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You are here: Home / Economics / C.R.E.A.M. / Open Thread: BRICS-A-Bracket

Open Thread: BRICS-A-Bracket

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Dude is disintegrating right before our eyes while the media continues to go along with it.

[image or embed]

— Ragnarok Lobster (@eclecticbrotha1.bsky.social) July 7, 2025 at 11:11 AM

====

Meanwhile…

Wondering if he knows that the R in BRICS is Russia, his constant favorite.

[image or embed]

— Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (@whitehouse.senate.gov) July 7, 2025 at 10:45 AM


===

It's gonna be weird when Trump inadvertently backs into being a Russia hard-liner because he's randomly decided that BRICS is now his Axis of Evil but he doesn't know what the letters stand for.

— Jacob T. Levy (@jacobtlevy.bsky.social) July 7, 2025 at 7:36 AM


===

Per the Associated Press:

RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) — The BRICS bloc of developing nations on Sunday condemned the increase of tariffs and attacks on Iran, but refrained from naming U.S. President Donald Trump. The group’s declaration, which also took aim at Israel’s military actions in the Middle East, also spared its member Russia from criticism and mentioned war-torn Ukraine just once.

The two-day summit was marked by the absences of two of its most powerful members. China’s President Xi Jinping did not attend a BRICS summit for the first time since he became his country’s leader in 2012. Russian President Vladimir Putin, who spoke via videoconference, continues to mostly avoid traveling abroad due to an international arrest warrant issued after Russia invaded Ukraine.

In an indirect swipe at the U.S., the group’s declaration raised “serious concerns” about the rise of tariffs which it said were “inconsistent with WTO (World Trade Organization) rules.” The BRICS added that those restrictions “threaten to reduce global trade, disrupt global supply chains, and introduce uncertainty.” …

Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who hosted the summit, criticized NATO’s decision to hike military spending by 5% of GDP annually by 2035. That sentiment was later echoed in the group’s declaration.

BRICS was founded by Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, but the group last year expanded to include Indonesia, Iran, Egypt, Ethiopia, and the United Arab Emirates.

As well as new members, the bloc has 10 strategic partner countries, a category created at last year’s summit that includes Belarus, Cuba and Vietnam.

That rapid expansion led Brazil to put housekeeping issues — officially termed institutional development — on the agenda to better integrate new members and boost internal cohesion…

The meeting was also an opportunity to advance climate negotiations and commitments on protecting the environment before November’s COP 30 climate talks in the Amazonian city of Belem.

Brics summit in Brazil tries to reinvent collective approach to world’s problems | Jonathan Watts

[image or embed]

— The Guardian (@theguardian.com) July 7, 2025 at 8:45 AM

Counter-argument:

The BRICS threat to the dollar empire
with its NATO enforcers
is giving Trump's billionaire backers
nightmares …
meme via Roger Hill

[image or embed]

— Oliver (@oliver48.bsky.social) July 7, 2025 at 5:07 AM

Reader Interactions

213Comments

  3. 3.

    Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony

    @JCJ: They’ll use his criticism of BRICs to say he’s tough on Russia while he actually goes after everyone but Russia

  5. 5.

    Professor Bigfoot

    If he actually was a Russian agent whose mission is to destroy the USA from within and also to make it a global pariah state, what would he do differently?

    William of Ockham is tearing his ghostly hair out.

  8. 8.

    Splitting Image

    Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who hosted the summit, criticized NATO’s decision to hike military spending by 5% of GDP annually by 2035. That sentiment was later echoed in the group’s declaration.

    Did he have anything to say on the reason that NATO is hiking military spending? Or is he also committed to treating the alliance as BICS for the moment?

  11. 11.

    laura

    Hey, it’s me, back again with my “rant, bitch and cajole” about listening to not white voices. Ragnorak lobster aka eclectic brotha is a consistent first rate aggregator on his bluesky and is a great follow. Check him out, then see who else he routinely reposts. Tify330 is an excellent political poster. Myron j Clifton always worth your time. Jamelle Bouie same, only much higher profile what with the NYT and all.

  12. 12.

    Jeffro

    trade policy by tweet (updated daily hourly)…I’m sure this will reassure markets and consumers all around the world…yessir…

  14. 14.

    Jeffro

    @XeckyGilchrist: they can rely on it (it is pretty reliable) but there has to be some pullback on spending (by businesses, at least) in this kind of unstable economic environment

    it certainly doesn’t ease inflation or bring interest rates down

  15. 15.

    JoyceH

    @Jeffro: hey, he’s added after “Thanks you for your attention to this matter” – DONALD J. TRUMP President of the United States of America”. What could be more reassuring and official than that?

  17. 17.

    p.a.

    If you assign odd numbers as “bluster/threaten” and even numbers as “back down/whine” on the output of a random number generator, you might be able to “time the market” on tRump’s economic “policy”.🙄

  18. 18.

    Jeffro

    @JoyceH: I’m on the verge of adding a 3rd bottle of champagne to the garage fridge, is all I’m saying…

    …might have to start getting a celebratory playlist together soon, too.

  19. 19.

    glory b

    @laura: Agree wholeheartedly.

    I actually like the first three more than Jamelle Bouie, he’s a bit too mild mannered and cautious for me.

    The other three don’t have a work/journalistic affiliation to worry about. I believe Ragnarok Lobster is a parole officer, Tiff, not sure and Myron Clifton is a children’s book author.

  20. 20.

    Elizabelle

    @glory b:  Did not know that.  Interesting.  Thanks

    ETA:  I think Jamelle does as well as he can, with AG Sulzberger and Joe Kahn as leadership of that paper.  They are fuckers.

  21. 21.

    trollhattan

    Can somebody club this dude with a hunk of firewood? I need a break.

    “President Trump on Monday announced 25% tariffs on goods from South Korea and Japan heading into the U.S.,” the Wall Street Journal reports.

    “The tariffs will take effect on Aug. 1.”

    New York Times: “Markets dropped on the news, as investors seemed to view the rates as punishingly high for some of America’s closest allies and largest trading partners.”

  23. 23.

    Jeffro

    please won’t SOME enterprising young reporter ask Le Swiss Cheese-brain, “sir…exactly which ‘anti-American policies of BRICS’ are you referring to in your tweet?”

    or “sir…are there any pro-America, or neutral, BRICS policies that you can think of?”

    or “sir…will you be deporting BRICS tourists, students, and businesspeople?”

  24. 24.

    Jeffro

    @trollhattan: New York Times: “Markets dropped on the news, as investors seemed to view the rates as punishingly high for some of America’s closest allies and largest trading partners.”

    Reassuring markets and consumers all around the world…yessir…

  25. 25.

    Citizen Alan

    @Steve LaBonne: Honestly, it would also look the same if he were the literal fucking Antichrist sent to destroy the world but, because God has a sense of humor, he picked an Antichrist who would be adored by Evangelical Christians.

  26. 26.

    Gloria DryGarden

    @trollhattan: people have Japanese cars. I have one. Goddamnit. My Toyota is reliable. I need to be able to get parts and fix things.

  30. 30.

    Chetan Murthy

    The “102-year-old veteran and fighter against fascism AGAIN” thread (well, his pic, with his walker) reminded me of something for all us oldsters: theguardian.com/wellness/2025/mar/11/older-adults-strength-training

    ninety-somethings, strength training and getting improvements in all the life tasks.  And they really only focused on one exercise: quad leg extensions.  Life-changing results.

    I mention b/c I have knee injuries, sufficient that during the pandemic, I got so weak in the legs I had to clutch the handrail going down stairs.  They hurt all the time.  A few months ago, I started doing “static quad single leg presses” (get on the leg press machine, set it to a tolerable weight for a single leg, push off, get your knee to 90 degrees, and hold it there for N seconds”.  Switch legs, repeat.

    I started off doing 100lb, 10seconds, 3 sets.  And over months, bit-by-bit, slowly/slowly/slowly, I’m up to 140lb, 15seconds, 6 sets.  And ….. the results have been life-changing.  I used to always walk down th stairs at the BART real carefully, always with my hand close to the guardrail.  I used  to never run to catch the bus.  Now?  I can -trot- down the stairs, and while I can’t -run- to catch the bus, I can -trot- to do that too.  And I can squat down to reach under the kitchen sink without feeling a pain in my knees.

