A few days ago, we discussed Senator Chris Murphy’s theory on what’s behind the destructive Trump tariff regime. The linked post contains all the details Murphy shared on Bluesky, but to sum up, the senator believes the administration is using tariffs as a tool to compel businesses to acquiesce to its authoritarian power grab.
I think Murphy makes a compelling case, but in the discussion here, commenters raised convincing counterpoints, such as that Trump is too dumb to hatch such an elaborate scheme. It’s true that Trump doesn’t know shit about business (he bankrupted multiple casinos!), and he’s been advocating tariffs as a fix for deindustrialization since the 1980s.
So, you don’t need the authoritarian power grab theory to explain why Trump is wrecking the economy. The Occam’s razor explanation is sufficient: Trump is stupid.
That said, one thing that’s made Trump 2.0 more destructive than the previous release is that Trump is not really running the show. He’s a figurehead with a personality cult he developed with the only true talents he has, demagoguery and a conman’s low cunning.
But that real base of power is now being used by tech oligarchs Musk, Thiel and others, the Project 2025 architects (Russell Vought, et. al.), Christian nationalists, prosperity gospel grifters, etc., to enact agendas that largely overlap.
Anyway, Murphy had more to say about the theory in an interview with Chris Hayes after Friday’s stock market wipeout. Here’s a clip:
Murphy: “The vast majority of Republicans, their number one priority is Trump seizing power, and the Trump family and the MAGA universe holding power forever … with the exception of maybe 20 Republicans in the Senate, the GOP inside Congress is done with democracy.”
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) April 4, 2025 at 8:19 PM
The most striking thing to me was Murphy’s guess that there are 20 Republicans in the Senate who aren’t on board with overthrowing democracy. That’s a lot more than I would’ve guessed, but Murphy knows these people. Is it Senate brain at work, or is that real?
If he’s right, there’s a sufficient number of Senate Republicans to put an end to this bullshit right now. What about the House?
I read that Pastor Johnson used an arcane rule to prevent members from voting to revoke the bogus “emergency” state that authorizes Trump to unilaterally set tariffs. I don’t know how or if that can be reversed.
The bottom line is, Democrats are locked out of power. All of this is on Republicans and has been since January 20.
Republicans can end this shit. For now, they are more afraid of Trump than they are of us, but as public anger grows, there are signs that calculus is shifting, such as sycophants like Ted Cruz questioning tariffs.
Maybe Trump will find a way to climb down before irreversibly plunging the entire world into recession, if he hasn’t already. But so far, he’s golfing while the world burns. Yesterday, his tone-deaf toadies released a statement about Trump’s performance at a golf tournament while millions were taking to the streets.
Anyway, if you have the misfortune to be represented by a Republican, consider calling them Monday. Tell them you know they could stop this, and ask them why they won’t.
Open thread.
War for Ukraine Day 1,136: Missiles & Drone Swarms in the Small Hours
Baud
Amen, sister!
Baud
There have been a lot of comparisons between Trump and Hitler over the years, but at least Hitler didn’t try to destroy the German economy.
Baud
hells littlest angel
@Baud: They should ask Robert De Niro to be the godfather.
Betty Cracker
I was so surprised and pleased to see protests in two rural small towns during my travels yesterday. Lots of others on Bluesky mentioned seeing similar in deep red areas all across the country. Lots of gray hair among the protests I saw. Maybe it’s a Florida thing? Or maybe Social Security really is the third rail that will electrocute anyone dumb enough to touch it.
oldster
As confirmation of Chris Murphy’s theory we now have Bill Ackman, a loathsome person in his own right, telling victims of the tariffs to call the president to make a deal. That’s pretty much the literal definition of a shill, ie the partner of a con artist who ropes in new dupes.
https://www.thestreet.com/investing/billionaire-bill-ackman-delivers-frank-3-word-message-on-tariff-war
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
prostratedragon
@Baud:
“And Sarah Was Nonity Years Old,” Arvo Pärt;”, excerpt with ballet.
NotMax
Dow Jones futures down another 2300 points. Monday gonna be chaotic.
Baud
@prostratedragon:
Artsy!
Betty Cracker
@NotMax: Holy moly. WSJ sends a subtle message:
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
Tampa
MagdaInBlack
@Betty Cracker: That “flattering” picture of him looks as though he’s finally being hauled off to a nice padded room.
Nelle
If they don’t want Heads Off, they better keep their Hands Off.
Betty Cracker
So tomorrow I have to watch a basketball game. I dislike basketball (the sound of the sneakers squeaking on the court drives me mad), but the Gators are in the championship. I’ll mute the TV and listen to music or the screeching birds outside.
Betty Cracker
@Baud: Go Tampa!
@Nelle: Stealing that for a sign at the next protest!
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
“He’s not hurting the people he’s supposed to be hurting.”
Matt McIrvin
@Betty Cracker: Others including me noticed the same thing nationwide: These protests are older and whiter than most would have expected. I think minorities and students are sitting these out because public protesting has clearly become very dangerous for them– we have Trump openly seeking social and legal permission to shoot, arrest or deport them. But when a 70-year-old granny steps up, the optics change. And old people are *pissed*.
TS
@oldster:
Never thought I’d be siding with China against the USA. Never thought the President of the USA would be out there “making deals” that were only of benefit to him.
I will see myself a pauper before I want anyone to make that deal.
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
People also know that only some people have a chance of reaching the white Republican voting majority.
Baud
@TS:
Supporting anyone who stands up to Trump and his Republican cohorts is being pro-USA.
Princess
But wait — I was told that only the Democrats have agency?
Seriously , the Republicans get a pass for everything, from everyone, in clouding DRM voters. The media has trained us well.
Betty Cracker
So I mentioned in another thread that I couldn’t attend a protest because I’d already agreed to help a friend out with a birthday party for her mom. The attendees were mostly churchy older folks, largely but not 100% white, not conservatives but middle of the road normies. There was a lot of discussion about what’s going on with Social Security, the VA, the stock market, random deportations to a foreign gulag, etc., and yeah, the old folks there were PISSED.
rikyrah
Good Morning, Everyone😊😊😊
prostratedragon
@Baud:
I think Pärt is more humorous than he normally is credited. But it’s a dry humor.
oldster
@TS:
America is under occupation by a hostile regime with close ties to the Russian mafia. We will need a lot of allies in order to drive out the occupiers. For now, anyone who resists the occupying force is my ally.
We allied with Russia to defeat hitler, and as soon as that job was done we resumed our natural enmity to an oppressive state. That’s what true allyship means: people who disagree about most things, agreeing to work together on one thing, with no commitment to cooperation beyond that thing.
For the moment, I’ll accept Xi’s help on those terms.
rikyrah
@Matt McIrvin:
I , and other Black people, are resting.
He has given the police
COMPLETE IMMUNITY
COMPLETE IMMUNITY
COMPLETE IMMUNITY
To kill us at will.
We are sitting this round of protests out.
Princess
@Matt McIrvin: maybe safety is a concern for some but I see both Black people and young people on social media proactively stating they’re sitting this out. The reasons differ — Black people say white people caused this, it’s hurting white people, so they can fix it. Young people — the protests aren’t about Palestine, and/or they detract from the insurgency that will destroy capitalism. I have no idea how representative these views are, but they exist.
Baud
@rikyrah:
Good morning.
bjacques
@oldster: but I already called the President.
I called him an asshole, a moron, and a dipshit, but it doesn’t seem to help.
Nelle
@rikyrah: Rightly so. Here in Des Moines, a couple thousand showed up. A mix of ages, but a lot of older people. White, not gray, hair. Some struggling to walk. Wind gusting above 30 mph, with a wind chill of 29. Taking turns to block the wind for each other. A fair number in wheelchairs. I only saw white people. Whites made the mess. Whites need to clean it up.
No uniformed law enforcement visible. I guess they dont want photos of cops handcuffing grannies. At least, not white grannies.
Betty Cracker
@oldster:
Agreed, and that’s why the broad “Hands Off” framing is politically smart, IMO. Attendees turned out for different reasons, and that’s okay.
TS
@oldster:
The enemy of my enemy is my friend – is truly hard to take when the latter has been my friend for over 100 years, but appeasement is surely not the answer.
Matt McIrvin
@rikyrah: And, what do you know, the police haven’t been rioting at all at *these* protests with a bunch of old white people out. No mass arrests, no kettling, no one got shot or beaten up.
I do wonder if this situation lasts. But Trump and his circle clearly assumed he was going to get BLM round 2 to put down and he didn’t.
Princess
Trump has been talking about tariffs and pretty much using the same language since 1987. Part of his attraction to the leftist horseshoe crowd has always been his anti-trade, pro-tariff, anti-immigrant stance. In that, he hits some of the same notes and reaches some of the same audience Bernie does.
I wouldn’t call him a figurehead exactly. His imprint is definitely still present. But he’s lazy and apart from the things he really cares about (revenge, his pet theories, his ego) he is content to let others do the work.
Matt McIrvin
@Nelle: In Haverhill, the cop cars were there with lights on and the cops stayed in them. Indivisible instructed people to *call* the cops if any shit went down.
oldster
@TS:
To friends I owe loyalty, and a presumption of continued benevolence. To allies I owe nothing beyond what’s agreed to for the task at hand.
oldster
@bjacques:
Thank you for your service.
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
Grannies need to start burning some cars. Use their privilege for good.
Geminid
From Turkish journalis Sebnan Gumuscu:
Gumuscu was reposting a picture from the Washington, D.C. “Hands Off” rally. It showed a protester dressed up in a big yellow Pikachu costume.
Video of a protester dressed as the Nintendo character Pikacahu went viral in Turkiye a couple weeks ago. It showed the protester nimbly evading police in the coastal city of Antalya.
Since then Pikachu has returned to the streets, and Batman and Catwoman have joined the crowds protesting the arrest of Istanbul mayor Ekrim Imamoglu. College students are particularly active, but there is a broad base of participation.
Spanky
@Baud: That seemed extreme, but then I thought about Teslas.
Jackie
@Matt McIrvin:
Saw this blurb on paywalled Newsweek:
The VILLAGES!!!
prostratedragon
@Matt McIrvin:
We’ll see how it develops I guess, but some police claim to have been caught off guard.
From NYC, this …
… and this:
prostratedragon
@prostratedragon: Twenty vertical blocks to a mile in Manhattan.
Bruce K in ATH-GR
@Matt McIrvin: I saw a tweet reposted on LGM which quoted a New York City cop stating two things:
1. They were shocked at how much larger the crowd was than their estimates.
2. The forty cops brought out to police the expected small crowd was all they needed for the much larger crowd.
HinTN
@Betty Cracker: We hold these truths to be self evident, that
Matt McIrvin
@Bruce K in ATH-GR:
Yeah, that’ll happen when you don’t act like an occupying army. Going on about how much nicer these white folks are than the protesters at the George Floyd protests does make me a little itchy.
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
Besides the cops, I wonder if the older, whiter crowd kept the violent fascist counter protestors away.
Baud
The administration’s secret weapon against future protests. Measles!
Matt McIrvin
@Baud: I suspect that is the case.
I mentioned on another thread, I saw a potentially dicey situation yesterday with a MAGA in a car rolling his window down at a light to yell at the protesters, some of whom weren’t inclined to de-escalate and maybe weren’t thinking of the possibility of this guy turning his car into a missile on wheels. The hero of the moment was the guy who just started shouting in a weary voice “Move along, buddy, you’re blocking traffic.”
Jeffro
in my FB and BlueSky posts – the political ones, not the “ooh, what a pretty sunset!” ones – I always remind people of two things:
Jeffro
in my (political) FB and BlueSky posts, I always end with two facts:
one, the MAGA GOP majorities in the House and Senate could end this insanity in 15 minutes if they wanted to.
two, the Capitol Hill switchboard number: (202) 224-3121
Jeffro
in my (political) FB and BlueSky posts, I always include two facts:
one, the MAGA GOP majorities in the House and Senate could end this insanity in 15 minutes if they wanted to
two, the Capitol Hill switchboard number
Bupalos
Taking hostages and creating global chaos as an avenue to power isn’t beyond Trump’s intelligence. This shouldn’t be controversial. I’m really surprised folks are so wedded to the veneration of intelligence as virtue that they insist on the “Trump is the dumbest person in the world” thing. That was cooked up solely for playground partisan delight.
Do people suppose that “eating the dogs, eating the cats” was just something he’s so stupid he believed, and was concerned about people’s pets? People are underestimating Trump’s intelligence, even as they badly overestimate the intelligence required to realize that taking the faberge egg of current global politics on a carnival ride is a solid way for a narcissistic chaos agent to become more powerful. He does understand things about this move that many on our side do not, about threats and fragility that we whistle past. Fear does this. Hyper-partisanship does this. It has us literally screaming that he’s a poopy head and the dumbest person in the word and that he must be being controlled by shadowy geniuses. Does this sound familiar at all?
