"americans don't need cheap goods" "americans don't need good stock portfolio" "americans don't need job" look if the goal is to radicalize the public by taking away all the benefits of capitalism and leaving only the bad parts these guys could scarcely be doing a better job
— Hemry, Local Bartender (@bartenderhemry.bsky.social) March 7, 2025 at 12:07 PM
One way to think about this administration is:
Trump's last full year in office was a global pandemic with no known cure that filled hospitals with dying patients and shut down the entire in-person economy.
And firms think the current business environment has *more* uncertainty.— Derek Thompson (@dkthomp.bsky.social) March 6, 2025 at 8:19 AM
Remember, sharing is caring:
This is not a winning message lmao
— Schnorkles O'Bork (@schnorkles.bsky.social) March 6, 2025 at 11:47 AM
BOLD STRATEGY COTTON
— Schnorkles O'Bork (@schnorkles.bsky.social) March 6, 2025 at 12:25 PM
lmao I just fucking can't.
Lets do the "prices are too damn high" election and win by promising to lower prices, and then.. *waves hand at everything*— Schnorkles O'Bork (@schnorkles.bsky.social) March 6, 2025 at 12:25 PM
Donald Trump has ruined the solid, full employment economy that Joe Biden handed him.
— Clean Observer (@hammbear2024.bsky.social) March 7, 2025 at 10:15 AM
Joe Biden handed them a full employment economy and they’ve done nothing but fire people, damage public services, and unleash chaos.
— Clean Observer (@hammbear2024.bsky.social) March 7, 2025 at 9:39 AM
You’re getting no credit because if you’d done nothing, you’d have more stable markets and thousands of more people working.
— Clean Observer (@hammbear2024.bsky.social) March 7, 2025 at 9:40 AM
Thief-in-Chief is making bank, though!
SCOOP: Business leaders are paying as much as $5,000,000 to meet one-on-one with President Donald Trump at his Florida compound, sources tell WIRED, while others are paying $1,000,000 apiece to dine with him in a group setting.
— WIRED (@wired.com) March 4, 2025 at 11:01 AM
It hasn’t even been two months and already we know we don’t need the long judgment and perspective of history: his second administration is extremely high up there, arguably the top, in terms of both most openly and brazenly corrupt and lawless:
www.rollingstone.com/politics/pol…— Asawin Suebsaeng (@swin24.bsky.social) March 7, 2025 at 8:59 AM
Baud
A plurality chose serfdom.
zhena gogolia
@Baud: but we’re all serfs now
Spanky
“Some of you will die, but that’s a risk I’m willing to take. “
Baud
@zhena gogolia:
I don’t feel like a serf. I still have dignity.
zhena gogolia
@Baud: I feel like I was a free woman for many decades and now a bunch of assholes have power over me
Spanky
@Baud: They’re working on that even as we post.
rikyrah
Good Morning Everyone 😊 😊 😊
Spanky
Again, if Vlad Putin himself had been elected POTUS, what would he be doing differently?
Baud
@rikyrah:
Good morning.
Baud
@Spanky:
They can’t take away my dignity.
M31
serfdumb
NotMax
Got time to unwind with a weekend long watch?
Totally bizarre TV. The Chun King Chow Mein Hour New Year special with Stan Freberg.
mrmoshpotato
@Spanky: Putin wouldn’t be his own bitch.
Baud
@zhena gogolia:
Sure. I think dignity and power are different things though. Not unrelated, but different.
chemiclord
Bassent is right, though… at least in the context that matters to him.
“Real” Americans, and by that I mean Trump’s voter base, absolutely will accept higher prices… as long as Trump is responsible for it. The MAGA cult will accept a disturbingly large amount of bullshit on their plates as long as they can feel they are owning the libs.
different-church-lady
Gee, if only someone had predicted all this would happen…
TBone
I’m gonna bribe my way in to Mar-A-Lardass using “Trump Bucks” monoploly money. Anything is possible.
different-church-lady
@TBone: Just start your own memecoin. It’s what all the cool kids are doing.
zhena gogolia
@Baud: Hmmm
I just know I’m filled with impotent rage every single day, and I don’t enjoy the sensation.
“impotent” is the operative word
The American people just threw away their freedom for NO REASON
TBone
@NotMax: before Mom knew better (she was young & broke, newly divorced), we had to eat Chun King chow mein and Dinty Moore beef stew.
mrmoshpotato
Shake your bones to some Little Richard
different-church-lady
@zhena gogolia: Hatred and kicks are reasons.
TBone
@different-church-lady: great idea! But my meme coin game is gonna have trouble camouflaging my revulsion and I need to stay on the down low!
TBone
@mrmoshpotato: 😘😍
rock my world
I actually IRL many moons ago met that guy and watched a fabulous puppet show on Rittenhouse Square!
At that show, Frankenstein Sinatra sang to Dracoola!
Van Buren
You know how they day the market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent?
I’m beginning to think they can keep flinging shit longer than I can stay sane.
MattF
@Spanky: Note that this includes military threats of invading your geographical nearest neighbors.
Nukular Biskits
Good mornin’, y’all!
Baud
@Nukular Biskits:
Good morning.
tobie
Good morning, BJ. The framing that we’re becoming serfs as Trump’s anointing himself King is the right one. I saw Josh Marshall referred to the unitary executive theory as the “Schmittian moment.” Maybe it’s my own fixation, but I find it helps me to be able to name what we’re up against.
NotMax
@TBone
What, no minuscule cans of Underwood deviled ham?
;)
Enhanced Voting Techniques
If I am peasant were is my salmon on rye bread dinner, and were is my 115 days off work?
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@TBone:
Heh heh, my childhood with a broke, single mom moving around constantly, working 2 jobs is again playing out in my head.
TBone
@TBone: might be mistaken about location, it might’ve been in
TBone
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: we have more in common here than not! All the time!
BlueGuitarist
@Baud:
thanks for the video from Reddit downstairs of the anti-Nazi dude (and the woman behind him laughing).
Shasta county is 70% R.
Anti-Not-see dude probably has more dignity than power.
narya
@TBone: at TLA?
NotMax
@mrmoshpotato
Did someone say bones?
:)
TBone
@NotMax: yes, I related a Mommy N Me picnic day from my childhood here once, musing about whether Mom had The Munchies when she purchased our picnic food. Two loaves of tiny cocktail bread (rye & pumpernickel), cans of deviled ham, spreadable cheese, and a cardboard tub of Breakstones Honey Butter! She HAD to be high!
TBone
@narya: it was definitely outdoors, strolling after a sumptuous supper date, we stumbled upon the free puppet show.
I have so many stories that I haven’t thought about in aeons that you guys bring up to the surface again!
I think I was at the TLA for The Doors movie.
I started smoking pot way too young so some details have to be nailed down by research.
oldgold
In the springtime of my dotage the Tangerine Terror has taught me something.
If a pol wants to engage in unethical/ crooked conduct, do it openly. If you hide it and it is uncovered, you have a breaking political scandal. Do it openly and the reaction is ho-hum.
A Ghost to Most
They really are Hogan’s Heroes fascists. The incompetence abides
TBone
@NotMax: LOVE
Nukular Biskits
@Baud:
In reality, perhaps, but a lot of those serfs still think they’re part of the ruling class.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
history.wustl.edu/news/how-black-death-made-life-better
It’s always interesting to revisit serfdom and The Black Death, then think about what Covid might have wreaked.
Nukular Biskits
@chemiclord:
THIS.
TBone
@BlueGuitarist: I should transcibe that speech and cannibalize some of it for future use. It. Is. Awesome.
