Short one with Oliver Willis, but fun. We’ll do it again.
Come for the politics, stay for the snark.
T R E 4 5 O N
We cannot abandon the truth and remain a free nation.
Weird. Rome has an American Pope and America has a Russian President.
Imperialist aggressors must be defeated, or the whole world loses.
The media handbook says “controversial” is the most negative description that can be used for a Republican.
Balloon Juice, where there is always someone who will say you’re doing it wrong.
Hi god, it’s us. Thanks a heap, you’re having a great week and it’s only Thursday!
In my day, never was longer.
If you can’t control your emotions, someone else will.
Republicans firmly believe having an abortion is a very personal, very private decision between a woman and J.D. Vance.
Their freedom requires your slavery.
“When somebody takes the time to draw up a playbook, they’re gonna use it.”
Our messy unity will be our strength.
Of course you can have champagne before noon. That’s why orange juice was invented.
Wow, you are pre-disappointed. How surprising.
This year has been the longest three days of putin’s life.
The truth is, these are not very bright guys, and things got out of hand.
How stupid are these people?
Do we throw up our hands or do we roll up our sleeves? (hint, door #2)
DeSantis transforming Florida into 1930s Germany with gators and theme parks.
Every reporter and pundit should have to declare if they ever vacationed with a billionaire.
Accused of treason; bitches about the ratings. I am in awe.
Republican also-rans: four mules fighting over a turnip.
He really is that stupid.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
Very good stuff. Oliver hits the big points consistently.
Gallego and Schiff for Crypto!
Their souls get sucked out when entering the Senate is just one of sooooo many dead on observations and comments in this segment.
If we take back the House, the lessons learned will be “Everything we’ve done since the election was on the right track”…and it’s not.
Quaker in a Basement
Cole AND Willis?
I’m in!
Bucky Reynolds
There will be no 2026 elections because Frump will impose marshal law.
WaterGirl
@Bucky Reynolds: I don’t think that will happen, but if it did, that would not end with the result FFOTUS thinks it would.
WaterGirl
I love that even if you aren’t familiar with FFOTUS to know that FF stands for First Felon, I imagine the first thought is Fuck FOTUS, and that works, too.
Baud
@WaterGirl:
I thought it meant Forever Fortnight.
VFX Lurker
*martial law
**there will still be elections in 2026
Suzanne
I’m halfway through, and I find myself nodding vigorously. The part about so many Dems being scared to mess up, being so risk-averse….. rings true.
lynno
Good evening Kal. Lynno has missed ya so much.
Kelly
@VFX Lurker: Frump will declare Marshall Law Because he doesn’t know the right words. Then to cover up the mistake he’ll say it means the Constitutional Sheriffs will police the polling places and only allow Patriots! (people whiter than a brown paper bag) to vote.
WTFGhost
@WaterGirl: If it did, I’m sure federal Marshall Willandholly will be on the ball to protect us (and Jay will point and giggle because he’s on the “ball”).
(Sorry: ref to Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back. You probably have to be stoned to enjoy that movie. Oh… wait. (Checks medical marijuana card, checks PuffCo vape – hyep, contains good rosin)
Maybe I know what to watch today.
(The movie contains the impossibly beautiful line, “Do you know why I’m Marshall Willandholly? Because I’m a *JOKE*, that’s why!” Kids, if you don’t understand why that’s funny, ask your parents. They won’t slap you this time, unless they’re really mean and oversensitive, which is most parents, but, there you go… it’s hard to raise parents properly these days!)
lljones
The podcast really hit the nail on the head for me. My one quibble would be Howard Dean as DNC was not effective, I thought he was one the best and made every race competitive in every state.
WTFGhost
@Kelly: WTF makes you think they’ll use a *brown* paper bag these days? I’m sure they’ll pay for bleaching it, at least!
@Suzanne: Oliver Willis is one of the scariest men alive, a guy who unabashedly loves Superman, and is probably really pissed off that he, himself, is not the Last Son of Krypton, or somesuch. Seriously, I think he’s more upset with America that it’s not still “Truth, justice, and the American way!” than with DC writers.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@WaterGirl:
There will be elections. Modern day authoritarians hold elections. Putin has elections. Orban has elections.
They just make sure the outcome is predetermined. The GOP’s been working that angle since…forever, via many suppression methods we’ve all talked about.