    The reason I mention the static leg presses, is that it’s completely static: no motion, so no grinding, no possibility of injury.  [and since I have knee injuries and reduced cartilage in my knee joints, that’s really important]

    Anyway, just thought I’d put in a plug for these static exercises.  For us old folks.

  33. 33.

    SW

    He’s going to have to shit himself in public before they mention his “challenges”

  34. 34.

    schrodingers_cat

    Trump’s tariffs are a  reversal of over 90 years of our economic policy. I don’t see the media coverage reflecting this.

    The horseshoe left also likes tariffs and hates trade pacts.

  35. 35.

    Shakti

    The markets rise and fall on the mood swings and whims of one guy.

    I’m sure he and the insider traders love this (because it’s not unpredictable or chaotic or unprofitable if you have an inside track.). How much of the judiciary and Congress and their relatives are in crypto? Because the more chaotic things are, the more attractive crypto gets.

  37. 37.

    Jeffro

    @rikyrah: A lot of people sincerely believed that Elon Musk was going to identify $1-2 trillion in fraudulent payments and the fact that it didn’t happen is worth paying attention to

    amen!

    and we need to beat them (metaphorically) over the head, over and over again, about it: THERE *IS* NO ‘WASTE, FRAUD, and ABUSE’ GOING ON HERE, FOLKS..WELL, THERE WASN’T…UNTIL TRUMP TOOK OFFICE

  38. 38.

    Archon

    @Citizen Alan: Ushering in Armageddon as the anti-Christ would require Trump having the power to order a nuclear first strike without it being countermanded along the chain of command. He’s probably not quite there yet to do so.

    Usually when I conjure up extremely unlikely possibilities there is a part of my brain that says, “don’t waste my energy on this”. The fact I tried to realistically game out the “Trump is the anti-Christ” scenario and my brain didn’t shut it down as not possible is extremely disconcerting.

  40. 40.

    Gloria DryGarden

    @Chetan Murthy: thank you. I’ll need to get on this.

    100 lbs sounds like a lot. Although, I carry my whole body weight around, and it’s more than 100 lbs.

    if I don’t go to the gym, perhaps I can get this effect with a chair pose, or warrior pose..

    again thank you. It’s inspiring to hear how much better you’ve gotten.

  41. 41.

    Martin

    There’s no point negotiating with a person who believes they don’t need to honor the agreements they negotiate. Trump negotiates with other countries as though there are domestic optics their leaders need to manage ‘If I don’t meet with Trump, voters will blame me for the problem’. But that’s not the dynamic. Trump is so openly transparent that their citizens already blame Trump, which means that their leaders don’t need to move first – Trump does. Trump’s narcissism prevents him from understanding this.

    The other dynamic is that tariffs are a specific kind of threat: ‘our economy is 10x the size of yours and we’re willing to lose 1% of our economy for every 10% you are going to lose in order to get this deal’. But when you do this globally, the dynamic reverses – the US is now saying ‘we’re willing to lose 5% for every 1% you are going to lose’ provided that foreign governments stick together. And to that threat they’re willing to say ‘oh, okay, go for it’. Yeah, it’ll hurt their economies, but they can make up for at least some of the losses in sales to the US with sales to each other, and in more socialist governments, they have a broad set of tools to address the domestic problems than the US is typically willing to employ (at least since FDR). Other foreign leaders understand global macroeconomics. They have economists who aren’t cranks that they listen to, they tend to not substitute their ‘well this is how I saved money on carpeting for one of my casinos’ personal knowledge.

    Meanwhile the effects are the tariffs show up a little bit more each month in the economic data. All the buffers in the economy to avoid inflation, job losses, and so on are being exhausted, and no plans can really be made because nobody knows what the rules are going to be. Will Trump go through with the tariffs after this 90 day period, will he give up on them, will he invent a new set of tariffs (as appears is starting to happen). Nobody knows.

    My son’s business closed for last week because their customers also closed and have paused spending, because they don’t know what the impact of the tariffs are going to be. His suppliers in the US also closed for the week. His company’s customers are some of the most dominant players in the global semiconductor market – a growing market, the folks the CHIPS act was supposed to bolster and onshore. Last year my son’s company made the decision to move their manufacturing from California to Vietnam. They’re a pretty small company, it’s like 20 employees, but the problem was that they need highly skilled electronics trades, and we don’t have many training programs for that and they aren’t large enough to afford to run their own. Vietnam built up that industry over the last couple of decades and they have a lot of those kinds of workers – way more than the US. (Median wage for those workers is about what US national minimum wage is – about $8). When Trump first announced the tariffs my sons boss talked to their customers regarding the move and whether they should cancel it and their answer was that since 80% of their production was outside the US, and 80% of sales of those finished goods were outside the US, it was cheaper to pay tariffs on 20% of the equipment imported from Vietnam for their US factories than reciprocal tariffs on 80% of the equipment exported from California to Taiwan, etc. Basically, if they weren’t already planning on moving, they would have probably insisted they move in response to the tariffs. Now, since Trump is threatening specific tariffs on semiconductors above the national tariffs, and so on, everyone is in a holding pattern because these percentages are so high that they can annihilate the margins of even trillion dollar businesses.

    And what these businesses know, that Trump does not, is that intellectual property cannot be tariffed. Tariffs only apply to physical goods. So they can send designs to Taiwan to be manufactured with no tariff. And this is part of the reason the US has so many fabless semiconductor companies – they broker in IP, and put all the physical stuff outside the US, outside of the reach of policy that changes every 4 years, and yeah, they’ll have to pay to import the finished goods (which won’t be semiconductors but phones, computers, etc. and will bypass those specific tariffs) but that’s borne by the consumer and usually by some other company. When that Dell laptop goes up 30% in price, you don’t blame AMD for that. And if Dell were assembling those machines in the US, the tariff on semiconductors makes their costs go up, but if they assemble it in China, they don’t have to pay that extra cost. So China becomes even cheaper under this tariff regime. The stated goals are so contradictory to the stated policy that everyone is just standing still, wondering if they’ll figure out the error, and no, they never will because none of this has anything to do with economics, it only has to do with Trump posturing and giving himself a reason to say how great he is.

  42. 42.

    me

    @rikyrah:

    MAGA voters aren’t stupid. They know exactly what they’re doing. The wellbeing of their families comes second to their desire to hurt perceived enemies. They willingly gave up their healthcare to protect and serve the interests of white supremacy, and they’d gladly do it again .

     

    This isn’t binary.  Stupid people intentionally do stupid things.

  44. 44.

    Geminid

    @glory b: I think Ragnarok Lobster works at a Chicago police station as a civilian employee. At least, that’s what I gathered from a few posts where he mentioned his work.

    Mr. Lobster also has talked about working in auto factories, jobs which did not last. And he’s mentioned playing defensive end on a high school football team that went 0-10 his senior year.

    Lobster is still a fan and student of the game, and I enjoy his commentary on Packers games during the season, especially the scathing critiques of his favorite team’s management.

    Ragnorok Lobster left Twitter last year, but before he did he got in a really good one when Musk renamed the platform “X”:

       His momma named him Twitter, and Imma call him Twitter!

  45. 45.

    trollhattan

    Public service announcement: When your inner self says “Self, you need a pet lion” do not listen to that particular self. You’re welcome.

    Dramatic CCTV footage shows the moment an escaped pet lion leapt over a concrete wall before attacking a woman and her two young children.

    Police in Pakistan have arrested the owners of the big cat, which chased the woman down as terrified onlookers ran for safety.

    The woman and her children, aged five and seven, sustained injuries to their arms and faces but are now in stable condition, authorities said.

  46. 46.

    Martin

    @Elizabelle: I was really pleased to see this take of Bouie’s.

    I’ve explained this here more than once and I almost never hear anyone in the mainstream lay this out, because people need to understand it. I have also noted that international students studying in the US are a form of trade export. It doesn’t get measured as an export because it doesn’t go through the mechanisms that we use to measure trade, but every year foreign students dump ~$60B a year in foreign money into the US economy. That put’s it on par with our trade deficit in the automobile industry. So it’s not small – cars are one of the top industry tariffs we have in this country.

    So I like Jamelle because he knows these things and he pulls them out which very, very few other people make note of.

  47. 47.

    TONYG

    @Jeffro: I am about 95% certain that Trump would not be able to provide a definition of the word “tariff”.  The word is just some sounds that he makes with his mouth.

