yeah no but also no lies detected
— Joshua Erlich (@joshuaerlich.bsky.social) July 21, 2025 at 3:21 PM
Haven’t listened to the whole three-hour-plus interview yet (YouTube embed at the bottom of this post), but Hunter Biden has touched some nerves amid the Very Serious Media. Per the Guardian, “Hunter Biden takes on George Clooney and presidential debate in interview”:
Hunter Biden has given a profanity-laced, three-hour interview to the US outlet Channel 5 that is remarkable for its no-holds attack on actor George Clooney, denial that he was the source of cocaine found in the White House and thoughts on why his father bombed in his debate with Donald Trump before dropping out of his presidential re-election run.
“Fuck him!” the younger Biden said of Clooney, whose remarkable New York Times opinion piece last July called on the Democratic party for which the actor is a financial donor to find a new presidential nominee.
“Fuck him and everybody around him. I don’t have to be fucking nice.”…
Biden’s interview to Channel 5, a popular YouTube channel created by Andrew Callaghan, comes as US House Republicans pursue investigations into his father’s presidency. Congressional Republicans have been claiming that the former president’s closest advisers covered up a physical and mental decline during his presidency, and criticizing his pre-emptive pardons of family members, including Hunter, after Trump threatened to prosecute his opponents as he captured the Oval Office again in November…
Hunter Biden acknowledged that Joe Biden had an “absolutely horrible” debate against Trump before his father dropped out of the 2024 presidential race exactly a year ago on Monday and endorsed Vice-President Kamala Harris to succeed him. Hunter Biden said his father had to drop out or see fellow Democrats fight him “every step of the way”.
Among the reasons for the poor debate performance were that his father – 81 at the time – was “tired as shit”, Hunter Biden said. “They give him Ambien to be able to sleep. He gets up on the stage and looks like he’s a deer in the headlights, and it feeds into every fucking story that anybody wants to tell.”
After Trump’s second presidency began in January, the FBI reopened an investigation into who left cocaine in a White House locker in 2023. Suspicions have fallen on Hunter Biden, whose past struggles with substance abuse have been well documented.
But Hunter Biden denied the cocaine found in the White House was his, asserting he has been clean and sober since June 2019. “Why would I bring cocaine into the White House and stick it into a cubby outside … the situation room in the West Wing?” he asked…
Hunter Biden has a point. And a quite colorful one.
— Olga Nesterova (@onestpress.onestnetwork.com) July 21, 2025 at 2:14 PM
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Hunter on Musk and immigration.
— Olga Nesterova (@onestpress.onestnetwork.com) July 21, 2025 at 2:14 PM
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Hunter Biden on Stephen Miller: “There’s something f*cked up about that motherf*cker.”
— The Tennessee Holler (@thetnholler.bsky.social) July 21, 2025 at 2:56 PM
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what’s weird about this is he sounds exactly like his dad
— jamelle (@jamellebouie.net) July 21, 2025 at 4:11 PM
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i watched a bunch of this and hunter really starts cooking when he compares this moment to reconstruction era violence
— jamelle (@jamellebouie.net) July 21, 2025 at 4:30 PM
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My only real hunter biden take is that he did really inherit his father’s juice, even behind all the brain damage and cocaine use he clearly got the CHA 10 retail politics genes
— William B. Fuckley (@opinionhaver.bsky.social) July 21, 2025 at 4:58 PM
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I guess I do have an actual take: he’s as a good a ‘left Rogan’ candidate as any, Joe will never run for anything ever again so any splash damage to a potential candidate brand isn’t something to worry about, he’s got name recognition, he could do the podcast thing
— William B. Fuckley (@opinionhaver.bsky.social) July 21, 2025 at 5:00 PM
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He’s had an eventful life to talk about, he could get people to talk to him by virtue of being his dad’s son, it probably comes to nothing but who gives a shit, try things.
— William B. Fuckley (@opinionhaver.bsky.social) July 21, 2025 at 5:08 PM
War for Ukraine Day 1,243: The Butcher’s Bill from Last Night’s Russian Attack on Ukrainian Civilians & Civilian Infrastructure
Fair Economist
I haven’t seen the interview, but in the quotes he’s not attacking the Democratic Party, he’s attacking a host of hanger-ons and parasites like Carville and Pod Save America.
Gretchen
Here’s what Tommy Vietor, one of the Pod Save America boys, had to say about the interview:
« It’s good to see that Hunter has taken some time to process the election, look inward, and hold himself accountable for how his family’s insular, dare I say arrogant at times, approach to politics led to this catastrophic outcome we’re all now living with. »
The Pod Save boys have no intention of holding themselves accountable for their successful efforts to undermine and push out Joe Biden last summer. They thought that a « mini-primary » at the convention would be great fun, and there would be no consequences for pushing out our nominee at the last minute. I haven’t forgiven them yet – they were so sure they were right, and everybody else was wrong. It was very Underpants Gnome: push Biden out, ???, victory! And now that it’s all blown up, well, they’re still looking for the guy who did this. And they have the nerve to say that someone who disagrees with them is arrogant!
SpaceUnit
Crazy how many people here fell for that Pod Save horseshit.
Gretchen
I’ve got to agree with him about Carville, Axelrod, the Pod Save boys, Clooney, Tapper… and I don’t know about Anita Dunn but he’s so right about the rest of them that I have to consider it. Carville latched onto a generational political talent in Clinton, and Axelrod and the Pod Save boys latched onto the next generational talent in Obama, and they’re all convinced that they were responsible, even though after their one success retired, they never found another. Maybe you guys didn’t make Clinton and Obama, and just got lucky? Nah, they’ll never consider that.
Splitting Image
@Fair Economist:
I haven’t really made the connection before, but I’m starting to wonder if the proliferation of these parasites is a result of the breakdown of the idea of “employers” and “employees” in the private sector.
Once upon a time, it was common to join a company straight out of school and work there until retirement. You might switch careers at some point, or take a job with another company, but companies thought that there were benefits to inspiring loyalty to the firm and people thought that there were benefits to working up through the ranks until pension day.
At some point along the way, the idea of every worker as an independent contractor took hold, and that as a worker you should focus on building a “brand” and moving from company to company rather than staying put and working your way up the ladder. The notion of the “Organization Man” that held sway in the 1950s and 1960s is dead as a doornail.
I think that as a result, there are fewer and fewer people who think of either party as an organization to which they might contribute but more and more as a resource which they can use to help build their own brand. It makes no difference to a lot of these people whether a party wins or loses, since they can build their brand by claiming they guided the party to a win or by claiming the party lost because it didn’t listen to them.
Martin
I’m not sure why people are taking sides in this. It’s kind of one flavor of fundraising/money oriented politics vs a different flavor of fundraising/money oriented politics.
sab
Carville keeps sending me texts. No amount of “STOP” stops him. I am old. I voted for Clinton. Carville is much older. I really don’t want to hear from him any more.
My husband will be thrilled to wake up tomorrow and see Hunter fighting back.
We have had to deal with drug addiction in my family. Our guy ( son) chose to do drugs in high school. Serious anxiety issues since childhood. No medical help available so he chose self-medication. Bad choice that took him years to dig out of. But dig out he did. I am proud of him and thankful.
Hunter didn’t have a choice. He was on opioids from his early childhood to get him through recovering from the injuries when his mother and baby sister died in a car accident that seriously injured him and Beau.
He has worked his way through. Republicans have set every trap they could to tip him back into drug use. Vile people they are. Good for him for his recovery.
I think he is entitled to vent after everything that political opponents have done to his family after what real life has already thrown at them.
My family looks at his family as a model for dealing with death and also addiction. Strength and grace.
NotMax
How much do I care about what Hunter Biden has to say about anything?
Not one whit.
sab
@Gretchen: I don’t like Axelrod, but Obama wasn’t his first round with a political talent. He also worked for Mayor White in Cleveland’s heyday.
Axelrod has always been open to backing very talented Black politicians that were written off by race prejudice. I have problems with him in many ways, but I will give him that.
Martin
@NotMax: I don’t care who’s saying it, but I don’t think he’s wrong. I also don’t think he’s saying it from a superior position in terms of how to conduct politics.
I don’t have anything against any of these people, but these stories always comes off more as middle school mean girl shit than politics. Bring us solutions. They never have any.
JoyceH
@Gretchen: Hey, why would Axelrod or any of those guys even try to sign on to another campaign? You work 18-20 hour days nonstop for two years and have about a fifty-fifty chance of losing. And if you lose, you’re nobody. Anybody interviewing Kerry’s campaign manager these days? But with the winning campaign in your pocket, the hard part is over. Now you can podcast or Substack and be a contributor to a network, and you don’t have to go to DC or NYC, you don’t even have to leave your living room. It’s major bucks for a part time job and you can never be proven wrong.
SpaceUnit
@Martin:
Yeah, think it might be more of a good-for-my-country vs a good-for-my-brand kinda thing.
sab
@sab: Strength and grace, and also love and support.