There is absolutely no reason to think that Peter Thiel (?!) is more intelligent or better than Trump at political manipulation and control. I’m going to spend more time thinking about the psychic wage people earn that prevents them from understanding simple truths. Yes, the guy who seized a political party, made it his, and rode it to the most powerful position in the world is in fact very intelligent in very important ways. Also mentally ill. Insisting on the Nazi or American apartheid terms that dehumanize human intelligence (low animal cunning) is increasingly weird and comical. It also has some uncomfortable overlap with the habitual dehumanization of the new species “Cletus” that people delude themselves about.
Baud
Stuff Hagseth doesn’t want you to know.
More historical info in comments.
Betsy
@Betty Cracker: GO GATORS!
Baud
RevRick
@rikyrah: @Princess: @Matt McIrvin:
My wife and I went to two protests yesterday.
The first, along a busy road in front of the Rep. MacKenzie’s (R) office, was populated by mostly older white people, but there were folks in their thirties and forties in the group. I spoke with one young man who was there, because his dad is in a nursing home with dementia, and it is paid for by Medicaid.
The second was in downtown Allentown, sponsored by a racially diverse UCC church, and my wife and I noted that the crowd skewed much more diverse and younger. Our mayor was in the crowd. The politics was notably more leftist, but to us white folks importantly conveyed the message, “We need your protection.”
Baud
catothedog
@Matt McIrvin:
It is dangerous for us. We had the “talk” with our kids.
The American people have the government they deserve. Some of them think government is evil, and some think politics cannot achieve anything good. These two groups together are a majority now. The first group cannot be fixed. They want rule by thugs.
The second group needs to experience rule by thugs to learn the value of politics and compromise. When enough of them realize what government is and how their government works, they can see if they are up to the task of rebuilding government and the country from the ruins.
That is largely a white people problem. It will not be solved until good white people stop protesting Trump and start treating Republicans and White Christianity as evil, and acknowledge that Trump is just a pimple on the dog .
Republicans and White Christianity cannot be negotiated with. The white people who vote for Republicans are the problem; the white liberals – the Bernie brothers , the Kamala-is-genocidal, both-parties are the same, these prima donnas who can all go home to their white privilege fortress, while leaving us to suffer the depredations of their tantrums – are the problem.
Let them figure out how to solve white racism first. Let the white people sort it out is what we told our kids.
Suzanne
Due to kid stuff, I did not get to the PGH protest yesterday. Apparently it was significant, despite raining all day. Awesome.
I did, however, call both of my Senators on Friday and I was a bit worked up and I left some rather spicy messages. So now I’m sure I’m now being surveilled. I did not call Rep. Lee, because she knows what’s up.
Rep. DeLuzio, from the district adjacent to mine, is getting some attention on Xhitter because he is of the “tariffs don’t have to be bad, if the Dems couple them with better policy” persuasion. Talking about western PA being “hollowed out”. And some of the National Dem accounts have been elevating him. It is being noted that his district has a lot of wealthy suburbs and is almost 50% college educated. I have liked him on other issues. Reminding myself that allies may come in different flavors.
tobie
@Matt McIrvin:
@Betty Cracker:
Sarasota was an older crowd but a good 20% were young people. I spent a lot of time talking to a young woman who was there in secret. She said if her mom knew she was there, she’d be in trouble.
Dorothy A. Winsor
I’m intrigued. Tell me more.
chrome agnomen
@Baud: I’d guess this is you being somewhat snarky, as often is the case, but your statement is absolutely true.
Baud
Jeffro
that plus you have to wonder…how exactly do you counter-protest a #HandsOff rally?
march with signs that say “keep wrecking my retirement funds, please!” ?
ones that say “trump knows what he’s doing!” ?
or just all paint your faces orange and sing ‘YMCA’?
they’re all cowards to begin with; on top of that, they don’t have an original thought in their heads (that’s why they need Fox to tell them what to be made about every
day 15 minutes)lowtechcyclist
@Baud:
Fuck that, all us oldies either had the measles as kids, or were exposed to it. It’s not going to scare us away.
Not a bad idea to check with one’s primary about an MMR booster, though.
Baud
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
We’ll bail you out!
Baud
NotMax
@Baud
Good video about that disaster.
Bupalos
@catothedog: in these ethnic identarian terms, the marginal difference that powered Trump back into the white house was changes in voting patterns among people of color. This is one of those simple realities that psychic wages pay people not to understand.
Baud
@Bupalos:
No, everyone understands that many white liberals feel entitled to sky high minority voting so their right wing cohort can vote for their tribal interests.
Betty Cracker
@Bupalos: As it says right there in the post to which you replied, Trump does have a genuine talent for demagoguery and conning the rubes, which allowed him to build a real base of political power. But on business and economics? All the evidence, including multiple bankruptcies, indicates he’s dumb as a fucking stump.
WaterGirl
@Jeffro: I fished your first two out of spam.
tobie
I think Chris Murphy’s right that Trump (and Stephen Miller, Russ Vought, and others) want trading partners and American companies to kiss the ring, but I feel like that whole strategy is based on an economic misperception. Everything we wear, drive, spray, use etc is composed of components from multiple countries. Sure, GM can get relief for car parts but those parts are made of materials and components from many different places. The song “Are my hands clean” from Sweet Honey in the Rock is old but it’s amazing in describing the supply chain.
Baud
@WaterGirl:
Why would you do that?!
zhena gogolia
@Baud: Right.
Jeffro
@WaterGirl: thanks! it was the phone numbers that did it, right? noted for next time =)
rusty
@Betty Cracker: I was surprised at how skewed the ages were at the rally at the state house yesterday, even in New Hampshire. The people carrying Palestine flags were young, but almost everyone else was gray haired. (Also almost entirely white, but we are a really white state on average.) Earlier in the week I went to a prayer vigil outside the local ICE offices. I’m on the verge of 60, and out of the 50 people there may have been one or two people younger (and they were clergy). At least there I understood, the vigil was in the middle of a work day, that is a tough sell. I went because it was a 10 minute walk from work and I am lucky enough to have a flexible work schedule where I counted it as lunch.
Matt McIrvin
@Jeffro: The go-to MAGA retort to everything for years has been to grouse about “the border” or “invaders”. So it’d probably just be something about how liberals want to open the border. But it’d seem like a non sequitur.
Bupalos
I think apathy and ignorance has a lot more to do with it. Young folks do more dangerous stuff than protesting on the regular. Also that a lot of youngs are increasingly Trump-curious.
WaterGirl
@Betty Cracker: Was your holy moly about the juxtaposition of the headlines, or because he looks like a vagrant in the back of a police car?
Possibly both?
Never thought I would say this, but well done, WSJ!
PAM Dirac
@Betty Cracker:
I noticed the same thing in Frederick, MD. Lots of women who are pissed off and not the slightest bit hesitant about showing it.
Splitting Image
@catothedog:
About time, too.
Betty Cracker
@Bupalos: Also YOU said “low animal cunning,” not me. Please don’t put words in my mouth and then use them to make a bogus point about dehumanization that you could not make using actual quotes from the thing I wrote. It’s dishonest.
Spanky
@Baud:
Checkmate, conservatard! WE’VE ALL ALREADY HAD THE MEASLES IN THE 50S AND 60S!
Chris T.
Worth noting: Trump was not running the show in Trump 1.0 either, but the people around him were substantially more competent.
Betty Cracker
@WaterGirl: It was a response to NotMax’s info about Dow futures. Whoa!
rusty
@Princess: I also think Trump is linking tariffs and the income tax. If he can tariffs to work, then they can eliminate the income tax, the thing the rich hate the most. It’s economically insane, but being rich doesn’t make you smart, it just makes most folks even more greedy.
prostratedragon
Headline from yesterday
Bupalos
@Betty Cracker: We’ll he doesn’t care about that stuff, because he’s mentally ill. I don’t know if people understand that when they cite that he’s being stupid here what they’re saying “this guy really wants to reindustrialize the Midwest, help the degraded communities and people there there, and make America stronger. But this won’t do that, he’s just so stupid!”
As an exercise I suggest people say that out loud.
Geminid
@rusty: I’m curious: about how many people would you estimate were in the pro-Palestinian contingent?
Central Planning
@Bupalos: I’m going to start telling people “This is what happens when you run government like a business”
tobie
@rusty: Maybe GenZ is a problem for Democrats and for democracy? At least half of the campus protestors were not international students on visas. Why don’t they care about social programs, assaults on civil rights, attacking allies, etc?
Matt McIrvin
@Geminid: I saw a small group of young people with a Palestinian flag in Haverhill, MA too, and since our rally was earlier than most, I’m wondering if it was the same people. They could have just headed up 93. (But I’m sure there were others.)
They were well-behaved and, from what I could see, didn’t get any crap from the rest of the crowd.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Betty Cracker: That WSJ page is a real Nero fiddling while Rome burns moment.
sab
@Betty Cracker: It’s not just a Florida thing. Lots if protesters in deep red Ohio. They want to save Social Security and their 401ks.
Steve LaBonne
@Betty Cracker: The third rail will electrocute them when we actually stop getting our benefits, and that day may not be far off.
Baud
How to say I Got This in baby goat.
Steve LaBonne
@sab: Political progress often depends on harnessing more or less self-centered grievances for broader ends.
Baud
@Steve LaBonne:
Very true. People like us are still a minority.
Geminid
@Betty Cracker: The way I sometimes put it is that Trump is ignorant. He’s mentally lazy and intellectually incurious. It doesn’t matter how much intelligence someone has if they won’t put it to work.
Freemark
Young people aren’t affected by tariffs yet. While the olds ARE seeing effects at the SSI offices and in their 401ks. Most young people barely think about 401ks or stocks in general.
rusty
@Geminid: Two or three dozen out of a crowd of several thousand. Also, the speaker before the main speakers got going was younger and was warming up the crowd with cheers. Lots of enthusiasm, but the Free Gaza chant was very tepid. She tried twice and I think was surprised she didn’t get a better response.
The Thin Black Duke
@Bupalos: Black people know what time it is, dude.
Jackie
@Baud:
This. It’s pretty hard to be proud of being an American right now. :-( Frankly, I’m ashamed.
sab
@Spanky: I know good people who bought Teslas years ago and are stuck with them. Burning cybertrucks is okay, but burning Teslas is going too far.
Bupalos
@Betty Cracker: It wasn’t really a response to particular post and I use the term “we” as much as I do because I feel the same impulses. I’m not actually referring to your language I’m referring to this impulse to say this is something other than intelligence which is ubiquitous.
The term “animal cunning” comes up quite a bit generally as a kind of disclaimer and while I think there is absolutely no difference, the historical term in German and American often included “low.” It’s completely redundant semantically, the point is to make it seem an intelligence different in kind- outside human norms. This is a thing as humans we do, claim that perfectly human things are not. We do it for a lot of reasons, both charitable and uncharitable to humanity , often serving our fears. Trump isn’t sub-human stupid. He’s mentally ill and sociopathic for sure and possibly psychopathic. He’s well above average in intelligence, it’s just a very anti-social form.
Baud
Chief Oshkosh
@prostratedragon: Says a lot about the general shittiness of policing in this country. We do much better when they just stay in the donut shop.
Geminid
@rusty: That’s interesting. Thanks.
rusty
@tobie: My three oldest are young adults, two still on campus. They do care about those issues, but even I am surprised about their heat about Gaza. Massive bombing of a civilian population can have that effect. They also support Ukraine for the same reason if that helps.
Matt McIrvin
@tobie: I think a protest movement largely devoted to keeping right-wing radicals from tearing apart things we already have isn’t going to be very appealing to kids who have already been so shut out from any American Dream that they just want capitalism gone. They’re going to be interested in Luigi Mangione, not a bunch of greybeards trying to save Social Security.
And that is going to be a problem down the line.
Something like this was happening in the US in the 1930s, and the response was the New Deal. That built a broad multigenerational coalition. We didn’t really get a New Deal after 2008, for a variety of reasons, and it led to a lot of discontent some of which eventually flipped to the far right.
DougL
This! A thousand times this! All my white liberal friends want to spend their time analyzing why other demographics “let us down?!?” I have become the skunk at their garden party. It’s us. White people are to blame. Remove any other demographic – Trump still wins, but by an even larger amount. Remove white people? It is an overwhelming Harris (and Dems in other offices) landslide. White people are the problem. White people must confront this to ever change this. I tell them they cannot be “good people” (as every white person insists they are) if they vote Republican. No exceptions.
