Marine Le Pen, leader of France’s anti-immigrant National Rally party, was convicted of embezzlement today in a French court. If her appeals are unsuccessful, she will face two years with an electronic bracelet (in lieu of prison) and a hefty €100,000 ($108,000) fine. Meanwhile, she is barred from running for political office for the next five years—even while her case is pending appeal. This almost certainly precludes her from standing for office in the 2027 elections in France, where she was expected to capitalize on her party’s gains in the 2024 election to take an outright majority.
Several other party members were found guilty with her. The heir apparent to LePen is a 29-year-old who is unlikely to be able to command the same level of electoral potency. Constant vigilance is necessary, but this is a strong check to the advance of far-right politicians in France.
To which we Americans can only say:
Open thread.
Steve LaBonne
Authoritarian leaders and would-be leaders are ALWAYS crooks. It would be nice if a meaningful number of voters in all countries would finally understand that.
trollhattan
Thanks for taking out the trash, France.
Today is a two-prong anniversary, Cesar Chavez Day in California and 20th anniversary of Terri Schiavo’s death. Was diagnosing her health from the Capitol via video a prediction of Trumps to come? Experts disagree.
Suzanne
@trollhattan:
No kidding.
UncleEbeneezer
Our courts were well positioned to hold Trump accountable with multiple indictments in multiple jurisdictions. Jack Smith had already re-indicted candidate Trump to account for the Supreme Court immunity ruling and a grand jury had already sent it to trial with Chutkin, a decent and unbiased judge. All we had to do was make sure Joe Biden or Kamala Harris won the 2024 election. But too many voters didn’t care and too many on our side were too busy bashing Biden/Harris to put this issue front and center. The same people who constantly complained about Garland and emphasized the importance of bringing Trump to justice, lost all interest in that issue when crunch time came and Biden’s age/Gaza gave them license to bash the only two Dems who could make sure the trials would proceed.
scav
The Pen for Le Pen!
Bruce K in ATH-GR
Good. Greece did a similar thing to the local neo-Nazi party a while back, except that their case was strengthened by the murder of an antifa rapper by a mob of fascists. Fifteen high-ranking members of Golden Dawn were convicted of murdering Pavlos Fyssas, the party was found by a court to be a criminal organization and formally dissolved.
Betty Cracker
That photo array is hilarious! I wonder what the kid was pissed off about?
My one year-younger sister and I were talking about a family photo of us as toddlers a while back where we both look as mad as the kid in the photo array above. We’ve laughed about it over the years, but during this recent conversation, it came out that she didn’t remember why we were angry, whereas I do: The photog kept barking orders to make us assume awkward poses, and we were fed up! Probably the same with that little boy.
As to the larger point, kudos to France. Our system has a potentially fatal flaw in that it allows malevolent rich and connected people to gum up the works for so long that justice is essentially denied, Trump being the most stark example. Maybe we can add that to the long list of items that must be changed if we get an opportunity to rebuild our democracy.
trollhattan
@Betty Cracker:
Pleased to report Awkward Family Photos lives on. What a gold mine.
ExPatExDem
Meanwhile here in the nation “of laws, not of men” there is one law for the nobility, and another for the peasants.
They Call Me Noni
My first thought at just the headline was “gosh, I wish we could do that”.
ExPatExDem
@They Call Me Noni: The Nixon pardon set the precedent that the ruling class are above prosecution.
Chetan Murthy
Not even that. A re-read of Don Siegelman’s wikipedia page ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don_Siegelman ) is instructive. One law for well-connected right-wingers, more like.
trollhattan
How can you tell when the Weather Service has no frickin’ idea? When your forecast sounds like this.
Shorter them: “we have no idea. Just wait fifteen minutes if you don’t like the weather at the moment.”
rikyrah
Mother Jones @motherjones.com
Elon Musk has already spent more money—$20 million and counting—than any individual donor in the history of US judicial races to flip the Wisconsin Supreme Court.
But he dramatically escalated his efforts Friday, saying he would “personally hand over two checks for a million dollars” for voting.
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2025/03/elon-musk-wisconsin-supreme-court-vote-buying-one-million-schimel-crawford/
Baud
@UncleEbeneezer:
The Marine Le Pen investigation that led to this verdict has been going on since 2015.
rikyrah
ChrisO_wiki
@ChrisO_wiki
Completely on the level, yes sir, nothing to be concerned about here:
“somehow four Tesla- owned dealerships reported to the Canadian government that they sold an astonishing 8,653 cars during a single weekend in January — enough to qualify for 43 million Canadian dollars’ (about $30 million) worth of government subsidies under a program just before it expired.
Now the Canadian government wants to know exactly how the electric carmaker managed to move two cars a minute off its lots — a rate that assumes those four dealers had stayed open 24 hours from Jan. 10 to Jan. 12.”
2:52 AM · Mar 31, 2025
https://x.com/ChrisO_wiki/status/1906615500701864410
The Pale Scot
Iraqis made a bronze monument to honor the guy who threw a shoe at President George W. Bush
Is there a little gift shop? I so want to buy some tchatchke or a poster.
And they planted a plastic shrub in it, somebody has reading Doonesbury.
Old Man Shadow
@trollhattan: In a way. Schiavo was another step down the path of denial of facts and science for magic and ideological purity for conservatives.
rikyrah
JUST ROTTEN EVIL PEOPLE
Rachel Bitecofer 🗽🦆
@RachelBitecofer
Trump and Elon are killing off Meals on Wheels.
No, really. 👇
Agency for older adults and people with disabilities to be shuttered under HHS cuts
https://x.com/RachelBitecofer/status/1906419029696520619
Doug R
@scav:
Stealing this or maybe Le Pen is going to Le Pen?
The Pale Scot
That’s everyday in S FL.
Doug R
@rikyrah: CBC story on the federal government pause on the Tesla rebates:
Canada freezes rebate payments to Tesla, bars it from future programs due to tariffs
They Call Me Noni
@ExPatExDem: And the Supreme Court picked up that mantle and made the President beyond the reach of any law.
laura
@rikyrah: but how does one square that with weepy apartheid Clyde claiming he’s never harmed anyone during a recent interview? I’m sure there’s some way this cruel act can be hung on Tim Walz, who apartheid Clyde claimed was all kinds of bad in that very same interview.
Melancholy Jaques
@UncleEbeneezer:
While it is true that America – the country – could have & might have dealt with Trump in the courts if Harris had been elected, I disagree with most of what you say.
In particular, I do not know that your claim that “[t]he same people who constantly complained about Garland and emphasized the importance of bringing Trump to justice, lost all interest in that issue when crunch time came” is supported by any evidence.
America – the voters – did not want Trump to be prosecuted, they wanted him to be president again. They knew enough to know that he was corrupt, a liar, a bigot, had been adjudicated a sex offender, had been convicted of financial fraud, cheated on his taxes, & tried to overthrow the government by inciting a violent mob to attack the Congress. The voters knew all of that but still wanted him back in the White House.
The widespread belief that if Merrick Garland had only done something sooner ignores the apparent fact that the supreme court was not going to let that happen. The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals did to run out of time to deal with the MAGA Judge, they deliberately allowed her to delay all proceedings against Trump.
Let’s stop blaming Merrick Garland, Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, the DNC, the Democrats, our friends & colleagues who comment on this website, and other people who are not the American voters who fucking voted for that asshole even though they knew all of the above about him.
Our political culture is fucked up & repugnant. We spent most of the 21st century believing that we outnumbered the ignorant, hateful bigots, but two Trump wins shows that we were wrong. We are in the minority & we have to figure out how to work from that position or we will continue to lose national elections. Unless of course there is a huge financial crisis or pandemic that peaks right before the election. It also helps if the Republicans have an insane woman on the ticket.
Jeffro
Codifying higher mandatory requirements for federal office into law is a MUST, post-trumpov.
Terraformer
Brazil can do it, and so can France. But not the USA.
How far we’ve fallen.
Jude
Omg, your meme choice is *chef’s kiss*. Laughing so hard over here.
UncleEbeneezer
@Baud: And international courts (The Hague) take 8-10 years to get to trial for war crimes. It’s almost like prosecution of complex cases of high-ranking defendants is a slow and tedious process everywhere, not just in the US.
Baud
@Terraformer:
French voters rejected Le Pen twice. If only our voters had done so.
scav
@Baud: France is coming out rather well in the current comparisons. And they have long toasters.