Joe and Jill Biden are a role models to us. I am glad to see his son defending him fiercely.
Martin
@SpaceUnit: I think it’s increasingly obvious that money doesn’t win campaigns any longer, and Democrats can’t get off that horse. I’m not saying you can have no money, but candidates that can capture the public attention are what matter now, and the party doesn’t know how to recruit/value/support them. No number of consultants can overcome that.
SpaceUnit
@Martin:
Certainly something to that. There’s definitely an imbalance between a single campaign’s cash and the entire entrenched wealth and influence of a very biased corporate media environment.
One can buy adds on their air-time but not on their editorial slant.
Ramalama
@sab: Yep. Both Axelrod and Plouffe helped Deval Patrick win the governor’s race in Massachusetts after a long string of Republicans ruling the roost. Gov Patrick was the first African American governor of MA.
sab
I miss Kay a lot, but I do not miss her absolute intolerance of the things that lead to drug use among the young.
Many of them came in with untreated mental health issues.
My stepson seriously threatened suicide since he was eight. Anxiety. He self medicated at fifteen. That got him out of any considerstion for the rest of his life. “Druggy.”
He finally got himself effective drug treatment. Took twenty years.
He wasn’t just drug issues. He was self-treating for psychological issues. He did drugs because we wouldn’t treat his anxiety issues.
Martin
@SpaceUnit: And I’d argue anyone under 40 or so rarely sees ads anyway. You win via authenticity on social media. That’s what Trump was good at. That’s what Mamdani is good at. That’s what Crockett is good at.
I don’t think the Democrats problem is that they aren’t leftist enough. I think the problem is the party keeps backing candidates that are good at raising money (more centrist) rather than good at being authentic with voters and making their own attention for free.
Baud
@Martin:
Nothing stops “authentic” candidates from running and winning primaries. See Mamdani.
Maybe the problem isn’t that we don’t have authentic people. Maybe the problem is that voters have been manipulated into viewing our people as inauthentic if they fall outside a narrow acceptable personality type.
Rusty
@sab: This is a good point, substance abuse often is self medication for other underlying issues. They can be psychological such as anxiety, but can also include trauma. People who have been abused can turn to drugs and alcohol to cope with the resulting mental health issues. Anecdotally, the number of people I know who have experienced the death of a child is far higher in AA than in the general public. Chronic health issues such as pain can also lead to substance abuse.
Gretchen
@sab: I think Republicans were doing everything in their power to push Hunter back into drug addiction and possibly suicide for the single reason that it would hurt Joe Biden and weaken him. All the laptop stuff and showing his nude pictures in Congress was a cynical ploy to drive him over the brink. If he died, oh well, that’s politics. That’s how evil they are and that’s how furiously they should be resisted.
they were willing to use a son’s weakness and a father’s love for his son for political advantage. There is no circle of hell low enough for those people
Baud
I don’t listen to podcasts or Rogan specifically, but the Hunter as a “left Rogan” (with the broader meaning of left here) sounds intriguing. He’s definitely a colorful character.
Betty Cracker
Got this awesome shot of a Green Heron from the side porch earlier!
Geminid
@Betty Cracker: That heron looks very serious.
Betty Cracker
@Geminid: It was a nervous bird at that moment! There was competition in the lagoon from an egret and a different type of heron, and Greenie was the smallest of the trio. We see Greens occasionally, but they’re shy and difficult to sneak up on.
Ksmiami
@Gretchen: Republicans are a disease. No, have no fucks left to give. Yes I’ll go there.
Martin
@Baud: I think Mamdani is a perfect example of this. Clinton and Clyburn backed Cuomo. The NY state Democratic Party still hasn’t endorsed him. Jeffries, Hochul, and Schumer haven’t endorsed him.
The problem as I see it is you have this survivors bias aspect to the issue. How many politicians that win off of attention are centrists? Any? Are centrists all so lacking in personality and authenticity that there aren’t any? Or, does that get buried in order present as the consultant polished candidate for the donors? So you get this perception that voters want leftists when folks like AOC or Mamdani win, when in fact they won because they didn’t do the thing the party demanded of them, in part because they aren’t what the donors want. So you get these politicians that appeal directly to voters instead. Isn’t it possible the centrists can do that too if they are willing to shift their priority? AOC and Mamdani didn’t have a choice – the donors didn’t want them. I mean, we KNOW that the DNC backs candidates primarily based on their fundraising potential. That’s how they’ve rolled for quite a long time now. I think that tends to lead them to well funded but not particularly well liked candidates by voters because they are too guarded.
Baud
@Martin:
Centrists are pretty few and far between, much like leftists. Most elected Dems are in the mushy middle.
I also think most people win because of they work their way up in the local community. Not because of their personality or their campaign style. But I haven’t done a rigorous analysis
I also don’t think the DNC backs candidates. The DCCC AND DSCC do recruit and back candidates.
But someone not backed can still compete. By your own comment up thread, money isn’t decisive.
Martin
@Baud: The left doesn’t need a Rogan. Rogan’s appeal is that you have to sit there for 2 ½ hours – you can’t prep 2 ½ hours of talking points on his show. That’s why Bernie does well there because Bernie is just being Bernie for 2 ½ hours. I think the real problem is that most Democrats aren’t comfortable just shooting the shit unedited for 2 ½ hours because they might say something that annoys the CEO of Proctor and Gamble. Meanwhile Trump goes on the show and says he’s going to deport the CEO of Proctor and Gamble. Trump doesn’t get punished for it not because he has some magical spell on the electorate, but because we no longer expect or want politicians to be perfect hairstyles at all times. There are no gaffes. Just speak your mind and own it. If you’re genuine we’ll know it, if you’re a bullshitter we’ll know that too.
I mean, Rogan is pretty fucking dumb – which I think is part of the appeal – everything is laid out pretty bare. If you can’t win an argument with him, voters might have good reason to not vote for you.
prufrock
@Betty Cracker: One thing I love about being a Florida native is that we have the best collection of birds.
Baud
@Martin:
I can’t speak much to it since I don’t partake of any of it. If Hunter did start a podcast, I almost certainly wouldn’t listen to it.
ETA: The notion that Trump is genuine confirms that people see politics exclusively through the lens of entertainment.
NotMax
@prufrock
Hawaiian birds ain’t chopped liver.
Just sayin’.
;)
Betty Cracker
@prufrock: We really do. It’s also cool that some migratory species are year-round residents. Like they said, “fuck it, we’re staying.”
Martin
@Baud: Trump is such a practiced and facile liar due to his narcissism that everything he says comes off as genuine.
Baud
@Martin:
Not to me, but I understand I’m in the minority.
Dems need to become better liars, I guess.
Princess
If he wants to be our Joe Rogan, I’m happy for him to try. He’d be a nice antidote to Gavin Newsom’s weasely cozying up to fascists. And he’s relatable to everyone who ever did really stupid shit and/or had awful things happen to them, which is everyone. As I said on Bluesky, Americans love a redemption arc.
Princess
@sab: So much drug use is self-medication for other issues.
zhena gogolia
@Baud: Yes.
lowtechcyclist
@Martin:
Yeah, and one flavor is “we’ve got some motherfucking principles, and here’s why we should all have them and fight for them” and the other is “we need to toss them all away in order to win back white working class men.”
Man, that second flavor tastes like shit, doesn’t it?
p.a.
When your message is filth, it will resonate as genuine with the filth demographic.
Princess
@Baud: yeah, I think this is right. If there were more centrists, Biden wouldn’t have been able to get so much big legislation through the House. They’re pretty unified in terms of policy there. Even in the senate, Manchin and Sinema were real outliers (though they may have given cover to others).
Baud
@Princess:
There’s probably a bigger split between institutionalists and reformers.
In any event, with the thin margins we had in Congress, outliers held all the power.
Princess
On Biden and Ambien: I use it for jet lag when I travel. It’s good because it works to keep you asleep and it has fewer side effects the next day but it’s very dependency-inducing and worst, it’s not real sleep. You’ve been “asleep” for 7 hours but you don’t have 7 hours of rest. I don’t know from this if it was a one-off use or a regular thing but not surprised it messed him up.
zhena gogolia
@Gretchen: Yes.
lowtechcyclist
@Martin:
Democratic candidates have been raising billions through ActBlue for years now. Seems like that should not only be part of the calculus, but that the Democratic Party should try to chart a path toward being free from Big Donors who are usually to the right of the party.
p.a.
When the multigenerational conservative attack on unions succeeded, the Dem $$$ had to come from somewhere, and it’s only natural Dem pols latched onto whatever sources they could find, which tended to be more concentrated wealth, more centrist, mirroring the economic changes wrought by neoliberalism & *puke* Reaganomics.
Now ActBlue etc are changing the equation but it’s still a struggle. No one gives up power without a struggle (h/t F Douglass)
ETA: or, what LTC just said.^
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
I don’t know what the Dems need to do but the thing the Epstein stuff has made crystal clear to me is the media writ large will only talk about anything for multiple news cycles if there are either A) continuing developments or B) the MAGA base wants it talked about.
