Good news, if true:
WASTE! FRAUD! ABUSE!
Send the $400 million bill to Ron DeSantis and Donald Trump.
??Alligator Alcatraz will be empty within days, according to an email obtained by ABC News.— Christopher Webb (@cwebbonline.com) August 27, 2025 at 9:50 PM
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NAACP asks court to block new Texas congressional map www.washingtonpost.com/politics/202…
— Timothy McBride (@mcbridetd.bsky.social) August 27, 2025 at 12:58 AM
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Voters elected Trump to make them rich, & Democrats are doing their best to hang him on it
— Chatham Harrison dba TRUMP DELENDUS EST (@chathamharrison.bsky.social) August 26, 2025 at 8:37 AM
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Getting rid of De Minimus right as we gear up for stocking for Christmas is the most impressive piece of "fuck your treats" I can thunk of.
— Schnorkles O'Bork (@schnorkles.bsky.social) August 24, 2025 at 3:46 PM
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I encourage Republicans to continue to do all they can to make "Republicans versus everybody else" the basis of our politics
— Chatham Harrison dba TRUMP DELENDUS EST (@chathamharrison.bsky.social) August 27, 2025 at 2:56 PM
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“Dems/libs need their own media to match the Repubs” discourse often ignores 2 big Q’s:
A. Would rightwing media be feasible and as influential if it had to appeal to anyone other than white people (especially men)? If not, is it a replicable model for Dems/libs/progs?
/1— Dana Houle (@danahoule.bsky.social) August 27, 2025 at 2:35 PM
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B. Is rightwing media based on manipulation? If so, should we assume people who don’t consume rightwing media are as easily manipulated as those who do? Are people blank slates RE manipulation & watching Fox makes them easier to manipulate, or is Fox appealing to those who are easily manipulated? /2
— Dana Houle (@danahoule.bsky.social) August 27, 2025 at 2:42 PM
On The Road – Captain C – Netherlands, September 2024 Part 6: Mauritshuis Part 2
Baud
I just want regular media that doesn’t spin things against Dems like the NYT does.
And a pony.
mappy!
Coalition of the resolute…
“The Quiet Breakaway: How US Governors In 12 States Are Practicing Coordinated “Soft Secession” From Trump’s America— Legally”
Soft Secession: A Pro-Democracy Field Guide
p.a
I was thinking in the last non-travelogue post that our message will be messy, “if no one is happy you’re doing it right” because: Big Tent. Rethugs often on-message* because they’re defined down to such a small group they have to corrupt the electoral process; “the universe is an ovoid space 800 meters in diameter.” (Paraphrased)
*Their message is blurring because they’ve defined themselves down to be led by an incompetent 🤡
Professor Bigfoot
I think its success is shown in how white men ostensibly on our side want to replicate it.
I don’t think they SEE that it’s built from the ground up to appeal to THEM.
Baud
@Professor Bigfoot:
There are a lot of liberal white dudes who see machismo and dick swinging as the only true manifestations of strength.
Eyeroller
@Baud: We don’t need a liberal version of Fox. It is unlikely to be successful anyway. What we need is an honest media that doesn’t boffsides us into fascism while constantly pushing Republican framing yet claiming objectivity.
One thing that might be helpful is funding a major outlet that tries to be truly objective. But we just don’t have a billionaire willing to provide what amounts to an endowment to such an outlet so it could be independent. When billionaires have bought news outlets with proclamations of keeping them independent (WaPo, LA Times) they have not been willing to lose money, even a small bit relative to their wealth, and have inevitably started meddling in the coverage.
New Deal democrat
Three things:
1. Even now, T—-p polls ahead on the border and about even on immigration issues, as well as “law and order.” Immigration is the common issue across all the rise of the neofascist right wing in all developed countries.
2. BUT, there is a significant percentage of voters who only come out of the woodwork when T—-p is on the ballot. Not to get overconfident this early, but the most likely scenario next year is a rerun of 2018.
3. There ought to be a fundraiser with a raffle where the winner gets dinner cooked by Dana Houle. Whatever else one thinks of him, the dude is an *awesome* vegetable gardener and Cook. For example:
bsky.app/profile/danahoule.bsky.social/post/3lxdxlwylms2b
Betty Cracker
Houle is asking the right questions in those last two Bluesky posts. Maybe it’s useful to consider them in the context of the audience we need to persuade, which is voters who don’t pay much attention to politics and who are not or only loosely affiliated with a party.
