to ‘position A’, a person might be predisposed to depression. When it’s set to ‘position B’, they would be prone to resilience. The gene gets usually passed on from generation to generation with the ‘toggle’ set in one direction. However, certain life events can switch the toggle’s position, thus ‘resetting’ the gene. The gene in that ‘new’ position then gets passed on from generation to generation, until it’s possibly ‘retoggled’ in the future.

      Some people believe that this is the basis for intergenerational trauma.

      If you go down this rabbit hole, make sure to also google “orchid genes” and “dandelion genes”. Trust me. It’s fascinating.

      Reply
    184. 184.

      A Ghost to Most

      @marklar: I compare them to the parameters passed to a subroutine that is executed. Environmental conditions can tweak the parameters.

      Reply
    185. 185.

      New Deal democrat

      @Matt McIrvin:

       Trump’s admin was really starting to go fucko bazoo during the 2020-21 lame-duck period when the wheels were coming off,… That was when all the plans to really dismantle the government got hatched ….

      What’s happened now is that Trump basically picked up where he left off, but with Musk as wrecker in chief.

      Again, agree 100%. I think T—-p is only focusing on the few things he actually cares about (kissing up to dictators, wetting his beak, being cruel to non-Whites, especially immigrants), and has outsourced everything else (basically, implementing Project 2025) to Musk.

      Reply
    187. 187.

      Shalimar

      @Geminid: Weigel has been a self-professed libertarian for the 15 years I have known of him.  His views tend to be actual libertarian rather than the marijuana Republican version of libertarians, so he is on the American left of quite a few issues.  He’s mainly known for being an honest and perceptive observer who travels a lot to cover stories in person, which makes the Jeffries story interesting.

      Reply
    190. 190.

      EntroPi

      @sab: actually…

      my sister has a non-profit research website at https://darwinsark.org/

      You (pay to) submit your pet’s DNA, they sequence it, and let you know.

      There are a bunch of optional surveys about behavior, with the research goal being to see what, if any, correlations there are between breeds and behaviors. They started with dogs a few  years back, and were broadly written up in Nature and other places with their findings.  They recently added cats.

      Reply
    191. 191.

      Gin & Tonic

      So Z got to meet with King Chuck on his London stopover. Chuck was impeccably tailored, as he usually is, and Z was dressed as usual. I haven’t seen any statements from Buckingham Palace about disrespecting the Crown.

      I hope the photo of the two of them gets wide circulation.

      Reply
    192. 192.

      RevRick

      @HopefullyNotcassandra: The hidden reality of stagflation is that a lot of it was due to that left wing shibboleth, Glass-Steagall. Even Carter Glass had second thoughts about his handiwork. And JFK’s Comptroller of the Currency wanted to junk portions of it. The problem was it choked commercial banks. In 1950, U.S. Commercial Banks held over two-thirds of assets worldwide; by 1980, not one was in the top 25 asset-holder. Regulation Q restricted interest on savings accounts. But when inflation neared that rate, those assets fled seeking higher returns elsewhere. And that meant the U.S. economy kept experiencing credit crises. Commercial banks could no longer fulfill their role of providing credit for the wheels of commerce. The 1970s was the time when financial wizards were creating all sorts of nonbank financial instruments. Do we all remember how Sears had its own financial services? Junk bonds anyone? How about mortgage bonds with different tranches? Securitization has a lovely sound. Until they bit us in the ass.

      Reply
    195. 195.

      Ohio Mom

      @marklar: I get what happens in each cell, it’s the idea that every cell is getting the same gene amped up or tamped down that I can not wrap my head around.

      If some trauma happens to me that permanently changes my personality, and a set of genes is let’s say, turned off, they are turned off in every brain cell in the same way? Because it seems to me that only one cell with genes turned off isn’t going to have much of an effect.

      I probably don’t have to really understand this, just accept it.

      Reply
    196. 196.

      Matt McIrvin

      @RevRick: Yeah, I’ve heard that explanation and it actually makes sense to me: you can raise the prime rate all you want, but if there’s a regulation preventing banks from actually offering a commensurate rate on savings accounts, ordinary folks won’t be motivated to save, and they’ll be locked in an inflationary spiral to spend their money on stuff they can’t afford before it loses value.

      Eventually the rules changed and it actually became possible to make good money on savings vehicles available to everyone, and people used them. I remember how much you could get on a CD in the early 80s.

      Reply
    197. 197.

      Martin

      People shouldn’t read comments like Griffins as ‘we thought Trump would be good for business’. The whole point of the stock market is that you are choosing – these businesses are good, and these are bad. Half the point of the market is identifying the losers, who might have been last months winners. Businesses are supposed to fail and be replaced by better ones, including Ken Griffins. Any time you see a CEO talk about what’s good for business, they’re always just saying ‘this is what’s good for me’. It shouldn’t carry any more value or credibility than just that.

      Reply
    199. 199.