Until now I thought the constant focus on Republican framing on the economy, Biden’s age, etc is some inherent bias against Democrats but here, finally, comes something that’s bad from Republicans but that Republicans are mad about and want to focus on and lo and behold it becomes a multi cycle story, even though no new real revelations are coming out on a daily basis.
The entire nation is being tricked, forced, coerced, conned? IDK exactly what word is right here…into obsessing about whatever MAGA is obsessed with. I don’t know what created this situation or what to do about it but it’s extremely exhausting and trouble for us that it persists. Nothing is a controversy for Trump, no matter how bad, unless MAGA cares. For Dems the entire nation picks up whatever negative framing on an issue MAGA pushes, on the economy, on our candidates’ perceived flaws (too old, emails, whatever) for weeks and months. It generates a headwind that’s hard to fight against.
zhena gogolia
@Splitting Image: Interesting.
Baud
zhena gogolia
@Martin:
Joe Biden brought us tons of solutions. Tons. The voters didn’t seem to care.
zhena gogolia
@sab: Me too.
Baud
@zhena gogolia:
Yeah, do people want solutions or do they want authenticity or do they want entertainment or do they want good vibes or something else entirely? Or do they want excuses to vote their prejudices?
It’s like wrestling a greased pig.
I got nothing.
Splitting Image
@Baud:
I don’t think that left, centre, and right are very meaningful descriptions anymore, if they ever were.
I mean if 45% of the country is willing or eager to vote for a fascist, than the other 55% are going to need the support of almost everybody else in order to defeat them, and you can’t be picky about who shows up in the voting booth. As you said, the big divide at the moment is who is willing to support the existing institutions and work within the system to effect change and who is willing to burn everything to the ground.
Baud
@Splitting Image:
Yet we are.
Princess
If I were in NYC I would vote for Mamdani without hesitation. That being said, unlike AOC, he’s not a Democrat. And also unlike AOC, he’s not protected by being one member of a huge caucus. He’s going to be all alone there as mayor of a huge complex and fractious city with precisely zero relevant experience to do what is required. I fully expect him to crash and burn and frankly I don’t blame Democratic politicians who are wary of tying their names to him. If I were in their shoes, I’d announce I would vote for him but I wouldn’t endorse him myself. Or some other tepid solution.
Baud
@Princess:
?
ETA: If I weren’t lazy, I’d go back to see who endorsed Adams four years ago.
Geminid
Reports are that fighting has finally ceased in Syria’s southwestern Sweida Governate. Two Fridays ago, the hijacking of a vegetable vendor’s truck triggered escalating violence that has claimed at least 800 lives.
Last Friday night Tom Barrack, US Ambassador to Turkiye and Special Envoy for Syria, announced a, ceasefire that seems to have finally taken hold.
New Lines Magazine published a good article on the fighting and its background last Thursday. It’s titled, “Escalating Violence Engulfs Druze Mountain.”
Jebel Druze, Arabic for Druze Mountain, is the center of Syria’s Druze community. There are many old and new grudges between the Druze and their Bedouin neighbors that drove the bloodshed initially
Ed. I’ll try linking again…still doesn’t work. Oh well. I can encourage people to look up the article in New Lines Msgazine. That is a really good publication.
Deputinize America
@zhena gogolia:
Bingo.
The children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren of the people who shouted at Ruby Bridges and those who thought William Calley did nothing wrong form the Trump/GOP base.
satby
@Baud: two pretty talented young Democrats have done well on podcasts recently. Pete Buttigieg on the Flagrant podcast and James Talerico on Rogan’s podcast. Neither are as flashy as AOC or Mandami, but they’ve been out there laying the groundwork and making the case for voting for Democrats.
Baud
@satby:
Awesome. Good for them.
Ohio Mom
@sab: And now that medicine does a better job of recognizing and treating pediatric psychiatric issues, all we hear about is that there are too many medicated kids.
For one example, we are told, “They are boys, they need recess.” No, that boy has a developmental disability called ADHD. Something we have effective medicine for.
Librettist
He’s not wrong about George Clooney. That bum hasn’t hit at the box office since Bush.
Somebody is paying for that Lake Como lifestyle, and I’d rather it not be me.
satby
@Baud: it’s all viiibes, man.
Betty Cracker
@Princess: Mamdani is a Democrat.
lowtechcyclist
@zhena gogolia:
This. Of course, the media did its level best to bury those accomplishments.
I know part of this thread’s discussion is about how voters don’t get much of their info from the mainstream media anymore, but where else were they going to find out about what Biden was accomplishing? Instagram? TikTok? An older guy like me has no idea how those social media ecosystems even work.
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
I think people are confused because candidates in NY can swing with multiple parties.
Deputinize America
@Geminid:
Tom Barrack – now THERE’S a foul name from the pits of hell. He’s the hedge fund ass with the soothing tone and kindly smile who stood up and gave a speech at the 2016 RNC convention about how the real Donald Trump that he knew was so warm, kind and generous, and that America just needed to trust him.
Turned out that Barrack had only ever met him a couple of times briefly.
Barrack’s name should be on the list of anyone who has a terminal cancer diagnosis but wants to make the world a nicer place…
satby
@Baud: Both not into performative outrage and probably pegged as “more centrist” so apparently overlooked by the Kool Kidz.
Princess
@Baud: So far as I can see, Mamdani doesn’t identify himself as a Democrat but as a Democratic Socialist.
Betty Cracker
@Baud: Yeah, I don’t really understand how that multiparty thing works, but Mamdani ran and won as a Democrat twice for the state assembly seat and also as NYC mayor.
satby
@lowtechcyclist: the Biden admin had Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube influencers as a key part of their outreach. Which I, for one, linked to numerous times last year.
Admittedly, I’m much more extremely online than a lot of my demographic group.
Ohio Mom
@Princess: I completely agree, my main hope is that Brad Lander, who has had successful experience in wrangling projects through the gauntlet that is NYC, is his right hand man.
Baud
@Princess:
I haven’t followed the campaigning. The general election is less interesting to me than the primary.
lowtechcyclist
@Deputinize America:
Can they wait until after this Administration has left office? Because Barrack appears to be one of this Administration’s few foreign policy people who has a clue. And I’m all for people putting down their grudges and ceasing to kill one another, and at least from the cheap seats, it looks like Barrack is helping that along.
Princess
@Baud: I was slightly less lazy so I just looked it up. Basically everyone relevant endorsed him. Schumer, Cuomo, Hochul, the whole gang. Not AOC. People who know NYC might find other omissions.
Baud
@Princess:
Thanks. Still a ways to go to November. We’ll see how things shake out.
Geminid
@Deputinize America: Have you followed Tom Barrack’s activities in the Middle East the last couple months? It’s an important story if you’re interested in that region.
I’ve been telling people there to look up Barrack’s Wikipedia biography because he’s a powerful player. In addition to his role in Syria, Barrack has the Lebanon portfolio, and met with that nation’s President and Prime Minister yesterday.
Betty Cracker
@Princess: While you’re on the Google machine, maybe look up “Mamdani party”? He’s a Democrat.
rikyrah
Good Morning, Everyone😊😊😊
Baud
@rikyrah:
Good morning.
Deputinize America
@Ohio Mom: Some levels of ADD can/should be accommodated, though – at its low end, ADD folks do an amazing job where the quick assimilation of info and rapid decisionmaking have to happen. The best street cops, firefighters, paramedics, EMTs and ER docs and nurses have to do that, and their “percentage of correct decisions” is usually up in the 90s. Just don’t expect a thorough narrative report after.
Speaking for me, I have a dose of it, never treated. I’m easily distracted, and tend to flit from task to task – I recognize it though, and have learned to cover for it in general.
Another Scott
I saw the short clips that Princess pointed us to yesterday (thanks!), and just started watching the whole thing last night.
It’s not continuous f-bombs. He’s thoughtful and honest and careful and knows how to use his own words and not be led by the interviewer when he doesn’t want to be.
I don’t know he’d be a good host, but he’s a good interview.
It’s pretty good so far (I’m about 25 minutes in). Worth a listen.
Best wishes,
Scott.
Princess
@Betty Cracker: You’re right it seems — at least Wikipedia says he is a party member. I tried to figure out why I got the idea that he isn’t so I googled. It was from his own campaign web page. This is the first sentence of how he describes himself on the campaign home page: “Zohran Kwame Mamdani is a New York State Assemblymember and democratic socialist running for Mayor.” Nowhere does he describe himself as a Democrat or a member of the Democratic Party.
zohranfornyc.com/#about
Baud
@Princess:
Oh, that’s interesting.
Librettist
West coast movers and shakers are going to have trouble cat herding Gavin to the nomination.
Princess
Double post
Liminal Owl
@sab: It is so good to hear that your stepson is doing well; blessings and congratulations to him and to you. And how I wish there were more non-addictive medication options for people with severe anxiety. (In addition, of course, to the non-med treatments… which can be so hard to access when the anxiety is in full force.)
p.a.