Considering that audience, I’d say the answer to the first question is yes, right-wing media did have to appeal beyond white people. Trump wouldn’t have won without significantly overperforming with Latinos and picking up a greater share of other non-white voters.
They did it by lying about the Biden economy and appealing to a cargo cult-like belief that Trump could roll us back to pre-pandemic levels of certainty and prosperity. It was bullshit, but it apparently worked with enough non-white people to augment the mostly white GOP base and drag Trump’s foul carcass across the finish line.
On question two, which is two part: Does Fox News attract the easily manipulated, and are weakly/unaffiliated voters easier to manipulate? I think we have plenty of data that suggests this is true. Fox News viewers are consistently more poorly informed, and higher levels of straight news consumption correlate with greater shares of Democratic votes.
prostratedragon
Power to the people!
New Deal democrat
@Professor Bigfoot:
@Baud:
Voting for the biggest @$$hole in the race, who hates the people you hate, and will favor people like you, is a staple of all democratic regimes, and has been for at least two centuries. See, e.g., Jackson, Andrew, and Thatcher, Maggie.
Baud
@prostratedragon:
Good.
Baud
@New Deal democrat:
It happens, but that’s not why Clinton, Obama, or Biden won.
Professor Bigfoot
@New Deal democrat: Who was the electorate for Jackson?
WHITE MEN, and ONLY WHITE MEN.
Baud
@Professor Bigfoot:
To be fair, that was the electorate for everybody back then. But the white dudes really loved them some AJ.
prostratedragon
Eyeroller
@New Deal democrat: I am convinced that a lot of the anti-immigrant attitudes are due to media influence. I’ve told this story often, but I don’t watch network news at all, but did over Christmas 2022 when visiting a relative who had the TV on constantly. I was stunned at the anti-immigrant drumbeat in every single ABC News (what they watched) show. It was a lot like the coverage of the Afghanistan withdrawal, i.e. it featured the same footage over and over and over and a sensationalized tone.
It’s also likely to be enhanced by foreign influence operations (which we know are working hard in Europe also). It’s an easy wedge issue for them to exploit, and they’re very good at getting into the Zeitgeist, which the MSM then covers because “people are talking about it.”.
Given the history of the US, even polling on immigration is not too bad.
Professor Bigfoot
@Baud: Oh, but that’s my point!
White dudes elected AJ; and white dudes elected Trump.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Ramona
This gives me hope and I sorely needed hope.
I wonder if states, say California, can coordinate with their residents who mark EXEMPT on their W2 forms to pay their Federal income tax into an escrow account held by the state. The state sends an IOU to the IRS which indemnifies its citizens who do that. The conditions under which the IRS gets to redeem the IOU from the states are clearly laid out and passed into state law. The states doing this explicitly flout any SCOTUS shadow docket against this deeming this SCOTUS corrupt based on their making up presidential immunity whole cloth.
Eyeroller
@Professor Bigfoot: Well, of course when Andrew Jackson was elected, only white dudes could vote. But he was one of our first “populists” who got the contemporary version of MAGAs out to vote for him.
Ten Bears
The population wouldn’t be so media manipulative but for the failing schools, and drugs
Bare-footed barely literate rubes sprawled drooling Pavlovianly across a “couch” the back seat out of a nineteen sixty-nine Chevy Suburban drunk as a skunk on Ambien, Prozac, Viagra and bimbo bottle-blonde bobble-heading crotch-shots on Fox Kool-Aid, all blindly following a charismatic authoritarian to suicide, dragging the rest of us with them
Been a while since I keyed that, rolls off the fingertips like yesterday …
Professor Bigfoot
@Eyeroller: Yes, exactly.
Like the graphic that shows what the US would look like if only certain demographic groups could vote; and it seems that AJ was exactly the kind of guy that white men love to vote for.
Just like Trump is.
Professor Bigfoot
Open thread so… GREAT MAKER, it’s freakin’ COLD this morning!!!!
It’s like one of those cooking shows– last week we were being braised, this week we’ve been thrown into the blast chiller.
Had the A/C on last week, gotta turn on the furnace this week what the hell!
Another Scott
Last night I was looking around to buy some locking C13 AC power cord connectors. Found a place that had them for a good price ($5.41 ea). Great! Put 8 of them in my cart, give them a delivery zip code, hmm. $40 delivery. Ok, such is life, they’ll get here quickly. What’s this? $20+ tariff?? Nope, even at 2x the price, it’s cheaper and less hassles on Amazon.