      WaterGirl

      @Gin & Tonic: All the photos I could find were from 2023.  With the exception of one that wasn’t clearly dated, but it looked like the others.  I’ll look for a photo tomorrow.

      Reply
    200. 200.

      Shalimar

      In other sort-of-non-politics news, Donald Trump apparently thinks pardoning Pete Rose will get him admitted into the Baseball Hall of Fame.  For someone who has sued and been sued over 10000 times in his life, he does not seem to grasp how courts work.  I wonder if Trump also thinks he can pardon criminals convicted by other countries?

      Reply
    201. 201.

      marklar

      @Ohio Mom: “Because it seems to me that only one cell with genes turned off isn’t going to have much of an effect.”

      You’re correct. This gets into the whole issue of cells/neurons making connections with other cells to create circuits, which come together to form systems, which form the physical basis of the self (there are other contributors, such as experience and culture…the brain is embodied, and the body is embedded in an environment and a culture; all ingredients come together to create the self).

      If events cause a process known as methylation or acetylation in a collection of cells (i.e., a nucleus) which are part of a circuit, the function of that circuit is changed, which in turns affects the function of a system, which then affects the ‘self’.

      BTW, I’ve always been a fan of yours. I was pretty much dragged on my first post ever on BJ, and you encouraged me to stick with it. Based on your posts, our lives are also somewhat similar (marklar son is similar in many ways to Ohio son, and we share similar heritage).

      Reply
    202. 202.

      YY_Sima Qian

      @Jay: The national suicide continues apace. & it won’t be just Russian & the PRC (& India, Israel, & the Gulf States), but every intelligence agency out there. I’ve said it before, this is going to be open season for intel gathering reminiscent of Stalin’s purge, Khrushchev’s urge, & the fall of the Berlin Wall/dissolution of the USSR.

      Reply
    203. 203.

      Geminid

      @Shalimar: Well, Wiegel definitely didn’t cover Jeffries’ public appearances in the last few months, or read about them. If he had, I don’t think he would have posted such a misleading story.

      There is plenty of reporting and/or press releases about Jeffries’ speaking engagements since last November’s election. It took me maybe 10 minutes to verify that Wiegel’s story was much less than a half truth.

      But like I said, this was a social media post that (so far as I know) was unrelated to his Semafor reporting.

      Reply
    204. 204.

      catclub

      @Matt McIrvin: ShadowStats claimed that real unemployment was worse in 2012 than in 2010, which is just crazy

       

      I got hints of Shadowstats when I was reading ZeroHedge. last time maybe ten years ago?

      Reply
    205. 205.

      YY_Sima Qian

      @Martin: The plutocrats wanted to reinforce the already strong plutocracy, & thought they would certainly be the ones to benefit the most from a transition to kleptocracy. What they forgot was that even a plutocracy requires some basic level of competence & predictability, & so much of the US’ wealth that they can try to extract/expropriate is in the form of ovely inflated assets prices, that can also disappear quickly when the bubble bursts.

      Of course, the plutocrats will be fine regardless. Capital is mobile & they can always pivot to assets overseas.

      Reply
    208. 208.

      RevRick

      @Nukular Biskits: I was thinking more about their foray into financial services, beginning with their purchase of Dean Witter Reynolds, and then adding Coldwell Banker, Sears Savings Bank and Discover Card. Allstate had been founded as part of Sears in 1931.
      Their revolving credit was all part of this financialization.

      Reply
    210. 210.

      YY_Sima Qian

      @Nukular Biskits: The last Repubs w/ any principles at all (beyond trying to hold on to their powers & privileges by any means necessary), such as Liz Cheney & Adam Kinzinger, have long been excommunicated. We are not even talking about agreeable principles, just any principles at all aside from grift.

      Reply
    211. 211.

      Other MJS

      @cain:

      Marco Rubio looked super awkward in the photos.

      I saw a meme of this with the caption “What the dog looks like when you ask him what he has in his mouth.”

      Reply
    214. 214.

      catclub

      @cain: By the way, we really need to retire calling GOPs “conservatives”, it’s dead.

       

      The inheritors of the confederate rule or ruin party.

      Reply
    215. 215.

      Matt McIrvin

      @catclub: Similar deal–lots of progressives upset about predatory banks read Zero Hedge during the Great Recession but the site was gradually revealed to be some kind of goldbuggish/alt-right wankery.

      Libertarians and the far right have this weird streak of animus against fractional-reserve banking and other basic financial manipulations, born of antisemitic conspiracy theories about International Bankers and old hard-money ideas, and it can unite them with the left on occasion when the finance industry is doing bad things. But it’s one of those check-your-wallet situations.

      Reply
    216. 216.

      divF

      @lamh47: Happy week before Mardi Gras!

      I make dinner for a group of folks every Thursday evening, and in the winter I make gumbo at least a couple of times. I told them when I served the gumbo last Thursday, that Lent starts Wednesday, so no more gumbo until Easter (unless it’s seafood).