Baud
@scav:
French bread is long.
scav
@Baud: Astonishing logic that. A sane environment. If only we could manage it here!
Burrowing Owl
@Baud: Our voters reject women too.
Baud
@Burrowing Owl:
TBF, I don’t think the French had done better in that respect, as far as I can recall. They’re no Mexico.
Fester Addams
They sentenced their former president Sarkozy to some slammer time for his corruption conviction too.
Betty Cracker
@scav: Wait, wut? Long toasters?
trollhattan
@rikyrah:
Sooo…given everything they kill is because 3 magic words: “waste, fraud, corruption” Meals on Wheels gotta go because Me-maw didn’t finish her tapioca?
“That’s waste, right there!!!”
trollhattan
@Betty Cracker:
Apparently the Cool (French) Kids are calling it “toaster” now.
BubbaDave
@Melancholy Jaques:
I believe that if things had moved fast enough, while Trump still had that loser stink on him, Roberts would have seen convicting him as a way to clear the decks for the Republicans without any electeds having their fingerprints on the knife. Waiting empowered Trump to reconsolidate his hold on the GOP and at that point Roberts was going to defend Trump.
No One of Consequence
@Baud: It’s just big-boned.
Chetan Murthy
@BubbaDave: I also believe that. In January 2021 the population was shocked, and supported punishing him. So did elites. But lackadaisical prosecution allowed Trump to reshape the story in the public’s mind and get elites behind him. B/c that’s what a mob boss does.
But whatever: it’s all water under the bridge, and yeah, MJ is sorta right, that our country didn’t want him punished. It is what it is.
Gvg
@Doug R: Le is the in French. Also l’.
Ruckus
@Betty Cracker:
As a democracy I’m not sure about this. We as citizens of a democracy have rights that some countries would not allow, sometimes/often giving too much power to the leaders. Now on the other hand this sometimes/(often?) gets abused, especially when the person in charge should never be in power…. I’m not sure this is not a fault with our governing system, but freedom does have a cost. Our country does not allow us, or the government to run roughshod over the concept of governing. This sometimes has a cost for all of us. Especially when power gets abused. I believe it can be a fine line that on occasion may get crossed.
Which is better, stronger limitations or the risk of wrong doing? It seems like a fine line to me.
chemiclord
@Baud:
And that’s something that torques me about the complaints that we didn’t do it right over here.
All the ones that “did it right” have taken about as long if not longer to get to this point in justice.
What they didn’t have was half a government running interference for them, and an electorate willing to vote the criminal back into office again.
Melancholy Jaques
@BubbaDave:
With respect, this is fantasy. Trump reconsolidated his hold on the GOP before Merrick Garland was even nominated. Before Biden was inaugurated, Trump had regained control of the Republicans in Congress such that only 10 house members voted to impeach him – one week after he led a violent attack on them – and the outcome in the senate in his favor was never in doubt.
A majority of American voters wanted their stupid, racist bully back in power because they are stupid, racist assholes and he represents everything they want in a leader. He scorns & harms the people they want to be scorned & harmed.
Gvg
@Chetan Murthy: it’s not entirely lackadaisical. It’s also lack of manpower. Which I think is deliberate and has been done slowly and sneakily so that people don’t realize they have been suckered into giving up fair justice for all and instead been tricked into fearing paying a little more in taxes when what would really happen is the rich would have to pay what they owe. It’s also that they deliberately make their financial crimes difficult to understand so that it’s hard to get a conviction from a jury. Jury’s should keep in mind that if it seems pointlessly convoluted, the purpose is probably criminal.
This is also a case where Trumps ability to keep generating new outrages buried attention on past ones. I don’t find that any reason to give him a pass though. Even if nothing was proven yet, the sheer volume of crap from his own mouth, not hearsay, should have been reason enough for voters to move on. I’ll never understand.
Ruckus
@Melancholy Jaques:
The power of a democracy.
The government doesn’t have to be taken over by force, if enough people side with someone that doesn’t respect them.
And being humans it is quite possible this can happen. See our current “leader.”
Enhanced Voting Techniques
A deep dive into the Trump supporting, Epoch Times publishing, anti medicine Falun Gong
https://youtu.be/VuSU7PcEKpU?si=TUyX_RwqDTOzwWFU
You see, dumbassery isn’t just for white people.
Professor Bigfoot
@Melancholy Jaques: There simply HAS to be a way to pin this disaster on Democrats; and I know someone here will find it soon enough.
Geo Wilcox
@Melancholy Jaques: You forgot the misogyny which is deeper than racism. A black man was elected twice but even a white woman, running against a known crook, could not win and of course Harris lost for twice the reasons, misogyny and racism.
Belafon
@Terraformer: How often have we risen to the challenge?
trollhattan
@Geo Wilcox:
Yep. We’re The Aristocrats!
Betty Cracker
@Ruckus: I hear you, and it used to seem like a fine line to me too. Not so much now, so I’m open to ideas on how to expedite legal processes and disqualify felons from high office. The current arrangement is starting to look like a suicide pact.
Asparagus Aspersions
I live in France, and was listening to the news just now while making dinner. One of the party’s spin doctors was being interviewed and was repeating various versions of what I assume is the line they’ve workshopped and agreed to stick to: that Le Pen was going to be the one of the final two presidential candidates in the next election and that the judges have illegitimately denied the voters the right to decide whether she should be president, it’s an affront to democracy, etc etc.
The reporter pointed out that it didn’t look great that some of the first and loudest voices of support for her were the Kremlin and Elon Musk, and the spokesman spluttered a bit before retorting that everyone can comment on a situation, so there.
laura
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: see also shen yun costumed dancers.
Baud
@Melancholy Jaques:
I for one am pleased we avoided the embarrassment of electing an imprisoned Trump as President.
Asparagus Aspersions
Chief Oshkosh
@Betty Cracker: Clearly you are not aware of all internet traditions.
I think Cole was whinging about all toasters being made to fit Wonderbread slices rather than…something else?
trollhattan
This asshole again?
Didn’t he go to prison or something?
Chief Oshkosh
@Asparagus Aspersions:
That’s the most French thing I’ve heard all day (and I’ve got two collaborations with some fine French folks going on right now).
Betty
@Betty Cracker: We have to remember the Supreme Court delayed the immunity case unnecessarily and then decided it wrong. That threw a monkey wrench into the cases that would not ordinarily happen. Had they quickly accepted the well-reasoned decision of the Court of Appeals, we could have had a very different outcome. Personnel matter a lot to institutional effectiveness.
Belafon
@Betty Cracker: It’s the things like challenging every judge to recuse themselves, or challenging the call by the judge to file the right documents, or challenges that build on other challenges that need to be restricted.
Melancholy Jaques
@Professor Bigfoot:
The best part is that it can be done without evidence, so whatever axe a person has to grind, they can write with complete confidence that their favorite complaint about Democrats is the one & only reason for Trump being in the White House, the senate & house majorities being members of his cult, and the supreme court being controlled by right-wing religious fanatics. And what’s most awful about it is that white Americans fully support them & everything they do because the other party isn’t racist enough for them.
@Geo Wilcox:
I didn’t forget the misogyny, but we have to be honest about it. Look how many stupid racist women are very popular with white voters.
HinTN
@Betty Cracker: Someone *cough Blogfather cough* was complaining last night about toasters only fitting Wonder Bread.
Betty Cracker
@HinTN: I saw the complaint about Wonder Bread-sized toasters, but are French baguette-sized toasters a thing?
Belafon
@Professor Bigfoot: “If Democrats were less interested in governing, less worried about being viewed as partisan, and more interested in maintaining the rule of law and serious about prosecuting Republicans, we could have avoided this.”
p.a.
@Melancholy Jaques: Oh, the USSC will just overrule our indictments is just conforming in advance.
And before the Garland defenders here turn up, since Josh Marshall thinks he effed up, I think I’ll bank on him. Not perfect, but pretty damn good.
Professor Bigfoot
@Belafon: Yep, that’s how it works.
Democrats simply cannot do anything right, ever since that dratted Voting Rights Act; which the conservatives are working hard to gut or repeal in any way they can… too bad we can’t come up with enough Magic Negroes to handle the demand.
p.a.
For whole loaves or long slices, you can use your oven broiler. You just have to experiment with rack height. Leave door open a crack to keep the bread in view & DO NOT WANDER AWAY. 😳 Turn as needed.