Maybe tangental, maybe not, and maybe my comment should be filed under “get off my grass!”, but has Dem courting of the ute vote been efficient? Have the efforts yielded equivalent results? I don’t know the numbers (spending/voters) and am too lazy to do it now, but did the “Swifties” show up? “Gen-tiktok”? Would Kamala have done much worse, i.e. the outreach worked? or was it smoke-and-mirrors. Because there are Dem scammers & grifters, and maybe they aren’t all pushing centrist politicians and centrist outreach.
Baud
@p.a.:
I know young whites and young males swung right for the same reasons their pappies and grandpappies did.
Hate bridges the generational divide.
Professor Bigfoot
“White men are 45 times more likely to commit crime.”
Hunter hits on the base of this: everyone he names (other than Anita Dunn) is a white man.
HE gets it, if most white people (including right TF here) don’t.
mardam
That was fucking epic!!!!
I could listen to that all day long. and I just might.
The Audacity of Krope
Hunter Biden is my spirit animal.
Professor Bigfoot
@Baud: It’s the power of whiteness.
White PEOPLE choose whiteness and white supremacy because honestly, the vast majority of them never ever give any thought whatsoever as to WHY why they chose the 34 count felon.
Oh no, it MUST have been Harris’s “bad campaign.”
Professor Bigfoot
@The Audacity of Krope: Hunter Biden is, like Joe Biden and Tim Walz, a white man who understands how whiteness directs so much of how this country operates.
There’s a white man I WILL listen to; one of the very few.
The Audacity of Krope
Good.
The Audacity of Krope
It was designed to be held as culturally superior. As such, the notion of white identity is probably best dropped from the culture.
mappy!
@satby: It goes back to Kennedy, at least. Charisma. Whatever the media thinks will sell, get the views, grow an audience (to sell to the advertisers), that’s what gets the 24/7 focus. Rinse and repeat.
One of the required readings in my High School curriculum (probably an English class…) was Vance Packard’s The Hidden Persuaders. Somebody (at my High School, at the time) made sure the syllabus included material that showed kids how they were being manipulated, or an attempt to give kids the tools to recognize manipulation…
…return to the regular programming.
Betty
@Martin: Amen to your take. I have heard stories about excellent potential Democratic candidates who first had to raise a lot of their own money before getting any help from the party.
Mai Naem mobile
Watched a few minutes of Fox Business and Fox News this AM. Still ignoring the elephant in the room. One was talking about Hillary and the other was talking about Biden’s family values.
zhena gogolia
@Princess: You know, this is pretty common these days, at least among municipal/state candidates. People leave flyers, and I have to google them to find out what party they’re in.
Professor Bigfoot
@The Audacity of Krope: Indeed; and I’ve said for a very long time to “ditch whiteness, sieze on your ancestral ethnicities! Be proud of your Germanness, or your Britishness, or your Italianness– eat the food, learn the languages, enjoy the culture. What, indeed, is the cuisine of ‘whiteness?’ What is its ‘culture?’ Ditch “white,” you’re better than that.”
BUT this is America and the notion of whiteness and its attendant natural superiority have DEEP roots in this nations soil.
Ohio Mom
@Deputinize America: It helps to be smart and to be able to use metacognition, to be able to monitor and channel your behavior. Like you.
I am guessing that people who say they outgrew their ADHD learned how to compensate and work around their um, quirks.
I think most brain diffetences are on a continuum, that “normal” shades into what is diagnosable and it can be hard to draw definite lines in that inbetween space.
Certainly, a dash of ADHD or a dash of autism can be an advantage, if used strategically.
Baud
@Professor Bigfoot:
The racists thing that because black people have a shared cultural and historical identity in this country, white people are entitled to the same. That’s why they’re not satisfied with their actual individual cultural heritage.
Betty Cracker
@Princess: Not just Wikipedia — every ballot on which he appeared identified Mamdani as a Democrat. He’s a DSA member too, like AOC was, but that doesn’t negate the fact that he’s a member of the Democratic Party who ran each race as a Democrat. On the “About” page of his website, note the use of lowercase for “democratic socialist” — it’s not a party ID; it’s a statement about his political orientation.
Apologies for being so insistent on this point, but I think it’s really important to get this right.
Professor Bigfoot
@zhena gogolia: It seems to me that people of certain shades tend to run away from being associated with the Democratic Party.
Tim Ryan and Sherrod Brown being two I gave money to and voted for but who were loudly “not really Democrats.”
I think there’s a reason for this reticence, but what do I know?
Betty
@Princess: Someone dissed Hunter on this argument saying that Ambien wasn’t on Joe’s list of medications. Hunter’s point stands if, as you suggest, it was a one-off use to deal with jetlag. He had been traveling overseas. It does help explain how off he was that night. His staff let him down by not for seeing the problem.
The Audacity of Krope
They have a habit of obsessing and stewing in a miasma of bad information. MAGA clicks the clickbait. That’s why they are catered to.
Professor Bigfoot
Blackness is considered an ethnicity because the Africans who were kidnapped and brought here were forcefully, systematically, and continuously separated from their ancestral ethnicities, their ancestral languages, their very fucking names.
Meanwhile those same white people are proud to talk about how they can trace their ancestry to a specific little village in Country Claire Ireland… but they prefer to be white because whiteness connotes superiority.
They prefer to be “white” because “white” is automatically counted ABOVE Black.
p.a.
White America: oh shit if they get power maybe they’ll treat us the way we’ve treated them.
White-aimed media: They ARE treating you the way you treated them.
I don’t know a solution except somehow keeping them home on election days. And I’m afraid that means another round of W era disasters.
Baud
@Professor Bigfoot:
Exactly. It amuses me when the racists get all in a lather over black vs. African American for just that reason.
p.a.
@Professor Bigfoot: There are innumerable youtube videos about X-Americans going to their source country and being told “you’re not X, you fraud, you’re American. You know nothing about what we’re really about here in X.
Lots of white butthurt.
p.a.
“When is there going to be white history month?”
“You mean every fucking month since 1619? Not enough for you snowflake?”
Baud
@p.a.:
Racists: Why are we dividing Americans by race?
Also racists: Any mention of slavery or Jim Crow hurts my feelings.
satby
A bit of a shock to me when I moved out of very ethnic Chicago to a rural area was how many white folks don’t really know their ethnic origins or think it’s irrelevant. When I would say I was Irish they’d assume I meant practically off the boat and acted surprised that a third generation person still identified that way. And they’d respond that they were “American”. It seemed sad to me, not to have an awareness of your own roots.
Professor Bigfoot
@p.a.: Heh, according to Ancestry I’m around 11% Irish.
Imagine me going to Dublin and claiming to be an Irishman!
(but I’d tell ’em that at least one of my ancestors was from here so POUR US ANOTHER ONE, MATE!”)
Baud
Based on my Bluesky feed, Bloomberg News had been fluffing Trump big time lately.
The Audacity of Krope
Question, how strongly do you identify with those who implemented Jim Crow? Whyyyyyy?
Baud
@satby:
Some of that may be intermarriage and lost family history due to migration. At least before DNA services, it took some work to trace family history.
satby
@Professor Bigfoot: Meanwhile those same white people are proud to talk about how they can trace their ancestry to a specific little village in Country Claire Ireland… but they prefer to be white because whiteness connotes superiority.
Hey now!
Professor Bigfoot
@satby: I’ve gotten more than one former coworker to start to think that way– that maybe being “white” wasn’t as important as being human, by getting them to consider their ancestral ethnicities as the thing to be proud of, not “whiteness.”
Language, cuisine, culture. What are the language, cuisine and culture of “whiteness?”
Hatefulness, a lack of seasoning, and more hatefulness.
Geminid
@Betty Cracker: There two smaller parties that swing some weight in New York City and state politics. The Democratic Socialists of America’s NYC chapter has 5000+ members, and it provided plenty of volunteers for Rep. Ocasio-Cortez’s 2018 primary run against Joe Crowley, and more recently for Zohran Mamdani’s campaign.*
The Working Families Party runs candidates on its own ballot line, and under New York’s singular “Fusion Voting” electoral law those totals are aggregated with the votes the candidate garners on another party’s line, usually the Democratic.
I’ve read that a lot of contributions for Mamdani’s campaign were made through the WFP instead of his campaign. This might have been done in order to emphasize the “David versus Goliath” narrative by keeping Mamdani’s own fundraising total relatively low.
David Hogg jumped on the Mamdani bandwagon fairly late in the campaign, and his PAC donated $300,000 to the WFP instead of the Mamdani campaign. I’m not saying something especially nefarious is going on here; it’s just another twist in New York’s convoluted politics.
The Working Families Party organizes in other states. I was reading up on the Democrats running in the CA22 primary and saw that the WFP endorsed one of the candidates. I’m not how much traction the WFP can get outside of New York though, because no other state has that weird fusion voting system.