  48. 48.

    trollhattan

    @TONYG:

    His whole notion of “trade imbalance” can only be held by an unbalanced person.

    If we import $N billion in rubies from some impoverished small nation he demands they import $N billion in US goods, otherwise TRADE WAR. These people are fucking idiots who happen to be in charge.

  50. 50.

    Kirk

    Coffee and chocolate (and my drink of preference, tea) are on the cusp of exploding on cost. As with bananas, we just can’t grow them here in sufficient quantity to meet demand.

  51. 51.

    lowtechcyclist

    @rikyrah:

    I totally don’t get the “fact that it didn’t happen is worth paying attention to” part. I know MattY is an idiot, but Elno’s inability to find it was as predictable as the sunrise, and even he had to see that.

    Did he expect the MAGAts to notice and pay attention? That makes no sense either.

    Would be nice if the media had thought it was worth more than a passing mention in between scoops about Biden’s age, but even Matt had to know that was too much to expect.

  53. 53.

    Belafon

    @rikyrah: The only places the inefficiencies could have been found are in the parts of government they weren’t going to investigate. What they were hoping for is that people could be declared inefficient uses of taxes, but they couldn’t find it because those get audited all the time.

  54. 54.

    JWR

    Something big, probably ICE or CBP or National Guard related, happening in Los Angeles. News people can’t tell who’s there, aside from National Guard and LAPD:

    Federal agents gather at Los Angeles’ MacArthur Park
    Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass was briefly at the chaotic scene west of downtown LA.

    Now news people are speculating that this was probably a staging area and will follow their big white vans.

  56. 56.

    Chetan Murthy

    @lowtechcyclist: @rikyrah: Yggles ….. has been making his money off hot takes for a number of years now.  Scorching hot takes.  He says these things for the same reason so many others do: when a rich and powerful man says a thing, the sycophants -must- take it seriously (or at least, pretend to take it seriously).

    As @Belafon: put it well, the only wastefraudandabuse was in places they were unwilling to look, and what they really mean by that word, is “life unworthy of life”.  Same as it ever was.

  58. 58.

    lowtechcyclist

    @JWR:

    They would choose MacArthur Park as their gathering place. Now I’ve got that damned song running through my head. And I don’t think that I can take it….😆

  62. 62.

    Doug R

    @Splitting Image:

     

     

    Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who hosted the summit, criticized NATO’s decision to hike military spending by 5% of GDP annually by 2035. That sentiment was later echoed in the group’s declaration.

     

     
     

    Did he have anything to say on the reason that NATO is hiking military spending? Or is he also committed to treating the alliance as BICS for the moment?

    TBF, NATO (especially Canada) is ALSO increasing spending because we’ve realized that the USA cannot be relied upon to back us up.

  63. 63.

    Elizabelle

    @Martin:  That was excellent.  Thank you.  Jamelle is right about zero sum thinking.

    Further, I think he explains it so well that even Trump could understand his point.

  66. 66.

    Elizabelle

    @JWR:  SOMETHING has to take all those dead people in Texa$$ (including lots of dead little white girls) off the top of the news.

  67. 67.

    JWR

    @TONYG:

    I am about 95% certain that Trump would not be able to provide a definition of the word “tariff”.

    His press lady gave us her interpretation of a definition he seemed to give the press, which was something like, “a tariff is a tax that we put on foreign countries that they pay us to sell their stuff here.” I kid you not. They’ve got it exactly backwards.

    This is why I’m still waiting for the data showing us the monies going to the “Department of External Revenue”, a thing Trump actually mentioned a few months ago.

  68. 68.

    rikyrah

    Brian Allen (@allenanalysis) posted at 9:27 AM on Mon, Jul 07, 2025:

     BREAKING: Tom Homan just threatened to “flood the zone” in New York City with ICE raids after Zohran Mamdani vowed to block federal agents if elected mayor.

    “GET OUT OF THE WAY, WE’RE COMING.”

    This is a declaration of war against local sovereignty. Homan openly admits ICE will target sanctuary cities out of political spite, using “community operations” and “work site enforcement” as weapons of intimidation.

    Let’s be clear: This is about federal agents flexing unchecked power in immigrant neighborhoods to send a message: You do not control your city. We do.

     t.co/tmnkg11QOf
    (https://x.com/allenanalysis/status/1942228931756622103?t=32zRkF2_mprfm3HOZ7J94w&s=03)

  69. 69.

    Scamp Dog

    I know it’s the standard answer in a lot of left-tending places to talk about these videos as proving Trump is demented, but I wonder if it’s just him refusing to answer the question and providing an answer to the question he wants to be answering. Cause what are you gonna do about, news dweeb?
    Of course, it could be both, since “answer the way I want” has been his thing for a long time, and a little dementia doesn’t really hurt his ability to do that.

    No matter what, it’s bad news for all of us.

  70. 70.

    rikyrah

    Kelly
    @broadwaybabyto
    Cynthia Olivera is a Canadian who’s been living in the US since she was 10

    She’s in ICE custody, after being grabbed at her green card interview.

    The 45 year old wife & mother has been moved between facilities while her husband begs ICE to let her get on a plane to Canada. 🧵
    10:07 PM · Jul 6, 2025

    Kelly
    @broadwaybabyto
    They’re willing to pay. She’s willing to leave. But she can’t escape.

    This is why we call them concentration camps.

    There’s no due process. Some people go in and never come out.
    10:07 PM · Jul 6, 2025

    Kelly
    @broadwaybabyto
    Also worth noting her husband voted for Trump because he supported his mass deportation plans.

    He didn’t think it would impact people “like them”. Only “others”.
    10:07 PM · Jul 6, 2025

    x.com/broadwaybabyto/status/1942057961364267387

  71. 71.

    Doug R

    @laura:

     

    Hey, it’s me, back again with my “rant, bitch and cajole” about listening to not white voices. Ragnorak lobster aka eclectic brotha is a consistent first rate aggregator on his bluesky and is a great follow. Check him out, then see who else he routinely reposts. Tify330 is an excellent political poster. Myron j Clifton always worth your time. Jamelle Bouie same, only much higher profile what with the NYT and all.

    Yup. I’d add Angry Black Lady and Ida Bae Wells. Wish Propane Jane would move over to Bluesky.

  72. 72.

    WTFGhost

    @Citizen Alan: I believe that’s predicted in Revelations, but, Republicans think they’re on the side of Biblical Prophecy.

    Which may be true, mind you, but not necessarily on the side they were expecting.

  77. 77.

    Martin

    @lowtechcyclist: I think he means that when people come to believe something like this, and then evidence doesn’t materialize to validate their beliefs, they don’t question their belief, they blame the failure to find the evidence and then pivot even more aggressively toward the next person who will promise to find it.

    So, that would suggest that these voters will blame Musk for being stupid, or maybe they’ll conclude that Musk found the $1T-$2T and rather than eliminate that fraud he steered it to himself and now he’s stealing from us – who knows. But if Congress comes in and says ‘we’ve cut $800B from Medicaid because it was fraudulent’, these folks are likely to believe that and the fact that every rural hospital went out of business because of it won’t be believed – it’ll be some liberal plot to kill them.

    That belief, because it wasn’t validated, will metastasize into something new that we probably can’t predict.

  79. 79.

    rikyrah

    Camilo Montoya-Galvez (@camiloreports) posted at 8:31 AM on Mon, Jul 07, 2025:
    NEWS: The Trump administration is terminating two other TPS programs, announcing it will revoke the legal status of roughly 76,000 immigrants from Honduras and Nicaragua in 2 months.

    They will be at risk of deportation in early September unless they have another status.
    (x.com/camiloreports/status/1942214964032229607?t=wrl5pUrk7X_Aw7Zv4sC3jw&s=03)

    Aaron Reichlin-Melnick (@ReichlinMelnick) posted at 8:36 AM on Mon, Jul 07, 2025:
    Since 1999, this population has jumped through hoops to keep their status, which includes passing a background check every 18 months to keep their status.