(Elec oven with broiler coil on top of oven. Those weird ones with the lower drawer broiler: 🤷🏻♂️)
Baud
America
FirstLastThose three countries hate each other.
Betty
@Betty Cracker: Whoever brought up long toasters owes us an explanation of how long is long.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: Everything he has done so far has weakened us on the global stage. He is pissing away the goodwill that the US has earned over the last century and with it our financial power.
Professor Bigfoot
Speaking of bread and toasters, I recently discovered at Costco “Uncooked Tortillas.”
Tried it just for the hell of it; and holy cow what a difference! Mrs. B loves her some Chiipotle and I’ve generally avoided it; but with the fresh cooked tortillas I can eat an entire bowl (granted, it takes three sittings but nonetheless!)
I’m sitting in a hospital room right now as Mrs. B is having yet another procedure done; she’s had nothing to eat since last night and I expect (depending on how she feels when they bring her back) she’ll want Chipotle.
And she’ll get it too! :D
Eolirin
@Baud: America is succeeding at bringing the whole world together. :p
Baud
@schrodingers_cat:
We knew that going in. But other people didn’t. Hopefully we can spread the word about how it’s playing out. Maybe persuade a few people.
Harrison Wesley
@Baud: Trump is a uniter, not a divider.
Professor Bigfoot
@Eolirin: Truly, a <LOL>/<sob!> situation.
Baud
@Eolirin:
Heh. Trump may have saved other democracies from fascism. Our sacrifice will not be in vain.
scav
@Betty: Same example provided yesterday of a current long skinny. Original encountered in ’82 and was a chipper orange and white Monoprix special — meaning barkingly middle class.
JML
@Baud: it does say something about how America can bring people together, but don’t think it’s what was intended. If China, Japan, and South Korea are getting into agreement because the US government is so sh!tty…yikes.
once upon a time, the GOP would have risen up in fury over this foreign policy failure, but the idiot isolationists have taken over completely.
Geminid
First Axios and now Reuters report that Trump will visit Saudi Arabia in mid-May.
The timing is interesting in that Trump sent a letter to Iran’s leaders earlier this month giving them two months to end their uranium enrichment program. That deadline runs out early June.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@Betty Cracker: Agree completely. Justice needs to be swifter, period. If the justice system gets it wrong, defendents still have plenty of appeals they can launch from jail. The social cost of rich people infinitely delaying their prosecution and lawsuits is much too high.
trollhattan
@Geminid:
“How many do you execute per month?”
“More than I can remember.”
“Wow, that sounds great. What a country!”
trollhattan
@Betty:
“Is it twue what they say about you people and your toasters?”
“It’s twue, it’s twue!”
frosty
It’s heartening to see that the Trump Administration is bringing people together.
@Eolirin: Dammit! I was too late again.
@Harrison Wesley: Looks like Baud threw a hanging curveball for all of us to take a swing at!
trollhattan
If you had a Kodak Instamatic as a kid, you never used yours like this.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx20g82y1k8o
Eolirin
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony: Only rich people have access to the means to drag things out like that in the first place, so it’s another inequity.
coin operated
@Baud: Christ on a crutch…hell has officially frozen over if those three can sit down at a meeting table and hammer out a deal.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@Eolirin: That is right, which is why changes to the system would not hurt the poor. They already have justice administered relatively swiftly.
Eolirin
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony: They get fucked over by justice being delayed, even. Months of pretrial detention that then fuck up their lives when they can’t afford bail, regardless of the trial outcome, being forced into taking bad deals when their rights get violated because a proper resolution will take too long and cost too much for them to bear.
So yeah, it definitely needs to be done thoughtfully, but I agree that it needs to happen.
They Call Me Noni
@Melancholy Jaques: I would argue that Trump’s first win was an electoral college win, not a majority of the vote. Not that it changes anything of course, but it does speak to the will of the majority of the people who voted.
p.a.
I’ve come to think the christofascists WANT a Hoxha Albania, Kim N Korea. Their ideology is: everything else is filth, we are totally self-sufficient. Interesting since their followers are the biggest snowflakes when things don’t fall into their laps when needed.
Eolirin
@They Call Me Noni: Technically Trump only won a plurality of the vote this time. He was just under 50%
UncleEbeneezer
@Professor Bigfoot:too bad we can’t come up with enough Magic Negroes to handle the demand.
OKay, this legit made me laugh, Thank you :)
Bill Arnold
@Betty Cracker:
There are long toasters, a fact that I did not fully appreciate before this thread, plus google.
They do not appear to be long enough for full baguettes, though.
e.g. grill- toaster special baguettes
schrodingers_cat
@p.a.: I am wondering who is the brains behind this turn from the Reign of Error 1.0.
ArchTeryx
@laura: Yeah. A whole lot of people aren’t aware that Shen Yun is a (very expensive) performance to raise money and catapult propaganda for Falun Gong. And right now they are advertising everywhere in Albany.
Their tagline is “China before communism” but what that really means is the same as our right wing means it: “Back to an imaginary golden age where everyone knew their place.”
cmorenc
We can thank our bad luck in maga judge Aileen Cannon getting randomly assigned to the classified docs case and extricating Trump from an airtight criminal case/conviction, which would likely have fatally crippled his viability to run. Because the knowing retention and concealment continued well after he was no longer President, even the six GOP hacks on SCOTUS could not have crafted a way to let him off the hook.
UncleEbeneezer
@Melancholy Jaques: Nah…Several Million Dem voters decided not to bother showing up on Election Day. They are every bit as complicit as Trump voters. And so are all the people who convinced them it was okay/justified to do so. When these people stop pulling this Dem-sabotaging bullshit, in the lead-up to every major election, I’ll stop bringing them up. I thought the stakes in 2024, including the prospect of keeping the prosecutions of Trump alive would be enough but here we are…
Steve LaBonne
@coin operated: Our most useful role going forward will be as everybody’s common enemy.
Belafon
@ArchTeryx: It seems that the story is getting out about it because my wife told me about it over the weekend.
Scamp Dog
@rikyrah: My mom fell in October 2023, and the Meals On Wheels guy found her unconscious on the floor. Because he got her help, she got another two and a half months of life with one of her sons nearby, as we took turns staying with her at the rehab facility.
Then again, how does keeping an elderly middle class woman alive help out a billionaire like Musk or Trump? Time to end this waste, fraud and abuse!
trollhattan
@UncleEbeneezer:
True enough. Trump had nearly identical totals in California ’24 and ’20; Harris dropped nearly 2 million compared to Biden.
‘Tis a problem, as is the % of new ’24 voters registering R. This best be an anomaly and not a trend; otherwise, we’re fucked. I blame Rogan.
Steve LaBonne
@Scamp Dog: This stuff is so obscene that I don’t have the vocabulary to do it justice. To the Master(baiter)s of the universe we’re all just NPCs who exist to be killed for fun.
ArchTeryx
@Belafon: Nobody remotely left-wing should ever show up to a Shen Yun performance, but you’d just be amazed. They think it’s an ordinary touring group. They have no idea the main course is right wing propaganda with a side of RFKJr-style woo.
Baud
@ArchTeryx:
I’ve seen ads. I didn’t know they had a political agenda.
Belafon
@ArchTeryx: They’ve done a really good job of hiding it.
ArchTeryx
@Baud: Very much so. IMHO, people miss that they’re sponsored by the Falun Gong and that they’re a FG propaganda group because most people here don’t have any idea of the existence of that cult. And since it’s directly aligned against the Chinese government, it’s like a case of Evil vs. Evil. However, considering the evil we fund every day just buying basics in this country, I’m in no mood to fund another right wing cult in China no matter how good their damn dancers are.
I tell people to look up the Falun Gong terrorist attack if they want to know who they are funding when they buy Shen Yun tickets.
Jeffro
Yes and yes.
Felons disqualified: check.
Pass a basic FBI background check: check.
10+ years of tax returns: check.
Serve in a lower office (state leg, mayor’s office, etc) prior to running for Rep or Senator; serve as a Rep or Senator or Governor prior to running for President; check
And so on.
It’s the world’s most powerful office – we ought to act like it.
No one should walk in off the street and go straight to the CEO suite!