* I checked out DSA-adjacent social media a few days after Mamdani’s win. There were reports of a surge in party membership, including as many as 2,000 for the NYC chapter. A couple of comrades warned other party veterans to be on the lookout for “Wreckers.” I’m not exactly sure who these Wreckers are, but apparantly they are a known problem within the DSA.
The Audacity of Krope
I’d be hateful, too, if I had to eat blanched chicken every day.
satby
@Professor Bigfoot: And in Ireland they consider me, correctly, as a Yank. And I tell people I am, because that’s what I am, an American of 99% Irish ancestry. A lot of what Americans think are “Irish” traditions are Irish-American.
The best part of DNA tracing is showing that humans are all intermingled and of mixed everything. We’re really all connected.
Professor Bigfoot
@Baud: Sure; but there’s the thing– the more intermarrying that’s been done in your ancestor line, the more cuisines, languages, and cultures you have to explore that you can claim as your own!
After a while it may be cumbersome to refer to oneself as being “Irish, Scottish, German, Italian, Dutch and Belgian,” but beer, whisky, schnitzels, pasta, more beer, better beer (TRAPPIST ALE FOR THE WIN)!
“THEY’RE ALL MINE, DO YOU HEAR?? MINE MINE MINE!!!”
(once upon a time I claimed to be 1/365th Irish ’cause, well, I LIKE corned beef and cabbage ;))
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Betty: I recall everyone who was so horrified over Biden at the debate were left speechless by Trump when he was fucking that fireman’s helmet on stage at the RNC the next week. Maybe it was Trump who is so fucked up that there is no rationally way to respond to him?
It’s like a lot people on the Left just HAVE to see Trump as the second coming of Hitler as part of their Doom Porn that they refuse to accept the absurd reality.
Also, how is George Clooney that different than Trump – some passed his time Boomer who is only relevant because of 80’s nostalgia?
The Audacity of Krope
A man of refined tastes…
geg6
@The Audacity of Krope:
Come sit by me.
Personally, what I’ve heard so far in this interview is exactly what I have needed to hear. Someone outraged about what has led us to this and the players that got us here. I especially love his Clooney, Pod Save America disdain and disgust. I saw some clip of Clooney on a red carpet just hamming it up with Brad Pitt, the wife and child beater, the other day and got literally nauseated at the sight. Hunter’s channeling a lot of my own anger at the Democrats. I have such anger at them all (those who stabbed Biden in the back) that I may never get over it. And I’m not sure I want to because that is my main motivating force at this point. Absolute fury is what has kept me from curling up in a ball and never getting out of bed. I plan to stay angry for a good long while. Maybe forever.
Professor Bigfoot
@satby: AMEN.
All of this, 100%.
This is why I claim “human,” first; and ALL the human cuisines belong to ALL the humans.
From haggis to Shandong dumplings, from sushi to kimchi to spaghetti and meatballs, I’m eating them all!!
p.a.
@Professor Bigfoot: My GF did one of the DNA tests, 9% Nigerian. No sign of blackness (I don’t know if that’s an insensitive way to phrase it.) Her family oral history (like, I guess, E Warren’s) includes a Native American forbear. I can imagine here in the United States of Racial Rankings having a NA ancestor would be less damning than having a black one, so the history gets nudged.
Or the generic DNA test is some % bullshit.
Baud
@Professor Bigfoot:
Everyone is honorary Irish on St. Patrick’s Day.
UncleEbeneezer
@zhena gogolia: Not those ones…
Ksmiami
@Professor Bigfoot: you forgot deep fear. I feel like Republicans are the most frightened and paranoid people and they hate as a result. They’re easy pickings for hate tv and radio because the overall message of Fox et al is be afraid – afraid of people who are different, afraid of ideas, afraid of losing status.
and yet these are some of the most protected little babies in the entire history of the world. I wouldn’t want to be any of them for one minute.
The Audacity of Krope
@geg6: Facts. And I’m glad the other major thing that got focus was immigration. There are few things in this world I find as appalling as immigration hardliners.
geg6
@Professor Bigfoot:
You forgot mayonnaise. Can’t forget the mayonnaise!
Professor Bigfoot
I may get over it; but I will not stop seeing that it was WHITE Democrats, almost all WHITE MALE Democrats, who shivved Joe Biden.
You won’t find many (if any at all) Black Democrats who wanted to kick Joe to the kerb.
Look at Hunter’s list and it’s almost all white dudes.
THIS IS NOT A FUCKING COINCIDENCE.
satby
@Professor Bigfoot: my brother, Black Irish is very real (see also the Black Irish of Jamaica):
Librettist
Labeling young Democrats as “Socialist” is just a “Yo Boomer” whinge about getting old.
“Would you like your Tapioca pudding Senator Manchin?”
Professor Bigfoot
@p.a.: Our family lore (like that of Senator Warren’s) was that my grandfather’s mother was “full blooded Cherokee.”
Ancestry DNA says, “no, that’s not the case.”
So it appears that for Black and white people, using Natives as the reasoning for their “looking different” seems to be SOP.
<Spock voice> Fascinating. </SV>
UncleEbeneezer
@Professor Bigfoot: It’s funny how Hunter Biden is doing exactly what people say they want Dems to do (pull no punches, real talk, curse etc.) but then respond “not like that” the second he does it.
O. Felix Culpa
@Martin:
Wrong. We know no such thing because the DNC does no such thing. Their job is managing the quadrennial presidential nominating convention and supporting the state parties. Please to inform yourself correctly and choose accurate Democratic targets to slag, since slagging the Democratic Party and Democrats appears to be your thing.
Professor Bigfoot
@satby: I’ve heard of Black Irish before and been mildly curious– but I thought it had more to do with being dark haired than with actually having African ancestors.
Rather like “black head” in German seems to mean “brunette,” not Blackness.
I shall have to learn more here!
The Audacity of Krope
@O. Felix Culpa: Fine. Major players in the DNC support candidates of their own accord without official DNC imprimatur. Better?
Professor Bigfoot
@UncleEbeneezer: Ain’t that SOP?
They don’t like or trust the Party of Jews, Women, and Blacks but they cannot bring themselves to honestly examine why.
lowtechcyclist
@Professor Bigfoot:
I won’t speak to the other two, but the cuisine is Olive Garden! Can’t find cuisine any whiter than that.
zhena gogolia
@UncleEbeneezer: I’m watching the interview from the beginning, and he is not swearing. They really selected those clips!
Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
The Audacity of Krope
Who said?
UncleEbeneezer
“They give him Ambien to be able to sleep. He gets up on the stage and looks like he’s a deer in the headlights, and it feeds into every fucking story that anybody wants to tell.”
The problem is that (just like with Hillary and Gore) so many Dems were just dying to reignite their perpetual shit-talk about Joe. And those who didn’t want to go quite that far themselves, did a bunch of mental gymnastics to come up with endless defenses and justifications for those who did. And of course, none of those people (including a bunch who hang out right here) will ever admit what they did or show even the slightest remorse for it.
Professor Bigfoot
@The Audacity of Krope: Isn’t that conceptually very different from saying the DNC supports individual candidates?
geg6
@lowtechcyclist:
I beg to differ. Ladies and gentlemen, may I present Cracker Barrel. It even has “cracker” in the name!
Soprano2
White men are interested in the topic. If white men are interested in it, the press thinks it’s worth the time to talk about it because again, they are primed to believe white mean are the “real, serious people” who care about “real, serious” things. If white men care about it, then de facto it must be worth talking about. I think it’s that simple.
I don’t want to ride this hobby horse, but I see it illustrated again and again. It seems obvious to me, maybe not to a lot of people.
Geminid
@Librettist: I know you’re talking about the money men here, but I wonder how popular Gavin Newsom is among California Democrats. I noticed a lack of enthusiasm for Newsom among Californians commenting here. This was before Newsom’s foray into podcasting triggered so much animus.
California jackals seemed to give Newsom passing grades for his work as governor, but I didn’t see the enthusiasm for Newsom as a Presidential candidate I’ve seen for Jay Pritzker among Illinois jackals.
This might be projecton though, because I like Pritzker and I don’t like Newsom.
BellyCat
All of them, Katy.
Baud
@UncleEbeneezer:
Good point.
My limited feed on Blue Sky suggests that the clips were generally well received by at least some folks, at least.
Professor Bigfoot
@lowtechcyclist: STOLEN FROM THE ITALIANS, THEN WATERED DOWN TO THE UNRECOGNIZABLE!! XD
Stealing other people shit and then ruining it is pretty on brand for whiteness, ain’t it? ;)
p.a.
@Professor Bigfoot: Antebellum US slave society was one of the few conservative hierarchical cultures that was not invested in genealogical research and bloodlines: they knew what would be found if they looked at the (for the) sticky issue of “begetting”.
Professor Bigfoot
@Soprano2: It’s pretty obvious to everyone who isn’t a straight white Christian man; but… ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Soprano2
Joe Biden had solutions to long-term problems that would make everyone’s life better in the long run. Unfortunately, people cared more about the price of things right now and the scary brown people that FFOTUS was telling them were all criminals than they did about long-term solutions for anything.
geg6
@Soprano2:
You’re not the only one. Even more so if it’s a concern for rich white men.