Ps – boy do I hate the quote block function on this website!
prostratedragon
@tobie:
This should be a daily ritual, for the reminder of both moral and economic exposure:
“Are My Hands Clean?”
Steve LaBonne
@DougL: Absolutely this. We are going all the way down the toilet unless white people finally take responsibility for taking out our own trash.
They Call Me Noni
@prostratedragon: That is exactly my thought every morning for the past ten years.
Matt McIrvin
@DougL: There’s a lot of people talking past each other on this subject because of the old problem of confusing the thing with the trend change in the thing. There was a huge amount of media attention paid to Trump gaining support among minorities, and it led to all this baffled handwringing about why it was happening. But the support he gained among them was from a super low baseline. He gained support from white people too, but from a high baseline. If white liberals ignore that they just sound like they feel entitled to automatic minority support.
Steve LaBonne
@Betty Cracker: There’s a reason why Bupalos has resided in my pie filter almost from the moment I started commenting here. It’s a troll of a particularly boring and dreary kind. I was already familiar with its act from LGM.
Steve LaBonne
@Matt McIrvin: Some of them really do. Another facet of white privilege.
oldgold
This is interesting. It seems Musk may not be fully on board with the tariff terror. Yesterday, Musk took s shot at Trump’s Tariff guru, Peter Navarro, disparaging his qualifications in a post on X, “A PhD in Econ from Harvard is a bad thing, not a good thing.”
tobie
@rusty: @Matt McIrvin: Yes, I get that young people are moved by the battle of good versus evil. Why doesn’t what’s happening with immigrants, Ukraine, LGBTQ+ neighbors and friends, people with disabilities, and so on bother them? I hate to say it but you’re convincing me that a generation raised on social media and sound bytes isn’t willing to fight in any way for democracy.
Bupalos
@Matt McIrvin: He actually lost a little support from white people I think.
What I would say about this whole line is that yes people are talking past each other but also it’s a way of not taking about reality and actual politics and falling back on a comfortable posture. “X ethnic group is responsible and X ethnic group will have to fix it and Y ethnic group knows Z whereas X ethnic group does not” is simply and plainly effectively meaningless. Just signifiers. Zero political reality. I think the meaninglessness is the point.
Betty Cracker
@Bupalos: FWIW, I’m glad you comment here. You bring up perspectives that deserve consideration in a venue that can be too much of an echo chamber sometimes. But you also have a tendency to assume intent and ascribe motives to others that can shut those discussions down. You didn’t ask for my advice, so feel free to ignore it, but that’s my observation.
oldster
@Steve LaBonne:
I had not encountered him before, but this thread alone provides sufficient evidence for that conclusion.
Shalimar
I 100% agree we’re doing all this because Trump is stupid. It’s his plan and everyone else is helping him refine and execute it. That does raise the question of why all these people who know it’s stupid are helping him instead of talking it out of it. And that is where all the other possible motives come in.
UncleEbeneezer
@Princess: They don’t give a fuck about bout Palestinians. Tens of thousands of Palestinian people in Gaza have been protesting and calling for Hamas to surrender and stop oppressing them for over a week now. And the response from all these young Americans who swore they cared about Palestinians has been the collective sound of crickets. Even when Hamas tortured and killed a protester and left his body on the streets and are making death lists, as a warning of what would happen to anyone who dares to speak out against Hamas. But the young people don’t give a shit because these protests aren’t about bashing Israel/America and using cartoon caricatures of Zionism. Their disinterest in standing with actual Palestinians who are risking their lives to tell us exactly who is to blame for this war (Hamas), speaks volumes.
Ksmiami
@prostratedragon: cops have investments too… I see even Trumps loyal groups going down down possibly to less than 27 percent … once you mess with people’s livelihoods, savings etc, it tends to not go well. And America is not Russia – we do not have a collective history of suffering for the mother country. Esp not for the past 50 years…
Bupalos
@Baud: talking one ethnic group feeling entitled to a the votes of another ethnic group is just very strange. Which isn’t to say it doesn’t happen that people do feel that way. I just don’t understand what that conversation is really about.
Everyone in this country is responsible for Trump and addressing the deplorable conditions we’ve allowed to arise. Anyone shirking or declaiming that responsibility is contributing to further decline.
artem1s
@Baud:
Well to be fair, WWI and the 1918 pandemic destroyed the German economy. Also he ‘saved’ the German economy by starting the Anschluss and locking up ‘communists’ and ‘enemies of the state’. They started with those parts of surrounding countries they deemed histroically ‘German’. And then grabbed the assets of the Jews and others so they could start up the war machine to invade Poland and the other countries that didn’t join voluntarily. Sound familiar?
Yes, Trump is a puppet and someone is behind all of this. And they are running Hitler’s playbook. Mark my words. They intend to default on the debt and send the world into another depression. Then the land grab starts. Putin gets Europe and the Middle East. The Federalist Society, Miller, etc… gets the Western Hemisphere. All aided and abbetted by the Catholic Church and the Fundies. The Great Depression made Hitler’s land grab possible.
Those 10-20 GOPers are still not understanding what’s at stake here. If believe that they can keep power and a healthy stock market by slow walking the damage and that only the ‘crazy’ shit has to stop. If they think they only need to convince TCF to stop the tarriffs and not kill the Dow we’re doomed.
There is no slow walking out of this. It’s like Valkerie. None of them are willing to be in the bunker and put on a suicide vest in order to stop the madness. They all want to survive so they can pick up right where W left off. That’s why I never will trust Darth Jr. She’s fucking one of them at heart.
A Ghost to Most
Fascists generally double down until they are crushed. It’s on them.
sab
@Bupalos: He can be both stupid and have a serious personality disorder. The latter is the problem. Narcissists surround themselves with equally toxic people. Crab buckets are their preferred social arrangement.
brendancalling
@NotMax: I refuse to look at my portfolio which was already inadequate.
These Trump-humping politicians better hope none of the MAGA dupes figure out who’s screwing them. Those people are crazy and armed.
lowtechcyclist
@Baud:
How horrible. Little doubt in my mind that lives will have been lost that otherwise could have been saved, just in this one disaster. Let alone the many other ways assistance from USAID has saved lives worldwide.
Thank you, ‘Christian’ dominionists like Russell Vought, who apparently have ripped the parable of the Good Samaritan out of their Bibles.
Gin & Tonic
@Dorothy A. Winsor: That’s a Pulitzer-worthy photo of Trump, IMO. Very Dukakis-in-the-tank vibe.
Matt McIrvin
@tobie: They’ve never seen democracy actually accomplish much for them. The US constitutional system has basically been jammed shut by hardball Republican obstructionism since the 2000s. If I were a 20 year old dude I’d be thinking “burn it all down” and maybe even thinking Trump is the chaos agent who will burn it all down, followed by the revolution in which all the rich people finally get a bullet in the head. LGBTQ rights and such can happen after the revolution.
I’m skeptical of that kind of thing myself, but I’m an old dog raised on the Cold War.
Young women are turning out and voting for Democrats though. But the things they’re specifically interested in are less the focus of these protests. They already tried that in 2017. It worked as far as huge midterm gains but somehow Trump returned.
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
@Betty Cracker: He doesn’t really have to be a super genius here though. He fully understands extortion which is all this really is – Murphy is arguing that he’s setting up an extortion racket. He doesn’t know squat about how to run a business or an economy but doesn’t have to. He just has understand I do this and it gives me leverage over you so give me money/do what I want. I think that’s fully within his grasp.
chemiclord
@Matt McIrvin: I think minorities as a rule have decided that they’re done sticking their necks out just to have white people continue to vote for white supremacy.
Younger folks don’t see any way of compelling change, so they see this as a waste of time.
prostratedragon
A hopeful sign ?
“Newark Teens Gear Up for School Board Elections After Voting Age Extended to 16”
Nukular Biskits
Good mornin, y’all.
Matt McIrvin
@oldgold: I was thinking this might be the thing that splits them. I think the MAGA billionaires were just ignoring everything Trump said about tariffs, figuring he wasn’t serious. Now they see he’s serious.
Splitting Image
@Gin & Tonic:
Trump had so many Dukakis-in-the-tank moments during his campaign that he knocked the original out of the top five. Remember him “working” at McDonald’s? Driving the garbage truck with his panda-face makeup?
But it is interesting that the Wall Street Journal published it.
Bupalos
@Betty Cracker: No I take that as intended and thank you for the generosity. I think what I am is too careless and theoretical with language and (ridiculously) operate as if I’ll naturally be taken as meaning nothing particular and personal. You read me as dishonestly accusing you of dehumanization. That’s how it reads if you’re not an over theoretical moron assuming the internet is a disembodied depersonalized nirvana of friendly platonics trying ideas out on each other.
frosty
@rikyrah: Take a rest and don’t make targets of yourselves. This old bald fat white guy will pick up the fight.
WereBear
@TS: I prefer “Come with us if you want to live.”
Splitting Image
@tobie:
The emerging split seems to be between young men and young women. I think that young women will remain in the Democratic coalition because their lives and liberty depend on it.
A disturbingly large share of young men seem to be abandoning the idea of democracy because it took away their right to have their very own marital slave.
Glory b
@Matt McIrvin: Although Pittsburgh had a share of older people, the protesters I saw (they marched past my daughter’s apartment building) were mostly young, college aged.
This was the case even though there was a splinter protest in the neighborhood of Oakland, home to Pitt, CMU, Carlow and next door to Chatham.
One large one (although the one downtown was pretty big) would have been my preference, but I wasn’t in charge.
Conor Lamb was the main speaker downtown, with the crowd chanting for him to primary Fetterman.
Oh, the irony.
Bupalos
@What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?: I’d argue he also has the eve of a near genius for when people and systems have been compromised and will not be able to employ the tools they’re thinking they can rely on. Or when they themselves have been lying and won’t be able to drop their lie to combat his.
Professor Bigfoot
@rikyrah: This, exactly.
For me it’s “white folks got us into this, we can only hope they’ll dig us out of it,” and yesterday’s protests were a grand thing to see.
But I remain convinced that white folks will shake hands over our dead bodies and move on.
(obligatory “not all white people”)
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Baud:
I really think it’s location dependent.
I’ve said previously that the 5051 rally here in Denver was heavily Hispanic (and then predominantly Mexican) for the first 3-4 hours. There were Denver pohlice, no friend of POC by a long shot given their history, but it wasn’t intrusive, threatening, anything.
Yesterday’s rally, as I mentioned, was overwhelmingly white and older and no difference in terms of the pohlice.
Now, the BLM protests/riot of which we went during the day but my wife dragged me away before things got outta hand, that was a different story. You literally could tell the people there during the daytime that were gonna be there that night and start the shitshow.
Baud
@Bupalos:
False. I’m blameless. As are most of us here.
Betty Cracker
@What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?: Rachel Maddow explored the origins of Trump’s economic policies here. Starts around the 6 minute mark. It’s remarkably dumb.
I agree the extortion angle Murphy outlined would appeal to Trump — everything we know about his predatory instincts supports that. I don’t think he necessarily understands or particularly gives a shit about tech lord dreams of a Dark Enlightenment age or Christian nationalist hegemony forever.
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
We’ve been in a sorry state for a while in a lot of ways, but this is just another way of saying they’re taking us for granted.
IMHO, the reality is, young white dudes don’t like competing in the job market with women and minorities any more than their dads and granddads did.
p.a.
The best thing come election time these protests could accomplish for normies is to tie tRump, Mush, and Republicans into one big “Party of fuckups” package. The more politically involved will have their reasons and targets, but to overcome incumbency, gerrymander, judicial and legislative shenanigans, normies need targets that are actually gettable in the midterms. The House & Senate survivalists will attempt to decouple from the admin, but they must not be allowed to. How is above my political competence… and maybe the paradox comes into play again: work with the survivalists to mitigate the damage (I haven’t looked at my IRA & 401 in a week) and you risk the survivalists winning enough ti keep the whole bunch of fuckups in the majority.
RevRick
@Bupalos: Trump is stupid. But stupidity is not about intelligence. It’s about a web of beliefs that refuses to accept contrary reality. And Trump’s stupidity, reinforced by his obvious malignant narcissicism, is based on three elements:
1). He was trained to believe that there’s no such thing as a mutually beneficial transaction. Real relationships are unreal to him. There are only winners and losers;
2). The only measure of happiness in life is money. I get $, I win. I have to pay you for something, I lose;
3). Only chumps pay for stuff.
His whole obsession with tariffs, dating back to the 1980s, is just those three elements writ large in national terms. And his coddled life experience just reinforces his beliefs.
Throw in his clear white male supremacy stupidity, and that’s a national stupidity, and he sees the world as a place where we should rightfully dominate and force others to bow to our wishes. And he has a huge audience that fully buys into his stupidity.