    They are the single-most proven compliant noncitizens in the country — yet Trump/Miller wants to have them purged anyway.
    (x.com/ReichlinMelnick/status/1942216184318861506?t=sTC4sNJt3MusOXkBslt0nQ&s=03)

  80. 80.

    rikyrah

    improvise. Adapt. overcome. (@reesetheone1) posted at 0:56 PM on Mon, Jul 07, 2025:
    The minute the Democratic Party become anti union is the minute I have no use for the Democratic Party. t.co/0w6jdu6DXq
    (x.com/reesetheone1/status/1942281462075502692?t=eHMpKQdlNH5XFSDDMWB-Lg&s=03)

    improvise. Adapt. overcome. (@reesetheone1) posted at 0:58 PM on Mon, Jul 07, 2025:
    MLK was killed backing sanitation workers in a strike.

    I don’t expect non black minorities to understand why backing labor matters…..
    (x.com/reesetheone1/status/1942282029644566939?t=2uVdAfllz4QNuKvd63KD3Q&s=03)

  81. 81.

    trollhattan

    Oh Ted, time for a Mexico vacation?

    Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, says it’s “natural” to ask what could have been done differently to prevent the loss of life from flooding in central Texas, but that now is not the time for “partisan finger-pointing.”

  83. 83.

    Doug R

    @Citizen Alan:

     

    .
    Citizen Alan

    July 7, 2025 at 1:45 pm

    @Steve LaBonne: Honestly, it would also look the same if he were the literal fucking Antichrist sent to destroy the world but, because God has a sense of humor, he picked an Antichrist who would be adored by Evangelical Christians.

    Daniel 11:32 With flattery he will corrupt those who have violated the covenant, but the people who know their God will firmly resist him.

  89. 89.

    Shakti

    @me:

    It is only stupid if you think they value absolute position/status over relative status, in any way.

    I observe, they attach (almost) no value to absolute position  but relative status is more important than life or the air they breathe.

    If you see any one of them object to something that appears to hurt their absolute status it’s because getting a negative effect to the policy hurts their relative status. Being hurt by the policy is a mark of low relative status.

     

    It is such that lead them to their choices, and will lead them to the choices they make again.

    I respect those convictions too much to condescend to call them stupid.  And we know how they hate being called stupid.

  93. 93.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @Shakti: I observe, they attach (almost) no value to absolute position  but relative status is more important than life or the air they breathe.

    And my experience is  that relative status is a desperate need to be seeing as the wisest and smartest person on the room and for the rest of the family to stop constantly making fun of them in subtle ways.

  94. 94.

    Chetan Murthy

    @Gloria DryGarden: In the article, some of these ninety-somethings start off at TWENTY POUNDS.  One woman who is profiled TRIPLES that weight in the course of the study.  Start off at whatever weight you can hold comfortably — comfortably — for ten seconds.  Not “oh, I don’t know if I can get thru this” weight.  Just “comfortably”.  Then increase the length of time, and the # of sets.  Remember that that’s on one leg, so if you find you overestimated, you can just add your other leg to help, and lower the stack safely.  You can add your arms pushing down on your thighs to help too.

    BTW, I saw this article about planks, too: theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2025/may/05/the-one-change-that-worked-i-could-never-get-fit-until-i-tr…

    And yeah, I can do a 40-second plank, but that’s my limit.  So I do it every day, and after it I do 3 20-second planks.  Slowly gonna work up the time there.  I mean, I can’t do SIX CRUNCHES without feeling like “ow my abs”.  “He’s too old and weak”.

    I -do- think that it works much better in the gym, b/c if you do it with a chair, or some pose, you’re going to (a) be unable to calibrate the effort, and (b) if it’s a pose, you might fall down and that’s not safe.  Heck, even if  you can control it, just the -movement- might be unsafe.  The idea of using a leg press machine is to make it -absolutely- safe: I slide the seat (it’s adjustable) so that the weight I’m lifting is an inch-or-two above the stack — so worst-case, if I run out of steam, the weight drops a whole inch.  That’s -safe-.  to lift off, I use both legs -and- my arms.  Then I lift off one leg to do the rep.  Also, b/c it’s a single leg at a time, when I end the ten seconds, I don’t just lower the weight — I use my other leg to pick up the weight, and switch, so the leg that was workin goes from “hard work” to “no work” without actually moving, bending.  And I use my arms to press down on my knee to take some of the weight, as I switch.  Everything possible to avoid moving the knee joint under load.  Everything.

    Again, b/c I have serious knee injuries, I look for the -safest- way to do knee exercises.  Once, I tried to do lunges — with -no weight-.  Oof,  I did 3 sets of 10, and for the next week I was both sore, and had pain inside both knee joints.  Learned my lesson there.  Maybe if  I double the weight with these leg presses, I’ll try doing lunges again.  But not until then, for sure.

    And of course, this is, like, five minutes total.  Less, actually.  B/c 10-20sec/set x 2 legs x 3-6 sets.  So that’s an inconsequential amount of time.

  98. 98.

    Chetan Murthy

    @Chetan Murthy: Gloria, in the Guardian article about quad leg-extensions, they talk about these seniors doing the exercises under the supervision of trainers, physical therapists, etc.  I don’t have those, which is why I try to focus on the safest way to do the exercise.  B/c injury is the bane of old folks, right?

    I -have- gotten physical therapy for my knees, and they’re the ones who started me doing these exercises, but since there’s a trainer right there, and they can catch the weight if it’s too much, they can have you do more dynamic exercises.  Or real kneeling squats (b/c they’ll stand right behind to catch you if you fall).

  102. 102.

    laura

    @glory b: I was driving to a local park and saw Myron J Clifton walking along. I hung a U-turn and pulled over and introduced myself. Yes, I gushed like a teenager. Yes, he is a lovely person. Yes, we took a selfie, and he kindly blurred my non-social media having face out when he posted about his interaction with a random local fan.

  103. 103.

    NeenerNeener

    @WTFGhost: Yes, and my ex-sis-in-law is an Evangelical who is rooting for the Rapture and expecting the “End of Days” to happen any time now, so she seems to be cool with having the Antichrist as our president.

  104. 104.

    Geminid

    @Martin: No, you’re not unwelcome. But you could made it clear your snappy comeback was to Fritschner, not Rikrah. I would have.

  105. 105.

    Shakti

    @Enhanced Voting Techniques:

    There’s that. That leads to the chestnut of being afraid of being laughed at versus being afraid of being killed.

    I just don’t think “stupid” or “ignorant” or “I/[they] didn’t know” is as broadly exonerative as we like to think.

     

    @JWR: Cruz talking about “finger pointing” doesn’t want to be accountable now and doesn’t think the government has a duty to prevent or mitigate this kind of thing or should have one.  Chalk it up to nature and Jesus, gotta accept it.

    When does the line between passivity/neglect and malice blur into each other completely? We’re not supposed to notice.

  106. 106.

    Chetan Murthy

    @Shakti: When does the line between passivity/neglect and malice blur into each other completely?

    When neglect goes hand-in-hand with lower taxes on the rich, it doesn’t -blur- into malice: it -is- malice.

  107. 107.

    Nelle

    @Chetan Murthy: I’m late to the discussion here.  I’ve been doing the E-gym at the Y for two years now.  It’s a set of resistance machines.   I have a wrist band with identifying chip, so, as I check in on each machine, it sets my program, with the right levels of resistance and adjusts the machine to my height.  The ten machines are synchronized for the workout and then clean and move, so no one can monopolize a machine.  The actual timing of the workout is timed by following the ball on the video screen.

    I’m 74 and have the usual ailments.  But my last strength test, last week, measured leg strength at 52 years, upper body at 25 yrs, and inner core at 21 years (all for a woman).  I have to work on stamina and flexibility, but I’m strong for a woman of my age.

  108. 108.

    Martin

    @Omnes Omnibus: How does that suggest that? I’ve been trying to make this point for a while here – that Congress will not care that you violate their authority if they are on board with that violation. Same holds for the Supreme Court. This is not the objective rules-based system that you continue to believe it is. Trumps deportation machine which violates Congress authority as well as established law, but is tacitly permitted by both Congress and USSC should make that clear enough.

    That is not me wanting the system to break, that is me noting that the system is broken. Analysis is not desire. Climate scientists do not want the climate to get worse when they report the climate is getting worse, and me noting that Congress will not care that Trump has violated that authority is not me wanting it to work that way.

  109. 109.

    Chetan Murthy

    @Nelle: Yes, -calibrating- the resistance correctly is really important, isn’t it?  Make it too much of a jump, and you can injure yourself, or not finish the exercise, or get discouraged.  Make it too easy, and you don’t progress, or even weaken.