:-/
Lots of small companies are going to be hurt by these tariffs, and US companies can’t make up the difference for unique connectors that are sourced from Europe…
We live in the stupidest timeline. We have to keep pushing ahead to get out of this.
… I can see no way out but through.
Best wishes,
Scott.
Baud
@prostratedragon:
It would be a shame if tourists started photographing themselves giving the Trump banners the finger.
A damn shame.
sab
@Professor Bigfoot: Good point. White men who could afford the poll tax.
New Deal democrat
@Professor Bigfoot: Voting for the biggest @$$hole can equal racism, if that’s what those voters want. But I suspect there is not genetic coding for less melanin that necessitates brain development in that direction.
For example, see Chavez, Hugo.
New Deal democrat
@Eyeroller: In the UK, it’s Polish plumbers. In France, it’s Algerians. In Germany, it’s Turks. In Italy, it’s Libyans. In Greece, it’s Syrians. In Mexico, it’s Central Americans.
(E.T.A.: in the Roman Republic, it was the Cambrians).
In ancient Sumeria, it was Assyrians.
Being overrun by immigrants is a cultural fear as long as humanity has existed.
prostratedragon
@Baud: Maybe do some interesting projections too.
Deputinize America
Regarding the troubled asshole who shot up the church in Minneapolis, I knew the mom’s side of the family for years, remember meeting her on a couple of occasions and have probably laid eyes on the shooter on two occasions. The uncle was close to me for a decade (known him for 30 years), and undoubtedly devastated at the confluence of guns with mental illness.
It is absolutely the guns, but the trans community will take the beating.
Professor Bigfoot
@New Deal democrat: William of Ockham tells me that when white surpemacy has had such an outsized effect on every aspect of American society and culture and even jurisprudence, it would be foolish to overlook its power anywhere.
White people will seek to find some subdivision of white people that they can, if not deny their whiteness, deny that their behavior and choices are driven by their whiteness.
But from the outside, it all looks like white people and white supremacy.
rikyrah
Good Morning Everyone 😊 😊 😊
Baud
@rikyrah:
Good morning.
Professor Bigfoot
It most certainly is.
Now if we can move on to exactly WHY a certain political ideology is so absolutely hell-bent on preserving their access to every conceivable gun at all times, perhaps we could actually do something about it.
But America’s gun obsession is another pathological symptom of white supremacy.
They need their guns to protect their social position, just as they did in Robert F. WIlliams’ day.
Professor Bigfoot
@rikyrah: GOOD MORNING!!
Suzanne
Dems/libs/progs (I kinda like this formulation) are, by and large, a different personality type than conservatives, and thus media aesthetics will be different. But different doesn’t mean that it doesn’t work. I think we actually did have a stronger media aesthetic at one point, relatively recently.
The biggest difference I observe in personality is that Dems/libs/progs are not authoritarians. Sometimes that manifests as dumbass contrarianism, sometimes that manifests as criticizing Democrats (which annoys Dem centrists, but is foundational to why these people are Dem at all), and sometimes it’s just useful skepticism. A Dem/lib/prog media apparatus will not just be Fox News for the left side of the aisle. It would be much more heterodox and include a lot of types of people that we criticize here, much like Jon Stewart and Theo Von. People who probably vote the right way and in all likelihood get viewers to those conclusions, as well, but maybe aren’t enthusiastic about it.
That’s okay. There’s no enthusiasm bonus on votes.
One of the worst changes for us was allowing ourselves to get unfunny.
Betty Cracker
@Professor Bigfoot: Yesterday morning, it wasn’t cold here, but there was a dryness and slight hint of fall in the air. Now it’s back to the braising liquid…
Baud
@Suzanne:
IMHO a lot of the “funny” people like Stewart (I don’t know Von) become seriously unfunny and offended when Dems make fun of them.
A large part of the problem, again IMHO, is the unwritten hierarchy governing who can make fun of whom.
Betty Cracker
@Suzanne: If you have HBO, I highly recommend Marc Maron’s “Panicked” special, in which he talks about the left’s “buzzkill” problem. He also briefly shits on Theo Von. I’m unfamiliar with Von but got the impression (from Maron) that unlike Stewart, Von is firmly on the right. Is that not true?
ETA: Maron doesn’t really have any solutions for the “buzzkill” problem, but it was interesting to hear a working comic lay out his view of it.
Another Scott
@Eyeroller: +1
Dean Baker has proposed a modest tax credit that people could use to support press outlets of their choice.
We have the economic and regulatory and media systems we do because of the choices we make. They’re not laws of physics. We can make different choices.