Shalimar
@Baud: Amen
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Geminid:
Here in Denver, the pro-Palestinian folks weren’t big but they were loud. They had a pick up truck with a PA in the back parked on the street fronting the west side of the Capitol and their PA was easily louder than the formal setup at the base of the Capitol behind me.
They had some adherents in the crowd, not all young. One guy probably my age stood in front of me with a Palestinian flag that I spent half an hour keeping out of my face.
Another guy, also my age, came up the steps before it got too jammed (and the people in the truck ran out of battery power for the PA) and I heard him saying as he walked by going up to the formal stage “I didn’t come here for a Hamas rally”.
One of the people in the bed of the truck made the proclamation that we as a society are run by “a Zionist death cult”. Ah, rally language!
Steve LaBonne
@Professor Bigfoot: The hope is that this time, for one of the very few times in American history, enough of our own oxen are being gored that more of us will finally get the picture. I’m not going to say I’m wildly optimistic but neither will I give up hope.
Glory b
@Bupalos: I can’t say anything about other groups, but black people have been urging each other to STAY HOME and let the white people figure it out.
One thing, WE KNOW that Trump can’t wait to declare martial law and he’d do it if there were more than 3 black faces in a crowd.
I remain convinced that this was the plan, ealier, he hoped to fire up the 1/6 crowds, expecting that BLM counter protesters would show up. He’d declare martial law and figure out a way to stay in office.
Fortunately, black people in DC stayed home then too.
Raoul Paste
@Splitting Image: “ Remember him “working” at McDonald’s? Or driving a garbage truck….”
Pictures all destined for the Trump presidential library.
Shalimar
@Matt McIrvin: They’re about to see how much democracy was accomplishing for them when Republicans take a lot of it away. We will see how November 2026 goes after that.
p.a.
I try telling teh youngs cynicism & defeatism are self-fulfilling prophecies, and there won’t be any Social Security unless they fight for it too, but…🤷🏻♂️
Who was it said “cynicism is wasted on the young”?
frosty
@Suzanne: I called everyone yesterday too – voicemail. Reminded McCormick and Smucker that they swore an oath to the Constitution that says Trump doesn’t have authority on tariffs unless they give it to him. Called Fetterman and got the message that his office’s working hours are M-F. That’s a new one!
Next call will be spicier: “Did you run for office to watch your branch of government be emasculated by a narcissistic conman? Do your job!”
Bupalos
@sab: We’ll that could be, sure. But I guess I think all the evidence says while his intelligence is wildly imbalanced, and I do believe it’s practically impossible for him to (for instance) read junior-high level text with comprehension, overall he’s well above average in intelligence. Meaning he can see things about the way systems will operate that the vast majority of us can’t. Without assuming that he really knew quite how well all of this would work, there probably weren’t 1000 people in the United States that understood in 2015 just how vulnerable we were. He did. The guy can smell rot.
lowtechcyclist
@Baud:
Next try saying it in Baby Shark.
frosty
@Jackie: 2,000 at the Villages! All looking at each other and saying “I didn’t know there was anyone else like me here.”
Unless they’re secretly in a cabal like Valued Commenter DAW.
JML
The fact that the protests yesterday were damn near everywhere is really key, I think. If it’s only in the larger cities, it’s easy for the media to ignore and just frame it up as more urban v rural combat, and enable the racists the pretend it’s only minorities stirring up trouble. When towns of 15K or so have protests with 1000 people showing up all over the damn place it’s much harder to ignore.
Keep up the pressure. Keep the blame exactly where it belongs: the Current Occupant and the GOP.
Nukular Biskits
Local TV station actually reported on yesterday’s march in Gulfport:
Hundreds march Gulfport for ‘Hands Off’ rally protesting Trump administration
The local mullet wrapper, The Sun Herald, however, has nary a mention.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@frosty:
Don’t be surprised if the answer is “yes”. It’s a feature, not a bug to them.
45 years ago the assault on public education started in earnest. Two, possibly three or more generations of people, many of whom lack critical thinking skills are signing in, signing up … and voting.
Or worse, running for office.
And no, this isn’t an criticism of public education as an institution or the people involved; I’m one of the louder and stauncher supporters here, none of this it’s good “in theory” crap I’ve seen stated here on occasion.
It’s a statement about the consistent right wing attempts to slowly strangle it and how that’s made consistent, large-scale, good outcomes problematic and resulted in right wing clowns running for office and forgetting/ignoring what their office actually represents.
RevRick
@p.a.: Sen. Paul Rand,* of all people, sees the danger of tariff hikes as spelling just such a disaster. The two biggest electoral thumpings the GOP has ever suffered were following the McKinley tariffs of 1890, which led to the Panic of 1893 – dumped in Grover Cleveland’s lap and Smoot-Hawley of 1930 – which led to the worst two-cycle losses in American history.
*I cannot believe I’m citing Rand Paul, but stopped clock and all that.
Geminid
@Glory b: As you say, the cheers for Conor Lamb to primary Fetterman are ironic. Big John is making steady Conor look better and better.
But I wonder if Fetterman will run for reelection in 2028. He’s not that healthy physically, and he doesn’t seem to like politics that much. Fetterman may be a one-and-done like Senator Jim Webb of Virginia.
sab
@Glory b: I absolutely agree with you that martial law is Trump’s plan for third term. And he can only do that if Black people protest. The George Floyd protests were pretty peaceful until the young white supremicists got involved in counter protests and property damage (and murder), that got blamed on Black Lives Matter and not the actual perps.
lowtechcyclist
@Baud:
Because of course they did.
Fuck the Constitution, fuck the truth, the only thing that matters to them is loyalty to Dear Leader.
schrodingers_cat
@Glory b: This immigrant follows the lead of black people, especially black women when it comes to politics.
They are the moral center of our politics.
They are smart,pragmatic and tough.
So I am staying home until next year’s midterms. After the year of hell that was 2024 I need a break.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@RevRick:
Yunno, if one of *the*, downright evil Senators in US history, that would be Moscow Mitch, along with one of the worst policy wise, are gonna help with this mainly because they’re concerned about KY bourbon sales to CA, well, we allied with Stalin once.
All of this is at least technically in keeping with Paul’s glibertarian nonsense. Again, any port in a storm.
Now I need to take a long hot shower.
Matt McIrvin
@JML: The main MAGA response to them on social media so far seems to be to claim they’re all “paid protesters” or just toss out generalized insults. It’s what you say when you’ve got nothing.
Jackie
@Raoul Paste:
Other than MAGAts and FFOTUS kin… who will visit? IF he even creates one.
Quiltingfool
@rikyrah: White people caused this mess, white people need to fix it.
Professor Bigfoot
@Bupalos: Ah, yes, “it was the Black people who switched to him that caused us to be in this mess.”
White dudes. Y’all a damn trip.
Nukular Biskits
@Quiltingfool:
Not this white person but I get your point and I don’t disagree.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@JML:
We were making that same point last night. It’s one thing for “blue” Denver to rally round the proverbial flag at these things but all the reports from places of the kind I know all too well, is not only good for showing support but knowing you’re not alone.
And believe me, after living in red, rurl Misery for 22+ years and joking there were only 10 Dems in the county, that’s important.
sab
@RevRick: Bourbon. Other countries make fine whisky/whiskey. Only Kentucky makes bourbon. All those bourbon drinkers will switch and develop new drinking habits. They won’t come back.
schrodingers_cat
@Bupalos: Prove it or STFU.
Geminid
@Glory b: I remember D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser warning people to stay away from the January 6 rally. A smart woman.
Bupalos
@RevRick: we’ll now we’re into the semantics of intelligence. I don’t disagree with your 3 elements there, they are indeed driving this bus. I guess I’m just not sure that those kind of dysfunctions or monomaniacal settled points of the soul somehow equate to stupidity. Was Hitler stupid? I think calling him stupid is a kind of infantilizing sooth for our own psychological purposes.
Trump indeed loves tariffs because they are an expression of his zero-sum worldview. Does that mean they aren’t consonant with a deeper plan that goes well beyond (in fact has practically nothing to do with) the supposed reindustrialization of the Midwest?
Hitler did indeed hate Jews. That didn’t make him stupid. That hatred was actually part of a deep monomaniacal thought he had rather similar to Trump’s, and similarly about how the world works in the deepest sense. It’s maybe neither right nor wrong to say this made Hitler “stupid.” I’m more interested in how invested people are (and were then too) about denying the intelligence.
schrodingers_cat
@sab: Tastes like charcoal. I prefer gin.
Jackie
@Geminid:
I think so, too. If Lamb chooses to run, he’ll have a good chance, I think.
Matt McIrvin
@Glory b: And on the other hand, people like me figure that because we’re the ones the cops or the military are least likely to shoot, we have a responsibility to stick our necks out. It’s long past time.
Have we got this? I have no idea whether we’ve got this. But it’s worth a try.
Quiltingfool
Yeah, makes me itchy too. Like white protesters are “oh, so nice!” but black protesters are violent. Yeah, right. White people can be extremely violent, as Black folk know all too well.
UncleEbeneezer
@tobie: Right? People who use their passion for issue X to justify not voting, spreading apathy and BothSides bullshit false equivalences, and are willing to throw all of our progress/rights under the bus are assholes. I don’t care how passionate they are about their pet issue. Whether they are white people, white women, gay men etc. we constantly call out and deride that bullshit for what it is. But when they are young people suddenly it’s fine and justified and we need to listen/understand where they are coming from etc. They get the same patronizing defense that the media gives rural white voters. We are told how progressive these young voters are (hooray) but then we gloss over the fact that so many of them simply can’t be bothered to do the right thing when it matters (unless Dems take unelectable positions on impossibly complex issues). They will “fight” when fighting means protesting, shouting shit about Biden/Harris/Dems/America/Zionists etc., knowing damn well that Biden/Harris wouldn’t weaponize our justice system against them (now that there are real stakes, notice how they don’t want to protest anymore). When “fighting” means doing the boring work of supporting and electing Dems, meh…they have no interest. I tried for eight years to get more young people involved in local organizing and it’s downright depressing how disinterested everyone was. They don’t seem to understand that unless we protect Democracy we will see horrific results on EVERY issue (including Gaza). I wish I could say I have some confidence that they will fight for Democracy, LGBTQ Rights, Black Lives, Abortion, Social Security, the environment etc., but hell, half the time they won’t even VOTE to protect those things.
sab
@schrodingers_cat: Really? My late unlamented grandmother drank gin. We always knew there would be an explosian. The question was always when not if she would explode into drunk anger.
No aspersions on you, but I have never even tasted gin because of her.
Geminid
@Jackie: Former Rep. Conor Lamb is only 40 years old, so he’ll be in the 2028 mix if he wants to be.
different-church-lady
@Baud: Hitler succeeded at it, but it wasn’t because he was trying.
Raoul Paste
@Jackie: Of course, I’m joking about the Trump presidential library. But I can see him raising the funds for a presidential library, and then just keeping the money
lowtechcyclist
@Matt McIrvin:
The New Deal largely excluded minorities. Anything comparable in the past 50 years would have had to include them. Need I say more?
After 2008, we did what we could. We impressively shrank the fraction of Americans who didn’t have health insurance, and did away with that whole ‘pre-existing condition’ bullshit. And Biden got us full employment (and then some!) and strengthened labor unions’ ability to stand up for their workers. That wasn’t nothing.
But inevitably, buy-in from the proverbial ‘white working class’ depended on avoiding even the appearance of aiding ‘undeserving’ minorities, and for the past half-century, that’s limited what we could do.
Matt McIrvin
@frosty:
Some of them may have been Trump voters.
Matt McIrvin
@Quiltingfool: As stated earlier in thread, the mass property destruction in the George Floyd protests was largely started by white, far-right “Boogaloo Bois” getting in on the action, either as false-flag operations or (more often I think) because they were just dumbasses seeking to start shit.
schrodingers_cat
@Matt McIrvin:
I don’t agree with this premise.
different-church-lady
I see the thing is back.
frosty
That sums it up nicely.
Bupalos
@Baud: The conflation of blame and responsibility is the whole issue here.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@frosty: It can be hard to find one another. You have to listen for clues.
Matt McIrvin
@UncleEbeneezer: This isn’t exclusive to Gen Z.
I keep thinking about something I saw online during the second George W. Bush administration, when discontent with the War on Terror was high. Ron Paul announced his candidacy for President, and I recall seeing one leftist note that he knew perfectly well that Ron Paul would wreck America and turn it into a racist, reactionary hermit kingdom… but he was still tempted, because the end of American Empire was almost, almost worth all of that.