TBone
@Nukular Biskits: it’s gonna COST ’em!
Nukular Biskits
Okay, serious question here, since it’s an open thread <he asks as he sips his first cup of coffee from the warm confines of his man-cave/office>:
When are we going to protest? At what point is civil disobedience the correct course of action?
Individual actions have merit but someone needs to start organizing resistance on a mass scale. Who/when/what/where/how?
narya
@TBone: I lived in Queen Village in the early 80s, and I can’t think of an outdoor space (like a park), though the square outside of Independence Hall isn’t far… also: the Tiffany mural of Maxfield Parrish’s work in the lobby of the Curtis Bldg.!
TBone
On the theme of Sound & Fury, bringing up from downstairs:
Heh. Cartoon at link
bsky.app/profile/jesseduquette.bsky.social/post/3lip24i2w3c2j
TBone
@narya: I wish I could remember the location more clearly but was in a food & drink & weed induced state of satiation. That buzz where you just feel great all over!
ETA hello fellow citizen, top ‘O the mornin’ to yas!
Nukular Biskits
@TBone:
Echoing discussions about trying to reach out to disaffected MAGAs, I’m not sure that’ll ever matter.
The hard core are willingly paying to ride, not the proverbial handbasket, but the Shinkansen Express 666 non-stop straight to hell … all for owning the libs, inflicting pain & suffering on “other” and for even the briefest (and fake) acknowledgement from the Emperor with No Clothes.
different-church-lady
@A Ghost to Most: Yeah. But there’s no Hogan.
UncleEbeneezer
@zhena gogolia: There was a reason: to teach Harris/Biden/Dems a lesson and show everyone that You’re-Not-The-Boss-Of-Me! It’s the stupidest reason imaginable, but it’s the truth. For far too many Americans the threat of real fascism isn’t as scary as the possibility of being branded a blindly-loyal Dem or a cheerleader for Dems.
New Deal democrat
A few comments on the T—-p economy so far:
1. There is, believe it or not, an “Economic Policy Uncertainty index.” As of Friday, it was by far at the highest level it has ever been over 40 years – worse than after 9/11, the 2008 financial crash, or the onset of COVID: fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?id=USEPUINDXD,
2. what you want to aim for are record high real wages and payrolls. So if prices go up 4%, but wages 5% and payrolls 6%, that’s good (and that was pretty much the Biden economy). But the T—-p policies of taking things away from working people equates to higher prices, but *lower* real wages and payrolls. Not good.
3. This is the last thing the economy needs right now, because under the hood the employment situation has been deteriorating for the past year or more.
4. when you’ve lost Joe Kerman – a country club GOPer who typically fawns over RW economis shills – you’ve lost Wall Street.
different-church-lady
@Nukular Biskits: In a way, they are.
Geminid .
@oldgold: A corrolary to this might be: do the crooked conduct openly, and do a bunch of it all at once; “flood the zone.”
UncleEbeneezer
@Nukular Biskits: So will very-online Leftists.
matt
remember if you know someone who votes Republican, you know someone who would choose this, what we’re getting right now, over our stable, functioning America we had before. You know someone who is such an asshole and hates the rest of us so much they are happy for this to happen so they can inflict it on us.
gene108
Paul Krugman interviewed Kim Lane Scheppele on the similarities between what’s happening now and Orban’s takeover of Hungary. This is something, from the interview, I had not thought of.
Cuts to the CDC, NIH, NOAA, university funding, USAID, and the knock in effect of shuttering non-profits that I had not thought about. Kill the funding to any place opposition might organize like reporting on infectious diseases that could contradict the administration’s narrative.
READ THE WHOLE THING or watch the video of the interview at the link below. There’s so much more (formatting & emphasis by me).
paulkrugman.substack.com/p/from-orban-to-trump-part-ii
Nukular Biskits
@different-church-lady:
Point taken.
Liminal Owl
I asked one of the IT guys at my workplace if he could tell me how to delete my Facebook caccount, for privacy (etc.) concerns. He told me that “deleting” closes the account but does NOT delete the data they’ve scraped from you over the years. Did everyone but me already know that?
Anyway, he said that there are apps that scramble the data to make it unusable, and he promised to send me instructions. I’ll share that info when I get it, if other people here are interested.
Nukular Biskits
@UncleEbeneezer:
Not disagreeing with you here, but for my understanding, how would you define “very-online Leftists”?
TBone
@Nukular Biskits: your prose is ahmazing but I dissent because I am DETERMINED to stay a sweet, summer child today. I must if I don’t want to melt in a very hot flash which episodes have mysteriously returned much to my sweaty chagrin.
Weather forecast: UPPITY
Nukular Biskits
@matt:
Keep in mind there are two groups of people that put Trump in office:
IMHO, that’s a difference without distinction, at least with respect to the outcome.
gene108
@New Deal democrat:
If people don’t have options for better paying, they’ll put up with a lot more abuse from their employers.
I wouldn’t be surprised if this is one of the drivers behind crashing the economy.
The Great Resignation and stronger employee bargaining power seemed to piss off a lot of businesses.
oldgold
@Geminid : !
frosty
@Nukular Biskits: I think we had the answer in the previous (and other) posts. The massive protests start after the Social Security checks stop coming.
Who will organize it? Dunno. AARP?
ETA That’s who and when. How? The mailers I throw away without reading.
We’ll need a Plan B.
Nukular Biskits
@Liminal Owl:
Good to know.
The ONLY reason I have a Facebook account is our HOA-that-ain’t-an-HOA communicate via its FB account rather than use some of the fees collected to set up a webpage.
Nukular Biskits
@TBone:
Do you live in Australia? It’s winter->spring here in the Northern Hemisphere.
bbleh
@Baud: @Nukular Biskits: and they will CONTINUE to think that, even as they and their families are impoverished and immiserated and society crumbles around them, and they will do so ever more ANGRILY, because they WILL NOT admit they were wrong or — even worse — conned.
A nation of bigoted, emotionally underdeveloped, ignorami. In other words, we’re stuck in sixth grade forever.
Nukular Biskits
@gene108:
I’ve been thinking about this as well. I can’t tell you the number of times I heard from business owners, etc, whining about how they couldn’t find anyone willing to work.
Of course, they were leaving out the last part of that sentence:
“… for crap wages, few if any benefits, in a toxic work environment.”
Baud
@gene108:
Businesses won’t be happy with the labor shortage caused by RFK Jr’s diseases.
Scout211
So many questions, not enough answers and our coalition is so divided that sadly, the answers make take a long time.
This morning in the Wall Street Journal (web archive version) is typically critical of Democrats, but seems far too accurate.
. . .
The project 2025 strategy is working, sadly. When you take away all the food, the hungry crowds start fighting each other for the few crumbs that are left.
It’s hard to come together as a coalition when we all are affected differently. But I have hope that it will happen. It has to.
Nukular Biskits
@frosty:
You’re probably right. Most folks aren’t going to get pissed until it directly affects them and theirs.
In the meantime, I’m still scheming how to go about being a lone voice in the wilderness here in BFE, MS, and shed a negative light (odd phrase there) on some of my local officials. I still think scheduling and advertising a town hall, for example, inviting them to show up knowing they won’t would be a start.
matt
@Nukular Biskits: yeah, true. but the person who would still support this.. now there’s a piece of shit.
Suzanne
@gene108:
I enjoyed it a great deal.
Nukular Biskits
@bbleh:
Ref: ignorami.
Although I can’t recall using it here, I have used the term ignorati to describe MAGAs (well, back before MAGA was a thing).