Soprano2
Ding ding ding ding, we have a winner! Do you think Harris EVER could have been “authentic” in the way FFOTUS was? Everything about it would have been criticized from all sides. White men are still the only people in this culture who have the privilege to “let it all hang out” and not pay a price for that.
Gin & Tonic
@satby: Funny thing is, when my daughters, both very open and proud of their Ukrainian heritage, married white-bread “American” boys (who were, as you say, largely unaware of any ethnic heritage) they both became surrogate Ukrainians. They needed something to belong to, and white American-ness didn’t scratch that itch. Now both of them have more friends in the Ukrainian-American community than outside of it. I really think the Professor makes a very good point.
Professor Bigfoot
Sir, I give you many points for even considering that it MIGHT be projection.
I am in exactly the same boat– I really like The Great Khan but not so much Governor Hollywood, and I’m not exactly sure why yet.
The Audacity of Krope
@Professor Bigfoot: It is in a literal sense. Still, there is a valid point to be made where institutional heavyweights in the party use their influence to sway media narratives and the activity of groups of activists and, thusly, the behavior of voters.
That’s their prerogative, but the rest of us are then going to consider whether those institutional pressures are moving the party in a way that’s good for themselves, their communities, America at large.
Sometimes it’s worth looking past the details someone gets wrong to find the salient point.
UncleEbeneezer
@The Audacity of Krope: You must be new here if you somehow didn’t notice. There has been a steady/relentless critique of Dem messaging for at least a decade. Lots of FP posts. Probably tens of thousands of comments. Often lamenting how Dems are too stuffy, wonky, elitist, too academic, out-of-touch etc., with everyday voters.
Shalimar
@Gretchen:
I do not understand what that means. What family approach to politics? There was only one family member even in politics since Beau’s death, and Hunter Biden never asked for any of the attention he got. Vietor makes it sound like this is a Bush or Kennedy thing when it is not even remotely that.
p.a.
@lowtechcyclist: Nah. Midwest fishfry & jellomold.
Any Anglo-based “boil until grey” food culture.
Southern white foodways salvaged to a point by adopting Afro & Caribe methods: bbq. And then fucking it up with Alabama white sauce, deep fried twinkies, oreos etc.
Baud
@Shalimar:
Maybe he’s thinking of the Biden Crime Family™.
zhena gogolia
@Shalimar: Within the H. Biden interview, they show a clip of Jake Tapper telling Katie Couric that Hunter was basically Biden’s chief of staff.
jonas
Well put. This is it exactly.
Baud
@zhena gogolia:
Wow. I hadn’t heard that before. Propaganda out in the open.
zhena gogolia
@Baud: I’m watching the interview, about 15 minutes in, and he hasn’t used a single swear word. He is extremely intelligent and interesting, and I’m learning things I never knew about how he was slandered. At the same time as he freely admits to his addictions and discusses them. It’s quite something.
The Audacity of Krope
Right. I’m asking who said it about Hunter Biden. Here. Now.
For my part, I’m more apt to criticize Dems’ actions than messaging.
Baud
@zhena gogolia:
I don’t have the patience for a long interview. I enjoyed the swearing clips, and I don’t think it distracted from his intelligence.
UncleEbeneezer
@Geminid: Many of the CA residents commenting here are Progressive blowhards who make a big show of being cooler than everyone else by constantly bashing mainstream Dems at every opportunity and creating the false impression that every city/district in CA shares the politics of DSA San Fransisco.
This blog, like most online political spaces on the Left, is not representative of the real world in that there are far more loud Progressives here than there actually are in the electorate.
satby
@Professor Bigfoot: 🤣 It’s actually both. Dark haired and eyed Caucasian Irish were, legend had it, changelings left by fairies who coveted the lighter haired babies and stole them from their cribs.
Black Irish in Jamaica and in Ireland are the mixed race descendants of African and Irish interracial relationships. Also, lots of new immigrants to Ireland, which is a modern multiethnic country. And far better for it.
Baud
frosty
@Betty Cracker: Beautiful! What a nice swamp you live in. Here, I make do with half a dozen House Sparrows living in the hedge at the side of our porch.
Geminid
@Betty: I thought Biden’s staff let him down by agreeing to an early debate. I’ve seen reports that some of Biden’s people advocated for one. The reports cite a staff memo making the case for a debate in late June.
Hindsight is 20/20 of course, but that was an own-goal if there ever was one. Trump is his own worst enemy, and that debate took the spotlight off him at a critical time. They could have let Trump rant away through Labor Day and debated him in September.
The Audacity of Krope
Hard to relate to a mannequin that was groomed from its date of manufacture for the Presidency. And who seemingly doesn’t give a shit about working people.
Dorothy A. Winsor
Maybe I’m just in denial or missing something important, but I have no interest in looking back and blaming people who were mostly on our side. I suppose it might help in forming strategy going forward, but mostly it seems like irrelevant rage venting.
JML
@Shalimar: well, they have to keep blaming the Biden Family for things, otherwise they might have to look in the mirror. And by framing it as the entire Biden Family it feeds into the ideas the GOP farms around that Jill was covering up Joe’s supposed dementia and that there really is a Biden Crime Family.
There’s also the big issue with a bunch of the former Obama folks who have a vested interest in dragging the Biden administration through the misguided idea that pulling down Biden’s accomplishment burnishes Obama’s more, which they “need” since they’re still dining out on their association with Obama almost 9 years after he left office. They never saw Biden as a proper heir, in fact they never had anyone as an heir, because in their minds Obama was a singular presence and his 8 years as president stands alone.
It’s part of why these guys sucked so much at helping other Democrats win elections and building any kind of permanent movement: nothing mattered other than Obama to them, and those of us on the frontlines in 2008 and 2012 saw it frequently from OFA people.
The Audacity of Krope
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Here’s a good strategy moving forward. Listen to the party’s voters before listening to the money men. In fact, let’s put forward reforms that minimize the importance of money men.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Baud:
Jen does have a point. A lifetime ago she would have said that from the right side of the aisle. Not now.
Matt McIrvin
@Dorothy A. Winsor: The headline is a good example of how, even if you’re careful about being specific and naming names, it’s going to get compressed into a “Democrats suck too!” message with vote-suppressing potential. Everyone has to remember that they’re immersed in a bad-faith environment.
Professor Bigfoot
@The Audacity of Krope: You said it, not me! 😂
zhena gogolia
@Dorothy A. Winsor: “mostly on our side” wasn’t good enough.
Baud
Not vouching for the analysis, but FWIW
Princess
@Betty Cracker: No, it’s fine. I was going by his campaign website which nowhere identifies him as a Democrat. That’s a choice but it’s going to confuse people. It confused me.
frosty
@prufrock: Florida really does have a great collection of birds. Almost a quarter of my lifers are from there, but to be fair I’ve been there almost every winter and it’s where I got started. Still, there’s at least a couple dozen that aren’t anywhere else. Florida Scrub Jay for example!
Shalimar
@zhena gogolia: Does Tapper ever provide any evidence of anything that his sources don’t claim he made up? That one is a pretty easy one to confirm. To be a de facto chief-of-staff, Hunter Biden would have had to be in the White House most of the time. Visitor’s logs can show how often he was there.
satby
@Professor Bigfoot: @Geminid: Pritzker has undeniable authenticity plus the very “Chicagah” no bullshit way of speaking.
The Audacity of Krope
…who thought they could substitute their judgment over 90 percent of the primary voters on our side.
Fuckem’. I hear so much about pissing inside the tent while influential people in good standing with the party are lighting fires inside the tent.
Professor Bigfoot
@geg6: Cracker Barrel is the only place where I can find smoked breakfast sausage like I grew up eating with my folks; so periodically I just HAVE to stop in there.
I have to catch myself, though, because I keep referring to it as “the Barrel of Crackers.”
The Audacity of Krope
@Shalimar: We talk a lot about how removed from reality the right is. Not so much about how removed from reality the center is and how people like Tapper are important to keeping them that way.
CNN’s YouTube account pushes Tapper content hard. It’s why they’re on my blocked list.
satby
@Gin & Tonic: I agree. And how nice for your sons in law to be able to associate themselves by marriage with such a proud and impressive legacy!
O. Felix Culpa
@The Audacity of Krope: First Amendment rights, my friend!
Also, what does “major players” in the DNC mean in your statement? Party officers ARE NOT ALLOWED to endorse primary candidates. While apparently this was only recently codified at the national level, it has been the case at the state and county levels for years.
narya
@Professor Bigfoot: Same here–but for me, Newsom is facile at best. Also, he’s not great on farmworkers’ rights (according to Jorts the Cat). And JB’s family history is very interesting, and, I would argue, in part responsible for his (for example) longstanding support for/allyship with the LGBTQ community. JB is sort of the anti-Stephen-Miller: he took family history and trauma and learned from it, became compassionate because of it.