(should be an easy sell: the right doesn’t want President Swift just as much as I don’t want President Rogan)
trollhattan
@ArchTeryx:
I remember when an edition of Epoch Times showed up in my mailbox. Perusing that was a weird journey. 1/PRC isn’t necessarily a good thing as an ideology.
me
@ArchTeryx: Of course “China before communism” was a mess. Why do they think the monarchy fell? Anyway, they have an ad in Chicago explaining that the anti-Falun Gong stuff is all CCP propaganda. Just because the CCP sucks doesn’t mean Falun Gong doesn’t suck.
ArchTeryx
@trollhattan: A lot of American right wingers also get, and write for, the Epoch Times. It’s basically a Chinese version of the Washington Examiner.
Martin
@trollhattan: He did. He’s also really fucking entitled, which tends to cause him to do stupid things. I has the misfortune of having to personally interact with him for years. His colleagues generally thought he was an idiot and toxic, and there was something of a cheer when Trump hired him because they had wanted him to go away for some time, and they figured he would be seen as such a fraud that he wouldn’t last. Little did we know that fraud was his strongest qualification.
Jay
@ArchTeryx:
Here, Epoch Times is the only “free” newspaper left. They have kiosks at all the transit stations. So they get a lot of bored eyeballs.
catclub
@ArchTeryx: Cirque du Soleil is impressive as is. If it was actually founded by people whose day jobs were communist organizers, and designed to funnel money into organizing – rather than better high tech circus equipment- I would be even more impressed. What was the planning meeting like?
Steve LaBonne
@me: Too many people imagine that if A sucks, then not-A must not suck. Which needless to say is not a valid deduction.
Martin
@p.a.: White Christians held cultural power in the US that has been aggressively falling the last 2 decades. They also held absolute electoral power between the two parties for 250 years, and the election of Obama showed that power was now at best marginal.
Given that civil wars tend to be started by the party that is losing majority power, you shouldn’t be surprised that white christians are willing to throw the experiment out the window in order to retain power. A white christian authoritarian is unquestionably preferential to them than losing the ability to enforce white christian electoral and cultural power.
I have said before, these people held cultural power in this country for 400 years and they aren’t going to give it up voluntarily.
The Thin Black Duke
Wisconsin and Florida is going to let us know what kind of America [white] people want.
catclub
You had me up until this. That ‘just as much’ is very hard to measure, given that Reagan was an ex-movie star, Arnold Schwarzenegger ran as a Republican, and Trump won twice.
Professor Bigfoot
@Martin: Conservatives are perfectly happy to throw out the Constitution they claim to revere because it permitted a Black man to become President “over them.”
So they don’t notice their pockets being picked. Hell, they’re happily emptying their pockets FOR Trump, exactly as LBJ said.
Terraformer
@Baud: quite right. That’s the reality I’m still grappling with
rikyrah
@Professor Bigfoot:
Prayers for her.
catclub
@UncleEbeneezer:
My guess is several million VOTE BY MAIL voters in 2020 did not get ballots mailed to them by their state government in 2024. They were not Democratic voters as much as ‘pissed at trump’ voters in 2020.
trollhattan
@catclub:
We took the kiddo to a Cirque show at our then new hoops palace. They’re really, really good and entertaining. Endless “how dey do dat?” moments.
Glad the kid didn’t ask us to hang a ribbon in the stairwell for her to descend headfirst.
Betty Cracker
@The Thin Black Duke: God help us if we have to depend on Florida to do the right thing, especially the two districts in question, which are redder than a baboon’s ass. I hope Wisconsinites show Musk the limits of his purchasing power.
Terraformer
Marcy Wheeler has a good piece up on the reality of where we’re at, or at least her perception of it (that appears spot-on, to me)
Diceros bicornis
Re le Pen: FAFO just doesn’t seem to have a satisfying translation in French. Merde alors.
The Thin Black Duke
@Betty Cracker: There comes a point where [white] people have to take responsibilities for the choices they make. As Melancholy Jacques commented earlier, Trump didn’t even bother to pretend that he wasn’t a bigoted sexist dirtbag during the campaign and the voters and non-voters rewarded him for his honesty. To use an unsubtle analogy, if someone is ignoring the misshapen lump on their leg that’s leaking pus, that’s on them. Hate of the Other is a disease that has metastasized, and White America doesn’t care.
karen gail
Back in late 60’s or early 70’s I attended a lecture at local community college; it was free and was told the speaker was interesting but had strange ideas. Nothing else to do so went with friend; the speaker was of opinion that no matter how far the US advanced the country would still default to it roots.
The speaker believed that a country founded on genocide and slavery along with the belief of the slave owning founding fathers that they were somehow a step above because of their wealth would one day put the worst of worst in charge of government. He said deep down many white males still believe that should be the only ones to hold public office, be in charge of business, in any kind of management position.
Every once in awhile memories of that lecture pop up; the uncomfortable seating, the low lighting and stuffy feeling of the hall; and a man who firmly believed that one day the wealthy would have their way and not only buy their way into government but once again treat the average person as a serf.
I told my grandfather about the lecture and he told me that greed will always find a way.
schrodingers_cat
@The Thin Black Duke: Exactly. I don’t want lectures about Democratic messaging from people who can’t be bothered to vote or actively campaigned against Kamala Harris and called her Holocaust Harris.
Jeffro
@catclub: I can guarantee you that Republicans don’t want President Taylor Swift. They might want their celebrity president, but they sure don’t want her.
Likewise, I can guarantee you that I don’t want President Joe Rogan.
Geminid
@cmorenc: A friend and I were discussing Judge Cannon’s role in the documents a couple Sundays. ago He used to practice law and and once clerked for a federal judge. He was pretty good at his profession until a case of adult-onset rheumatoid arthritis finally forced retirement.
I asked if the assignment of the documents case to Cannon was in fact random and he said he thought it was but he wasn’t sure. He noted that Cannon’s husband had an organized crime connection, and this was Florida.
Jackie
@Baud:
They hate FFOTUS more.
trollhattan
Waste? Check. Fraud? Check. Abuse? Check. Okay then.
Baud
@trollhattan:
Worth every penny to create content for the Trump base.
rikyrah
The United States versus Elon R. Musk
@Needle_of_Arya
leftists in the UK, France, and now Canada uniting with the centre-left to defeat conservatives & fascists was supposed to be a lesson for America’s white far left, which did the exact opposite
6:12 AM · Mar 31, 2025
https://x.com/Needle_of_Arya/status/1906665933302866371
Dorothy A. Winsor
@ArchTeryx: That show has been heavily advertised in Chicagoland for weeks now.
Betty Cracker
@The Thin Black Duke: The FL 6th may actually be flippable. Weil (D) seems like a good candidate, and Fine (R) is a repulsive pig. Weil’s pitch — an outsider vs. career pol — is smart, IMO. Repubs will panic if it’s even close because it is NOT a swing district.
catclub
yeah, but they make great knives, too. ;)
karen gail
@Jeffro: I agree with need for experience and training.
Back when Watergate took place one of the Saturday afternoon/evening gatherings someone brought up subject of need for educated and trained people in government. The head of R & D said that leadership should be taught; if you want to be President you should have to be qualified. Not just taking classes but a program along lines that trades do; start as an apprentice and work way up. Starting with position in local government, if fail there then not qualified for any higher office.
He also said there should be physical and mental tests; the fact that Nixon beat his wife should have been caught early in his life and stopped him from not only holding office but from allowing him in any position of authority.
Professor Bigfoot
@Betty Cracker: Your keyboard to Dog’s monitor.
Professor Bigfoot
@catclub: Okay, since this IS an open thread– I just got a new hand forged chef knife/santoku from a smith on Etsy, and ermegherd.
Wish I could show you a picture, it’s gorgeous and “it’s a choppah!” (#ForgedInFIre)
tobie
@Betty Cracker: I was feeling really good about this race when no one was paying attention. Folks were quite receptive when I called. Now, the first thing they ask when I’m phonebanking is which party does Weil belong to. Fingers crossed Weil’s able to keep the momentum.
Baud
Via reddit, tales from civilization.
Betty Cracker
@tobie: Dog bless you for phone banking!
David Collier-Brown
@rikyrah: In Canada, the sorta-far-left party (NDP) has 25 seats right now, but their cooperation with the centre-a-bit-left (Liberal) party has dispirited their followers so much that the current guess is that they will five members after the next election.