That was before much of Gen Z was even born. That guy was probably Gen X or Millennial. I think the whole Greenwald/Assange/Wikileaks axis was thinking along similar lines as they gradually went MAGA–supporting an isolationist neo-reactionary movement to wreck the Empire.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Matt McIrvin: I saw one young woman on tiktok smiling smugly and saying that when the protests were over, Trump would still be president
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Geminid: And some of the loonier lunatics still claim Jan 6 was a set up. It was really antifa
New Deal democrat
@Matt McIrvin: This is an important point.
When 100 or 1,000 or 10,000 people show up in total grass roots fashion, it does two important things. The first is that it reassures each person who showed up that they are not alone.
As to the second, where I was there were an estimated 1,500 people lined up on both sides and in the median strip of the main boulevard in town. Several thousand cars drove through during the 2 hours of the demonstration. Aside from the honkers and wavers I am sure that at least half had no idea whatsoever in advance that a demonstration was going to take place. Many of those people probably saw the 1,000+ of their neighbors protesting what has been happening and realized that they too are not alone, but are part of a very large and congealing force.
Professor Bigfoot
As far as I’m concerned, you win the thread (as if there were such a thing!) today, Rev. This is exactly what I see, too.
Quiltingfool
Russian people have had a boot on their neck for centuries. White Americans, not so much.
Another contrast? American is awash with guns. Serious gun culture. If authoritarianism is going to succeed, gonna have to take away the guns. That will be LIT.
frosty
@Geminid: I think Fetterman liked politics just fine when he was Mayor and Lt Governor. I don’t think he likes being a legislator. I was surprised when he ran for Senate instead of Governor. I thought the latter would have been a better fit.
Bupalos
@schrodingers_cat: I don’t think it’s at all controversial. Here’s a discussion of demographic voting shifts in the states that decided the election.
UncleEbeneezer
@Matt McIrvin: They literally just saw Democracy accomplish (partial, attempted, thwarted) Student Loan Forgiveness, the biggest/best Green Energy legislation in US history and the first (but obviously limited) gun regulation bill in decades. In their lifetime they saw gay marriage codified by the Supreme Court (something that would not have happened id Republicans had filled every one of those SCOTUS seats). In States like CA, MA, etc., the list of deliverables from Democracy is even more impressive. Anyone who says Democracy hasn’t shown them any positive results is just not paying enough attention, lacks a long-term perspective, or willfully refuses to see wins that we have achieved. Every day Trump reverses great policies put in place by Biden, Obama, Clinton, and the liberal SCOTUS that Dems put in place etc. Only people who take those gains for granted, don’t see them.
frosty
@Matt McIrvin: Sign I saw yesterday: “I’m not paid, I’m PISSED!”
Matt McIrvin
@New Deal democrat: I saw a lot of people drive through ours with supportive signs *in their cars*, displayed prominently in the windows. I didn’t expect that. One lady in a Sox hat rolled down her window and started cheering and waving her fist. A semi drove down Washington Street blowing its air horn.
And, as I mentioned, there were a couple of MAGAs trying to clap back, but they were vastly outnumbered by the signs of support.
munira
I’m old and white as were the majority of people out with me yesterday – and no, we did not cause this problem – we’ve been fighting against this jerk since he appeared on the scene and against these policies since the 60’s. However, speaking for myself, I’m happy to be the one out there now while people who are more vulnerable stay home.
dc
@prostratedragon:
If the NYPD were surprised, then we know what media bubble they live in. They believed that there was no resistance because Fox news says so and because there wasn’t a giant women’s march the day after inauguration. There’s been resistance organizing since Nov. 6. It’s not the same as the first go round because we are not then, we are now.
chemiclord
@Professor Bigfoot: Oh, there is always going to be a massive segment of white people who are going to vote for white supremacy no matter what. Anyone who gets offended by that truth is someone who merely needs to lose their sense of shame in order to join the white supremacists with a full throat.
The sane white people need to start showing up and shouting them down; not just at events like this, but every single damn time they open their mouths, and especially when it comes time to vote for government offices, even if it means putting aside our precious purity and voting for people who aren’t entirely in line with our economic platforms.
Timill
A little something for the morning: Bridget the Cat goes time travelling through art
[spoiler: she turned up safe and sound]
sab
@RevRick: Even senators have stock portfolios. I have always thought that insider trading was the main appeal for Republicans running for Senate. They come in moderately wealthy and leave filthy rich.
Steve LaBonne
@Matt McIrvin: All those things happened in my town as well. It was gratifying.
Matt McIrvin
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Hell, one of the main stories about Trump over the past few days has been discussion of his inevitable mutterings about serving a third term. With the assumption that the term limit is the only thing keeping him from doing that, and not, you know, democratic response to him fucking everything up. Either Trump is going to pull off a miracle like he claims he will… or votes just won’t matter.
frosty
I’m not sure. If they co-opt the gun owners (which they pretty much have already done) then they can keep their guns and use them in support of the authoritarians.
Matt McIrvin
@sab: I do think that some business moguls like recessions because even if they lose money on paper, they get to push people around. My wife noticed that when all the predictions of a Biden recession were going around a couple of years ago, some CEOs were publicly salivating about it, saying their lazy entitled workers were going to learn a lesson.
But what Trump’s doing here is in a whole other category. They were imagining just a downturn where they’d get to lay a lot of people off.
lowtechcyclist
@UncleEbeneezer:
The U.S. government is anti-Hamas, and actively supports an Israeli government that’s anti-Hamas. Why would pro-Palestinian protesters protest against U.S. policy with respect to Hamas?
And if not against the U.S. government, exactly who would they be protesting against, and what would be their demand? What power on this side of the ocean is aiding Hamas, that we could demand that it cease and desist?
Give me something to work with here.
They Call Me Noni
@PAM Dirac: And then, if they are anything like my gray cohorts, they went under the bleachers at the football field and smoked a joint.
zhena gogolia
@DougL: This is where I am as well.
zhena gogolia
@Gin & Tonic: Yeah!
Since you’re so fond of Duke, have you followed the controversy about how they’re using Duke merch in The White Lotus?
RevRick
@Bupalos: Stupidity has nothing to do with basic intelligence. Brilliant people can be stupid. Among other things, stupidity requires arrogance and inflexibility. When Trump boasted that he knew better than all the generals that was the epitome of a stupid statement.
I would recommend that you read Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s astute essay on stupidity. After all, he faced it up close and personal in Nazi Germany.
The Thin Black Duke
@Professor Bigfoot: Thank you. It’s so damned tiresome.
Quiltingfool
@Nukular Biskits:
You and I know what it’s like to be surrounded by white people who voted for and support this mess. WE didn’t vote for this, but since we all look alike (lol), we will all be collectively blamed.
I suspect Black folk know exactly how that feels.
Matt McIrvin
@dc: I was frustrated by how many of the “why no protests” stories ignored that it was 10 degrees Fahrenheit outside with snowstorms in a bunch of Eastern cities. I’m pretty sure that the weather had been more temperate in January 2017.
Bupalos
@Professor Bigfoot: If “the mess” is simply the election of the orange pustule in 2024 (which it isn’t)…. +dem margins among black men in the key states cratered from 2020-2024. Which meant blacks as a whole supplied more of the marginal votes for Trump (meaning difference from 2020) than whites. Who gave slightly more support to black woman Harris than they had to white man Biden.
A point I offer only to suggest we aren’t really doing meaningful politics when we engage in the ethnic slice-n-dice.
Nukular Biskits
@New Deal democrat:
This.
I would have (probably) marched all by my lonesome yesterday as that is my nature/flaw but it sure felt good to see hundreds of other like-minded Mississippians there.
Nukular Biskits
@Quiltingfool:
Agree. And that’s human nature, I suppose.
If I were to happen upon yesterday’s march in Gulfport and didn’t know the purpose or couldn’t read the signs, my first inclination would be to assume it was a pro-Trump march based solely on the demographics of the majority of the attendees: older & white.
And I would have been wrong.
Matt McIrvin
@frosty: I was looking at the YouTube chat on the live feed of the Washington DC protest. There were a bunch of haters there and all they could really do was seize on racist or misogynistic stereotypes–when someone with a foreign accent was on, they’d go on about their “bad grammar”; when a woman was on they made fat jokes.
It all seemed really tired. I think if they see a bunch of aged white people who look like stereotypical Trump voters, but are protesting, all they can really do is claim they’re paid shills. They can’t seize onto any of their other lazy shtick.
Westyny
@NotMax: Where are you seeing that? I’m not seeing futures posting yet. The -2300 is from Friday’s bloodbath.
lowtechcyclist
@What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?:
This. It’s just a variation on the numerous negotiations with contractors that he’s had over the years. It might’ve taken him all of ten seconds to grasp this idea once someone suggested it to him, assuming he didn’t see it on his own.
Interesting Name Goes Here
@Bupalos: But it’s OK for you to engage in it to absolve yourself of your culpability, right?
Please stop. It’s too early to be drinking.
different-church-lady
@Professor Bigfoot: Goddamn, let’s just ignore that incessant human static generator, shall we?
different-church-lady
@Interesting Name Goes Here:
STOP SAYING THAT OUT LOUD.
lowtechcyclist
@Bupalos:
Ho-kay.
Matt McIrvin
@Nukular Biskits: I was honestly expecting that the protest in my town might be 10 people standing at the intersection with picket signs, like a lot of the protests I see around here. Best case, maybe there was a little rally going on in the parking lot of the strip mall there. But they were lined up along both sides of the street for blocks, all the way from the river up past the courthouse and the public library. The line ended right at the ballot drop box outside City Hall.
lowtechcyclist
@Splitting Image:
What a weird notion, thinking of women as people rather than things.
They might should try that sometime. If not, in the words of George Carlin, unfuck ’em.
different-church-lady
@Quiltingfool:
Hey, you know what? If that’s as close as this whitey ever gets to knowing the kind of shit blacks have to put up with every goddamn day of their lives, I’ll fuckin’ absorb that.
Betty
@Geminid: I think he wants out. The stroke did a lot of damage and he doesn’t like D. C. or the criticism he has been getting. He might stay out of ego, but maybe his family could convince him to come home. I would love to see Madelyn Dean run for that seat. She gets a fair amount of news coverage and is very good on the issues that matter to me.
different-church-lady
@lowtechcyclist: Man, that sea lion has quite a vocabulary.
Nukular Biskits
@Matt McIrvin:
Quite frankly, I wasn’t sure what to expect here. I know I’m not alone here in MS but when I turned the corner onto 13th Street here in Gulfport, I was completely taken aback at the number of folks.
And that made me happy.
Melancholy Jaques
@UncleEbeneezer:
Really? I thought it was all Joe Biden’s fault. I’m sure that’s what I read & heard for a whole year. There was a magic switch in the Oval Office & all Biden had to do was flip it & peace would be restored.
I wonder why none of them have asked Trump to flip that switch.
BritinChicago
@Baud: “There have been a lot of comparisons between Trump and Hitler over the years, but at least Hitler didn’t try to destroy the German economy.”
Hitler’s policies were extremely good for the German economy (he put a strong version of Keynesianism into practice before the theory was there). Even though I’ve lost a lot of money, and lots of people have suffered and will suffer much more badly than I am, I’m glad that Trump is acting as he is, because that presumably (surely?) means that he will become so unpopular that we may be able to get rid of Trumpism, in spite of their using the power they have to tilt the electoral board even more than it already is tilted. (If not, we’re really in trouble.)
zhena gogolia
@Baud: Amen, brother.
Lobo
@RevRick: I saw this at LGM The Three Pillars of Trumpian Wisdom.
RaflW
@Betty Cracker: “Lots of gray hair among the protests I saw. Maybe it’s a Florida thing? Or maybe Social Security really is the third rail that will electrocute anyone dumb enough to touch it.”
Pics I saw from the massive (20-25K) rally in St Paul, MN yesterday had a ton of older white ladies (some of them are my friends, and I’m having to admit I’m starting to pass as an older white man now).
This reflects some of the demographics of liberalism in MN, but it’s also, I think, a signal that the 52,000,000 Americans getting Social Security retirement benefits are worried and more than that, pissed.
Republicans in the House may all be ‘over’ Democracy, but the result will be their removal, not our capitulation.
Geminid
@frosty: Giselle Fetterman said something interesting to a Washington Post reporter during his Senate campaign; that her husband is an introvert. I had not thought of Fetterman that way, but it makes sense and I think she would know.
Now, “introvert” is a relative term and I think there have been successful politicians who were introverts. But they seem like exceptions to the norm.
Fetterman’s mental makeup is just one part of the picture. Like I said, he does not seem like a physically healthy man, even with a pacemaker. And his father is wealthy, and he supported the son financially when he was mayor of Braddock. These are reasons I think there is a good chance Fetterman won’t run for reelection in 2028.
tobie
@Matt McIrvin:
I think that sentiment is true for the online left. I don’t know if it’s true for those who depend on govt services from subsidized housing to SNAP benefits to Medicaid to Pell Grants to the protection of voting rights and civil rights. Granted if you have burdens that great, you’re not going to have time to protest.