O. Felix Culpa
@Professor Bigfoot: Good point. They are different categories.
lowtechcyclist
@Professor Bigfoot:
See, I told you it was the epitome of white cuisine!
Professor Bigfoot
@UncleEbeneezer: When really, REALLY, it’s just that there are too many of the wrong people with too much power in the Democratic Party and therefore they cannot be trusted.
“There is no horseshoe. There is only white people who are at best uncomfortable with any power being held in Black hands. Those white people are at all points of the ‘left-right’ spectrum.”
Baud
Princess
@Geminid: Allison Rose loved Newsom, I recall.
lowtechcyclist
@Soprano2:
Truth.
Baud
@Princess:
I miss her.
O. Felix Culpa
@Shalimar: Vietor cannot be an honest interlocutor on this question, because he will not look honestly at his role in wrecking Joe’s candidacy.
moonbat
@Professor Bigfoot: We just call it Crackers’ Barrel. Accurate and less noticeable. lol
O. Felix Culpa
@The Audacity of Krope:
And sometimes one questions the veracity and insightfulness of a commenter who keeps on repeating the same incorrect statement–despite having multiple people inform him of the truth multiple times–in order to ride his hobbyhorse. And who rarely if ever provides specific examples, but simply offers up personal biases that some shady Dems somewhere who I can’t name but don’t like are doing shady things.
The Audacity of Krope
That’s true…
Officially. Yet every Presidential cycle and typically within even local primaries there seems to manifest an unofficial official party favorite. Organized efforts are ready to go to help them. The media narrative remains positive…until the day they get the actual nomination. Elected officials, who have lots of pills with the DNC, are big drivers of this.
All of this is allowed and I wouldn’t even say it’s wrong. Still, a lot of people in the party need to understand how this looks to voters, especially ones who have more currently marginal views in the party.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@narya:
Governor Goodhair II’s not right on a *lot* of stuff.
He’s very good at slapping back at Hair Furor but heaven help us if he gets the Dem nod. I’ll do whatever little I can to work for any candidate(s) running in 28 against him.
Kirk
@Professor Bigfoot:
Yes. Food has already been mentioned. Language? James D. Nicoll nailed it decades ago:
Culture? It follows language and cuisine. “White” culture is a salad from Applebee’s smothered in ranch dressing.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@The Audacity of Krope:
Exactly. Whenever we point that out, we’re told to stfu, don’t understand coalition politics, are being purity ponies, etc., etc.
Professor Bigfoot
@Baud: My current policy is that I simply don’t listen to white men anymore.
I believe that centuries of white male supremacy have made them, as a demographic, dumber than a sack of wet mice and the most GULLIBLE people on the planet.
So when they start talking about the uselessness and fecklessness of the Democratic Party, if that particular white man has not said and done things that show him to be a true ally to the rest of us (see Dark Brandon and The Great Khan and Coach Walz) he goes directly into the round file.
”2/3 of you dumb motherfuckers voted directly for white supremacist incompetence in the form of Trump and most of the rest of you complain all the time about the Black and Jewish and female led Democrats, so you’re free to fuck right off, white man.”
Chief Oshkosh
@Martin:
@Baud:
I don’t think that truth or lies plays into the vote-getting attribute that is at play here. Trump is “genuine” in that he’s a shitstain of a human being who always, always, always presents as a shitstain of a human being. This is genuine. He genuinely is just as shitty as he presents himself. Yes, some find that entertaining, and others identify with the shittiness, etc.
YMMV, but I think that there are many Democrats that are (or were) similarly genuine…most of the time. Sheldon Whitehouse, the two GA Senators, AOC, Tim Waltz, Jasmine Crockett, Pritzger, Maxine Waters, John Lewis, many more.
frosty
@mappy!: That’s a good thing to teach. My 7th grade math teacher did a lesson on numbers and advertising. The only thing I remember her saying was “Ivory Snow is 99 and 44 one-hundredths percent pure … pure what??!”
O. Felix Culpa
@The Audacity of Krope: Dude, I’ve worked in local and state politics, and to a lesser degree on the national level. Of course players gonna play. AND, you would be surprised at the number of ethical players in the game too. People who really care, work their asses off for the common good, and adhere to the rules. I hate it when alleged allies smear with a broad brush.
Ultimately, it’s the votes that count and the players can’t force that choice
ETA: Going back to alleged allies, it’s interesting when white men continue to slag the one organization that can save us from the White Male Supremacist Party. It’s almost like they don’t actually feel threatened, or something. Because imperfection is a fact of life, and when you put one imperfect Democratic Party against the glaringly fascist GOP, well, only certain people have the luxury of tearing down the imperfect party, while doing fuck-all to actually improve and strengthen it.
Baud
@Chief Oshkosh:
I can’t argue with that.
frosty
@Professor Bigfoot: OK, I can embrace my Britishness but do I really have to eat the food??? I’d rather have yours!
Professor Bigfoot
@The Audacity of Krope: Will y’all listen to Black voters, though?
Seems like the only voters that are important enough to actually listen to are the white one.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
moonbat
What an appropriate post to put up on the one-year anniversary of Biden stepping down from his run for president last year. Seems like eons ago. I can feel my political PTSD starting to kick in so having Hunter Biden translate my anger (and really, aside from Joe Biden himself, who has more right?) is just up my alley.
I’ll be watching the whole thing later with a big ole scotch whisky. Thanks, AL, as always!
The Audacity of Krope
Most of those in my life are non-voters, alas. Though I try gently to change that on occasion. The voters outside my life don’t appear to speak with one voice either.
Geminid
@UncleEbeneezer: I believe this blog’s commentariat skews liberal, like it skews white and skews college-educated. But the Cali commenters I refer to sounded pretty normal to me. They just did not seem to respect Newsom highly like they would if they thought he’d be a good President. They didn’t seem to like him that much as a person either.
I keep track of potential 2028 candidates, and I thought the lack of enthusism among people who saw Newsom firsthand said something. And it seemed to relate to Newsom’s character or personality.
And here I’ll own admit my bias again, because my take on Gavin Newsom is that he lacks moral ballast and is apt to blow with the wind. I could say that about a lot of politicians, but I think it’s something that shows in Newsom and that primary voters will see or at least sense.
Scout211
@Geminid: @UncleEbeneezer:
I’m a California Democrat but I would not label myself a “progressive blowhard.” But really, who would?
My main issue with Newsom as presidential material is that his success as a governor can’t be separated from the fact that we have a supermajority in the legislature. If he does run for president and gets the Dem nomination I would not hesitate to vote for him. But I am not enthusiastic about voting for him in the primary.
I live in a very red, rural county. I do understand that much of California is not progressive or even a little bit blue.
Can we maybe stop judging each other for not fitting into the perfect mold of “Democratic voter”?
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Thank you. Come sit by me.
The Audacity of Krope
To the extent that we’re arguing against the legacy of colonialism, the influence of money, and unwillingness to take political risks to improve the lots of communities across the US; seems to me we’re trying to drive out the last white supremacist elements that remain in the Democrats.
Whom have I, personally, been complaining about? Schiff, Brown, Pelosi, Warren, Newsom, Clooney somehow. Pretty white crew there.
Matt McIrvin
@Kirk: “White culture” is just a blending of European immigrant cultures, but try to describe it as a thing on its own and you get mush because whiteness is a fiction created to support racial privilege, what Kurt Vonnegut would call a “granfalloon”. He might say the same about “American culture” but I think there’s a bit more to that.
Timill
@frosty: Yes you do… Nowt wrong with a good tikka masala…
Professor Bigfoot
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: Because the real problem is how separated WHITE PEOPLE IN GENERAL are from reality.
You will not find a lot of people who are not white that are taken in by Republican “messaging.”
O. Felix Culpa
@Professor Bigfoot:
Ding! Ding! Ding! Messaging has to hook onto a preexisting receptiveness. And golly gee, what could that be, in this case?
Quiltingfool
One of my favorite lines in the show Man in the High Castle: “I’m Irish. We know a thing or two about raisin’ Hell.”
Kristine
@Baud: Huh. Based on what I read in their free newsletters, they’re doing the opposite. To the point that I keep checking to make sure I’m really reading Bloomberg.
O. Felix Culpa
@The Audacity of Krope:
And the many dark and foreboding comments about the DNC and the Democratic Party and suspect Democratic leadership. Let’s not forget those.
I’ve got stuff to do IRL, so checking out now. Ciao.
Professor Bigfoot
Curious, innit?
Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, three times is enemy action.
Once you see it, you cannot STOP seeing it.
frosty
This is perfect! Thanks for sharing it. Ms F and I LOLed when I read it to her.
The Audacity of Krope
@Professor Bigfoot: It’s just a kinder, gentler, more inclusive white supremacy….
Geminid
@Princess: I remember now. But Allison Rose seemed like an exception in this respect. I never heard that much bad about Newsom, but if there was a politician in my state that I thought was good presidential material I’d be talking them up like I talk up Abigail Spanberger. I didn’t hear that from Californians.