We should work on definitions for each of those. ;>)
Baud
@Scout211:
We were a divided party before.
Nukular Biskits
@Scout211: Classic divide and conquer strategy.
And, like you, I’m afraid it’s far too accurate.
UncleEbeneezer
@Nukular Biskits: People who are 1.) small in number/% but 2.) very vocal/prominant and dominate online spaces and 3.) define themselves and all virtue in negative relation to the Dem Party: The more anyone is willing to criticize, bash, protest Dems, the more they are valued.
Most are people whose names we all know like Briana Joy Grey, the Young Turks, Jacobin writers etc. But it really is a collective effort so I don’t think anyone who does the same shit, even in more obscure places like BJ, gets a pass. They are all part of the problem of perpetuating the widespread belief that Dems are the real problem! among our electorate.
NotMax
@Nukular Biskits
Summer is as summer does.
Or something.
;)
UncleEbeneezer
@Nukular Biskits: Don’t forget: people who did vote for Harris, but only with their arms folded and after spending four years bashing her and Biden. Voting the right way on Election Day is great, but it doesn’t somehow magically erase all the damage they did to the Dem brand/candidates.
Nukular Biskits
@NotMax:
Then there’s Unknown Artist – This Summer .
Kirk
@chemiclord:
Yes, but there’s a silver lining here. If Trump is ever no longer responsible for it, I think it’ll explode.
We’ve seen some of the rumblings with “Musk is in charge” acts. I honestly expect that when he dies, if he dies in office, his top officers will do their best to sustain the weekend at Bernies plan. It won’t last – too many egos in conflict. But they’ll try.
Nukular Biskits
@UncleEbeneezer:
i.e,. the “purity ponies”.
oldgold
@frosty: “The massive protests start after the Social Security checks stop coming.”
Well, that might be so, but the few times I have taken to the street to protest, there weren’t many grey-haired folks among us. Street protests and such are not their natural habitats, but the polling booth is.
Beyond that, massive street protests and such, I believe will very quickly result in Trumplethinskin imposing of Martial Law. Is that what we want? Probably could be argued round or flat. I am with the flats.
Suzanne
@UncleEbeneezer: The unplease-able left is annoying and wrong, but they pale in influence and scale to the normies who just want their tax cuts and their F-8464528#7$650’s.
frosty
@Nukular Biskits: That’s a brilliant idea! If only you had one or two other Lone Voices to attend.
Here in BFE Confederate PA I get monthly emails from PADEMs about taking action … Monthly Meetings. Summer picnics. Fundraising dinners. Not any more useful than your neck of the woods.
Nukular Biskits
Semi-related … I’ve only skimmed it but bookmarked for reading later on:
Slate: The Women Who Wanted to Leave Their Husbands Over Politics
WereBear
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: And the monthly boozeups for the saints!
narya
For those who may be interested: here and here are some photos of the aforementioned mural. It’s truly stunning, and if you are ever in Philadelphia around Independence Hall, I strongly recommend a visit. Philadelphia is very walkable (one of the things I loved most about living there) in that part of the city.
Geminid .
@Scout211: This article is of a piece with many other op-eds: the analysis is framed in a “bipolar” representation of Democratic electeds and rank-and-file, dividing them into “Progressives” and “”Centrists.” I contend that this analysis mistates the actual situation, no matter how many pundits argue it and how many of their readers accept it.
WereBear
@Spanky: People would be falling from windows.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
More detail and actual data on the Great Resignation:
hbr.org/2022/03/the-great-resignation-didnt-start-with-the-pandemic
Nukular Biskits
@frosty:
A get-together bitchsession with like-minded folks is often what such events wind up being. Not saying that’s a bad thing but it’s often nothing more than lotsa venting but gets little to no traction.
The real problem is getting local media to pay attention. Repeatedly.
WereBear
@NotMax: That looks exactly right. Thanks!
RevRick
@Baud: The Trump gang wants us to feel powerless and shrink back from civic engagement. I refuse to submit. My dignity and my hope insist I do something. So I’m heading up an effort to create a media and lobbying team around the issue of climate change, because I realize there’s an intersection there with societal injustice. The poor suffer the impacts first.
Stomping our feet in outrage on BJ is all well and good, but unless it leads to some serious action it’s a hollow gesture.
Nukular Biskits
@RevRick:
PREACH!
chemiclord
@Nukular Biskits: When a critical mass of people cross that threshold.
That point is always going to be a lot later than you want it to, when it should, and when it would be most effective, and there’s no way of pushing people to that point faster than they are willing to go.
WereBear
@chemiclord: A dead paycheck speaks louder than words. Especially when mom or dad is getting kicked out of their nursing home. And the public schools have closed down.
They didn’t realize the clouds they floated on, immune from their mistakes, was woven by old dead men and held aloft by twisted tatters of Confederate theology. They didn’t know what kept them up at all was the tireless efforts of people who didn’t want the country to burn down.
I can only speak to them in words they will understand. “Look at what you gone and done.”
Spanky
@Nukular Biskits:
Things like yesterday’s March for Science are a good starting place. It gets people out and around other like- minded people in a pretty safe environment, and gets them (us) accustomed to civil action.
Better than waiting for a raging protest to cut your teeth on mass action.
frosty
@Nukular Biskits: “A get-together bitchsession with like-minded folks is often what such events wind up being.”
Balloon-Juice!!
Phylllis
@NotMax: I like deviled ham. Doctor it up with some pickle relish & spicy mustard and it makes a pretty good sammich
Don’t know if I could handle Vienna sausages at this stage of life, but a can of those and some saltines made for a filling lunch back in the day. Just the thought of the sound they make coming out of the can kind of creeps me out.
zhena gogolia
@UncleEbeneezer: Yes.
chemiclord
@Scout211: For what it’s worth, the various caucuses within the Dem coalition have been gleefully eating our own far longer than anything the GOP has actively done to, perhaps ironically, heighten the contradictions.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@RevRick:
Another retired pastor who’s president of one of the Registered Neighborhood Orgs of which I’m a board member, is, like you, motivated for action centered around climate change.
One thing he’s doing is giving people this book:
amazon.com/Language-Climate-Politics-Fossil-Fuel-Propaganda/dp/0197642233
Although I disagree with some of the author’s analysis (she falls into the same logic-flow trap as some of the key people she criticizes), it’s a very accessible read, lays out not just the current “lay of the land” but each chapter has a little piece at the end explaining various approaches to talk to people about climate change.
She does a very good job walking the reader thru the various groups, how we got here and how ‘centrists’ uphold the policy status quo which, in her view, ain’t a good thing.
frosty
@oldgold: Agree. Martial Law may be waiting in the wings. He’s replacing the generals who would refuse illegal orders.
RevRick
@Scout211: The most effective strategy is to select an issue that you are most passionate about, gather likeminded people, and apply a laser-like focus to publicly addressing it. If you have a Democratic Representative, they will know they are getting support. If you have a Republican Representative, they will know you are weakening theirs… or they will have to move towards your position.
Baud
@RevRick:
Good for you. I’m increasingly convinced that salvation will need to happen in the real world or not at all. Online discourse just incentivizes people to be spectators who are made to feel strong through scolding others for not being good enough.
Suzanne
@Baud: Online discourse also doesn’t match what I see in grass-touching life. Of course, that’s the point of the algorithms…. to convince me of something in order to make it more likely to happen.
NotMax
@chemiclord
This.