We’re a complicated country. I wish there were some sense of the commons but the Reagan Revolution destroyed that.
BritinChicago
@artem1s: “Also he ‘saved’ the German economy by starting the Anschluss and locking up ‘communists’ and ‘enemies of the state’. They started with those parts of surrounding countries they deemed histroically ‘German’. And then grabbed the assets of the Jews and others so they could start up the war machine to invade Poland and the other countries that didn’t join voluntarily.”
I think the factors you mention have very little to do with Hitler’s saving the German economy. That came mostly from enormous public spending, mostly on rearmament and on public works projects (the Autobahn system dates from the 1930s).
TS
@Quiltingfool:
After arming the country with their 2nd amendment rulings, when trump suggests that the guns have to go, will his SCOTUS support him? They really will have to tie themselves in knots for that one.
different-church-lady
2020: “Nothing’s gonna change in this country until old white folks are in the streets.”
TODAY: “These protests are too old and white.”
Melancholy Jaques
@BritinChicago:
That’s what I thought when he completely fucked up the response to COVID. Then I thought it again when he incited a violent attack on the Congress.
The idea that Trump – the living embodiment of white male grievance – will lose any popularity due to the harm he causes is a liberal fantasy. His supporters have lost friends & family for their devotion to him. They will never change.
different-church-lady
@BritinChicago:
It kinda doesn’t work like that.
different-church-lady
@Melancholy Jaques: The cult does not end until the cult leader is dead.
Glory b
@schrodingers_cat: We do!
Scout211
There are books coming out soon written by insiders from the Biden administration. The media and the right wing are already focusing on how Biden’s poor health and cognitive confusion were covered up. And these books do cover it, sadly. The first one I read about was Ron Klain’s book but this morning there is a right leaning opinion piece in USA Today listing other books coming out as well. And the only thing pre-publication that the media seems to be discussing is the coverup of Biden’s poor health mental confusion. This opinion writer is just livid that the Democrats lied and covered up his health problems and cognitive issues. She’s really mad, people!
Here’s my sincere wish: I hope that we don’t get caught up in the right wing/media spin about Biden’s health, again. It’s SOP with every White House to keep things like this from the public. Health issues, affairs, alcohol, etc. It’s an old story and the revelations in these tell all books only have legs here if we let them rattle us and possibly cause the great jackal Biden wars of 2024 to return.
And of course, the Trump team is not covering up anything, right? It’s only a scandal if Democrats do it.
I don’t recommend reading the opinion piece, but here it is.
Obviously I can’t control the commentary here, but I just wanted to give you all a heads up about what is coming in the next year. The right wing is in dire need of a distraction right now but I hope we don’t get caught up in it.
Professor Bigfoot
@frosty: They’ll want— need to take away our guns.
Just like the southern segregationists through the ‘40s, ‘50s, and ‘60s.
And as a side note, once again, if death squads ever come to this country they will be recruited from local police departments.
different-church-lady
@Scout211:
NARRATOR: “They got caught up in it.”
catothedog
@comrade scotts agenda of rage:
The assault on public education was a reactionary move against school integration/desegregation. Funding school by local taxes – rich white areas get more funding – is also the same game, except it assuages white liberal guilt of being explicitly racist.
It is a constant whining among Millennials/GenZ that their parents/grandparents could afford a house, a car and live a life of comfort on one income. Except that it was a lifestyle afforded mostly to white people then. The inherent racism in pining for that past does not matter a whit to them.
And that is exactly Project 2025. Make government work for white people – oligarchs and corporations rule, everyone will be net poorer, but white people will be better than everyone else. They think they can avoid the same mistake as 1920’s and avoid another FDR. (this is what orban is doing).
The jury is out on whether it will work – but my bet is that Millenial/GenZ whites will take the bargain
Spanky
@dc:
That would be the mayor and chief, not the beat cops. And we know what bubble Adams lives in.
different-church-lady
Oh, god, what a pity:
Matt McIrvin
@Nukular Biskits: One effect of this may be to change white people’s behavior in polite white-people company, because they won’t automatically assume that everyone around them is on the Trump Train.
During the lame-duck period and around the inauguration there was all this very insistent media talk about the Great Vibe Shift, how, yeah, we finally collectively decided MAGA was what we wanted, and society was going to have to make massive adjustments to that. Russell Vought’s “Second American Revolution”.
Part of the message was: if you’re not on the train, you better watch out. It’s not going to go personally well for you.
MAGA were openly saying this during the campaign, that Biden or Harris supporters had better get on board with Trump because we knew who you were, we knew who your family were, and there would be consequences. These open threats. (Sometimes they’d claim the secret ballot wasn’t really secret, but, you know, if you’re a registered Democrat and give donations to Act Blue with your name on them, it’s not exactly a secret how you lean anyway.)
So this kind of mass rejection of the whole thing by people who LOOK like they’d probably be Trump supporters, who could just pass if they kept quiet… that has extra weight.
Professor Bigfoot
I’m going to assume that in your white male arrogance you’re simply mistaken here.
different-church-lady
@Matt McIrvin:
That was an authoritarian threat, not a political observation. Anyone in the media who repeated it is complicit.
frosty
@Scout211: Thanks for the warning. If the jackaltariat starts this fight again I’ll be finished with reading comments for awhile… hey, I’d get a few hours of my day back! Win!
jonas
Funny how when you don’t show up in full tactical riot gear, shields, armored cars, etc. and start screaming at people and shoving them around, things stay pretty peaceful!
RaflW
@different-church-lady: Weren’t the media darlings astroturfed as the Tea Party old enough to be like 20% driving scooter chairs?
I’m very much in agreement with the folks on Bsky last night who were saying that this thing needs ‘cringe activism’ and lots of normies if it’s going to succeed in knocking back the Republicans.
Seeing retired couples yesterday strolling around together with signs as well as smiles for all the fellow protesters made me happy.
Bill Arnold
@Bupalos:
One of the asks by the Trump administration of Harvard this week was to ban mask-wearing at protests.
This is transparently saying that the Fascist forces (including at least one jewish org) are using and intending to increasingly use face recognition technologies to dox everyone (regardless of skin melanin levels) at every protest, so that they can attempt to ruin the lives of a subset of protesters to scare the others. (Plus phone location databases, etc.)
Young people are more aware of this, FWIW.
RaflW
@Scout211: “The media and the right wing are already focusing on how Biden’s poor health and cognitive confusion were covered up.”
OK. But here’s the hook: Use that, every damn day, to draw similarities to the decrepit old man in the White House now. His bizarre ramblings a few days ago about “groceries, there’s an old word, it’s things in bags!” should be exhibit A that his brain is swiss cheese.
different-church-lady
@Bill Arnold: I’m all for banning masks on the protestors — makes it easier to quickly spot the ICE goons.
different-church-lady
@RaflW: The double-standard is now just the standard.
Geminid
@Betty: Rep. Dean is a very solid politician. But she will be 68 in 2028, and might stay in her House seat rather than run for Senator.
Madeline Dean was a member of the House Class of 2018. That was a talented bunch. Two of them– Andy Kim and Elise Slotkin– are now U.S. Senators.
Two more– Mikie Sherrill and Abigail Spanberger– are running for governor this year, of New Jersey and Virginia respectively. Sherrill has a very good chance and I think Spanberger’s election is all but certain.
Class of 2018 member Chris Pappas (NH01) is running for Jean Shaheen’s Senate seat which next year, while in Maine Rep. Jared Golden is expected to run for governor.
Deb Haaland is running for New Mexico governor next year, and as Senator Ben Ray Luhan said: “Deb knows how to win.” Haaland may be the most impressive of a very impressive group. Her Wikipedia biography is well worth reading. It’s an inspiring story of resilience and determination..
sentient ai from the future
Republicans want to put a tax on cookies.
47% tariffs on vanilla. do you know of ANY cookies that dont have vanilla in them?
Redshift
I’m have to do some research, I think that prevents a vote cancelling the tariffs under the current law, but it doesn’t prevent what the Senate bill is doing, cancelling the “economic emergency”. I’m pretty confident it can’t prevent a bill to take back the tariff authority Congress delegated to the president, so the Republican Congress really could stop this at any moment.
Bill Arnold
@sab:
A (progressive) friend bought a Telsa several years ago, and has been despairing about it. Their weekend project this weekend was to put an Audi logo on the back. (Looks good.)
Suburban Mom
The youngs (now less young) who formerly resided at Chez Suburb are both in their thirties. They have occupied Wall Street, marched for Black Lives Matter, and women’s lives. They have protested the occupation of Gaza. They both stayed home yesterday. They have conventional jobs, partners, and one has a baby. When I asked my son if I needed to keep bail money handy, he said that he was working all week and he didn’t think anything that his dad and I got up to would involve exorbitant bail fees. This is a long way of saying that this feels like a generational choice, the kids don’t see a near-term resolution, and they are hunkering down for what comes next. It makes sense that we would step up to advocate on their behalf.
Splitting Image
@RaflW:
Trump’s decline is the only reason that Biden’s mental health was or is an issue. It’s the same playbook that the Republicans have been using for decades: attack the Democrat for the Republican candidate’s worst failing.
George W. Bush’s mental health wasn’t called into question (well, relatively speaking), but his patriotism was, so John Kerry had to become a draft dodger. Mitt Romney was one of the richest men ever to run for President, so Barack Obama had to become an out-of-touch elitist.
It’s the same show every time, and parroted by the same people.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@catothedog:
I’ve seen this play out in front of me after moving back to Denver. The pale blue tsunami of white, urban professionals coming from some lily white burb elsewhere support and enact policies using a lot of meaningless “progressive” language (they’ll use the word “equity” a million times when pushing for decidedly inequitable policies, just ask any POC here about that) that have a massive impact on POC. But since this crowd is exceedingly racially tone deaf, probably deliberately, they don’t see it. Don’t want to see it for the reason you outline.
Steve Gravelle
@Betty Cracker: Here’s the thing: given that (cheating at) golf is apparently the only thing he gives a shit about, why not start pointing out that he can’t even golf anymore? It’s stupid and trivial, which would make it a natural to be picked up by the media (social and otherwise), and so simple even a Trump supporter would get it: why can’t we see Trump golf? It would also really get under his skin, pointing out his “club championships” are actually participation trophies. I’ve seen only a couple cell phone clips shot from a distance of him actually “golfing,” but it’s obvious he can’t play. Sounds so stupid it just might work…
different-church-lady
@Splitting Image:
And we were so determined to kick that football that we practically begged Lucy to hold it for us.
different-church-lady
@Steve Gravelle: It’d probably be better to just say, “This is the same shit the Kims pull in North Korea.”
Baud
@Bupalos:
Your statement was backward looking, so the two are the same.
I agree we all have responsibility to fight Trump.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@RaflW:
Commenters who say “white people caused this, it’s now up to white people to fix this” might actually see two things that might shock the generic “white people” label into action. One is your Social Security scenario.
The other is the stock market crash. I was standing in the midst of the Denver rally yesterday and wondering how many tens of millions of dollars in lost 401K assets were represented by the people there.
Combine those two and who knows, maybe “white people”, or at least the slice approachable by the left, will act in a way so many commenters think/hope they will.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@TS:
This Court hasn’t found a knot too extreme for them to tie.
different-church-lady
@Baud: No no no, Baud, the important thing here is that we figure out who to blame.
Bill Arnold
@DougL:
Counterpoint: Democraphics do not vote!. Individuals do!
E.g. in a tight race, a black man’s vote for the GOP counts precisely as much as a white man’s vote for the GOP.
With rare exceptions, all demographics have room for intra-demographic pressure.
Nukular Biskits
@different-church-lady:
That’s easy: We blame Baud.
schrodingers_cat
@sab: I am not much of a drinker. But I am make a great martini or a gimlette,
different-church-lady
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: I’m still brought up short by the idea that waiting for white people to do the right thing is a plan that’s gonna work.
different-church-lady
@Nukular Biskits: Well, then it’s vital we get Baud elected.
Professor Bigfoot
@different-church-lady: We ain’t got nothin’ else.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: This.
FWIW, my demographic in India which is akin to the WASP demographic here is also like that. Unearned privilege makes people shitty and they are blissfully unaware of it.
Nukular Biskits
@different-church-lady:
Agreed. Now, what should be his platform?
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@different-church-lady:
Heh heh, it’s why I used the word “maybe”.
WereBear
@Dorothy A. Winsor: I want a leather jacket with Hell’s Grannies embroidered on the back.