    I’m starting off much lower than you though: I’m literally afraid to ride a bike (it used to be my main form of exercise, 10yr ago), b/c I might grind my knee joint and further exacerbate the …. arthritis (which is what it is, let’s be honest).  So I’m not even ready to do weight-lifting that involves knee movement.  Though, haha, I -do- use the stationary bike.  I always use the same bike (so no variation in measuring device) and I always use the “constant power” setting.  So I can set the exact same wattage, and then I try to do a consistent cadence (90 rpm).  So that’s as close as possible to a calibrated force.

  110. 110.

    Martin

    @Geminid: And I take that as evidence that I am not entitled to the benefit of the doubt there. You could have assumed that comment followed directly from Fritscher’s observation (which it did) but instead you assumed I was coming after rikyrah which in I don’t know how many years she and I have been on this site together I don’t believe I have ever done.

    I’ll note azlib made the exact same observation that I did using different words and didn’t get a comparable response from you or OO.

  111. 111.

    zhena gogolia

    @Martin: You’re welcome here, and people always notice when you’re not here for a while.

    We’re all in distress.

  112. 112.

    Chetan Murthy

    @Martin: @Geminid: I must say, it’s a common thing that when person A quotes from someplace else (with attribution to person B) and doesn’t add their own take, then person C replies, and it’s assumed that they’re responding to person B, not person A).  It’s pretty common.

  114. 114.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Martin: Yes, it’s broken.  Do you think I have been saying that you want to break the system?  No, I have been saying that, imo, you want to burn it down because you don’t think it’s fixable.

  115. 115.

    RevRick

    @Professor Bigfoot: Frankly, I think Trump is too stupid to be much of an asset to anyone. Can you imagine Russian intelligence looking at a guy who bankrupted two casinos and saying, “Yes, let’s pick that one?”
    Are Russians and Chinese leaders delighted with the outcome? Undoubtedly. They probably cannot believe their good fortune.

    But let’s not forget MAGA world. Trump only has a feral instinct for the worst in others. He found a way to mine the mother lode of ignorance, resentment, bigotry that is the heart and soul of MAGA. And he also understands that these people have a deep-seated need to lick somebody’s boots. Which makes them prime candidates for joining a cult.

  116. 116.

    gene108

    @Jeffro:

    please won’t SOME enterprising young reporter ask Le Swiss Cheese-brain, “sir…exactly which ‘anti-American policies of BRICS’ are you referring to in your tweet?”

    Trump’s been swatting aside “gotcha” questions ever since Megyn Kelly asked one during one of the early Republican debates in 2015.

    Yeah, he doesn’t really answer them, but it never hurts his support.

  117. 117.

    Fair Economist

    @lowtechcyclist: In the article, I thought Yglesias was clear that informed people, *including him*, didn’t think Eloon would find meaningful waste to cut, but that a lot of poorly informed people did.

  118. 118.

    Eyeroller

    @Geminid:Well, it’s paraphrasing something usually attributed to Stalin, and also suggestive of Andrew Jackson’s attitude toward other branches of the government. Trump doesn’t even have to explicitly show contempt for this Congress; they are eager boot-lickers (I could say something more vulgar but will refrain). ​

  119. 119.

    Citizen Alan

    @Archon: IIRC, “Wormwood,” which Biblical eschatologists seem to assume is nuclear war, happens a bit later during the Tribulations.

  120. 120.

    gene108

    @schrodingers_cat:

    The horseshoe left also likes tariffs and hates trade pacts.

    The horseshoe left hates that fact the free trade and globalization have done more to alleviate global poverty around the world than anything else. It flies in the face of their worldview on economics.

  122. 122.

    Eyeroller

    @Fair Economist: Did MattY consider that nearly all of this “sincere belief” is due to racism?  A lot of white people, not just hardcore MAGA, believe to their very cores that there is immense waste and fraud by millions of lazy minorities, first pretty much exclusively Black “welfare queens” and now adding in “illegal immigrants” which basically means “immigrants.”

    Similar story with foreign aid.  For decades most people believed that we spend an insane quantity of the federal budget — some up to 40%, more recently they’ve said 20% if they guess — on foreign adi.  And not many people still alive remember the Marshall Plan and even that wasn’t so expensive.  And those same people believe that most of that aid goes to Africa.  These beliefs persisted even when we used to get instruction booklets with our tax forms with pie charts showing how the budget was spent, with foreign aid a tiny sliver. Facts don’t matter, as we’ve learned all too painfully in the era of social media mis/disinformation.

  123. 123.

    Geminid

    @Eyeroller: I understand the retort and know its origins. It’s almost a cliché now.

    But I still thought this point about Congressional powers was something worth making on Fritschner’s part, and worth reposting here.

  124. 124.

    Chief Oshkosh

    @Scamp Dog: Whether Trump is addled or whether he’s playing games could be tested if just one news outlet started off their evening report of the WH with the phrase “Appearing to be confused yet again, President Trump responded in answer to reporters with…”

    You know, like how they used to treat Biden.

  125. 125.

    Citizen Alan

    @rikyrah: Slightly less than half the country is clinically insane at this point. They talk about “Liberal Democrats” the way a medieval peasant would talk about “evil spirits.”

  126. 126.

    Chief Oshkosh

    @Martin:

    …these folks are likely to believe that and the fact that every rural hospital went out of business because of it won’t be believed – it’ll be some liberal plot to kill them.

    I’m not picky about the method by which these idiots go away and quit bothering the rest of us. Loss of life due to their own stupidity will serve just as well as any other reason. If they die erroneously thinking the libtards killed them, what do I care?

  128. 128.

    Gloria DryGarden

    @rikyrah: if they close, then they can decrease staff. An$ then they can…

    one hopes they don’t destroy our property in the interest of erasing history…

    it’s unthinkable

  131. 131.

    oldgold

    This morning’s raid on MacArthur Park in LA  by Ice and who knows who was a chilling piece of theatre. They actually had machine guns mounted on armored vehicles!  What an awful spectacle.

    Beyond that and just in fun, I fervently hope this does not result in a revival of the song MacArthur Park.  It has to be one of the worst 10 songs of all time. 

  132. 132.

    gene108

    @rikyrah:

    MAGA voters aren’t stupid. They know exactly what they’re doing. The wellbeing of their families comes second to their desire to hurt perceived enemies. They willingly gave up their healthcare to protect and serve the interests of white supremacy, and they’d gladly do it again .

    @me:

    This isn’t binary. Stupid people intentionally do stupid things.

    Saying MAGA voters are stupid excuses their actions. It reduces their agency about what they decide to vote.

    You can’t blame Trump voters for mass deportations, because they’re dumb and don’t know ant better.

    Bullshit! They fully know what they’re doing, and what they want. They are not dumb. They do not vote against their interests.

    Their interests are different than yours or mine.

    It’s been proven time and time again “intelligence” is multi faceted from technical knowledge like math and science, to art and music, to emotional intelligence, etc.

    Just because a Trump voter isn’t as smart as you in one area doesn’t make them stupid in everything.

  134. 134.

    HopefullyNotcassandra

    @Jeffro: just announced 25% tariffs on Japan and South Korea.

    This move is abysmal,  unless this president is trying to rattle our bond markets and drive the value of the dollar into dust.

  135. 135.

    HopefullyNotcassandra

    @p.a.: It would be even easier, one supposes, if you spent time regularly inside the White House and so knew exactly when TACO is on and when TACO is off

    This entire tariff experience ad infinitum exquisitely resembles a pump and dump.

  137. 137.

    Fair Economist

    @Eyeroller: It’s not just racism. The right wing has run a propaganda campaign that the government is “inefficient” for decades now and it has totally permeated public thinking, even though it’s false in the developed world (there are countries where it’s true). Once I started paying attention, I realized I heard it *everywhere*. Now I make a point of refuting it every time it comes up.

    The main inefficiency in the US is that decades of carping about mythical public sector inefficiency has resulted in the government doing everything via private contractors, which *is* inefficient – vast sums spent on contract negotiation and enforcement, losses to profit-taking and graft, and poor long-term planning for limited capital and labor resources. This is the main reason infrastructure in the US costs several times what it does in most other developed countries.

  139. 139.