UncleEbeneezer
@Suzanne: They are connected though. The normies will point to the purity ponies bullshit to justify their own apathy and anti-Dem bias. I have a friend who is a solid Dem voter. She was whining about Biden being old even before he was sworn in. She’s not a purity-pony. Closer to a normie than a purity-pony. But she still has the reluctance to really cheer for Dems, that so many (most, I’d argue) people in America have. So she will gladly use purity-pony talking points. Purity ponies are a small part of our electorate but they do a ton of damage because they give Independents, Libertarians and Normies fodder to ignite/burn Dems while they can all still pat themselves on the back for not being Republicans and even brag about how independent (or even progressive) they are. They give people a permission structure to not step up when Dems need it.
Nukular Biskits
@Spanky:
True.
Part of the problem for me is I’m a lonely blue dot here in sea of red. So any “raging protest” or otherwise, would likely have to be of my own doing.
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard “Sir, a lot of Mississippians support both Senator/Representative/Governor/Dogcatcher X and Donald Trump.” As if that’s some kind of end-of-discussion answer to my questions.
Phylllis
@Nukular Biskits: I’m the secretary/treasurer of our HOA, and set up a cheap-ass WordPress page from a template for just that reason. People should not have to join that hellhole to get relevant information. I think our domain & hosting cost about $50 bux a year.
WereBear
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: AI, but I agree, it’s pretty basic:
The effect of the Pandemic of 1918 was similar, secularizing Europe to its present, low, state of interference.
I expected the rush of evangelistic fervor in the US got frantic because people were dropping out of churches and getting better educated. The outreach got crazier as their audience was driven into mindless paranoia.
Less of them, but they gave more, kind of thing.
YY_Sima Qian
Adam Tooze is always worth a read (gift link to FT piece below):
Baud
@UncleEbeneezer:
Some online anti-Dem leftie types get the attention because they’re showy, but there a bigger problem of a culture of savviness and cynicism that extends well beyond them IMHO.
Nukular Biskits
@Phylllis:
OMG! I haven’t thought about Vienna sausages and crackers in years.
Growing up poor, at a lot of those things. I need to look up the nutritional values next time I’m at the store … wait … on second thought, maybe I don’t really want to know.
Nukular Biskits
@Baud:
Well put.
RevRick
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: I’m currently reading Cathedral on Fire * by the Rev. Dr. Brooks Berndt, which is, of course, aimed at the church, approaching climate change from a theological perspective. I’ve read Bill McKibben’s Eaarth , which says we will have to adapt to the conditions our dependence on fossil fuels has created.
*Only available through the United Church of Christ Environmental Justice Ministry.
oldgold
Last night the Short-Fingered Vulgarian announced appointees to a Board at the Naval Academy. Really, it is not a big deal, but the appointments are so damn bad, I had to laugh.
“Our GREAT United States Naval Academy needs a new Board of Visitors. I am pleased to announce that an incredible group of Patriots will serve on the Board— Walt Nauta, Sean Spicer, “Doc Ronnie” Jackson, and Derek Van Orden. Together they will ensure continued Greatness for the Academy.”
Nukular Biskits
@Phylllis:
Agreed. The problem is our “HOA” isn’t a real HOA (where homeowners elect a board and set the regulations) but an LLC, in which the board is comprised of certain family members and their well-connected buddies.
We pay somewhere around $1400/year for … something.
Dorothy A. Winsor
I’ll be at the Schaumburg IL library today from 12-3 for their author fair. If you’re in the area, drop by. Look for the little old lady.
Dorothy A. Winsor
One of my former Iowa State colleagues linked to this story about science grad students having their admission rescinded because of cuts to research funding.
RevRick
@Baud: Escape from the world interpretations of salvation are the false result of imposing Platonic philosophy upon Christian faith. Judaism is far more resistant to this nonsense.
My hope is for a transformed world that reflects the goodness of justice, peace, and love. So I’m going to invest my time and effort into heeding God’s first command to Adam (man of earth): tend the garden.
Suzanne
@UncleEbeneezer: So I’ll have to take your word for it, because…. that is not a thing I observe in my grass-touching life. Like, a ton of my friends voted for Elizabeth Warren in the 2020 primary (tells you the kind of people I hang out with), and I can tell you that every one of them then happily voted for Biden and spread pro-Dem messaging. A few people I know (my BIL springs to mind) are in that unpleasable lefty category, and I think most of them also voted Dem, maybe a bit more grumbly about it.
But as Baud notes….. the Cult of Savvy that I observe is much more that swing-y middle who seems to think of themselves as hard-headed realists, assures me that it doesn’t genuinely matter who wins, can quote unemployment figures with perfection every month, and absolutely thinks being a loyal voter of either party is deeply cringe.
Captain C
@UncleEbeneezer:
At least until bad things actually happen (as predicted). Then it’s “Why won’t the people I rejected and tossed out of power save MEEEEEEEEEE?!?!???!!”
YY_Sima Qian
@UncleEbeneezer: Why are you still on the “very online leftists”? Are we going to pretend that they are any more than the most marginalized voices in Liberal-Progressive-Left coalition, let alone US politics in general? They have had just about zero influence in the policies & platform of the Dem Party, foreign or domestic, since about forever. There is no organized Left in the US as the ROW would recognize it, it’s long been neutered since the Cold War 1.0.
& why are we treating Biden & Harris (or any politician) like new born babes that needed to be nurtured & sheltered, as opposed to tough, seasoned political operators w/ plenty of ego, who sought their positions of great responsibility?
ron
A persistent problem with the framing in the posts quoted above (that’s be going on forever) is “Trump is acting alone.” There needs to some way of stating this is happening with the hearty approval of all republicans. And it would only take a handful of them to end it all. We need to destroy their entire brand.
Baud
@ron:
Agree.
zhena gogolia
@YY_Sima Qian: Who was heckling Harris at every public appearance during the campaign? Who heckled Hillary Clinton during her nominating convention?
zhena gogolia
One thing I’m going to stop doing is taking advice from Americans who aren’t living here.
Nukular Biskits
@zhena gogolia:
You mean the mythical 150-year old Social Security check recipients?
Matt McIrvin
@Suzanne: My experience here in New England is more like Uncle Ebeneezer’s. A lot of the vocal Democrats I know in real life were Bernie supporters in 2016 (but switched to Elizabeth Warren in 2020) and continue the pattern by being mostly dissatisfied with elected Democratic politicians, including the ones they elect.
In 2024, most of them bought into the “Biden is senile/decrepit” messaging and disliked not having a realistic alternative to vote for the in the primary… but they were actually enthusiastic about Harris, at least for a while.
(Edited to add: However, I also have known a lot of the “post-partisan savvy centrist” types working in Northeastern tech industry. The people for whom “socially liberal and economically conservative” messaging works. Don’t hang out with many of them now.)
YY_Sima Qian
@zhena gogolia: & they have influenced the Dem Party policies & platforms, or messaging, in any way, shape or form? How many voters did they influence to sit out in 2024 or vote 3rd party?
Obama (& Clinton before him) saw plenty of hecklers, too, & not just the reactionaries. Goes w/ the territory of being President, or running for President.
Ohio Mom
@gene108: I read the whole thing yesterday. It pulls together everything that is happening and puts it in context.
I need to print it out, I that way I won’t lose track of where I first heard all of it.
zhena gogolia
@Nukular Biskits: Yeah, them!
YY_Sima Qian
@zhena gogolia: Sure, do what you want. My post was not addressed to you.
Nukular Biskits
Okay. Finished my HUMONGOUS Cinnamon Toast Crunch muffin and working on my second coffee (this one’s a mocha).