But we need enough sensible people in office, and that means winning elections.
Thanks.
Best wishes,
Scott.
New Deal democrat
@Professor Bigfoot: BTW, I agree with you that for a large portion of the GOP electorate, racism is the biggest motivating factor.
For me it is encapsulated in a quote that FDR said to his AG Henry Morgenthau that completely took him aback:
”The United States is a White, Anglo-Saxon Protestant country. Everyone else is here on sufferance.”
That mentality underlies a lot of the GOP ideology today.
Betty
@Eyeroller: That was likely a Sinclair station. They don’t get enough attention as they continue to take over more local stations. Just as right-wing as Fox.
Suzanne
@Betty Cracker:
Sing this from the goddamn rooftops. This is 100% the goal, and I think we don’t want to face it for a few reasons:
1) Those of us here are pretty partisan and probably most of our social circles are similar, and we have a hard time relating
2) The persuasion tactics we need to use on this group seem unsavory and/or silly
3) We do not have a great track record of success.
Baud
Also, y’all might disagree, but I think unfunniness is part of the quasi-Marxist personality, which a lot of young people on the left seem to find attractive these days.
zhena gogolia
@prostratedragon: Ugh. I guess now we know what the new editor is all about. Cancellation time.
Suzanne
@Betty Cracker: Von is not firmly on anything. He is very much someone I would categorize as “incoherent”.
We used to have a lot of incoherent people in our coalition and we need some of them back to win stuff. We will need to accept some degree of incoherency to do so.
prostratedragon
If they do this, the joke could wind up on them:
ETA CST is Chicago Sun-Times.
Baud
@zhena gogolia:
Ah, I was wondering what happened to Vanity Fair. All the dominoes are falling in line except Balloon Juice.
satby
@Deputinize America: there’s already a lot of right wing commentary blaming “transgender ideology” for the shooting. Somehow not mentioning the murderer’s fixation with right wing mass murderers like McVeigh, Brevik (Norway), and Tarrant (New Zealand).
EmbraceYourInnerCrone
@Professor Bigfoot: bingo! I’m not sure what the answer is and frankly I’m exhausted trying to explain to middle class suburban white men that I’ve only had the same rights as them since the mid/late seventies and that white men still dominate the media and the levers of power, both in front of and behind the scenes. Some days I feel like barfing if I hear one more time we have to worry about appealing to “working white men” and everyone else’s needs and lives are secondary/“special interests “.
Baud
@EmbraceYourInnerCrone:
Except at Cracker Barrel.
lowtechcyclist
@Suzanne:
When did this happen? I’ve been hearing that liberals have no sense of humor since before I could vote, and I’m north of 70.
Baud
@satby:
This is the type of thing a left wing media, if we had one, could emphasize.
prostratedragon
@zhena gogolia: Oh. Didn’t know about the change.
Betty
A Jewish man on Threads has a detailed and lengthy take down of Stephen Miller. My favorite line is: Stephen Miller is the aesthetic of hate. It encapsulates the man’s ugly history of attacks on immigrants.
Aziz, light!
Yes.
Baud
@lowtechcyclist:
There’s always been the “they can’t take a joke” when we say something offensive is offensive.
But I feel I see less use of humor in our own ranks than in the past. Also, too, we don’t seem to do rebellious music anymore.
satby
@prostratedragon: yeah, Great Lakes is pretty far from d.t. Chicago. And downtown is where they’d be sent, not to anywhere that doesn’t offer good photo ops.
satby
@Baud: that’s why we have to share it ourselves, with cites.
Baud
@satby:
I remember in the early days of the political Internet, hoping it really would become a replacement for traditional media, which was clearly failing us. I don’t have such hopes anymore.
I don’t disagree about individual sharing, but I’m not sure it can adequately compensate for the lack of reach due to us not having a real media ecosystem.
Suzanne
@lowtechcyclist: I think there was a big drop in our general funniness level around 2015-16. Humor was fairly youthful and left-coded for a while there. The vibe was that conservatism was for old and uptight people.
I watch a lot of stand-up comedy (more like I listen to it while doing chores), and there was definitely a vibe shift. Trump reads as funny and outrageous to a lot of people (which, BTW, read as youthful, which is part of why we’ve never been able to get Trump to read as old and decrepit), and women are much less allowed to be funny, and I felt that all through 2016.
satby
@Baud: Who’ll Stand With Us, Dropkick Murphys
Scout211
The headline in the FTFNYT “Medicare Will Require Prior Approval for Certain Procedures” prompted me to find another source so I could link it here.