    Miss Bianca

    @rikyrah: I’m sorry, but anyone in any way associated with immigrant relatives who voted for Trump because “they’re not going to go after MY immigrant relatives!” is the dictionary definition of “too stupid to live.”

  140. 140.

    HopefullyNotcassandra

    @rikyrah: does this mean our archive data is going free to folks like Mr. Musk, breaking copyright law at record speed?

    Will Marco Rubio lose the 18th century?

  148. 148.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Martin: ​

    How many divisions does Congress have?

    There’s been some discussion of this. My problem with it is that it says we’re already to the point where there’s no point in taking anything to court anymore, we’re to the point where power is directly from the barrel of a gun and any resistance might as well not bother with any other avenues.

    We may be approaching that point, and Lord knows the GOP-controlled Congress and the Seditious Six have given Trump power that no former President ever had. But we’re not there yet.

  149. 149.

    Elizabelle

    @Fair Economist:  Good comment.

    They drum it into your head, through constant repetition.  Constant, and multiple channels.

    Like:  Republicans are better for the economy.

    Except. They aren’t.  Even pre-candidate Trump said years ago that Democrats were better for the economy.  When he had a few more brain cells.

  152. 152.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Fair Economist: ​

    In the article, I thought Yglesias was clear that informed people, *including him*, didn’t think Eloon would find meaningful waste to cut, but that a lot of poorly informed people did.

    Oh sure. And I’m sure Elon had a lot of support back during the winter from those people. But how does that matter now, how does it affect anyone’s thinking now?

    Well-informed people knew this from the start. And the MAGAts and normies alike have moved on from that, aren’t even thinking about it unless the subject comes up somehow, which it doesn’t. And if it does, the MAGAts will just assume the waste was found, and the normies will just shrug and go back to thinking about whatever was on their minds already.

  156. 156.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    Worst 10? Man, you are generous. I’d say bottom 5.

    If it weren’t for “My Heart Will Go On,” which came out well after Dave Barry’s book, I’d say that of those songs that have gotten substantial airplay, “MacArthur Park” was still the worst.

  157. 157.

    Martin

    @Chief Oshkosh: Because they’re not going to die, they’re simply going to elect more MTGs. Their life expectancy will be cut by 5 years, but Arkansas isn’t about to revert to nature. And this process runs the risk of having Democrats radicalized – which is thing that keeps happening on the margins.

  158. 158.

    Martin

    @lowtechcyclist: I don’t think they’re going to move on from it. It’s not like the belief just showed up in the last 6 months – it’s just putting a number to Reagan’s welfare queen attacks from 45 years ago. It’s going to persist for quite a while and resurface packaged up slightly differently and probably even farther removed from reality.

  159. 159.

    dnfree

    @oldgold: MacArthur Park is right down there in worst songs along with “Horse with no Name”.  I think Dave Barry once quipped something like “You’re riding alone through the desert!  Name the horse!”

  161. 161.

    NeenerNeener

    @HopefullyNotcassandra: this president is trying to rattle our bond markets and drive the value of the dollar into dust.

     
    I saw a post somewhere on social media that TACO doesn’t have enough actual dollars to pay off E. Jean Carroll or do anything else, and he’s being paid by tech billionaires and foreign governments in crypto so he’ll destroy the dollar as a reserve currency and crypto will become the US currency. Like everything with TACO….when you look at what he’s doing it’s easy to believe it’s true.

  162. 162.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Martin:

    I don’t think they’re going to move on from it. It’s not like the belief just showed up in the last 6 months – it’s just putting a number to Reagan’s welfare queen attacks from 45 years ago. It’s going to persist for quite a while and resurface packaged up slightly differently and probably even farther removed from reality.

    Oh, the belief that it’s there is as old as you say if not older, but we’re talking about Elon’s inability to find it.

  163. 163.

    Martin

    @Omnes Omnibus: I don’t think it’s fixable internally. Every incentive inside the system is aligned to maintaining the system in this state, or making it worse. Eliminating the filibuster isn’t the one weird trick people think it might be. And I don’t think electing more democrats is either because nobody in the party is seriously talking about the magnitude of reforms that might address that. Even things like expanding the court is purely temporary – it doesn’t address the underlying problems, merely opens a window where the court could possibly be relied on as an internal agent to allow those reforms to take place. You could maybe do a campaign finance reform and not have the court immediately invalidate it, etc. But we’re increasing hitting a point where even getting that door cracked open isn’t going to be sufficient. National guard is in LA according to a cabinet member to liberate us from our locally elected officials, and the court is allowing that to continue. Congress is allowing that to continue.

    Tell us, what is the remedy to this? Like something that will actually work, because electing democrats hasn’t prevented us from degrading to this state. That’s not sufficient.

  165. 165.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Harrison Wesley: ​
     

    I dunno. PMJ did a fun version of “My Heart Will Go On.” Though I agree that it’s a pretty sappy song.

    I have no idea what the lyrics of the verses are, just that I would prefer to never again hear Celine Dion sing, “near, far, wherEVER you are” at that volume and pitch that goes straight through my head.

    “When Canada is dead and gone, there’ll be no more Celine Dion!” – Kyle’s mom, who had a point

  166. 166.

    TurnItOffAndOnAgain

    @Martin: Elect more democrats than we have been.

    The argument that electing democrats hasn’t helped us is like saying, “Welp, the doctor said I needed to put this rash cream on me every day for two weeks, and I’ve been putting it on every three days for two weeks and it hasn’t done shit, so the cream must be worthless.”

  167. 167.

    Martin

    @lowtechcyclist: I agree. The observation is that Trump won’t care if he’s violating Congress’ power because Congress will do fuckall about it. Even if Democrats win control in 2026, they’ll do fuckall about it because short of impeachment they’re powerless to stop him, and we’re not winning that many senate seats.

    The central motive here is around money best as I can tell. Trump doesn’t care about violence – he welcomes it. But he does care about money, so take that. General strike, pull the emergency brake on the economy – that will focus everyone attention in ways that mass violence probably won’t. That’s what’s driving who goes on the court, who gets into office, and so on. Take their money away and I think you have the leverage you need. That’s one risk of wealth inequality, it becomes a very long lever you can pull on. You take 10,000 points off the Dow and half the nations hedge funds will fail within 48 hours.

  169. 169.

    Martin

    @lowtechcyclist: Right, but that just causes the belief to metastasize in some new way. They may or may pin blame on Musk.

    Honestly, if the left was any good at this we’d find a way to start a conspiracy theory that ties Musk in with having found the fraud and is colluding with Stephen Miller to keep it for themselves and stole the client list as leverage or some shit like that. I’m sure someone can piece that together in a way that makes some sense – or not, being sensible doesn’t seem to be terribly necessary.

  170. 170.

    Eyeroller

    @Elizabelle: There’s a reason why this line was picked for especially intense propaganda.  There were other options to get people to oppose social-welfare programs, most of which are also employed, e.g. government is not as effective as private charities and churches. But the “waste, fraud, and abuse” is particularly effective because of the unstated-but understood-conception of who is committing the fraud and abuse.

    I saw this firsthand, when and where I grew up.

  171. 171.

    Shakti

    @rikyrah: Yglesias is part of the okey doke in framing any of this as “sincere.”

     

    By “fraud” they likely mean sincerely that “too much government money is benefiting people I don’t like” And for such people getting rid of “fraud” is a good in and of itself, and they don’t want to think about the first or second order effects of getting rid of “fraud” and pretend stupidity when it might boomerang on themselves.

    Otherwise, it’s an insult to credulity that a majority of these people strained their motivated belief this far into “sincerely” believing this amount of “fraud” exists and that someone like Elon working on behalf of Trump, of all people, would find it and get rid of it.

    @lowtechcyclist:  This vastly overstates how “well informed” you’d have to be to know this.

    At that point you’d have to willfully be plugging your ears under a rock not to at least know this or guess — just based on Trump. Not even Elon.

  172. 172.

    Aziz, light!

    Take their money away and I think you have the leverage you need. That’s one risk of wealth inequality, it becomes a very long lever you can pull on. You take 10,000 points off the Dow and half the nations hedge funds will fail within 48 hours.

    Sure is easy for wealthy Californians with ridiculous amounts of equity to brush off people losing their retirement nest eggs.

  173. 173.

    Jeffro

    @JBWoodford: ah but where is “Horse With No Name”, by America?