Time to get out there and till the land, as Ms. Biskits calls it, before the forecast T-storms tonight.
Y’all play sweet.
pajaro
@Nukular Biskits:
Re: when will mass demonstrations start:
This is the thousand dollar question. Usually, there needs to be some event that galvanizes people to be willing to come out. In 2017, it was the election itself that was the spur for the women’s march. In 2020, it was the video of the killing of George Floyd, played over and over, that cause people to say, enough, this isn’t us, and get up and demonstrate.
I think it will take a dramatic event, like the killing of demonstrators, to get us and our neighbors out. I worry that a threat to our liberty, like a Trump decision to defy a court order, is too abstract for our fellow citizens. The other possibility would be a dramatic fall in the economy. But it just doesn’t look like what has happened so far is enough to motivate widespread demonstrations.
RevRick
My freshman year economics professor is rolling in his grave over the lunacy of the Trump administration’s policies. The notion that we can just move from public spending to private spending is a fairytale. Econ 101 taught me this simple equation: GDP = C + I +G +X. Laying off government workers and slashing spending will reduce Consumption, which will lead to business cutting back on investments. Minus signs do not magically become plus signs. Quite the contrary. As John Maynard Keynes famously observed there is no magical level of economic activity or employment, and, in fact, economies can get stuck in Depressions. We’re about to retest that reality.
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
The number of libs who went all in on the senility thing is more disheartening to me than Trump supporters.
gene108
@Scout211:
Part of the problem is I think is generational. Democrats under 40 have never seen a Republican Party that wasn’t tilting towards fascism and authoritarianism.
They’ve never witnessed reasonable Republicans.
Another issue is Democrats represent a lot of different groups and it’s hard to appeal to all of them at once, without one group or the other feeling left out.
Unlike in 2018, when the attempt to repeal the ACA was one issue Democrats could focus on, there’s so much shit happening at once it’s hard to focus on what will work with voters.
Is it the economy? Is it the rule of law? Is it Musk taking over the government? Medicaid cuts? I don’t think anybody knows.
Suzanne
@Matt McIrvin:
This describes, like, 80% of the people I interacted with in Arizona. Disheartening AF.
Raoul Paste
@RevRick: Yours is a unique and welcome voice here at BJ
TBone
Lyrical perfection!
Lola!
m.youtube.com/watch?v=k-k2_Liofy8
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: You and me both. That’s why I am taking some time off and contemplating what to do next
I am wondering seriously about whether I need to craft an exit strategy. Especially after the open and virulent hate I encountered on this blog after the inauguration.
In addition to DOGE shenanigans and what is happening at the national level.
Matt McIrvin
@Suzanne: In my experience, the identifying characteristic of such people is that they are fiscally comfortable and feel secure about it. I’m pretty fiscally comfortable but I never feel secure about anything (and I know too many poor people).
narya
This. It’s a thread of libertarianism, IMHO: the Rugged Individualist Who Thinks For Himself. Sometimes (as with my Friend), they’re “crushed idealists.” I push back on this whenever I encounter it: getting things done requires coalitions, cooperation, not getting everything you want, but also requires some core principles (like not throwing trans people under the bus).
And, at this point, I think it also requires the evolution and emergence of a variety of tactics. I don’t think there’s One Right Message behind which every Democrat must get in line. I do think that one emerging strategy is town halls–and if R representatives refuse to hold them, then hold them anyway, with a cardboard cutout, and some Dem leaders taking note of what is most concerning to the people who show up, and then running against the Republican on those issues.
YY_Sima Qian
@gene108:
I think all of these matter a great deal to every part of the Anti-Fascist coalition, & to parts beyond (when the new reality finally hits them in the face).
Geminid .
@UncleEbeneezer: Westchester, New York Democrat Tom Watson had an interesting label– or epithet– for the group you may be talking about: “hipster progressives.” I call them the Jerkobin crowd, but that’s just me.
Ed. I think some of the people so described are reliable but disgruntled Democratic voters. Others are more conditionsal in their support.
@Nukular Biskits: But these labels will always be imperfect because they are founded [upon] generalizations, and generalizations are imperfect
They are also emotionally loaded, in that they figure in a larger and very heated debate about party governance going forward. I use the words “emotionally loaded” advisedly; in the last month, this larger intra-party debate may have excited more hard feelings in this forum than I saw last July, and that was no picnic.
This debate will go on in one form or another for quite a while, I think. It did after Clinton lost to Trump in 2016.
This is one reason I look forward to next year’s Democratic House primaries.* There will be open seats to contend over because there tends to be a couple dozen or so retirements every cycle.
There will also be serious primary challenges to plenty of incumbents. That’s not a bad thing in my opinion, because this will finally give Democratic primsry voters their chance to weigh in on the debate.
* I’m also looking forward to the Republican House primaries, but that’s a different story.
Ohio Mom
@frosty: AARP takes pains to be nonpartisan, they are a 501c3 organization and by law, must remain nonpartisan.
The law allows nonprofits to take stands on issues but it seems to me that organizing demonstrstion against cuts to Social Security would be too close to an anti-Trump protest so I’m not betting on AARP organizing it.
Every time AARP comes up in the conversation, I remember this: when I started dating Ohio Dad, he was living in Northern Virginia, just over the bridge from Georgetown.
To keep myself busy while he was at work, I decided to take one of those trolley tours. I thought I’d a good way to get a feel for the DC layout neighborhoods.
I was by far the youngest person on board. We were passing this massive office building that took up an entire block when the tour guide said,”I know this will be of special interest to you, on your left is AARP’s national headquarters.
Baud
@schrodingers_cat:
Exit from the blog or from the country?
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: Country. I don’t want to and I won’t until it is the absolutely last resort. But I increasingly feel like I need to put together a contingency plan.
No strategy necessary for quitting the blog.
TBone
I got the happiness jonez today 🎶
m.youtube.com/watch?v=YSO_wvnLhtY
Matt McIrvin
@pajaro: This is going to sound stupid or cynical, but one of the things people overlook about mass protest demonstrations is that they tend to happen in nice weather.
The George Floyd protests happened in the summer while a lot of people were either unemployed or stuck at home because of COVID. Perfect conditions for something huge to go down.*
I can’t speak for most of the country, but in the Northeast, this winter has been brutal, with alternating snowstorms and bitter cold. The largest demonstrations that have happened have tended to be on rare warm and clear days.
People remember the Women’s March in 2017, but I recall that weekend being a lot milder than Trump’s 2025 inauguration.
*(And conservatives complained that it wasn’t cricket for people to urge quarantine from work over COVID and then urge mass demonstrations. Cry me a river–you’re not the only ones allowed to play hardball.)
rikyrah
Outbreak Updates
@outbreakupdates
USDA quietly dissolves two critical food safety advisory committees.
These groups advised on microbial contamination and meat inspection.
You know, the stuff that keeps E. coli, Salmonella, and Listeria from turning your dinner into a hospital visit.
x.com/outbreakupdates/status/1898234227843268633
catclub
@NotMax: yep. also canned spam.
Baud
@schrodingers_cat:
Exiting the blog is easy, though you’d be missed.
Exiting the country is more work. I’m sad that it’s already come to that.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: I edited my response.
rikyrah
@schrodingers_cat:
I don’t know what to say to you.
I’m part of the 92%. And, we have decided to rest.
It is amusing how our choice has disturbed so many.
The attempts at rage baiting the Black community are becoming more obvious and clumsy.
But, the Ancestors told us November 6th to rest, and that’s what we’re doing.
This is my country. We built it.