Professor Bigfoot
@frosty: Oh, not all of it— I’ll happily eat propah fish ‘n’ chips most every day; and despite the name, Spotted Dick is actually quite tasty!
Besides, since the Raj, a vindaloo is nearly British now. 😉
Professor Bigfoot
@The Audacity of Krope: It’s not a coincidence that you didn’t see any Black politicians and certainly no Black voters turn on Joe Biden.
frosty
Absolutely true. But if it’s British, why do I get it as takeout from a restaurant named India Palace?
The Audacity of Krope
@Professor Bigfoot: Jussayin’ if white supremacy weren’t still a thing among Democrats, respectability politics wouldn’t be such a big deal
PAM Dirac
@The Audacity of Krope:
Similarly I ask the “heritage, not hate” folks why the symbol they chose to sum up their heritage was only in formally use for 4-5 years? Was there something special about those 4-5 years?
The Audacity of Krope
@PAM Dirac: Those were a very important four to five years. Doubt many Americans would say otherwise. But ….
Quiltingfool
@Professor Bigfoot: I’m a white woman, and I, too, don’t listen to white men, and certain white women.
I listen to black women. They have dealt with both racism and misogyny. Their words matter.
I very much doubt black women would ever trust this old white woman, though. I don’t blame them, pretty sure they’ve have many, many bad experiences with “Miss Ann.”
Trust is earned.
Professor Bigfoot
The headlines on the Hunter clips talk about how he was “attacking the Democratic Party” but what I saw was he was attacking the remaining pockets of “defenders of white supremacy” in the Democratic Party.
I’ve said before that one reason why Joe Biden was hated and why he was actually shivved was because he was far too comfortable with Black people.
Watch any video of Joe Biden surrounded by Black folks and only Black folks; that man is just as comfortable and “at home” as the Black folks around him.
Try that with just about any other white male politician.
WHITE PEOPLE, particularly white men slagged Joe Biden because he was an n-word lover.
Look within yourself and you will see that it is true.
The Audacity of Krope
Oh, I been known that.
…
Sorry for the colloquial liberties.
Kristine
@frosty: I have the coffee mug. Nicoll had some items for sale at one of the online stores (forget which but they’re places like Zazzle). Idk if he still does.
Professor Bigfoot
@Quiltingfool: I hear you.
The only analogy I have is my own- through the Obama years I got SO MUCH MF whitesplaining that I understood “mansplaining.”
That opened my eyes to “the patriarchy,” and that’s one of those things that once you see it, you see it everywhere.
I once piped up with “not all men” and the aunties who gathered me and told me that women know damned well it’s not all of us, but that it is so many of us… well, you know.
Since then I’ve tried to be an ally, first by listening to women. But it’s important that I don’t call myself an ally.
I’m not qualified to judge.
All I can really say is that I want to be and ally, I try to be an ally; and I hope the women who know me or interact with me see me as an ally, because they’re the ones who are qualified to judge.
And if any woman is suspicious of me, well, duh, and that’s OK; knowing what I know now I don’t blame her one bit. I’m still gonna do my damnedest to “do the right thing.”
schrodingers_cat
Question: Who or what has PodSaveAmerica actually saved? They should call themselves PodSaveWhite(male)Fragility.
What the Biden must go wars exemplified for me is how deep rooted white fragility is even in the Democratic party and liberal spaces like this one.
Doug R
@Gretchen:
….and proving Hunter’s fucking point.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Geminid:
Sometime last fall, a commenter (I don’t remember who and they’re definitely not a regular commenter) from CA had this to say about Goodhair II:
That pretty much sums up the moral ballast question.
Doug R
@NotMax:
Your loss.
Timill
@Kristine: James used to have a cafepress site, but it’s closed now.
Gloria DryGarden
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: if he’d murder his grandmother, it makes me ask, why does he want it so bad? ( is he looking at the bennies? Because it’s a hard job, if done right.)
topclimber
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: Keep an open mind: Maybe she deserves killing, or perhaps would gladly sacrifice herself to make Gavin POTUS.
Timill
@frosty: More traditional that way. Vocabulary isn’t the only thing we ‘borrow’…
The Audacity of Krope
Like a MAGA gramma during COVID.
Laertes
Jesus. Does this guy have a podcast? I could listen to a lot more of whatever he wants to say.
M31
@JML:
this sentence made me startle — has it only been 8+ years since Obama was president? I would have thought 15, lol, I can’t really look back at that time without thinking it was the very distant past and a different world
dnfree
@Professor Bigfoot: Some white people have cultural identities from their families, but many of us are just “mutts” in that sense. I have English, Irish, Welsh (Ancestry claims, I never heard about it), Scottish, German, Swiss…and that’s just what I know about. No ties to any of those culturally.
Not like my son-in-law whose father was a Greek immigrant as an adult. He knows his cultural heritage. All of his father’s children married white Americans, over their father’s objections. But the grandchildren still know and are proud of their Greek heritage.
Gloria DryGarden
@Baud:
yes
@Dorothy A. Winsor: I so agree, the rage venting is only useful if it helps us form a strategy for going forward..
Professor Bigfoot, you’ve given me one more reason to dislike the in- fighting amongst Democrats. Your thread of comments here today makes a lot of sense. Of course I can’t find the exact one to highlight it.
Geminid
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: That reminds me of advice Dusty Baker said Hank Aaron gave him when the Cardinals came to town. It was Baker’s rookie year, and he would face Bob Gibson for the first time. Aaron told him:
Baker said he was left wondering, “What about my 25 game hitting streak?” It ended that night.
Gloria DryGarden
@dnfree: I’ve heard of people with a bit of Greek still being proud of and embracing their Greek heritage.
as a “mutt” I’ve caught on to the wave of recognition, that I’m not just some melting-pot white, that I have exact precise heritages, whether anything was taught about it. I think I first truly recognized my Scottish heritage from a character in a book, whose drinking and argumentative style was remarkably similar to my father’s. An$ why would anyone grow up embracing England as one of their ancestral links, if we ditched England in that war, and arranged for a deep legal separation? So there are reasons, assimilation for example, for white folks not being aware of heritage. But it’s making sense to know and embrace, and recognize patterns.
dnfree
@Gin & Tonic: Agreed: my son-in-law is Greek, my grandchildren are identifiably Greek (they look just like kids we saw in Greece), and they identify with that heritage.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: So he likes to use our party primary to get elected. Reminds me of someone whose name rhymes with Landers.
Eduardo
Not interested at all on re-litigating Biden push-out.
But boy, did Hunter Biden was so fucking right about the Dem Party and immigration , the “working class” white vote, transgenders, Axerold and Rahm Emanuel. This is such a beauty: bsky.app/profile/onestpress.onestnetwork.com/post/3luilsio34k2o
satby
@dnfree: Interesting when you think about it, because Ireland, Scotland, and Wales are Gaelic countries that were occupied and absorbed by Anglo Saxon England, so lots of overlapping heritage. And Germany and Switzerland are so similar that 60% of Switzerland speaks German. Another overlapping heritage. That’s actually quite interesting when you think about it and European history.
PJ
@Martin:
Well, we had a solution, which was to re-elect Biden, but a lot of prominent Democrats (and even some people here, too) thought that was a bad idea. What could go wrong with dumping the guy who beat Trump before and who had been nominated by Democrats to run again? (Oh, I forgot! That wasn’t a REAL primary, as you commented here so often, and absolutely did not represent the voice of real voting Democrats.)
PJ
@Baud:
John Fetterman was “authentic” while Conor Lamb was not. It’s just marketing BS based on whatever aesthetics appeal to a particular audience.
The Audacity of Krope
@PJ: Fetterman is authentic, though. An authentic douchebag.
Miss Bianca
@geg6: late to the thread, just wanted to say, “I’m with ya.”
Bobby Thomson
I would pay good cash money for a podcast consisting of nothing but Hunter Biden telling Jake Tapper, David Axelrod, and James Carville to go fuck themselves daily.
Bobby Thomson
@PJ: having shivved Clinton in 2016, he has a real track record
Bobby Thomson
People liked that in Bill Clinton but not so much in John Kerry.
dnfree
@satby: I had a college friend years ago (white with dark hair) and she said her family was “black Irish”, descended from Spanish sailors shipwrecked in Ireland from the Spanish Armada.
dnfree
@PJ: I voted in the primary for the ticket of Biden and Harris. So she was elected as the replacement for Biden if one was needed. The debate killed Biden’s chances.
Paul in KY
@Martin: Good point. If Rogan really didn’t want VP Harris on his show, she should have made him either admit that or shamed him into having her on it.
Paul in KY
@Professor Bigfoot: I think Sen. Brown was/is a proud Democrat. Not sure about the other one.
Paul in KY
@Professor Bigfoot: Joe helped shiv himself, IMO. In hindsight, he should not have run for 2nd term. Not in physical condition he was in. That’s on Joe and his team.
rikyrah
I see the Antarctica post, but when I click on it, it’s not there. I get an error message🤔🤔