    (my kids flipped. out. when they finally figured out that’s my least favorite song of all time)

    honorable mentions: “Brown-Eyed Girl”, “Life in a Northern Town”, and anything by Oasis

    eta OMG: did not see dnfree’s comment at #159!  total mind-meld!! LOL

  175. 175.

    Martin

    @TurnItOffAndOnAgain: Again, that alone is not getting us what we need. We couldn’t even operate as a majority because we had Manchin and Sinema in the group. We spent so much time in 2009 pulling 60 votes together that we left a million problems unsolved. Too many Democrats are themselves enablers of the larger problem. 4 Dems voted for Alito. 1 for Kavanaugh. 3 Democrats were so outraged by the GOP blocking Obama’s nominee that they voted for Gorsuch. 16 Dems voted for the GENIUS act – crypto goes directly to the heart of the problem creating legal ways to bribe elected officials.

    There is no incentive to ‘reach across the aisle’ and yet the system is designed to require that. You aren’t supposed to need 67 Senators from one party to impeach, and yet you practically do. The 2/3 vote requirement was supposed to prevent partisan witch hunts, but it actually blocks all accountability, not because it’s a bad rule, but because you need other components of the system to diffuse partisanship, and there aren’t any – they’ve all been stripped away. Now you just need one billionaire rocket guy to come in and say ‘if you vote against the thing I want, I’ll dump $100M into your primary challenger’, and that will probably work.

    Voting alone doesn’t get you out of the trap – you need structural change.

  176. 176.

    Geminid

    @Jeffro: I was listening to the local oldies station (WREN) on my way home from work the other day, and they played “Love Me Tonight” by Tom Jones.

    Man, was that a ever a bad song! I think Tom Jones knew it too, but he just powered on through and gave the producers what they needed.

  177. 177.

    Shakti

    @Miss Bianca: They pretend stupidity to mask their malice/hostility towards their relatives.  It’s kayfabe at this point.  The relatives are not FAFO, at all.

    What really irks me:

    The overwhelming majority of this story genre is  about Trump voters with immigrant relatives who get taken away.

    As if they are the only people who matter!

    People who voted for Democrats or couldn’t vote are much less likely to be interviewed for the exact same scenario.

  178. 178.

    TurnItOffAndOnAgain

    @Martin:

    Again, that alone is not getting us what we need. We couldn’t even operate as a majority because we had Manchin and Sinema in the group.

    Hence, needing more Democrats.
    That’s not all we need to do, but we can’t do anything else before that.

  179. 179.

    Professor Bigfoot

    @RevRick: They got their hooks in him back before the turn of the century— remember one of the Trumpkins actually bragging that they get most of their financing through Russia?

    I also remember Maria Butina, and the NRA, and the buckets of cash funneled to GOP politicians.

    I think he’s an asset, cultivated decades ago, and when he came down that escalator the KGB trained intelligence officer in charge of Russia saw- and siezed— an opportunity.

    He doesn’t have to be smart to be an asset— he just has to be in the right place.

  181. 181.

    dnfree

    @Jeffro: My worst of all time is seasonal:  “What are you doing New Year’s Eve?”  My kids delight in taunting me with it.  But “MacArthur Park” and “Horse with no Name” are tied for last in non-seasonal songs.

  182. 182.

    WTFGhost

    @Martin: @lowtechcyclist: I agree. The observation is that Trump won’t care if he’s violating Congress’ power because Congress will do fuckall about it. Even if Democrats win control in 2026, they’ll do fuckall about it because short of impeachment they’re powerless to stop him, and we’re not winning that many senate seats.

    The best strategy – albeit the most dangerous – is to mock him, as weak, as fumbling, as stupid, etc..

    He wants people to flex their muscles, and fail. But you can’t fight mockery that way. Obviously, Democratic leadership should simply call him “foolish,” “feckless,” “incompetent,” “all impulse, no planning whatsoever!” But the biggest way to break an authoritarians power is to make his own people a bit embarrassed by him, then, a whole lot embarrassed by him.

    “THEY’RE TRYING IMPEACHMENT AGAIN!” means “the senate will hold strong, refusing once again to convict Trump of actions we all saw him take, on live camera, saying “and the Senate Republicans can blow me!”

    “THEY’VE INVENTED ANOTHER FUNNY NICKNAME FOR (ahem) ANOTHER CRUEL INSULT TO OUR GOD EMPORER TRUMP!” doesn’t give them any cover, except to say “it’s disgusting to think reducing the NWS could lead to undetected weather issues!” and so forth.

  183. 183.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Archon: ​

    If peoples “nest eggs” have to be hurt in the process of saving our Republic, so be it.

    How wonderfully casual. Can’t make an omelet, and all that.

    But that aside, how do you get workers to participate? We know the white part of the working class won’t have anything to do with it because they’re largely pro-Trump, and if Blacks are doing this by themselves, they know the shit’s gonna hit the fan in a way that they’ll be on the receiving end of it. Hispanics? Sure, if they want to be on the next flight to CECOT.

    So, a general strike of white office workers? Doesn’t sound like something that’ll pack a lot of punch.

  184. 184.

    Kathleen

    @laura: I follow the same people. And I agree with you completely and was having “deep thoughts” about our current situation tonight before I logged on here..

  186. 186.

    Martin

    @Aziz, light!: Congratulations! You found the trap built into the system. Politicians by removing pensions and other defined benefit systems, undercutting social security, have made you complicit. You’re not sure you can afford to go after the investor class because you ARE the investor class, and get to be poor at the same time.

    The same problem is what underlies the housing problem in this country. We’ve set up home ownership as an investment which operates at odds with affordable housing as a form of shelter. You can do one, but not both. So now you have liberal San Francisco blocking low income housing development because they don’t want to dilute the equity in their homes because they intend to retire off of that. So SF liberals say they want to help homeless people and then act to prevent that help from materializing.

    Money changes people, often not for the better. By lashing your retirement to the Dow, you’re now going to protect the billionaires. By lashing your retirement to housing prices, you’re now going to fuck over the poor. It’s not like any other form of real resistance isn’t going to have the same effect on the market. You’re fucked either way, and if that’s a bridge too far, you might as well be a republican because at least they’re honest about fucking over the poor to boost the Dow.

    That’s how it works. There’s no way out but to fight against it. You can always make increasing social security part of the ask.

  188. 188.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Martin: ​

    Are we supposed to wait to protest until we have a majority?

    How many divisions do the protesters have?

  189. 189.

    Kathleen

    @laura: The ongoing threads about his peach cobbler are so much fun. I laughed so hard I cried one night.

  190. 190.

    evodevo

    @trollhattan: Our drug dealing redneck lowlife neighbor had a full grown male lion for 4 years, before it attacked him one day and he shot it (to sighs of relief from all the neighbors). At the time, there were NO KY laws against keeping one, and the only federal regs were that you had to take a class (!!). It ran loose on several occasions onto the surrounding farms, including ours, and luckily no one got hurt.  My husband for several of those years carried an AK whenever he took the dogs for a walk on the farm, because you never knew when it would show up. That was the impetus for our idiot legislature to pass some laws addressing that problem, but it took quite awhile. So, it’s not just Pakistan lol

  193. 193.

    WaterGirl

    It would be really awesome if good people here on Balloon Juice would not attack other good people on Balloon Juice.

    What happened to the presumption of good faith?

  194. 194.

    WaterGirl

    Oh my god, how many good people here got up on the wrong side of the bed this morning?

    Open Thread: BRICS-A-Bracket

  196. 196.

    TurnItOffAndOnAgain

    @Martin:

    You can do a lot before that. Are we supposed to wait to protest until we have a majority?

    Just to clarify, you alluded to big, systemic issues that are supposedly too big to be fixed just by voting in more democrats. Am I understanding you right that you think those issues can’t be solved by voting, but they can be with protests?

    If I’ve got that right, that sounds completely backward.

  197. 197.

    Geminid

    @WaterGirl: I thought it was ambiguous myself.

    But I was somewhst touchy on account of Martin’s cheap shots at another commenter a couple nights ago. He complains that I did give him the benefit of the doubt, but he did not give her any benefit of the doubt when he spoke of her “bad faith” arguments.

    Then he went on to describe her as having the same views of socialism as did Donald Trump. This was a gratuitous smear he wouldn’t make to her face; it was in a reply to someone who hadn’t even mentioned the other commenter’s name.