I’ve been telling Peanut that if she wants to plan for a life outside of the USA, I fully support her. My job is to help her parents to get her fully educated, so that she can take her well-educated self wherever she feels is best for her.
Matt McIrvin
@Geminid .: The disgruntled liberals I know IRL are *not* Jacobin or Intercept types. That’s pretty fringe even among the Bernie left. They could be better described as intensely liberal people with some democratic-socialist leanings who would like their Democratic politicians to be a bit further left than they are, but will vote for them in general elections, sometimes while grumbling.
I more or less consider myself one of them, and some of my policy preferences are more extreme than theirs (especially on some specific things like immigration, where I think the Bernie left is generally to my right), but I think I’m more likely to support normie Democratic politicians.
TBone
@TBone: messy is as messy does.
Dorothy A. Winsor
I thought my son was being overcautious when he asked me not to file for my Canadian dual citizenship because he has to have security clearance and they always ask if any close family is dual. It’s Canada! I said. Ha! Turns out that’s suspicious now
Ohio Mom
@schrodingers_cat: Where would you go? Back to India? As I recall, you are some sort of STEM professional, does that make you a hot commidity in a variety of developed nations?
I started thinking about exit plans back in GWs presidency. I quickly realized no one wants Ohio Family (except Israel, and that is completely out of the question). So here is where we stay. Maybe after Ohio MIL dies we can look at moving to a Blue State but that also seems unlikely for variety of reasons.
zhena gogolia
@Matt McIrvin: The same person in my group who was advocating that Biden be pushed out for Sherrod Brown or Pritzker was “unenthusiastic” about Harris. I think he voted for her, but it’s that demonstrative lack of enthusiasm that pisses me off.
oldgold
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Are you aware that the famed International School of Writing at the University of Iowa has had its funding pulled by Doge?
zhena gogolia
@Matt McIrvin:
Anyone on a college campus knows this!
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
@gene108: The thing that gives me the most hope is all this is scary and concerning but the U.S. for all it’s flaws has a looong history of liberal democracy that former Eastern bloc countries do not.
Not saying the Orban playbook CAN’T work here but it’s probably not going to be anywhere near as easy to pull it off here as in Hungary. We’ll see, but that’s my chief source of what optimism I have left.
It’s not going to be hard to refocus a lot of people on what we had and are losing or have lost… it’s crazy but I watch Seinfeld reruns occasionally and since the inauguration I’m like sentimental for that era when we didn’t have to worry about the government being a hyper chaotic, nihilistic FUBAR enterprise. The show barely touches anything political in a way that feels almost transgressive right now to me. I’m a federal worker so bearing the brunt more than a lot of folks but ubiquitous cultural phenomena will make it hard for people to forget how things once were and could be again.
rikyrah
There have been all kinds of protests around the USA.
There have been science protests
There have been protests for immigration
Anyone notice how there HAS NOT been police responding in RIOT GEAR
WHERE are the police in gas masks?
WHERE are the police with rubber bullets?
UH HUH
UH HUH
Wilson Heath
Different front of lying sack o’crap, but when Bessent was doing confirmation rounds, he was talking about the horribleness of the National debt and the need to get it under control. So we now see that the genius plan is to cut services to everyone while doing debt-financed tax cuts for billionaires and mere centimillionaires, and making sure that tax enforcement is crippled to boot.
”What do you call this act?”
”Fiscal Conservatism.”
Gretchen
@schrodingers_cat: Where would you go?
I hope you won’t leave the blog.
Suzanne
@narya:
Yes this. Very much this.
I think a lot about movement patterns and where people are relocating and what it means for our politics moving forward. I was noting in the previous thread that AZ and PA feel really politically different even though they are both purple/swingy. AZ seems to attract a lot of this more libertarian kind of person, and most people I knew didn’t really have coherent politics even if they were registered voters. And before anyone calls that white privilege…. AZ is probably more diverse than PA, is younger on average, and this attitude 100% crosses racial boundaries. And the I-10 corridor is the fastest-growing part of the country.
Omnes Omnibus
@Matt McIrvin: In the Madison, WI area, my experience matched yours.
Geminid .
@TBone: My childhood memories of Dinty Moore beef stew are fond ones. That’s what the family ate when we went camping.
At home, my Mom would cook Chun King dinners from time to time. Also, ring baloney and saurkraut which I Iiked more. I also liked the baked Spam on pineapple– you know, like the Hawaiians eat (as the Dole company would have it).
schrodingers_cat
@Ohio Mom: Not going anywhere but contemplating my options.
raven
@Geminid .: When I was a kid and lived withy my old man he would buy a canned whole chicken!!
Dorothy A. Winsor
@oldgold: No! I didn’t know that.
Apart from the cruelty, the staggering stupidity of these people just leaves me speechless.
Matt McIrvin
@Ohio Mom: I’m in this weird situation where I probably *could* arrange to emigrate but for the same reasons of privilege that that’s an option, I feel like I probably shouldn’t be the one to do it. I’m an aging straight white cis guy with a corn-fed accent who at first glance looks like a natural Trump voter (except for having an advanced degree). Most of my personal characteristics don’t put me in danger. I am pretty well-off. I live in one of the deepest-blue states though not in the deepest-blue region of said state. If people endangered by Trump need to GTFO, I should be the last one on the boat.
I’d like my kid to have options if she feels she needs them. One big question is what places in the world are just a little less far along the same road, so that fleeing to them would just delay the pain. A hope I have is that the baleful situation in the US is politically impeding the far right elsewhere. World War II and the Holocaust really discredited fascism and racism everywhere as ideologies, to the point that they even drove the US to try to clean up its act. I hope we get away with less damage than that but who knows.
YY_Sima Qian
@New Deal democrat: Howard Lutnick has been out there spewing all kinds of non-sense trying to defend Trump’s actions, making no more sense than Trump himself.
However, at this point I think the only development that might catch Trump’s attention is a stock market crash that actually hurt the material interests of the plutocrats. The kleptocrats engineering the chaos & the Blitzkrieg against USG have probably hedged their positions to gain from such a crash.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Geminid .: A guy was telling me yesterday that on a business trip to Nebraska years ago, he ate in a diner that had painted on its wall “We proudly serve Campbell’s soup.”
Omnes Omnibus
@Geminid .:
Hormel roast beef hash.
bbleh
@Nukular Biskits: Counsel will stipulate to ignorati, as it works better, like cognoscenti, to describe a class as well as multiple individuals (and ignorami sounds too much like origami.)
YY_Sima Qian
@Matt McIrvin: Don’t forget the massive disruptions from AGW that are baked in at this point. Not every place has the state capacity to confront that challenge, & it will be an increasing stressor on polities everywhere going forward.
Matt McIrvin
@Baud: While he clearly doesn’t have dementia, the years were obviously catching up with Biden, he was slowing down and his lifelong stutter was getting harder for him to mask. The debate performance with Trump shocked a lot of people.
But I also think part of it was that Joe Biden, as a lifelong occupant of the ideological center of the party, had a long career of more centrist positions, especially on things like crime and policing, and the left wing of the party had consciously compromised on that to get Trump out in 2020. If Biden was no longer a good strategic choice then a lot of that old unease came back, and people would grasp at any reason to express it.