Apparently, this was quietly announced last month.
Kiplinger with the details:
This is horrible news for all of us on traditional Medicare. We pay more for traditional Medicare because we all need to purchase a supplemental plan for cost shares and co-pays. But we can go to any doctor or any hospital that takes Medicare. And no prior authorizations are required on almost every service and almost every medication, unlike Medicare advantage plans.
Of course, “we aren’t cutting Medicare” is the lie when the medical services themselves can be controlled or cut by whoever is tasked with granting approval for those services.
Also too, “WISeR model?”
Ohio Mom
@New Deal democrat: In case anyone here didn’t know, Henry Morganthau was Jewish.
I still admire and appreciate FDR but he certainly had feet of clay.
Baud
@satby:
There’s some. Not as rich as in the past, as far as I can tell.
JML
@lowtechcyclist: if it means I have to start laughing at racist “jokes”, then I’m out.
seems to me that the accusation that liberals aren’t funny is rooted in our unwillingness to laugh at bigoted shit and actually reporting people to HR that send around a racist/sexist/bigoted joke on the company email, etc.
it’s still a constant refrain on the right: “can’t you take a joke?” and those fuckers need a brick to the head.
Deputinize America
@prostratedragon:
Under what statute would DHS/ICE “police” Chicago? Attempt to grab or assault people, and then charge them with Federal felonies for resisting?
Baud
@JML:
Start making fun of right wing Christians if you want to see people not being able to take a joke.
prostratedragon
@Suzanne: I always thought that people seeing much humor in in was a bad sign. The Three Stooges are much wittier.
Suzanne
@JML:
I think this is definitely part of it. I do think we have an earnestness, if that makes sense.
Another Scott
@New Deal democrat: Made me look.
As one would expect, the quote has morphed over time, as well as the supposed speaker (some sites say it was his mother).
I found this:
From Morganthau, Jr’s diary:
Crowley was an Irish American Catholic, and Morganthau was Jewish. Presumably if, in a counter-factual world, he had a Black man as a cabinet member there he would have thrown him in the list as well.
:-/
People, even great people, are products of their times. Something something truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die and a new generation grows up something something.
Thanks.
Best wishes,
Scott.
satby
@Baud: I think a lot of the conventional B_J assumptions about the state of political humor or music today is partially a result of how much older everyone here skews, and how many people proudly proclaim they rely on this site as a trusted news source. It may be trusted, but the “news” reporting is limited and cherry picked. Which is fine, it’s not designed to be a news outlet; people just need to not forget that it isn’t one. There’s a whole world of countercultural stuff happening we don’t get exposed to here.
satby
Absolutely this. Josh Johnson sells out his appearances everywhere he goes, for example. He’s funny, but also a thoughtful political commenter.
Baud
@satby:
I recognize that I’m not partaking in the same content as young people. But I still can observe the world around me, like old people did in the past. I’m sure that there are things that I’m missing, but I’m skeptical I’m missing a large cultural movement effectively reacting to the rise of fascism over the last decade.
Suzanne
@prostratedragon: So relatively soon after the election, I watched Andrew Schultz’ special. I literally had no idea who he was at the time and was looking for something to fold laundry to. ;) If you haven’t seen his special, it’s all about him and his wife going through IVF to have their daughter. Not a thing that was really typical for men to talk about even a few years ago.
So about halfway through it, it dawns on me that he likely voted for FFOTUS (found out later that I was correct), but also that lots of dudes like this have voted for Dems in the past and maybe we can get them again. Schultz has made statements since the election indicating that he is unhappy with FFOTUS. Is he influenced by bigotry around sex and race and sexual orientation? Absolutely of course he is. But I also think that we can get some of that kind of guy back, without giving into bigotry. A man who will talk about problems with his sperm count on stage might have more empathy than we think on first blush. Buttigieg later went on his show and had a great convo with him, commiserated about parenting, made a couple of jokes, etc. I think that kind of thing helps shift that vibe.
lowtechcyclist
@JML:
Yeah, ‘humor’ that’s all about punching down is right out AFAIAC.
Matt McIrvin
@sab: Jackson’s movement was actually MORE democratic than most that had preceded it, in that it had the support of poor white men (who were just getting the right to vote in much of the country, as the requirement of land ownership went away).
It was quite a low bar.
prostratedragon
@Suzanne: Any acknowledgement at all of people’s actual lives, and of their own place within that space, is a helpful start.