Not a good example to other countries (:-))
Baud
@David Collier-Brown:
I read Doug Ford(?) won reelection because the left of center was split among three parties.
They Call Me Noni
It was mentioned on another thread that there be an open thread created for protest sign suggestions. Would it be possible to get that? My daughter and I have been brainstorming for our signs this Saturday but I’m certain that the witty people here on BJ would have tons of great ideas or their favorites that they have seen at other protests. We are not opposed to plagiarizing for this good cause.
Thank you.
Belafon
@rikyrah: Brexit was never going to be an example for the left, and while the government went conservative and the whole “we can support ourselves” thing hasn’t worked out, the country doesn’t seem to have gone off the anti-democratic deep end. We are the example for other countries. If another democracy were acting like us, would people here see it, or is “it can’t happen here” still too much of our system?
Baud
Looks like Tesla finished down only 1.6%.
Markets rallied a little this afternoon.
Belafon
@They Call Me Noni: Is this to protest at a Tesla dealership? If so, I hope someone makes a “Don’t take Tesla’s name in vain” sign, even if it might be a little subtle.
Steve LaBonne
@They Call Me Noni: We are having two signs from this site printed and mounted.
zhena gogolia
@Belafon: I think it’s for the “Hands Off” protest on Saturday.
tobie
@Betty Cracker: My mother lives in Florida so I have some investment in the state. I’ll be there this coming weekend and if my mother’s doing well on Saturday (she’ll be recovering from a medical procedure) will sneak out for an hour to hold a sign at the local ‘hands off’ rally. I took to heart your note about the sun at last weekend’s protest and will smear myself with sun screen. I need to remember to pack a hat.
trollhattan
@Professor Bigfoot:
Aside from the obvious and happy “Yay, new knife!” feels, nothing like a new knife to show how damn dull all the other knives are.
Try harder, old knives.
Salty Sam
Post a link? As a blacksmith who occasionally makes hand forged knives, I’d be interested in what you got.
Steve LaBonne
@David Collier-Brown: Or maybe their members have figured out that facilitating the election of Poilièvre is a really bad and totally non-leftist outcome. In a single member FPTP system a third party can only help the major party most ideologically different from it.
Jay
@Baud:
Provincial Parties are not the same party as the Federal ones. A Provincial “Liberal” Party can be anything from center Left to Far Right Wingnut, where the Federal Liberal Party is centrist.
Doug Ford was elected because of the urban/kinda rural split.
Professor Bigfoot
@Salty Sam: Wicked cool– this is it
I confess, I would like the handle to be a wee bit thicker, but otherwise…
Salty Sam
Keeping your knife sharp is basic culinary competence! Equivalent to changing the oil in your vehicle, y’know?
Citizen Alan
@Geo Wilcox: I dunno about that entirely. The single most depressing thing to me about the Trump era is that I now believe quite strongly that McCain and/or Romney probably could have beaten Obama if they’d gone all in on the racist attacks against him. I think McCain lost when gently but firmly told that old hag at the Town Hall meeting that, no, Obama was not a foreign terrorist but a decent family man with whom McCain agreed on policy issues. And a chunk of future MAGAs just threw up their hands, decided that McCain was a RINO, and stayed home.
jonas
@UncleEbeneezer: This was probably one of the most horrible effects of our new media siloization. A lot of voters, particularly low-information, occasional voters who don’t pay attention to much news, or only Fox or CNN, mostly never followed or paid much attention to the myriad cases against Trump, the J6 rioters, etc. Republicans were *hugely* successful in coordinating their messaging on and getting most of the public to just kind of tune it out as so much partisan background noise instead of a sign of just what a malignant scofflaw and criminal threat Trump was. A generation ago, 1/100th of what Trump did would have completely ended any politician’s career. Now’s he fucking President. Again!
Baud
@Jay:
So were the provisional left of center parties split?
Professor Bigfoot
@trollhattan: I’ve had Mrs. B’s old Ginsu knives in my block for a long time; one had to get tossed to make room for the new one.
Awww, so sad. ;)
Compared to my other knives (Henckels) it was flimsy; compared to the new one it feels like sheet metal.
Mr. Bemused Senior
@ArchTeryx: Regarding Shen Yun
I happen to know a lawyer working for the plaintiff.
Professor Bigfoot
@Salty Sam: And I am bad at it.
I got this nifty device from “Worksharp” and it’s helped a whole lot.
I watch too many cooking competition shows and I only wish I could hone a knife with the quick, sure motions of Bobby MF Flay.
(Watch “Beat Bobby Flay” sometime– that MF will take your signature dish and beat you with it. He’s a bad man. ;) )
Baud
Working class hero
The advocates are probably great. Most of the miners will stick with Trump.
Salty Sam
@Professor Bigfoot: Nice- Santoku is a good all round blade.
I treated myself (to Spouses chagrin) to a really high end Gyuto a few years ago. It’s a treat to use, but I came to love the looks of a Bunka, with its distinctive clipped “K tip”. Then one of step-daughter’s roommates broke the tip off- he was freaking out that he had “ruined” my knife, but I just thanked him and then spent a half hour in the shop reshaping it into… my new Bunka!
Matt
$50 says Macron pardons her, because if there’s one thing he loves more than anything it’s pandering to the far-right.
Jay
@David Collier-Brown:
A big hurt for the NDP, is not their measured support for the Trudeau Government, it’s the almost universal adoption by voters of strategic voting.
@Steve LaBonne:
Political party membership in Canada, Federally and Provincially is incredibly tiny. My riding, which has an NDP member of the House, has only 143 paid dues members of the NDP Party and 114,000+ registered voters.
Because it’s a Riding by Riding system, a 3rd Party Vote, does not take votes away at a Federal level. We have a Dipper because the Liberal was weak, the Con was a wingnut and the Greens don’t really exist here. So we voted in an experienced well known Dipper via strategic ABC voting. (Anybody But the Con). Whomever was polling best in the riding, to beat the Con, got our votes, so name recognition and ground game had a huge influence.
In this election, other than Alberta and Saskatchewan, people will be voting with a passion against Dolt47.
Geminid
@Matt: I have not seen that with Macron. And I would bet he does not pardon Le Pen.
JML
@Matt: yeah, I’ll take that bet. because Macron likes winning waaaay more, and shuffling Le Pen off the ballot makes that much more likely.
Jay
@Baud:
There really is only one “left of center” Party in Ontario. The NDP. The Green Party effectively does not exist and the Liberal Party is center-right. Ontario wanted “development” so they voted for Ford.
tobie
@Baud: No worries. He’s going for the chardonnay-swigging contingent too. The entire staff of the Institute of Museums and Library Services has been put on leave. Bye-bye, public libraries. Who needs learning anymore?
Salty Sam
To be fair (and apologies to @trollhattan for my response at #121, I didn’t mean it to sound like it did), most people are. It is an easily learned skill, but in the bustle of daily life, mastering that skill and putting it to use drops in importance compared to all the other bullshit we have going on in our daily lives. I confess to letting my knives get way too dull before I break out the stones and dress them up. But it is a zen practice for me when I do, and I just love the feeling I get when I get my knives sharp enough to shave my forearm.
Geminid
@Jay: So who selects candidates for the Canadian Parliament? Is it party committees, like in the UK?
That’s one of the aspects of parliamentary systems I like the least. I can see why they do it though because it fits the overall system.
Professor Bigfoot
@Salty Sam: NOICE!!!
ETA– I do love this knife, but I freely admit my knife skills are simply not up to par.
Watching a cooking competition show and watching those people work… the PRECISION of their knifework just amazes me.
If I tried to go that fast, there would be blood. ;)
Geminid
@JML: I think the problem might be that Macron won’t let the Left form the government. He keeps pandering to the Center even if it has the least parliamentarians of the three blocs. His latest government seems stable though.
Salty Sam
How does one get to Carnegie Hall? 😄
Jay
@Matt:
@Geminid:
@JML:
French Presidential Pardons are not like US Presidential Pardons.
All a French Presidential pardon can do is lift/prevent a jail sentence. It does not restore rights, fines or lift sanctions.
They Call Me Noni
@Belafon: We’re going to the Hands Off protest in Corydon, IN so not a Tesla dealership. Nearest city to us is Louisville, KY (right across the river) but I don’t see where they have a dealership Closest would be Indianapolis which is a couple hours away. Or Cincy, Ohio.