      I learned how to make gumbo from an autobiography / cookbook by “Queen Ida” Guillory, a Bay Area Zydeco musician who moved here with her family from Lake Charles right after WW II . She’s no longer performing, but she’s till around – just turned 96 last month.

      Reply
    217. 217.

      Nukular Biskits

      @RevRick:

      I knew Allstate was part of the Sears universe but I didn’t realize it went that far back.

      Sears was the Walmart, both in terms of retail and financial instruments, of its time and a lot of my great-grandparents’ and grandparents’ generations effectively wound up owing their souls to Sears.

      Reply
    219. 219.

      Matt McIrvin

      @Liminal Owl: I encountered one recently that I’d passed on: we were talking about the Jeju Air crash in Korea, and I noted that a lot of the speculation I’d heard revolved around the pilots accidentally shutting down the wrong engine after one was disabled by a bird strike.

      But I just watched a Mentour Pilot video on the accident, in which he refused to put forth a detailed story since so much is still unknown, but noted what’s currently known and warned sternly against such unwarranted speculation. He showed video evidence that actually *both* engines on the plane suffered simultaneous bird strikes!

      So maybe there is no need for a “pilots shut down the wrong engine” hypothesis. But it got interpolated from incomplete data and started to dominate online discussion. The fact is that we don’t know, at least not yet.

      Reply
    221. 221.

      lamh47

      @WaterGirl: 100%. I’d like to consider Cali home upto and until I just feel the need to be back home in NOLA.  My original goal was at least 5 years to get fully vested as fed worker, but we all know how that worked…out

      Reply
    223. 223.

      Andrya

      @Gin & Tonic:   The Republicans claim to revere Winston Churchill- but Churchill wore his extremely informal “siren suit” while visiting the White House shortly after Pearl Harbor.  And, of course, Churchill’s constant mission was to beg for American arms aid.  Not to mention the time FDR encountered Churchill who was naked coming out of the bath…

      Reply
    224. 224.

      TBone

      Oops! To: Doc Sardonic:  Hi there!  Noah finally started eating enough on his own on Thursday, after about ten days of me pulling my hair out trying every tempting food and treat I could think of to wean him off of the tube.  He got sick a little after our Josey died of the same symptom (suddenly stopped eating) and was hospitalized. They gave him what they could intravenously, and sent him home with an esophageal tube.  He’s been about five or six weeks on tube feeding and we’re so glad it’s finally time for a happy ending!

      Reply
    225. 225.

      Geminid

      @YY_Sima Qian: There’s also Turkiye. I’d love to know how President Erdogan and his Foreign Minister and M.I.T. director are aporaising the Trump/Zelensky meeting. They seem to be a really tight team.

      Are you familiar with Ibrahim Kalin, Turkiye’s intelligence chief? He’s an interesting guy. Kalin earned a PhD in Islamic Studies from George Washington University and then taught at a Massachusetts college a few years before returning to Turkiye. President Erdogan tapped Kalin replace Hakan Fidan at the M.I.T. in June of 2023, when he made Fidan Foreign Minister.

      Ibrahim Kalin’s avocation is folk music. He sings and plays a kind long-necked lute. Wikipedia tells me Kalin’s musical efforts have garnered well over a million viewings on YouTube. I listened to an ensemble piece and it was very calming.

      Reply
    227. 227.

      Kayla Rudbek

      @Ohio Mom: maybe an inflammatory response or something like that carries through your bloodstream and turns all the genes on/off? I am not a biologist or a biochemist and I haven’t read the epigenetics literature yet.

      Reply
    228. 228.

      Nukular Biskits

      @TBone:

      I thought that was “Filé Gumbo”

      Which reminded me of this:

      From somewhere outside, I hear the street vendor cry “filé gumbo”
      From my window, I see him going down the street and he don’t know
      That she fell right to sleep in the damp, tangled sheets so soon
      After love in the hot afternoon

      Reply
    233. 233.

      Geminid

      @Andrya: I wonder if you have followed recent events in Turkiye regarding Abdullah Ocalan.

      Ed. Ocalan called for an end to the PKK’s armed struggle against the Turkish state, snd the pursuit of Kurdish rights through the political process. Ragip Soylu wrote a good article on this for Middle East Eye.

      The title is “What’s next after Ocalan’s order to disband the PKK?” This link might work:

      https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/whats-next-after-ocalans-order-disband-pk

      Allright! the link works. I’m one for one in March.

      Reply
    234. 234.

      Jeffro

      @TBone: I hear ya, I hear ya, but I’m cooking for an audience of one here…

      …it’s all I can do to get Mrs. Fro to have even a single black-eyed pea on New Year’s Day.  =(

      Reply

    Leave a Comment

    Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

    If you don't see both the Visual and the Text tab on the editor, click here to refresh.

    Clear Comment

    To reply to more than one person, click the X to save & close the box.