Bill Arnold
@UncleEbeneezer:
Where is this being reported? The reports I’ve been seeing are of thousands, not tens of thousands.
tobie
We are feisty this morning! Thanks @Betty Cracker: for the diary and for launching the discussion.
Does anyone here follow Sean Casten on BlueSky or Mastodon? He had a brilliant thread this morning on why the model of a judge should not be an apolitical high priest of the law.
schrodingers_cat
@different-church-lady: I am pretty glad that they are old and white. That is the core R voting demographic.
Melancholy Jaques
@different-church-lady:
Not even then. See, e.g., Robert E Lee.
The Thin Black Duke
Getting back to a point a BJer made earlier, the deciding factor in these protests gaining traction are the people seeing their 401Ks, pensions, retirement accounts, etc., directly and immediately impacted by Trump’s idiotic tariffs. Biden’s fingerprints aren’t on this crime scene, it’s Trump’s.
Geminid
@tobie: Sean Casten: another member of the House Class of 2018!
That’s the first set of Democratic House members I followed closely, and I’m really glad I did. I was particularly interested in the forty who flipped Republican seats that year; Sean Casten was one of them.
narya
Best sign I saw yesterday was actually a huge embroidery; it said “I’m so angry I stitched this just so I could stab something 3,000 times.” It was by Shannon Downey, an activist/creative who wrote “Let’s Move the Needle: An Activism Handbook for Artists, Crafters, Creatives, and Makers; Build Community and Make Change!”
Ksmiami
@Dorothy A. Winsor: fuck her
Baud
@narya:
Nice.
artem1s
One reason there was a giant women’s march in 2017 is because millions of women all over the world were already planning to celebrate what we’d been waiting all our lives to see – the US finally join the civilized nations of the world who could elect a woman to it’s highest office.
Those who had reservations in DC since before 11/9 decided they wanted to do something with them despite their disappointment. So THE March happened in a way that even those who took part couldn’t imagine. The DC part of the march was just the most visible and it was in stark contrast to the weak MAGAt turn out the day before.
I think Fox did assume smaller numbers mean less people upset or that they were defeated. But I think most people understood from the beginning that this was going to take longer and that pacing ourselves is important. And we learned back in 2017-2020 there are multiple ways to resist. BLM marches were the most visible and probably largest protests during the first reign of terror. But those marches were bookends – Women’s march in the beginning and BLM near the end. It wasn’t giant crowds protesting the whole 4 years.
I also think there is going to be some significant tag teaming this time. When one group needs to or decides to step back, another will step up. The rolling chaos is actually helping to sustain the resistance. And the GOP is stuck in the middle trying not to upset the Giant Toddler in Chief on the one hand and keep the mob at bay all at the same time.
frosty
@schrodingers_cat: Try a French 75. It was our Gateway Cocktail to a pandemic hobby of mixology.
different-church-lady
@Ksmiami: Well, she’s not wrong.
But fuck her anyway.
Ruckus
@Betty Cracker:
Or maybe Social Security really is the third rail that will electrocute anyone dumb enough to touch it.
Many old farts rely on Social Security for their survival, especially at a time when it may barely be enough for them to hang on. For many of us old, retired farts it may be the third rail. You know the one with the power. Sure many have reasonable pensions. But many is not all. Many of us old, retired farts survive on a fund we paid into for decades, a fund designed to be a pension for those that did not have one from their job(s) or unions they didn’t belong to. It is OUR money, we earned it, by providing to the fund from our wages so that those before us could prosper. And survive.
And now it is OUR turn. It is a much, no, extremely necessary tool for millions so that they can survive reasonably in their later years. We paid into it for decades so that others could survive and that we would be able to as well. Some of the wealthy seemingly do not like that millions get to survive from money they paid into the fund for decades while they lose some tiny percentage of their vast fucking wealth.
Are people mad about this? If they know about it, I’d bet every last one of them are. I’m one of them. I paid into Social Security for 60 years of work. (started young, worked into my 70s) It’s my fucking money. I earned it.
catclub
@different-church-lady: First of all. it is _whom_ to blame.
Ruckus
@RevRick:
BINGO. Nail hit squarely on the head.
Soprano2
@Bupalos: I think of FFOTUS as cunning. I’ve known other people like that, they aren’t what we would call book learning smart but they’re cunning about some things. My husband noticed a long time ago that he would say something and watch the crowd reaction to decide whether to say it again. He’s smart about stuff like that, and about how to manipulate people.
Betty Cracker
@Scout211: I read a long piece in Vanity Fair about the upcoming Biden admin tell-alls. The article doesn’t accuse the White House of a cover-up like the wingnut commentator did. But it does say they were in denial, and that rings true (speaking for myself, anyway). Dem insiders like Ron Klain, Bill Daley and associates of Biden’s closest advisors were raising the alarm before the debate.
Matt McIrvin
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
Well, he will. Herbert Hoover was president until 1933 too.
Wanna see how mad people can get?
different-church-lady
@Matt McIrvin:
No, not really. But we’re at the point where the only way out is through.
different-church-lady
@Betty Cracker:
Nothing does anything the way wingnut commentators do.
catclub
@Jackie:
Yeah, right. the same villages that were going to carry Florida for Harris. 30% is a lot of people but it is not a majority.
oldgold
@catclub:
Knock knock.
Who’s there?
To.
To Who?
To whom.
trollhattan
An estimated 5,000 showed up at the California Capitol yesterday. Good turnout, as that many folks will really clog things so there may have been even more who tried unsuccessfully.
Baud
@different-church-lady:
100%
Ruckus
@MagdaInBlack:
Wishing out loud?
I mean, you aren’t wrong, you are spot on!
catclub
@artem1s:
I would have said that Hitler took over when the unemployment rate was 47%, so no destroying was necessary.
Melancholy Jaques
@Betty Cracker:
How I wish these big time insiders would find another way to make a living then to dance on the political corpse of a good president & a good man.
Ruckus
@different-church-lady:
It kinda doesn’t work like that.
It REALLY DOESN’T WORK LIKE THAT.
Fixed it for you.
Soprano2
@Matt McIrvin: I saw that in comments on the local news story about the protest here. People were standing out in the cold rain here, so they think they’re being paid. I think it’s another confession. 😂😂
WTFGhost
What a lot of people miss about his bankrupting casinos, is, it was to squeeze money out of the casinos in salary and bonuses for for the family o’ assholes, as well as breaking contracts and cramming down smaller payments onto people who’d foolishly lent him money.
The reason his casinos went bankrupt was, he forced them all to buy notes that he had promised to cover personally; at that point, he wouldn’t have any economic cares if they went bankrupt, or made big bank, he was going to get paid, no matter what. He just had to be cunning about how he chose his debts (with an eye toward possible bankruptcy), and, of course, he had to keep the SEC from investigating whether he defrauded investors, but the SEC doesn’t ever seem to have the resources to find small-time malfeasance. Nowadays, it seems like all investigations into violations of the law occur until a Republican administration shows up, to administer apologies and make ridiculous lowball settlement offers.
So he protected himself, and hung investors out to dry – or, so one could argue, if one looked only at the above facts.
We don’t know if he could have made a casino rain down money, plenty of soup for everyone, he just got the biggest bowl. All evidence points to “no,” but, if one considers his habits of stiffing contractors, one has to consider the possibility that he could have made a casino profitable, and just didn’t want to.
catclub
What if they start with taking guns away from dangerous black people? Or dangerous Hispanic people?
Bill Arnold
@Bupalos:
So can a carrion beetle. (Though they are much more social than Mr. Trump.)
It’s a specialized skill, basically a collection of abilities some religious people personify as demonic.
He’s cosplaying as the Orange Antichrist in the Christian version of this framework; that little head (/avatar of the Beast) move that just happened to avoid a serious head wound was a basic [tr: divine being] combat move; his symbiotic demon was a wuss and deviated from Christian eschatology. (On camera!)
Immediately followed by a “fist pump” with a “stage fist” which looks ridiculous; surprised some Secret Service person hasn’t corrected his “fist” yet.
Evangelicals ate it up, though. An angel (def not fallen) deviated the bullet, etc.
The Thin Black Duke
@Soprano2: It’s depressing to think that these people can’t conceive of the idea of anyone voluntary inconveniencing themselves for free. Selfishness is what anchors their ideology.
different-church-lady
@Soprano2: Wait, there’s bad-weather compensation?
Ksmiami
@different-church-lady: she’s a dumb byotch who is unaware of what a grim future Trump is handing to the US. So double fuck her. I’m hoping Pete B or Pritzger becomes our next FDR
catclub
@sentient ai from the future:
The ones that use artificial vanilla extract? I cannot distinguish real and artificial extract at all.
Scout211
deleted
Ruckus
@RaflW
This reflects some of the demographics of liberalism in MN, but it’s also, I think, a signal that the 52,000,000 Americans getting Social Security retirement benefits are worried and more than that, pissed.
I’m one of them. This is my pension plan. It is everyone’s pension plan. It exists so that we can retire and live out our senior years in peace and rational, reasonable comfort. It isn’t theft from citizens it is a very reasonable retirement concept for ALL OF US, who are not rich. It is intended that we can live reasonably, not in the park freezing our asses off, and begging for food. But that takes away from their stunning piles of money that they worship. It makes rational sense, something they HATE. They do not want rational, they want MONEY. Not to spend too much of but to hoard over everyone else to show how great they are. Now that is NOT all wealthy people but it is those that live for wealth, not for living.
dww44
@Suburban Mom: The local event I attended was very diverse. And there were a good many younger folks and families, LGBTQ’s, even a young contingent of Democratic Socialists with their pre-ordered signs in this bluish dot in the middle of a purple red Southern state. Yep, the majority were white Senior aged women like me, but there was also a good smattering of Black Americans in this smallish Black majority city. A lot of focus on caring for the vulnerable, being kind, and being able to forgive those who voted “the other way”. A new organization that was birthed by 3 middle class white women, 2 of whom were younger than 40, just organized the event about 2 weeks ago and maybe 400 folks were there. One of the speakers was a youngish gay Black activist. Attending these events is energizing and uplifting. There was a little 5 or 6 year old girl carrying a lime green sign that said “Cybertrucks Suck”. There was one with a penguin theme and I heard the teenage girl behind me ask her Dad what was with that one. He didn’t know the answer and I supplied it. He graciously thanked me.
We were in the wide median of a well known downtown street and several cars honked in support. I observed only one counter protester in a humongous white pickup truck who gunned his engine to let us know he wasn’t a supporter. Police were there handing out water. It was a good day.
StringOnAStick
@Betty Cracker: the WSJ sure picked a perfect photo of the orange idiot to make him look as incompetent and addled as they possibly could. GOOD.
Ruckus
@WTFGhost:
I believe that shitforbrains doesn’t actually understand making a profit, how to go about it, how to actually do it. It often isn’t the easiest part of business, but it isn’t that difficult with a decent business concept. But show me a good business concept of shitforbrains and I’ll be able to show you the first one. He does not have the overall concept of, well anything. He has the first idea and ONLY a crap follow through. And follow through is the hardest part – take this from someone who’s owned 2 successful businesses. Not greatly successful, just not losers. It takes effort and FOLLOWTHROUGH. A plan and it’s execution. Actual work, thought and effort. And the absolute, 100% ability to admit to mistakes because 99.99% of humans will make them and a large number will not admit to them. Making mistakes is part of living, learning from them is called healthy living.
StringOnAStick
One thing I learned being an HOA president (never, EVER. DO. THAT.) is if you want to get to the deepest, hottest core of anger in people, mess with their money. Going after SS and Medicare will be the end of R electibility.
WTFGhost
@different-church-lady: Or, the cult leader is dragging down the polls so much it becomes safe to hire private security, and defy him.
You’ll be amazed at the number of Republicans who find moral outrage, once poll numbers start dropping! In fact, one might think that they had no interest *except* in poll numbers remaining high – certainly none in seeing that bad things aren’t done.
@Betty Cracker: “In denial” about the popularity of Biden and his policies, maybe. Remember: when it comes to physical functioning, the President sees the White House doc first thing in the morning, last thing at night, just to check on his basic functioning. Any fucker who says otherwise, and pretends there was some unspoken-truth about physical debility is a lying two-bit son of a bitch and a bedpost. (He didn’t have no man for a daddy, a man woulda learnt him up better. Yes, it’s sexist. Sorry about that, but it felt right. Also, I usually use “eff” in place of the “eff-word” (because why not?); profanity should be reserved for when it’s appropriate.)
@catclub: You tell the torpedoes, it’s “whom do I kill, boss,” and if you survive, we’ll all listen to your language lessons (out of curiosity, or fear, as appropriate).