    I wasn’t the only one who thought this attack was uncalled for either. Another person called him out for it, as I had done. I think this was after Martin’s bedtime though, because he never responded.

    So the way I see it, I treated Martin a lot more fairly here than he did that commenter the other night.

  198. 198.

    Martin

    @Geminid: So, I’m not going to hold back on schrodingers bullshit given her propensity to lie about me here and her role in going after me in the other Martin situation. I’ve tried to ignore these people (WG knows I didn’t go after any of them at the time, just asked that she clear things up on my behalf – I don’t think I even mentioned people’s names), but I like being part of this community and I’m tired of being chased off by people like her which I’ve allowed to happen a few times.

    I joined this place back when it was a right-wing site and commenters were circle jerking the usual Fox News bullshit, and I relished shutting those people down. That was fun, and it helped turn this place into what it is by chasing off the trolls. So I’ve decided to bring some of that energy back to the trolls here. If schrodinger is going to peddle in attacks on Democrats made by eugenicists, I’m going to call them out – and not politely any longer. I started by taking apart that NYT hit piece in a way that the NYT sure as shit wasn’t interested in doing and schrodinger wasn’t interested in either – she had an agenda and the hit piece fit that agenda.

    If you make good faith arguments and don’t act like an asshole, I really enjoy conversing with people, arguing, disagreeing. I try very hard to not make these things personal to the degree that people here are angry at me because I don’t think we should go nuclear on every Republican voter, let alone each other. But if these folks are going to argue in bad faith and disparage others here, I’m done being nice to them. I’m tired of people like Mistermix and me getting chased off by them.

    I didn’t give schrodinger the benefit of the doubt because she doesn’t deserve it any longer, IMO. She (and a few others) have been vindictive toward a group of us ever since Biden dropped out, and nobody has done shit about that, so turnabout is fair game and all that I guess. If this is too disruptive to the community, decide which of us you want to ban. If you see me doing this indiscriminately, let me have it, but there’s no way I’m the only one who has seen schrodinger’s behavior here. I treated her as fairly as she deserved.

  199. 199.

    Martin

    @TurnItOffAndOnAgain: There are all kinds of protests, my dude. A general strike is a protest. It need not just be waving signs on a corner. All these things can be done (and usually are) when you are out of power.

  200. 200.

    TurnItOffAndOnAgain

    @Martin: For one, you could’ve clarified, and two, are you still arguing that will do a better job of fixing the deep seated systemic issues you mentioned than voting?

    Because I’d still say that’s backward.

  201. 201.

    Geminid

    @Martin: Not giving S. Cat  the benefit of the doubt is one thing, making up shit like she “has the same views on socialism that Donald Trump has” is another. That was a gratuitous and unjustified insult, and no one was trying to run you off when they called you out for it.

    And I haven’t seen S. Cat trying to run anyone off. She certainly had no part in running Mistermix off, if he was in fact run off.

  202. 202.

    Martin

    @TurnItOffAndOnAgain: General strike? Yeah, probably. If the moneyed interests are the problem – the donors, the graft, making sure corporations win every fight, and so on, turning off their money flow will focus their attention. That is, after all, the thing they care about. Immigration for that class of people is not a racist ideology but a system where they get to completely avoid labor laws because an undocumented person doesn’t exist and the undocumented worker seeks to not be seen. That’s why a certain part of the GOP want immigration to be curtailed but non-criminals not deported, and certainly none of them getting amnesty because that puts them on the books.

    Trump cares about the stupid economic measures like the Dow. His donors do too. That’s where they’re weakest. I suspect you’d get some combination of:

    1. bankrupting the ones that are too highly leveraged
    2. disrupting the loyalties and funding streams behind the GOP – there would no standing together on this
    3. prompting a violent backlash from the administration
    4. scaring the wobbly republicans in congress and on the courts to help patch things back together. Republican lawmakers were so scared during the financial crisis that they killed a lot of sacred cows to stabilize things. McCain was so rattled he suspended his campaign.

    Mind you, I have no idea how you make such a thing happen with unions being completely decimated in the US, and too many of them backing Trump. But if you could do it, I think it would work, and non-violently on our part (I doubt Trump could resist trying to make an example of some, though). Lack of Dem leadership as well not helping.

    A lot of the civil rights actions were centered around strikes. It’s why so many black organizers focus on the importance of unions.

  203. 203.

    TurnItOffAndOnAgain

    @Martin:

    A lot of the civil rights actions were centered around strikes. It’s why so many black organizers focus on the importance of unions.

    They also focused on voting. That was, I’m pretty sure, a very big focus of theirs.

    And again, just to clarify because it’s hard for me to parse, you think a general strike and other kinds of protests will address deep seated systemic issues that voting for democrats won’t. What issues would these be, and why and how would that work better than voting, as opposed to in conjunction with it?

  204. 204.

    Martin

    @TurnItOffAndOnAgain: And yet not the only focus. ‘Necessary but not sufficient’ is the term of art.

    I think something like a general strike gives the electorate leverage to demand things that Democrats are unable to deliver, yes. Mainly because elected Democrats lack leverage – they are not going to hold the economy hostage. A general strike is doing precisely that.

  205. 205.

    TurnItOffAndOnAgain

    @Martin:

    I think something like a general strike gives the electorate leverage to demand things that Democrats are unable to deliver, yes. Mainly because elected Democrats lack leverage – they are not going to hold the economy hostage. A general strike is doing precisely that.

    How are they going to get anything with that leverage if they’re still in the minority because more democrats haven’t been voted into congress?

  206. 206.

    Martin

    @Geminid: In fairness I said “her views on socialist economics are identical to Donald Trump’s”, and I stand by that. She clearly hates the left indiscriminately:

    Tankies and MAGAs have a symbiotic relationship. Tankie DSA type politics helps Rs not the Democrats

    They traffic in similar bigotries. On the right they hide their intentions using patriotism as a cover on the horseshoe left its economic justice.

    She stated that while showing her own bigotries by uncritically peddling an argument made by a eugenicists.

    If she decides that equating supporters of, say, AOC with MAGA is in-bounds, then my comparison of her views on socialist economics being equivalent to Trumps are also in-bounds because best as I can see – her disdain for DSA is equivalent to his. If that’s a gratuitous and unjustified insult, then get schrodinger to issue us an apology.

  207. 207.

    Martin

    @TurnItOffAndOnAgain: Democrats lack leverage even in the majority was my point. Sorry, was unclear about that. Even if you get them elected, the court is going to strike down half the shit they pass, money will still be speech, corporations will still be people, gerrymandering will still be legal, as will bribing elected officials so long as you do it the correct way. These are the structural problems that elected officials are unable to fix. Even bipartisan campaign finance legislation got undercut.

  210. 210.

    Martin

    @TurnItOffAndOnAgain: The citizens. You’re basically holding the economy hostage against all lawmakers. You’re forcing bipartisanship on these structural issues – public funding of campaigns, eliminate partisan gerrymandering, and so on. These are things that Democrats aren’t going to deliver on, even if they tried and had large majorities.

  211. 211.

    TurnItOffAndOnAgain

    @Martin:

    The citizens. You’re basically holding the economy hostage against all lawmakers. You’re forcing bipartisanship on these structural issues – public funding of campaigns, eliminate partisan gerrymandering, and so on. These are things that Democrats aren’t going to deliver on, even if they tried and had large majorities.

    I’m sorry…you think the GOP death cult, that you yourself said will shoot the hostage, can be convinced to make a bipartisan effort through a general strike?

    And you think this is so likely to work that we should forego voting for protests instead of voting alongside protests or something like a general strike?

    Like, dude, I’m trying to make sure I’m not missing something here, because you’re coming across kind of underpants gnomes right now.

  212. 212.

    Geminid

    @Martin: I’m not trying to get anyone to apologize for anything. But S. Cat’s prejudices against the DSA are not equivalent to Trump’s, and your saying it doesn’t make it so.

  213. 213.

    satby

    @TurnItOffAndOnAgain: he’s totally in underpants gnomes territory.

    Edit: @Martin 210 These are things that Democrats aren’t going to deliver on, even if they tried and had large majorities.

    Asserting facts not in evidence at all. The legislation proposed along the lines you suggest has been by done Democrats, but without the filibuster/override veto proof majorities needed. Because of Republicans blocking that legislation.

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