WTFGhost
@trollhattan: What’s horrifying about Schiavo is, it took gross negligence to see any problems with it.
That is: you would have had to have failed to read the court record, and taken note of the findings of the court, something that’s so obvious, even a dullard could figure it out,
If you read the court record, you’d have seen she simply did not have enough brain left to be in anything other than a PVS. That Evangelicals forced her to live on, in a body incapable of becoming aware of the glory of God (which is all Evangelicals care about anyway), in order to keep her from paradise, because they wanted to score political points, tells you exactly how little Evangelicals care for the people they purportedly are trying to “save” so they can go to paradise, rather than living in hell.
Not that I have feelings about this or anything.
Don’t forget: we also had to overcome the willingness of the Republican Party to pretend that Trump was a perfectly fine, perfectly normal, candidate. If there were two sane parties (however reluctance the sanity from one), we wouldn’t be in this situation. Republicans chose power and insanity, over sanity and mere “influence”.
@rikyrah: Meals on Wheels does good work. If RJK was serious about making America healthier, it would be a high priority to get better, more nourishing (if somewhat more expensive) meals into people. Hell – the school lunch program could use a cash infusion too… if anyone cared.
@laura: “People like Walz forced us to do this, by relentless mockery of us not caring about disabled people!”
Princess
@Baud: Musk will free any trapped miners personally, like he did with those kids in the cave in Thailand.
I never paid much-any attention to Musk but that episode was the first time I realized what a sociopath he is.
Princess
@Jay: The biggest problem the NDP have is that farm and labour has more or less abandoned them and a party that used to be identified with the working class, now isn’t.
Geminid
@Princess: Yeah, Musk behavior during and after the Thailand cave rescue was a big red flag for me as well.
Jay
@Geminid:
Technically, it’s the paid members of the Party in a given riding, via a members vote, BUT, some parties have it in their bylaws that the National Party can override the riding. Unless it’s done tactfully and “for great reason”, it’s usually a shit show. Riding members do all the heavy lifting of a campaign, and if they have been told that “they don’t matter”, they don’t show up.
zhena gogolia
@Melancholy Jaques: Good summary.
WTFGhost
@trollhattan: Knife maintenance isn’t too hard, though. The hardest thing for chef knives is understanding the angle of the blade. For a chef’s knife, you might have a wicked-thin angle. A cleaver might be closer to a 22.5 degrees per side (45 degree), because you might expect to whack it into a bone or something.
The first thing that happens to knives is they roll. If you use a hone, or steel, you can unroll them, and bring them back to a true angle. Eventually, you need to sharpen, but if you keep an eye on how well the knives work – how closely they do what you want them to do – you can touch them up before they need a lot of work.
Steve LaBonne
@Jay: As they should. In a non-proportional system strategic voting is a must. Which obviously can include voting NDP in ridings where the Liberal party is not viable, but only in such ridings. I wish US voters were half as savvy.
Professor Bigfoot
@Salty Sam: Buy LOTS of vegetables, chop them up, cover them in fresh blood, then throw them out? ROFLMAO
Honest to goodness, I just simply don’t cook enough to ever get THERE! lol
Jay
@Princess:
My former riding was Dipper all the way, until it wasn’t. What changed was the economics. What was a area dominated by Union jobs, (forestry, transportation, mining) became an area dominated by Gas and Go retail and summer tourism. The ranchers there were never Dippers and here the Farms, Retail (and now construction) rely on Temporary Foreign Workers.
We also have the same, (but worse) social media issues and media issues. More young voters know who Joe Rogan, the Tate Brothers and Jordan Peterson are, than David Suzuki.
At my last job, nobody knew that the extra half hour we worked was to cover off either a half hour lunch being an hour, or that non-compete clauses were illegal.
Jay
@WTFGhost:
In the knife drawer, I have 2 diamond blocks and a steel.
Keeping sharps, sharp is mandatory here.
justsomeguy05
“Far-Right Leaders CAN Face Consequences”
in OTHER countries. In the US, Nixon, Bush, Trump, and so many others face NO consequences. But the US has jailed LEFT leaders, including Presidential candidates.
“On Nov. 2, 1920, Eugene V. Debs received one million votes in the US presidential election on the Socialist Party ticket while in prison.”
Harrison Wesley
@Professor Bigfoot: You’re not a fan of thumb stew?
prostratedragon
@ArchTeryx: All those bright candy colors, that would have to be it, wouldn’t it?
prostratedragon
@chemiclord: If by “half a government” you mean a total of 7 judges.
bluefoot
@Salty Sam: As a hobbyist bladesmith, I used to be surprised at people who invested in knives but didn’t learn how to hone and sharpen them. Even a couple of chefs of my acquaintance. Of course, now there are a ton of devices on the market for knife sharpening.
Jay
@bluefoot:
I was always surprised by the number of “chefs” who bought a new knife roll when the old ones got dull
Oh, and “woodworkers”,………
bluefoot
@Jay: That’s….amazing. One chef I knew told me he used to send his knives to a service to have them sharpened. It’s true that sharpening knives takes time if you do it old school with stones and all, so I can see having a service do it if they’re the tools of your trade and they get beat up on the regular. Woodworkers, on the other hand, you really just need a stone on your workbench.
back when I used to do long weekend trips with friends, I started packing a stone because knives at AirBnBs tend to be ridiculously dull.
Geminid
@Jay: What are the politics like in Vancouver?
Central Planning
@rikyrah: I don’t understand how the president can cut funds to a program that congress authorized.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
OT: Whatever happened to Tbone and Quinerly? I thought I read something on heymistermix’s place Tbone thought they had been banned from here
CarolPW
@Professor Bigfoot: My niece, a spectacular cook, developed her chef knife skills by chopping and slicing up onions, a 5 pound bag at a time, while on home leave. My sister turned the results into caramelized onions in the oven and vacuumed packed and froze them for later use.
She worked in one of Chef Andre’s DC kitchens during the last big shut-down, and they assigned her to a station where she could wield her knife (which she brought with her as all good chefs do).
You bought a beautiful knife, congratulations.
Baud
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
TBone had a time out and had stayed away.
I don’t know where Quinerly has been.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Baud:
What was the time out for?
Jay
@Geminid:
All over the map, varies by municipality, ethnicity and area.
That said, our right wing areas are more 90’s Democrat than Wingnuttia.
Citizen Alan
I had a lot of disdain for Arnold as a politician, but I will give him mad props for that video he cut attacking racists and antisemites as losers who will die miserably.
lowtechcyclist
@Central Planning: Do you mean how he can legally do it, or how he can just, y’know, do it?
Two very different answers.
Baud
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
From what I understand, posting too many comments.
Geminid
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Quinerly drops in and out She travels a lot and doesn’t comment much when she’s on the road.
Someone spoke to Cole Saturday and was told T-Bone got a timeout.
Jay
@Baud:
I think Quinerly is road tripping and has gone dark on the road to minimize the insanity.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Baud:
That’s something that can get you a suspension?
I remember Tbone tended to post links a lot, maybe that had something to do with it?
@Geminid:
I do remember Quinerly mentioning that she traveled a lot and tended to be offline
Baud
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
I don’t know what she posted. May have been links to music. She liked to do that.
Citizen Alan
For what it’s worth, Cannon is the only duty judge assigned to Fort Pierce, which is the district where Trump was domiciled, and she has held that position since she came on the bench. I’m pretty sure that the only way she would not have been the judge in the stolen documents case was (a) if she showed a tiny sliver of ethical character and recused herself or (b) the 11th Circuit got involved and forced her to recuse herself.
Professor Bigfoot
@CarolPW: And you’ve just given me a fantastic idea… time for a quick trip to Costco for a big bag of onions.
Caramelized onions in vaccuum seal bags in the freezer is a GREAT idea!
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Citizen Alan:
I recall that the DOJ/Smith could’ve filed in another jurisdiction (New Jersey, I think), but choose Cannon’s instead
Baud
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
I don’t know how he could have filed in NJ. The documents were in FL.
Citizen Alan
@Baud: IIRC, the other jurisdiction was D.C. (could be misremembering) but the fear was that it would cause venue problems.