@Melancholy Jaques: Oh, it’s even better. Lee doesn’t even have to be a cult leader; he was just an over-promoted general who didn’t realize the importance of good supply, got pinned down, and couldn’t protect his nation, and was too stupid to surrender until after the South had proven its ass had been kicked hard enough to make it a hunchback. Don’t blame Sherman, ladies and gents – it was pure-D Lee proving being pinned down, and able to be worn down by attrition, was not enough for him. He had to see Sherman’s march to the sea! Good ol’ LEE!
The south would be an object of mockery, but people hated Black people so much… I mean, it’s self defense, if you can watch a person be flogged to death, you have to feel utter *contempt* for them as human beings, otherwise, basic compassion would force you to act. No, in the South, you had to learn it was *GOD’S OWN WILL* that Black people could be raped, murdered, tortured, etc., with abandon. So you learned to enjoy the hate, you learned to think you were a man if you could get laid at a lynching.
That’s the South they want to rise again.
Suburban Mom
@dww44: Thank you – it is good to hear about the diversity and positivity.
WTFGhost
@different-church-lady: GASP!
Well… if the problem is psychological, or physical, the new medications offer hope for men who are having electile difficulties. A simple dose is not enough; first, you must wait for a time; you can’t just overcome electile difficulty by taking a single pill and thinking everything’s fine!
No, wait, for the moment, okay, and then, make sure you’ve got the proper preparatory work, so that your message is delivered in a warm, affectionate manner; use touch carefully, but with wisdom, to avoid leaving… look, you don’t want a premature evacuation from the moment, do you? No one likes that! So: make sure you’re gentle, and warm, but don’t forget what your… coalition wants. They might want to hear from you, and see you, and get it from you, good and hard, so, be gentle with yourself, no stress, but be ready to give what is needed! Hopefully, you’ll be able to obtain an election, and…
Oh. You said “eLected.”
Never mind.
Ruckus
@Betty Cracker:
Bingo!
He got a good education, he just didn’t learn a lot. I believe this is because he’s always seemingly had an opinion of himself that stretches reality beyond the breaking point. Way, way beyond.
different-church-lady
@WTFGhost: You seem to have a lot of knowledge of Baud’s physical condition that it strikes me you shouldn’t.
Ksmiami
New Slogan: “Hands off or Heads off… your choice GOP..”
brantl
Let them
eat cakeplay golf.Ksmiami
@StringOnAStick: not sure it’ll be about electability, these fuckers will be lucky to be alive.
Ksmiami
@StringOnAStick: it’s a huge warning shot across the bow I think
brantl
@rikyrah: Let me know how that works out for you?
brantl
@Nelle: Oh, sure nobody but whites voted for Stumpy.
MagdaInBlack
@Ruckus: Yes, my daily wish.
WTFGhost
@schrodingers_cat: Bring your bar, and lawfully, I can gift small amounts from my (actual, home grown) stash, so long as we’re both in-state.
@Steve Gravelle: You have the right mind for this sort of thing. You want to present a line like that as “everyone knows.”
You could pretend that he just started cheating, since winning the Presidency – he’s *OLD*, who doesn’t feel sorry for an OLD golfer, whose muscles are FEEBLE and who can’t PLAN how to play the course any more.” That takes more buildup.
“He always cheats” is easier. “Oh, man, he’s so old, he accidentally carded an honest score for a hole! Of course, that was on the driving range.”
@Redshift: It’s possible it was part of the government funding bill.
This makes the article total horseshit.
OF COURSE there was a collection of federal judges, all of whom could administer the oath of office. That’s been true since the beginning of the nuclear age, and always will be true until the world changes dramatically.
The possibility that a man approaching, or in his 80s, will die, is a real thing that must be considered. It’s not in the least bit damning – it’s been part of Presidential succession planning forever.
How effing STUPID – make that STOOPIT – would you have to be, not to plan for the President’s death if he was 35, and in perfect health, during the nuclear age? That’s intellectual laziness.
You should feel INSULTED that the opinion piece author tried to slip that bullshit between your teeth, in hopes it would slip down your throat.
Interesting Name Goes Here
@brantl: Seems to be working out just fine so far. If I were you, I’d take that as a sign to get your stuff in order and stop hoping for us minorities to save you from yourselves again.
dnfree
@rikyrah: I just finished reading the new biography of MLK. These are events I lived through in my teens and young adulthood, but still I learned a lot. The last chapters, where King opposes the Vietnam War (before a lot of the mainstream had seen the light) is heartbreaking. In retrospect, it’s like the failure of Reconstruction—and not the fault of King or any of his associates. White people got tired of it before the goal was reached, and the FBI and Hoover turned LBJ against King. Devastating to read.
different-church-lady
@WTFGhost:
Planning for the event of a president’s death is THE ENTIRE FUCKING JOB DESCRIPTION OF THE VICE PRESIDENT. Goddamn, these people are too stupid to be allowed near words.
WTFGhost
@different-church-lady: I thought I said “Never mind.”!!!
Ruckus
@Baud:
This.
I’m an old white fart and I absolutely did/have not been on shitforbrains side of anything. Voting, policy or bullshit. Or anything else.
Ruckus
@RevRick:
THIS.
1,000% THIS.
Bupalos
My statement is not backward looking any more than it is present and forward-looking. But I’d also reject the notion that even in the part that is past-tense, identifying a responsibility we all had and all failed to accomplish together is the same as laying “blame.” It really is almost the opposite, where as “I am completely innocent” does in fact move squarely in the direction of there needing to be blame.
Bupalos
@lowtechcyclist: I guess I can’t even do self-deprecation right. I’m trying to call myself a moron.
Soprano2
@Scout211: I was thinking about this earlier this morning, thinking that the books would hit the market in Spring/Summer 2026. So much for the supposed loyalty of Biden’s staff.
Soprano2
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: The MAGA’s I know on FB are making light of it. Next time I see that I’m going to tell them to please keep up their tone deaf messaging about people’s life savings.
Baud
@Bupalos:
Let me reiterate. I am completely innocent.
dww44
@StringOnAStick: IF WE can make it to Nov 26 without wholesale disenfranchisement and WITH continued state and local control of our elections machinery. That’s why rallies like yesterday’s have to continue and grow so as to provide proof of the Will of the People.
Bupalos
@Baud: It certainly isn’t lost on me that one of the functions of this venue and venues like it is to serve as an innocence affirmation club.
dnfree
@Bupalos: If it helps, I understood you.
Baud
@Bupalos:
We innocents have to stick together against the majority.
karen gail
I greatly dislike when people equate high IQ’s as something that makes them “smart” or “highly intelligent;” at one time I was part of group of R & D people who were working in what is now Silicon Valley with the first electronics. Got to test one prototypes for first Atari game.
Anyway, one of the arguments against IQ testing was that the tests were designed to test white male upper middle class and above. I have no idea what the tests look like now I took my first one in junior high school back in mid 60’s. My father questioned my results and was told that no matter how high a female scored she would top out at 135; simply being female meant that even if you test at 190 the score you received would be 135. I later learned that they did the same thing for nonwhite tests; if your skin wasn’t pasty white you got a score that reflected that.
I have no idea if Trump has ever taken a IQ test, or what the results might be; but what I do know from his actions is that he is one of those “gifted” people who can pinpoint a person’s weaknesses and knows just what buttons to push or levers to pull to get the results he wants. It is a game with him, one that he is very skilled at and uniquely qualified at. There is a good chance that each of us has had contact with a person like that, they are the one who knows just what to say to hurt another person. It appears that they have a “sixth” sense about just what to say that will cause a heart hurt. If Trump were not so self-absorbed he might be even more dangerous, he does enough damage as it is and is willing to listen to and follow the advice of those who he sees as totally loyal and subservient to him. He is willing to “fire” anyone who is seen as anything less than swearing blind obedience; especially, if that person is highly skilled and capable in their field of expertise.
different-church-lady
@Bupalos: Maybe comedy just isn’t your thing.
Ruckus
@RaflW:
For a lot of olds Social Security is the first, second AND third rail.
Me for one. And many others that I know. Most of my neighbors. I live in a federal program senior’s apartment complex. One has to be over 55 to rent here. The oldest person I know of is 98 yrs old and she is a hoot. She drove taxies when she was young and she rode street motorcycles for years. My point is that a lot of humans will live a lot longer these days. Because of food, Social Security, medicine. We don’t have to be stupid and go bankrupt how many times, I think it’s 5, like shitforbrains. And I always ask this question, how did enough people lose their entire concept of thinking to vote for him? He gives a rats ass about anyone but him. His wife is there to serve him. Banks are there to give him money. He has zero skills of any kind, he has the concept of humanity of a rich 7 yr old, and the mental ability of a trash dumpster. I believe that people voted for him because of his money and newspapers talking about how wealthy he is. And for no other reason. A person with that much money must be smart. Not when one inherits it. And then throws it all away. Multiple times.
Matt McIrvin
@karen gail: When Trump was running in the 2016 primary, there were moments when someone not contemplating the possibility he could actually become President could get some pleasure from the way he stuck the knife into the other Republican candidates. He seemed to know just what to say to hurt them and put them off balance. It’s this very particular destructive cunning.
Ruckus
@karen gail:
I worked in public in professional sports. I’ve talked to people exactly like you describe and had to be pleasant and nice to them. They think they own the world, and they do not believe that they have to share it with anyone. Pompous, arrogant assholes to a one. Now I also knew of others in the sport that had a hell of a lot more money than the shitheads and were really good humans. It’s not the money that’s the problem it is the pompousness and arrogance about money and then having or being around anything that seems like a lot that is the problem.
Matt McIrvin
@BritinChicago: Steve Bannon was the guy in Trump’s first administration who really wanted to enact Hitlerian economic policies (or, to be kinder, to make Trump the fascist FDR). That was where “Infrastructure Week” came from–this kind of herrenvolk nationalist Keynesianism. But he could never get the rest of the administration on board, and he eventually fell out with Trump, who instead went with Elon Musk’s “delete the entire government and see what breaks” slash-and-burn policy and Navarro’s insane tariff worship.
So, surprise, he gets to be the fascist Herbert Hoover.
Matt McIrvin
@karen gail: My mother and her classmates had to learn to administer IQ tests when they were getting graduate degrees in psychology, so when I was about 7 or 8 I got to be their subject for the WISC-R, and I also took the Stanford-Binet around the same time for placement in a county “gifted/talented” program. I have no idea what my score was. But I remember there being a lot of questions that were probably pretty culturally bound. E.g. “What is foolish about this story?” followed by an anecdote with some kind of logical absurdity in it, but you have to know a lot of social context to even understand what the logical trouble is.
Binet and Simon’s original IQ test was really intended for nothing more than identifying children with impairments requiring special education, and they warned people sternly against applying it to any other purpose, but there was this absolute mania particularly in early- to mid-20th-century America for applying them to every other purpose. At this point, I think it’s safe to assume that just about anyone even mentioning IQ as a means of ranking people is up to no good.
Timill
@WereBear: Like These?
Or this?
karen gail
@Matt McIrvin: One thing that stuck in my mind was comments some made about the SAT, ACT along with a couple of others that were college or college system specific; was we were given an hour for each section how come those who finished early weren’t given credit for not needing a full hour?
I didn’t realize that each test section was suppose to be an hour; I ended up taking the test at another time and as I finished one I was given chance to use restroom and then go on to next section. The person who administered the tests, also scored them while I was doing the next section at the end the comment was made that I managed to take two test in one day rather than needing two days; and person doing the test thought that should be taken into consideration.
I know I took part in a group of tests from local college while I was in high school and while I don’t remember what was tested I do remember the speed at which we did the tests was also taken into consideration. If I remember correctly these tests were help the local branch of University decide where to start us in classes. I know a number of those in that class with me went on to start as sophomores and some were sophomore/junior subjects.
Then a couple of the guys from that group couldn’t make up mind if they wanted to stay in town or go to Madison or Milwaukee for college. They both ended up in Vietnam.
chemiclord
@Splitting Image: Yep. Absolutely no one voting for Donald Trump genuinely gave one-tenth of one shit about Biden’s cognition.
karen gail
It angers me that the GOP is so set on destroying Education; back in 4th and 5th grade our school had the educational system that Kennedy had put in place. We had booklets for each subject, we worked at our own speed and as we finished we would start the next. So our reading level may have been at one level while our math was a different level. The teachers were really excited about being able to help students learn at levels that reached them. I remember Mrs. DeWitt was excited that the program was to be expanded so that it reached all the years through high school. When Johnson took over the program was killed; it was something that worked and helped students actually learn.
Gvg
@WTFGhost: his father gave him money to try and save the casino, so you are saying he threw away that money too. If he did it on purpose, he could have told his dad not to bother giving him more money.