JoyceH
Well, I managed to watch and listen to ten minutes of this before sound got bollixed. Since others apparently watched the whole thing with no problem, I assume the issue is on my end, with both phone and iPad. Let’s not trouble shoot it here, I’ll figure it out later on the Big Computer, just came here to check if I’d heard that right. Oliver is Pitchbot?!!
twbrandt
@JoyceH: DougJ is Pitchbot
JoyceH
@twbrandt: Oh, okay. I misheard then.
JoyceH
I always followed Oliver on Twitter and remember the lengthy discussion on his thesis that the main difference between white people and black people is that “white people have cabins”. He clarified that it wasn’t about income and it wasn’t always yours personally. Might be “my uncle’s camp in the woods” or “my best friend’s family lake house”. But all white people have in their childhood a place other than their primary residence that was privately owned and where the kids would go to party. Thoughts?
Suzanne
@JoyceH:
Absolutely not a thing for me or my friend group. This seems like a middle- to upper-middle-class thing. It sounds awesome.
zhena gogolia
@JoyceH: I’m white and this is not part of my experience AT ALL
Baud
@JoyceH:
Camps are big in Maine.
Timill
@Suzanne: Me neither, unless you count the 12′ trailer caravan that we used to tour Europe in for 3-4 weeks at a time. Being British, this was easier than for Americans…
Which is how I got a tour of the Lamborghini factory back in 1967…
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: They are. They range from cabins to massive mansions.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@JoyceH:
Um, hardly. Unless you count something like a former rock quarry in Berkeley Co WV where the decidedly non-middle-to-upper-middle-class white kids would go to (obviously trespassing) in the summer to swim or party. And occasionally drown.
JoyceH
As soon as I read the “white people have cabins” thread, my first thought was “the farm”. We grew up in small towns but my preacher dad was a farm boy so when I was a toddler he bought 40 acres with an old farmhouse where we’d go in the summer. Dad would plant an enormous garden, Mom would tan and read library books, and the kids would play down by the creek. Good times.
JoyceH
@JoyceH: adding – Dad eventually brought in some rudimentary wiring but we never had indoor plumbing. Had an outhouse!
trollhattan
@JoyceH:
I wish.
However, in their infinite wisdom mom and dad got us the hell out of rural Iowa where if you weren’t a farmer you weren’t getting anywhere in life. I adjusted to city life and I guess the “cabin” was the lake I fished at during summer vacation. From a public dock sadly lacking in girls to meet.
Suzanne
@Timill: Yeah, I grew up with a single mom who hated camping and loved cigarettes. There was very little camping or nature stuff. When I got older, she was happy to let me go to Girl Scout or church camp and do that stuff.
WaterGirl
@JoyceH: This white person did not.
Professor Bigfoot
America’s problems are class based, and racism is pretty immaterial.
Baud
@Professor Bigfoot:
Did you hit your head? Do we need to call 911?
eclare
@comrade scotts agenda of rage:
In high school we went to a place that we called “tower fields”. We called it that because it was a big empty field except for the huge electricity transmission towers in it.
MagdaInBlack
@Baud: I was just about to dial for him.
dc
@JoyceH: This place was known as “outside” when I was a kid.
WaterGirl
@Professor Bigfoot:
[ Insert quizzical look here. ]
zhena gogolia
@Baud: My guess is it’s a satirical impersonation of Willis.
ETA: But I didn’t listen, because I got the impression it’s another “here’s what Democrats need to do” thing (perhaps unfairly).
Here’s what we need to do — get Democrats elected.
frosty
@Suzanne: We took road trips when I was growing up – Smokies, Outer Banks, Florida. Always motels, no camping. Boy Scouts filled that niche nicely. And now here we are hauling a trailer around the continent. It’s not tent camping, but it’s not motels either.
Ohio Mom
@JoyceH: Nobody I knew growing up in NYC had a cabin. Hell, most of us were renters, we didn’t even own a primary home.
Baud
Jackie
@dc:
Precisely.
Ohio Mom
Now I’m wondering where Oliver Willis grew up.
ETA: Silver Spring Maryland.
SiubhanDuinne
O/T. Well, he did it. He bombed Iran.
Fuck F’n FFOTUS. Edit: Also Bibi. Fuck him too.
Edit: Naturally, Baud got there first #39.
WTFGhost
@Professor Bigfoot: I could see that – with the idea that no one cares if the “trash” is white, or Black, they either have power to fight back or not. Everyone steals from the poor, the working class have some defense against the theft, but regardless, the money is still hoovered upward.