Another Scott
Meanwhile, people are still doing the work. RollCall.com (from March 6):
Someone pointed out a while ago that the way gerrymandering has been done over the decades, there are only a relative handful of districts that don’t have +10 or more majorities for either party. Landslide elections are extremely difficult and rare in such circumstances. That means, in addition to turning out the base and the advocates, finding ways to shift things a few percentage points among the normies and disaffected is a necessary component of flipping a seat. Of course, trying to illegally throw hundreds of thousands of people out of work, and starting shouting matches and worse with close allies, and throwing European friends and allies under the tank, and threatening land grabs all over the globe, and inviting Putin’s agents inside the administration, and all the rest, is off the map, so nobody knows what that means for the midterms, no matter how badly gerrymandered districts are.
As many have said, demanding purity is not the way we get a working majority back. Yes, even on core principles, we can have (and probably will have) some disagreements. (And that can be infuriating and worse.) We need all kinds of people who are willing to fight the monsters and vote for Democratic leadership.
Forward!!
Best wishes,
Scott.
Soprano2
@Baud: They think they chose serfdom for you and me, they still believe they’re part of the ruling class.
Soprano2
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: It had some of the same effects, they were shorter-lived than the ones the Black Death caused. Wages go way up when you lose 50% of your population.
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
I get how he was old and stuttered. That’s not that same as being senile. Libs should know this. The fact that many didn’t tell me some part of our coalition wants to be Republican rather than fight Republicans.
schrodingers_cat
There is one area of complete agreement between the tankie left and the MAGA right and that is foreign policy. Ostensibly its for different reasons but there is not much difference between what CODE PINK wants regarding foreign policy and what T 2.0 wants. Just by pure coincidence that’s exactly what the leader of Russia wants.
Sloane Ranger
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: You’d get sick of the sight of salmon eventually. There were so many complaints that the King had to pass a law saying masters couldn’t feed their apprentices salmon more than twice a week. :)
Matt McIrvin
@YY_Sima Qian: We’re going to have tropical countries becoming increasingly uninhabitable because of global warming at the same time that the rich global North faces a shortage of working-age people.
The obvious win in such a situation is for a country in the rich global North to accept mass immigration, with, yes, all of the culture shocks and ethnic-demographic change that that would entail.
But almost nobody wants to hear that answer, even in the social democracies that American liberals want to emulate.
The thing that frustrates me is that a specific element of AMERICAN political/historical mythology–that we are a nation of immigrants, built not as an ethnic nation-state but on a set of ideals–is uniquely positioned to benefit from this situation, in a way that countries whose history textbooks begin with “our ancestors the Gauls” are not.
But we’re running away from that idea full tilt, toward an ethno-state nationalism that is completely ill-suited for what’s coming.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: I was disappointed that NP lead the charge to push Biden out. I trusted her and the D leadership. No I am not so sure.
I trust the CBC,, they know how to fight and they don’t suffer from any illusions and are pragmatic.
tobie
@UncleEbeneezer: I recently got together with a bunch of Dem friends who spent the entire time complaining about how Bill Clinton destroyed the white working class and when I mentioned Reagan, trickle down, privatization and the destruction of unions I got blank stares. Dems themselves often place all responsibility for everything on the shoulders of Dem politicians. We let Republicans walk away blameless. It’s a weird psychological mechanism.
Baud
@schrodingers_cat:
They were following the polls, rightly or wrongly. Most of our problems starts at with our culture IMHO. Leadership can’t fix that.
Matt McIrvin
@Baud: I don’t think it’s wanting to be Republican–it’s more of an individualist instinct to not identify with a party.
But that’s also a poor fit for an ideology that is supposed to be into the benefits of collective action.
catclub
This. People oppose high taxes on millionaires because they _know_ they will be millionaires any day now.
Matt McIrvin
@tobie: Left dissatisfaction with Hillary Clinton’s support for the Iraq invasion got leveraged by the Trump 2016 campaign into a wholesale identification of her with the war, as if she’d been President during the George W. Bush years and it was a Democratic initiative. It was pretty remarkable.
That’s one of the reasons I try to urge Democrats today not to jump on any Republican buses–you’ll be identified as the driver after it all goes bad.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: I expected more fortitude from them and less of a herd mentality. They should have stood behind Biden like the CBC did.
I was disappointed. I could see the situation we are in a mile away. That they couldn’t see it is what makes me question their decision making abilities.
KH had an impossible task. I was not sanguine about her prospects. Although I even canvassed for her on the phone when I was in India for my mother’s funeral and stayed back to help my dad with paperwork and other stuff.
If she had run after Biden’s second term she would have had a much better chance.
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
I think it’s impossible to strategize around avoiding propaganda and the people who want to believe it.
Eunicecycle
@Matt McIrvin: if I recall correctly, she said her support was reluctant and she wanted to trust that Bush was telling the truth. Of course the trust was misplaced, but then the REPUBLICANS used her trusting a REPUBLICAN president against her. And of course Trump had publicly supported the war at the time, but lied about it during the campaign.
Matt McIrvin
@catclub: It also gets demagogued in deliberately innumerate ways, like the bad-faith confusion of marginal with effective tax rates, so that many, perhaps most people think they’ll end up poorer if their taxable income just barely rises into a higher tax bracket.
schrodingers_cat
@Matt McIrvin: This is going to make me sound elitist but many people are very stupid and innumerate and that goes for our elite media as well.
Voting for T again and believing that Bernie coulda won are but two examples of this stupidity.
Another Scott
@Baud: I think there’s a lot about last summer that’s unknown and may never be know about who was pushing and who was saying “think about it”. Even their books, whenever they appear, are likely to pull punches and shade the truth and be subject to fuzzy memories.
Ultimately, I believe Biden. He said the party was too divided, so he had to go. And Harris was the only alternative, and she was an amazing candidate.
I just looked at contemporaneous Electoral-Vote.com stories. It really looks like the weeks before and the first few weeks after the debate didn’t really change anything much. 40-42% for Biden, 42-40% for 47. And generally Harris was not better and was sometimes worse (unsurprisingly since she hadn’t been campaigning yet).
Something made a big bunch of Biden voters stay home. And whatever it/they say it was/were (grocery prices, rent, economic unfairness, Washington not listening, etc.) isn’t being addressed in a serious way by 47. Those voters who stayed home are obviously gettable because Biden did it… Figuring out how to do it now is Job 1.
FWIW.
Thanks.
Best wishes,
Scott.
suzanne
@Matt McIrvin:
Yes. This.
These are people with incoherent views, who find everything about government, like, old-fashioned and dusty and annoying, and aren’t joiner-y types. They vote Republican sometimes, but by no means exclusively.
TBone
@TBone:
P.S. that is NOT The Kinks!
Matt McIrvin
@schrodingers_cat: While we have no way of knowing for sure, I think Biden would have lost in an actual landslide if he’d stayed in.
I don’t know if there was any way to actually salvage the 2024 situation–what the median voter thought they’d be getting by voting for Trump was some kind of reset to the world and economy of 2019, and for them, that hadn’t been too bad.
There were people on our side making the case that that wasn’t going to happen, because Trump himself was bent on revenge and the normie-Republican “adults in the room” that tried to keep a lid on his worst craziness in his first term were all gone (I was one of the people trying to make that case) but that’s too complicated a story.
YY_Sima Qian
@Matt McIrvin:
The US being the embodiment of Enlightenment ideals, in contrast to the ethno-states/colonial empires in the Old World, was what I learned in junior high & high school, after emigrating to the US. It was the dominant self-conception (at least as publicly professed) in elite liberal & conservative discourse in the ’90s & ’00s, IIRC, during the US’ unipolar moment.
However, this conception has always elided the original sin from the founding of the Republic, white supremacy over the African slaves & indigenous peoples, & supremacy of the landed gentry over everyone else (we can still see the residual effects now, the monied class vs. everyone else). Whiteness was also once defined so narrowly as to exclude immigrants from most parts of Europe. All of these were written into the founding documents.