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
Jefferson and Jackson were the key leaders behind the century of Dems being a white populist party. The FDR coalition started to chip away at that. Now the old Dems are being reincarnated in the Republican Party.
Professor Bigfoot
@lowtechcyclist: I was thinking about that… they worship Mango Mussolini; we laugh along with Dark Brandon and Governator Hollywood.
Here’s the real difference between us and them: we can laugh at ourselves.
NOBODY takes GCN “Your Favorite Governor” seriously; we laugh our asses off at the parody of right wing shibboleths.
In general conservatives are hateful, humorless bastards.
Betty Cracker
@satby: 100% agree, on both the relative age differential and the fact that this site is NOT a comprehensive news aggregator. It always alarms me when I read a comment from someone who says they get all their news here. Don’t do that! Or at least do so knowing full well you’re drawing conclusions about an ocean from a bucketful of (filtered!) water.
satby
@Baud: well, I don’t take in a lot of “young” content either. So I can’t really address that statement. I think it’s less a cultural movement of resistance and more of a cultural “we’ve moved on” ad hoc spontaneous resistance. And it’s still forming. The pendulum is swinging back.
Suzanne
@prostratedragon: FWIW, I think humor was one of the big elements of Biden’s appeal for a long time. Getting caught on a mic saying “big fucking deal” and dropping “malarkey” into debates and the Obama/Biden memes and the Onion stuff with him with the Trans Am….. all that stuff made him feel really relatable and likeable and, honestly, a bit younger than his years.
RevRick
@Baud: And yet readers of the NYT still vote for Democrats by a significant margin. It took massive coverage of butter emails at the end of the campaign seeping into the national conversation to sink Clinton.
The reason why Fox News is so successful is it preys upon feelings of fear and disgust for which conservative brains are primed.
Matt McIrvin
@Suzanne: On the other hand… the closest thing liberals ever really had to a Fox News is satirical comedy shows. That’s why they shut down Colbert (though Colbert isn’t on the cutting edge any more). Conservatives have never been as good at that. They had a comedy base in standup, though, where gross and bigoted jokes seem to work with the right audience.
Right now, it feels like there’s a renaissance in left-coded comedy going on, but it’s not late-night talk and satirical pseudo-news, it’s centered around Dropout and improv-based comedy. A lot of it isn’t explicitly political but the messages aren’t far beneath the surface (Dropout’s head is literally Robert Reich’s son, and a chip off the old block). And standup isn’t mostly gross any more, there are good people being successful at it.
lowtechcyclist
@Another Scott:
Which makes me think that we need to be finding ways to appeal to young people whose politics aren’t yet solidified. As a seventysomething, I have no brilliant ideas of how one might do that, but the more we’re able to persuade young people that our values are the right ones, the sooner we get a good new generation replacing one of the bad old generations.
Baud
@RevRick:
Doesn’t really mean anything. Dems are more likely to tune into the NYT in the first place. I recognize that, despite their spin, they probably have the best journalistic operation in the country. Libs choose to make that tradeoff, just like people make all kinds of tradeoffs in life. But if they don’t recognize that’s what their doing, they’re going to be manipulated.
Even if the NYT only influences the topics of Dem conversation, that itself does damage.
Suzanne
@Matt McIrvin:
This is exactly what I mean, tho. A liberal media apparatus would be different from Fox in many ways. Much less serious in tone, much broader in style. “Watching the news” is, like….. a thing we did back in the nineties.
I think I have maybe watched, at most, three genuine news broadcasts in the last five years. Our coalition is different…. younger, and with different aesthetics.
Baud
@lowtechcyclist:
Before we do that, we need to agree among ourselves that our values are the right ones.
Professor Bigfoot
Hermana mia, this is another of those things where I hope like hell I’m wrong and you’re right… but I believe the only way to get them is to exhibit the kind of bigotry that attracts them.
Steve in the ATL
@satby: I think we can all agree the Dropkick Murphys are better when they are defending immigrants and much, much worse when they are attacking management-side labor lawyers!
Baud
@Professor Bigfoot:
I think the people who are gettable look and sound the same as the people who are not. It’s quite random, like radioactive decay.
Chief Oshkosh
@Baud: You only say that because you’re a beta with tiny hands.
So there.
/s
prostratedragon
Alabama outcry:
Seems he left early, out the back way.
New Deal democrat
@Another Scott: I don’t know if FDR was stating his own belief, or just restating what he believed was the opinion of most Americans at the time.