Salty Sam
Out of a 125 comment thread, 80+ were her responses to the other commenters, of which very few added to the conversation. This was a common occurrence with her. She was asked to dial it back a bit, and (I assume) got butt-hurt and left. She was not banned as she reported.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Baud:
@Citizen Alan:
I think you’re right, it was DC. It retrospect, perhaps they should’ve taken the risk
Interesting Name Goes Here
@UncleEbeneezer:
It’s stuff like that that has me convinced that Biden would have lost handily in 2020 had COVID not intervened. Two of the last three presidential elections and countless Congressional elections have been squandered because the voters are infatuated with being contrarian and self-sabotaging. That’s why I’m coming to hate that Will Rogers quote, among other things. When people say that as if it should be a badge of honor, they need to know that it’s not. “I’m not a member of a organized political party. I’m a Democrat” is not a proclamation of one’s free-thinking ability, not in 2025 – rather, it’s a stunning indictment of how depressingly easy it is to distract from achievable goals in favor of pipe dreams. The Democratic voting public has to realize that, and has to put an end to it soon and permanently. Otherwise, it really doesn’t matter who you choose to run because some social-media jackwagon will just come along, jangle some keys, and next thing you know half of Facebook has decided you are a genocidal pedophile. I dread finding out what 2028’s set of keys to be jangled will be…or what event will come along to negate those keys 2020 style.
Melancholy Jaques
@They Call Me Noni:
This is an academic argument that isn’t worth making & that misses the main point: If our political culture were not fucked up & repugnant, Trump would never have won the Republican nomination, let alone won more than 35% of the popular vote.
frosty
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
I think Quinerly is on the road. She mentioned that she was getting a little weary of reading the comments here (my interpretation). I get it, I do to sometimes.
She drops in maybe once a week or so.
CarolPW
@Professor Bigfoot: I cook my big batches at 325, 1 Tb butter and 1 Tb olive oil per onion. My roasting pan holds 12 onions, and it takes about 4 hours, stirring every 15 – 20 min.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
Kay’s post today, related to what Sen. Chris Murphy said recently
I gotta be honest, I don’t see where she’s getting this “Democrats are smug, self-satisifed, superior, hold ourselves out as ethically pure, and that it’s bullshit.”
I just don’t see it and she doesn’t give any examples. It sounds like something like Bill Maher would say about Dems.
karen gail
@bluefoot: I was never very good at getting my knives sharp, a number of years ago bought this handy little sharpener that has ceramic on one side and steel on the other. I not sure have ever used the steel side; there are two piece in each side that form a V. What I do is run my knife through before each use; when cutting large number of items I tend to stop and sharpen when it feels like blade is going through items as smoothly. It has become a habit, pull knife from block, sharpen and use.
Oh, have block of Henkle’s that were gift and kept after divorce; left his Chicago Cutlery that he came with behind.
Manyakitty
@Professor Bigfoot: best of luck to Mrs. B!
Geminid
@Citizen Alan: Ok. Thanks for the clarification.
Geminid
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): I think there is a grain of truth there, although it may be stated over-broadly.
Jay
@karen gail:
The ceramic side is a sharpener, the steel side is a hone.
The key reason a knife get’s dull, is that at a microscopic level, edge of the knife starts to curl over a little bit, blunting the edge. Running both sides of the blade over the “steel”, stropping it with leather or a hone, bends the knife edge back into proper shape.
Even Chef’s knives don’t need a lot of sharpening, they usually just need a couple of passes with a hone
In T and my case, I was the one with the good knives, she had the Wilkinson “Ever Sharp” garbage. Took a few months go “train her” on my knives, sped along by the fact she never cut herself with them but regularly cut herself with her garbage knives
BTW, my oldest knife turns 50 years old next month.
karen gail
@Jay: Thanks; I’ll make an effort to use the other side. I always had trouble with a stone; I still remember my grandfather throwing up his hands in horror and taking my stone and knife away and fixing it. It seemed no matter how I followed his instructions there were times when my knives ended up duller than they started.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Geminid:
How do you figure? And even if she’s right, Bluesky isn’t the real world. How many of these folks she says we lost would done so because of something dumb/snarky they had read on Twitter back in the day? Dem pols as a group don’t read that way to me, if anything the opposite. Does she think folks like Crockett have the wrong approach?
Jay
@karen gail:
I use large diamond stones, 3″ x 8″ for sharpening. Slide the blade along while drawing the blade back, like you would use a steel/hone. 6 quick swipes on the fine stone, sharp again, then the steel/hone. The medium stone is for changing the angle of the blade, that also reduces the number of knives needed because I can quickly change the edge to fit the task.
It takes some practice, but it’s nothing like sharpening a planer blade, a chisel, a router bit, a saw or a serrated blade.
Try using the steel a lot more. You will be surprised how little sharpening your knives need.
Jay
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
Normies and Low Information Voters consume Social Media, (by the fuckton, that’s 117 Imperial tons, none of your wussy standard tons) for “news” and opinions.
Social media is dominated by reich wing voices and reich wing algorithms.
The medium is the message.
Or to put it another way, only 21% of Americans have read a book, (paper, kindle, tablet, books on “tape”) in the past year.
Betty Cracker
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Welcome to Balloon Juice!
No, seriously, I know you’re a long-time commenter, but do you really not see the occasional example of smug superiority or confident totalizing analyses of the problem?
She’s not wrong, imo.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Betty Cracker:
Perhaps the occasional, I guess. But I don’t see it all the time and I don’t see how that would explain voting patterns at large over the last 10 years. I think the existence of right-wing propaganda being pumped constantly on social media is more to blame
Interesting Name Goes Here
@Betty Cracker: She may not be totally wrong, but pretending that the voters she’s trying to court just need a little guidance and TLC is being dismissive of larger yet more insidious issues, such as what UncleEbeneezer and I have commented on above. How long and how many times can just about everyone and everything else be blamed for electoral losses before the heat of the spotlight on the voting public becomes too painful to ignore? Some of this honestly feels too much like operating off of adages like “The customer is always right”, which anyone who has ever worked in retail for longer than 30 seconds knows is high-order bullshit.
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
I think he’s pied me.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Baud:
lol
YY_Sima Qian
@Baud: The populations of the three countries hold the others (in the abstract) in low regard, although people tend to get along at the individual level when there is the opportunity. Nevertheless, the governments are capable of operating quite rationally and cynically (exploiting nationalist passions but not dictated by them). Same with the developing Sino-Indian rapprochement, & a prospective Sino-EU rapprochement. As I said before, MAGA imperialism is a powerful forcing function.
At one level, this is hardly surprising, the Trump 45 term had prompted a similar development, which was short circuited by the COVID-19 pandemic & election of Biden. Coordination has materialized much more quickly this time around because MAGA is much more disruptive & aggressive this time.
The talks of a PRC-SK-Japan free trade agreement appears to have been revived, 2+ decades in the making. At this point the odds of the PRC joining the CPTPP just went up by a lot. As long as the PRC is willing to make the concessions & the reforms to meet the membership criteria, I have always expected the vast majority of the members to be amenable to the PRC joining. After all, most of them are already in the RCEP FTA w/ the PRC, or bilateral FTAs. The U.S. had leverage over Canada to veto the PRC’s application via poison pill terms in the USMCA, but Trump just torched that & the relationship w/ Canada in general, so Canada is unlikely to carry the U.S.’ water here. All eyes will be on the U.K., to see if it will block the PRC’s application in a desperate attempt to sustain the “special relationship “.
Professor Bigfoot
@CarolPW: <scribbling notes>
(okay, that was illustrative— I did a “copy and paste” and texted it to myself 😉)
THANK YOU!
YY_Sima Qian
@ArchTeryx: The FLG is the biggest reason there is support among Chinese Americans (including those from Taiwan & Hong Kong) for MAGA. I hear it is influential among Vietnamese Americans, too. At least FLG media is very active in Vietnam.
Betty Cracker
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): agree that right-wing propaganda, and more recently algorithmic manipulation, plays a huge role. But some Dems make it easy for the bad guys to parody our policies. That’s true across the ideological spectrum, imo.
@Interesting Name Goes Here: Can’t speak for Kay, but i don’t think she is citing a single source of ruin. That said, “the majority of voters suck” probably isn’t a winning message.
Gloria DryGarden
@Baud: America last, indeed.
Isn’t that what they set up to do? It’s pretty bad when countries that hate each other need to band together. Can’t blame them.
But it hurts, watching it all go down.
Gloria DryGarden
@YY_Sima Qian: interesting. I don’t know all those groups , alliances , and acronyms. Perhaps I’ll ask dr Google later, when I have an extra moment.
glad other countries are getting their alliances on.