Trump & MAGA just ripped away all of the veils & masks. In times of rising stress, baser instincts tend to win out.
Geminid .
@Phylllis: A country store 3 miles up the road from me has 5 varieties of Vienna Sausages. I tell that to people when they ask me if I live in a food desert!
Actually, I do not live in a food desert. There three grocery stores within five miles of me: a Food Lion, a Wal-Mart, and an independently owned Great Value in “historic” Stanardsville. That one’s my favorite.
There’s also Dollar General a few doors down from the Great Value that is fairly well-stocked with groceries, with the exception of fresh meat and vegetables. They have fresh dairy including eggs, and frozen pizza, etc.
The Great Value has plenty of good fresh meat; has its own butcher shop. Besides offering various cut beef and pork, they grind their own hamburger and sausage (their chicken is prepackaged).
They also have sliced pork jowl meat. A couple Charlottesville friends will often score some pepper jowl at the Great Value when they’re out here. They use it to make spaghetti carboranara.
But guess I am in a partial food food desert, because I have to go 14 miles to a Krogers if I want decent fresh fish. I’m not sure about the Food Lion’s fresh fish; I am sure about the Wal-Mart’s but not in a good way.
YY_Sima Qian
@Matt McIrvin: Well, I do trust the political instincts of people such as Obama, Pelosi & Schumer, that they would not try to push Biden to exit the campaign w/o very good reasons, since the massive downsides are obvious. Whether it was Biden’s declining mental faculties, lack of stamina, or just bleak internal polling numbers, no one knows & they aren’t saying.
I did trust them to have thought through the process of replacing Biden as the candidate. Harris was the only possible replacement, & the delay in endorsements was surprising, but I figured it was a planned strategy by the Party elders. Per post-election comments, I guess that was not the case, & there was no plan on executing the change over, nor that there was necessarily consensus on Harris versus an open primary. That was shocking & unsettling, & made me question their political acumen, after all.
Harris did very well w/ the hand she was dealt, but alas.
XeckyGilchrist
True enough, but leaves out the “attempted violent overthrow of the US Government” part
Geminid .
@Another Scott: I still haven’t looked at an in-depth analysis of last November’s electorate. Some ought be coming out soon, and they might shed light on question I have: how many of those Democratic voters who seem to stay home actually came out, but were Biden-to-Trump Independents?
Matt McIrvin
@YY_Sima Qian: And, yes, that’s where the myth of America as a nation founded on liberal-democratic ideology falls down. It was always operating within this circle of whiteness drawn to favor a colonizing/slaver elite, and to some extent within a ruling class.
But, as I was saying earlier musing about Douglass, it seems like the only thing that has ever worked to create social progress in this country is to point out the hypocrisy but then insist on making the Founders’ grandiose claims for America as real as we can, instead of tossing them out as a joke and grasping at some other model entirely.
But right now, we have people like Stephen Miller and the theocrats saying “no, the US was never built on those ideals at all, it’s an Anglo-ethnic nation based on commitment to blood, language and religion”. Which, despite our racist and often xenophobic past, it absolutely is not and never was.
TONYG
@Baud: Dignity??? Well, we’ll take care of that flaw in the immediate future son. Just wait. (Not even food pellets — negative reinforcement with the electric shocks>)
Another Scott
@Geminid .:
CFR.org (as of December 18):
So compared to 2020, 47 was +3M, Harris was -6.3M, so 3.3M Biden voters didn’t show up in 2024.
That’s a lot. And only a relative handful of them in 3 states would have changed the result.
:-(
Thanks.
[eta:] – My math is wobbly. But the point is a bunch of voters stayed home. The election was close (around 2.3M separated them), so 6.3M not voting for Harris is important.
Best wishes,
Scott.
TBone
@Geminid .: you were a lucky chile!
🎶🤘
m.youtube.com/watch?v=qFfnlYbFEiE
I didn’t complain about any canned foods at that age, I loved ’em as a chile.
Citizen Alan
Whether that is true or not, one of the things we will still have to contend with is that the entire American media apparatus (from the new york times down to the lowliest talk radio host) loudly insists that it is true 24/7. That for all relevant purposes, the democratic party is run by an alliance of the black panthers, the gay mafia, and the oberlin college student council. And no, i have no idea what the solution to this is either.
Citizen Alan
@zhena gogolia: i never forgive bernie sanders for the 2016 convention. And I will never again have a kind word for anyone openly supports the green party or the DSA.
Citizen Alan
I firmly believe that the most pernicious effects of the nader and stein campaigns lay not in the number of people they persuaded to vote for them in close states, but in the number of people who they successfully persuaded to not vote at all. If you accept the green party propaganda that there is no meaningful difference between the democrats and the republicans, but you are also intelligent enough to realize that a third party candidate cannot possibly win, why would you bother to waste possibly several hours on a tuesday to stand in line for the meaningless gesture of voting?
Citizen Alan
I absolutely hate to say it, but i’m pretty sure it’s “nominate a straight white maie.” Because as depressing as it is to contemplate, i think if Kamala Harris had been Jeff Harris, with his blue eyes and firm jaw and loving wife, most those biden voters would have come home, at least in enough numbers to drag us over the finish line.
Ruckus
@Van Buren:
I have no idea how old you are (and not asking…) but they have been flinging shit longer than I’ve been alive, and that’s over 3/4 of a century. rethuglican’s concept of power is to make everyone else as uncomfortable as they are, more if they can. They have, as best as I can remember, never tried to make things better, because reverse gear is the only one that works for them. I don’t know/understand why but that has been the republican party for all of my life. And it’s never worked, trying to reverse the spin of the planet.
Ruckus
@Van Buren:
It’s easier to fling shit than it is to stay sane.
Just look at the rethuglican party…….
Ruckus
@bbleh:
In other words, we’re stuck in sixth grade forever.
Well you are giving them more credit than I am……
They seem like toddlers needing a diaper change and throwing fits to me.
lowtechcyclist
@oldgold:
I’m so stealing that one.
Gloria DryGarden
Maxar, the company whose satellite imagery was informing Ukraine of positions and potential attacks, has been told by US govt to no longer share said imagery w Ukraine. Commenters on BlueSky suggest they are instead sharing it w the opposing side.
This company is in the north suburbs of Denver, in Broomfield. It feels personal. The whole war changes because of this.
Is there any kind of protest that would make any difference?
more on BlueSky. Or google Maxar, you’ll see lots of articles about how this affects things
Anyway
Guanciale! _ Love saying it –
YY_Sima Qian
@Matt McIrvin: Certainly no arguments there.
YY_Sima Qian
@Citizen Alan: Yes, corporate media will always bow to the powers that be to protect shareholder interests. Individual reporters & the occasional editor are the exceptions.
Ryan
This is coming from the people who made fun of transitory inflation. But hey, Bessent take egg, what can you do?
Gvg
@YY_Sima Qian: There is more than one kind of far left being talked about. You are referring to the traditional left of the past, the hippies perhaps. Some of the others are talking about what may be suspected to be fake online foreign talking heads and or an overly vocal minority of purity ponies that have damaged the democratic brand in recent elections. Suzanne was talking about her personal acquaintances. It was interesting because I don’t know people like that but it’s likely there are many more. There were some other types described that we have encountered in recent years. Most could be called far left and problematic voters for democrats but they aren’t the same. If everyone thinks of a different group when that description is used, then it causes a pointless argument.