Suzanne
@Professor Bigfoot: Maybe I’m too optimistic. Entirely possible. But I do think that incoherency cuts both ways, right? Lots of people are swayed by lots of things that don’t occur to us.
narya
@Professor Bigfoot: One of the entertaining (to me) bits of “Murderbot” is that the team Murderbot works with is all of the “lefty” stuff–cooperative, multiracial, a black woman in charge, etc. etc.–and the show both takes them seriously, especially the principles by which they operate, and gently makes fun of them (the whole throuple side plot). We can make fun of ourselves AND take ourselves seriously.
But punching down? count me out.
Baud
@Steve in the ATL:
Unacceptable. Talk about punching down!
Eyeroller
@Betty: The BORDER CRISIS shrieking I saw in 2022 was in the national ABC segments, not the local segments.
Another Scott
@New Deal democrat: The second part made it clear for me – do what I want or you’re gone. With the implication that non-protestants in the USA understand that dynamic.
:-/
It was racist punching-down based on religion/national origin.
Now, sure, everyone on a president’s cabinet and high level advisors have to salute and say “sir yes sir” in public. But not being able to push back in private when they think the boss is wrong is a very bad environment.
As we know and are again seeing in real-time…
Thanks.
Best wishes,
Scott.
Professor Bigfoot
@narya: EXACTLY this. We ain’t punching down.
Murderbot— or more precisely, Gurathin’s reaction to it— gave me an insight into some of the fears of guns… the almost subconscious fear that someone who HAS a gun on them could “lose it’s governor module” and suddenly kill everyone in sight.
Just like Murderbot, we absolutely DON’T want to do that (for moral reasons for most of us and practical reasons like for MB- my first instructor told us “if you use a gun in an OBVIOUS self defense situation, you’re still gonna have to talk to the cops. A lot.”)
BUT we (most of us, I think) have MB’s dedication to protecting our humans.
(ETA— MB is a far better shot than I am, but I’m not bad ;^)
Matt McIrvin
@Suzanne: The formats are changing too. In the last wave of liberal political comedy, everything was spawned from or patterned after “The Daily Show”, which was partly an “SNL Weekend Update”-style parody of conventional news broadcasts and partly late-night talk. Those models are declining, though, and young people probably don’t even register them as a model that is being parodied.
Oddly, the big hits on Dropout are basically game shows. I guess the British comedy “panel show” is the model. And really old American stuff like “Match Game.” Some things are perennial.
Princess
That poll of Trump’s favourability on different issues — they are never going to capture the real source and strength (such as it is) of his continued popularity because they don’t ask one of the cnetral reasons he was elected, that is to say, his views on race, or more bluntly, white supremacy. The immigration question is a slight proxy for it, and so is crime. But until they ask “Do you agree with Trump’s stance on race in America?” or something like that, we’re still whispering around one of the biggest if not the biggest reason we’re in this fix.
Baud
@Princess:
Agree 100%. Race is his core
ETA: And has been the Republican vote for decades.
Matt McIrvin
@Baud:
I don’t know, there’s a fair bit of ha-ha-only-serious hyperbolic shock humor of a type similar to the right’s, where instead of making rape and Holocaust jokes you wisecrack about murdering CEOs and how Stalin did nothing wrong.
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
I’m not 100% convinced either side is joking.
Bupalos
Trump is furiously flapping his arms against political gravity. With some results- I have to say, the self-defeating “America is over” hyperventilation he’s teased out of much of the online left over his lawn order cosplay in DC is depressingly impressive.
But his outsider/reformer brand is cracked now, mostly on his loud inability to deliver on a main leg of his foundational myth (Epstein/Qannon.) This puts him in the unenviable world of “normal” politicians who are increasingly subject to ever growing anti-incumbent forces in a world where most people’s lives and security are simply and inexorably getting worse.
Matt McIrvin
@Baud: That’s the way it works. You push the envelope of acceptable discourse with shocking statements that you can then claim are jokes if challenged.
But when people say the right is funnier (which they have at times), this kind of thing is what they’re actually talking about.
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
The right does have a larger universe of acceptable targets to “joke” about.
Baud
@Baud:
Vote= core
satby
Krugman today: “Why aren’t markets freaking out?”
Professor Bigfoot
@Princess: Yep.
It’s gets back to just, white people simply don’t want to acknowledge how attractive Trump’s racial views are to them.
Even those who ultimately reject those views.