Gloria DryGarden
Re the baguette and the toaster oven
i watched a recipe video of sheer simplicity yesterday. Cut the baguette into 6” lengths, or so. Slice open , toast, butter w fancy imported French butter (ymmv), then lay on big flat squares of chocolate bar. Close the sandwich. She calls it a goutêr. Does that mean tasty? Her face as she took a bite: sheer heaven.
She didn’t even reheat it to melt the chocolate. Just instant Pain au Chocolat, w your baguette. At 6-8” long, each section fits fine in your toaster oven.
i used to make mini pizzas w short pieces of baguette.
enjoy
Gloria DryGarden
@Geminid: hope he doesn’t.
And what about our fancy far right criminals? Pulling for the FAFO. Principles to catch up to them. Speaking if which, did Giuliani or 47 ever pay up on their list court cases?
sigh.
as BC says, we could stand to fix it so legal recourse does catch up w the very rich…
Speaking of democracy, is anyone going to the Saturday protests in Denver/ front range?
what about in Georgia? I’m seeing my pal Pollyanna could connect with one in Chattanooga TN, or in Woodstock ga, 30 miles north of Atlanta.
Is any one going to one of these? Potential for a casual accidental meetup?
Geminid
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): No, I don’t think Kay was criticizing all Democratic electeds including Crockett. But I think I might understand what she meant. A story:
Fifteen years ago my friend Debbie and her wife moved from a house in the country into CCharlottesville They’d built a house on an empty lot near the hospital where Debbie worked at the time as an RN. I expect there was a house on that lot that became derelict and was torn down. It’s an old, working class and mostly Black neighborhood.
Not long after, they met a Charlottesville City Councilor at some Democratic Party function. When they told her where they had moved, she remarked how great it was that people who worked at the hospital were moving into the neighborhood, like it was a new thing.
Debbie and Diana were appalled. That neighborhood was full of people who worked at U.Va Medical Center. But they worked the low-level and low-status jobs: handling waste, laundering bedding, preparing food. The City Councilor didn’t know they existed.
Charlottesville is a very “Liberal” city, but it’s a white collar town and the Democratic Party there is run by white-collar, college educated professionals like that City Councilor. She was elected at-large and in effect represented the entire city, not just her nice northside neighborhood.
Charlottesville moved from a ward system to an at-large city councilor system in the 1970s. This occured soon after desegregation and that was no coincidence either. Under the old system, the White, working class east side ward had a councilor and the mostly Black southside ward near the hospital had one. Under the new system the White middle- and upper-middle people on the north and west sides could totally control the city.
And guess what? Since then higher property assessments and taxes have driven half the city’s working class people, both White and Black, from their single family homes into apartment complexes just outside town, or back into the countryside their families came from four generations ago.
Going back to that City Councilor: she should have known that neighborhood had plenty of hospital workers already, but they were invisible to her. And for the people who run the town– the City Councilers and and city department heads– those people are liabilities.
When the City Manager and the Council talk about “quality of life” they really mean an expanding revenue base and you get that with middle- and upper-middle class people, not lower level earners like those hospital workers. So there’s a certain bias that conditions how the more powerful see– or don’t see– the less powerful.
I’m not saying upper-middle class professionals can’t see the less powerful as worthy and important people. Debbie’s wife came from an upper-middle class family, was a civil engineer in her working days, and she is not at all elitist. I’ve seen plenty of other Democrats like her.
And I would not expand this story into a general critique of the Democratic party either. As I’ve said here many times, I think the Party has elected a very solid group of House members, and I think most of them– including ones representing more affluent suburban districts– have an appreciation of all their constituents as valuable in their own right, not just as electoral assets. And I think those 215 Democratic House members are as good a representation of our national Party as there is.
But I think some of us Democrats still have a ways to go when it comes to getting beyond the social conditioning of the college educated “liberal;” and that was the element of truth I found in Kay’s critique.
Geminid
@Gloria DryGarden: Hey Gloria! Glad to see you around, and glad Pollyanna has thawed out enough to consider traveling to a demonstration. It’s a cold winter and early spring in the Southeast. My Atlanta friend’s dalffodils have been hanging fire, but they’ll probably bloom this week. A
lot of flowering trees up here in Virginia just busted out– pears, dogwoods and apples. The quince I see on my way to work bloomed a,week ago, which was late.
Melancholy Jaques
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
It sounds like a quote straight off of FOX or some other right-wing media. Or maybe just someone Kay knows who listens to a lot of FOX or some other right-wing media.
Our most recent president went to mass every Sunday. Visited the graves of his lost family members. Walked a picket line. Told employers if they had trouble finding employees “pay them more.” So please, stop it. Just fucking stop it.
If our candidate had been an anodyne white male under the age of 60, we would have won in 2016 & 2024.
Melancholy Jaques
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
Well, Crockett does insist on being black. A lot of voters find that off-putting.
Gloria DryGarden
@Geminid: a week ago I was seeing forsythia blooming all over town. And white trees, not the crabapples yet. Pink flowering bushes.
My peach has a few blossoms, but it’ll freeze Friday and Saturday nights, so that might toast my fruit chances. Crocus have started to bloom, gosh they’re late.
StringOnAStick
@Salty Sam: As a retired dental hygienist, I can’t stand dull blades of any kind, whether it’s dental instruments, knives or tools. Yes everyone, those things the RDH puts inside your mouth are wicked sharp (if they’re any good as an RDH) so please to stop yapping and trying to tongue wrestle with them, OK? It will go better for everyone and you’ll get top notch care and results. Man, the crazy things some patients would do…
satby
@Geminid: You didn’t explicitly note race, you cast the story more as a class thing, but this “and the mostly Black southside ward near the hospital
satby
@satby: and posted then lost the rest of my comment, so to continue:
that snippet tells a story. And the story could be that liberals are what she asserts “If I could change one thing before the midterms I would change that tone- I would stop talking to people like we’re their betters and everything we believe is self-evident and doesn’t need to be argued or proven. It’s obnoxious and arrogant and it so saturates liberal communications I don’t even think we see it”, but if that’s the case (and I disagree, plus I don’t have a college degree) I think my first reaction is heal thyself. But again, ignoring the white privilege that most whites are steeped in and racism and misogyny skews any analysis.
Kayla Rudbek
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
@ArchTeryx: and they always seem to be advertising in DC as well.
Interesting Name Goes Here
@Betty Cracker: It may not be a winning message, but it is a problem that is going to have to be confronted sooner or later if this hellish cycle is going to be broken for good.
Geminid
@satby: A fuller account would have noted another part of Charlottesvile’s history, which was the destruction of the Vineger Hill neighborhood. That was a four block by four block neighborhood of small homes just west of Downtown. It was flattened with Great Society money in the 1960s. The Black residents were moved into apartment complexes away from Downtown that were soon known as “the Projects.”
A few of the businesses that supported the town’s small Black middle class could relocate, but many did not survive. A lot of the Vinegar Hill neighborhood became a parking lot serving a large grocery store that was never viable and is now a Staples.
Charlottesville being a segregated town, there was a White, working class neighborhood just southeast of Downtown and across the railroad tracks called Belmont. That is still a nice neighborhood, but you have to have some serious money to afford a house there now because Charlottesville and surrounding Albemarle County have become wealth magnets. A White working class person who might have lived in Belmont 50 years ago would likely commute now from a subdivision in Fluvanna County to the east, or from Greene County to the north where I live.
So the story is about both class and race, but I was mainly trying to get at the attitudes of upper-middle class White people because they are the Insiders and the working class people, Black and White are the Outsiders.
I suspect an upper-middle class Black person would have been more socially aware than that White city councilor. That’s not just because the Black people in Debbie’s neighborhood were more visible to them; they would also have been more apt to have an outsider’s viewpoint. Likewise, my friend Debbie and her wife had outsider’s viewpoints because they are Lesbians. Plus, they had adopted and were raising a Black son and a biracial daughter, and that added to their perspective.
This story is not just about Democrats because I know enough about Republicans to see that for all their small “d” democratic talk, they are much worse when it comes to centering elite power at the expense of working class people.
Also, I wouldn’t try to generalize very much from the sociology of a college town with a major medical center, because most people live in a different type of community. So in the end this was just a story that tried to answer a question, and not the basis of some broader theory.