Ohio Mom
@SiubhanDuinne: I’m glad I took a few days off from news because now I’m sucked back in.
ETA: I’m reading that we are only moving bombers into place, no bombs dropper yet.
ETA: Disregard that last ETA, the NYT just updated, yes, bombs were dropped.
JoyceH
@SiubhanDuinne: my reaction- we just bombed Iran because of course we did. Now how quickly will MAGA line up and salute?
WTFGhost
@Ohio Mom: So far, TruthToilet is the only source that I’ve seen.
Renie
@Baud: We just created another generation of terrorists who will attack us on American soil.
SiubhanDuinne
@JoyceH:
Lindsay Graham is already there. I can tell how shocked and surprised you are.
SiubhanDuinne
@Renie:
Yup. This.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
And since this is a post about a talk with Oliver Willis, his latest piece on DK that literally just dropped is awfully pertinent at the moment:
Why the right gets excited about bombing people
Splitting Image
@Baud:
I’m encouraged by the fact that Donnie is calling the attack “very successful”. I presume this means that two of the bombs collided in midair and the rest landed in the ocean?
More details will come out later, I suppose, after the quislings rush to say that “this is the day Donald Trump became president”, just as they did last time when he threw a few bombs around.
WTFGhost
@SiubhanDuinne: And, seriously, what are we Dems going to do, having elected Trump twice? How could we ever convince them that America isn’t the Great Shaitan their parents and grandparents tells them we are? I mean… gah. I don’t have enough alcohol in my house for a night like this.
I’d love to hear the 25th Amendment has been invoked, and Vance canceled Trump’s orders at the last moment, but he was already truthtoileting the attack “live”.
Professor Bigfoot
@zhena gogolia: Bingo
I do not think very highly of Mr. Willis, and I’m sure the feeling would be mutual if he remembered “Blue Maga” me.
Another Scott
@zhena gogolia:
+1,000,000
I listened to about 10 minutes. This episode doesn’t click for me.
We’re a big complicated country. Our party is a big complicated organization that tries to keep many, many disparate groups together. And once our candidates get elected, like it or not, they have to work with the crazies on the other side – who are also elected by our fellow citizens – to get anything done.
There’s no One Weird Trick.
There’s no This Powerful Message Will Destroy the GQP Once and For All If Democrats Will Just Say It.
Presidents aren’t kings. They have to work with the other side to get anything done, and sometimes that means voting for legislation that will hurt some people.
Politics is hard. Politics takes a very long time. Politics is not a level playing field.
Amanda Litman’s April 4 Substack made some good points (that I’m sure many here will agree with):
She may be right. The question is, how does one implement policies that can address the housing affordability problem, in a way that has sustained buy-in. Biden had trouble – during a once in a century pandemic – with incremental partial fixes for student loan debt that used existing authorities granted by Congress. How is Lefty Q Unbeatable going to get buy-in for zoning changes, rent support, and all the rest, through the legislature and the courts when most people view their homes as their nest-egg??
I’m sure Oliver and Amanda know these things. I’m sure they recognize the constraints and they perhaps view their job as to advocate for (their view of) what might and ought to be.
And that’s fine. The world needs strong advocates and to think about things differently.
But there’s a difference between advocacy and governing. And there is a line, IMHO, between pushing our folks to do better, and demanding Green Lanternism and complaining that our leaders are little better than the monsters on the other side.
FWIW.
Thanks.
Best wishes,
Scott.
WTFGhost
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: Yeah, Willis is a man I respect. If you know how effing cranky I am, you know how rare that is. He’s the guy, he tells me I’m dead wrong about something, and I have to tear my belief down, now matter how sure I am that I’m right.
(Had to do that with abortion, and realized my personal beef with abortion was too vague and indeterminate to affect another person’s choices, and more, that any such argument must fail for the same reason, at least in the earliest stages. I think that’s the last time I hadn’t subjected belief to the same fire and forge before accepting it.
ETA: just to be clear, it wasn’t Willis who challenged my thinking on abortion – but he could challenge my thinking, at least long enough to understand what he was trying to express, before I’d agree, or not.
Another Scott
@Baud: Welp.
It sounds kinda like a “one and done” thing, like the Syria Tomahawk attack.
Iran may have something to say about it though…
[ sigh ]
We continue to be in the stupidest timeline.
Grr…
Thanks.
Best wishes,
Scott.
Kathleen
@zhena gogolia: Willis is a charter member of the “How Democrats Disappointed Me Today Club” before it was really cool.