(and that is understandable, dammit, if also unacceptable. We get why white supremacy is attractive but ask you to just be mindful of this)
RevRick
@Betty Cracker: Two things happened under Biden that were caused by COVID which colored how his administration was viewed. Both crime and inflation spiked to levels not seen in decades. This meant vulnerable communities were experiencing a level of pain they hadn’t experienced in decades. And since they occurred on Joe’s watch it was easy for Republicans to claim it was his fault (and Republicans made sure to attach Harris to Biden, which made it her fault by extension).
I doubt the average person would believe explanations of how a pandemic would lead to increased crime or increased inflation. So, they would accept explanations that point the finger at the Biden administration.
Did Harris lose because of racism and misogyny?
I won’t deny that it may have played some role at the margins, but those factors have long been baked into our society.
We kid ourselves if we underplay the effects of crime and inflation.
Jackie
Just woke up on the early West Coast… and I’m already waaaay behind two-thirds of the rest of ya’ll. Sigh. Now to grab a cuppa and start reading…
Paul in KY
@Betty Cracker: Good points. Think the misogyny was number 1 reason Latino males went with TACO. The BS stuff about TACO having a golden touch with the economy also peeled a bunch of useful idiots off too.
Paul in KY
@Professor Bigfoot: Back then it was country white vs city white. All white all the time.
Paul in KY
@Professor Bigfoot: See your point, but white dudes elected John Quincy Adams too and Millard Fillmore, etc. etc.
IMO, Jackson’s appeal was to the non-city-dwelling whites. Bashing on Indians was catnip to those dudes.
Paul in KY
@Ten Bears: That para sounded like Kerouac!
UncleEbeneezer
A Dem version of the news would only be ignored and accused of going too easy on the Dem Party. It would be treated with the same animosity and vitriol as the DNC unless it spent all its focus on attacking mainstream Dems.
Paul in KY
@Professor Bigfoot: Fear of ‘The Other’. Fascism uses that as their number 1 play.
Betty Cracker
@Bupalos: I think this is right. The frantic escalation of power displays are signs of weakness, not strength. That doesn’t mean he’ll lose — it means he’s got vulnerabilities we can exploit. I mean look at prostratedragon’s comment at #93. A Republican chased out of his townhall in Daphne, Alabama!?! I repeat: DAPHNE, ALABAMA!
Motivated Seller
Squabbling about the partisanship-level of any given media company completely ignores the influence of public policy. The Fairness Doctrine was rooted in the aftermath of WWII. It mandated broadcast networks devote time to contrasting views on issues of public importance. The doctrine stayed in effect until the Reagan Administration.
Anyone see a pattern?
Paul in KY
@satby: The hellhole of Grant Park…(shudder)!!!
Belafon
@Eyeroller:
Yes, but what do we need RIGHT NOW? We aren’t going to get an honest media for a long time. What can we create to counter the current media that normies will have access to and read, listen, and watch?
Geminid
I was checking out the social media account of the Armenian National Committee of America (SNCA) and ran into this item on Texas Congressman Henry Cuellar:
So, no high profile special election in TX28 this year.
ANCA carried this story because they watch any and all news related to Azerbaijan like hawks, and Cuellar is accused of taking money from an Azerbaijan oil company.
Paul in KY
@Another Scott: Thanks for looking that up.
Soprano2
@Professor Bigfoot: Same here, we went from 99 degrees to 69 degrees in a week! It’s hard on an old body.
jonas
@Eyeroller: Biden/Harris were hammered mercilessly by both the rightwing and MSM on two issues: immigration/migration and inflation (and, of course, the Afghanistan withdrawl). I don’t think the WH realized until it was too late just how badly those issues were hurting the president’s approval ratings, particularly among minority groups and never really mustered a coherent counterattack. But maybe it was hopeless anyway. The migration crisis had complex roots/causes that will take years, if not decades, to address effectively and the post-pandemic inflation spike was a global phenomenon that the president had little control over (as opposed to an inflation spike caused intentionally via stupid tariff wars). A dog might as well speculate on the mind of Newton, as they say.
Fox News is popular because it’s boils everything down to a single-celled premise: everything *you* don’t like and that scares you is the fault of liberals. Liberals are liberals mostly because their thinking is not that black and white and that’s why a network that just pushes mindless left-wing propaganda all day isn’t going to work. As folks have said upthread, what we need is the MSM to grow a pair and report fairly and not mindlessly always adopt right-wing framing for everything, including normalizing what Trump is doing.
Iron city
@Baud: I have a pony. Willing to provide. Will you pick up or shall I deliver?
Paul in KY
@Professor Bigfoot: Sorta riffing off the guns comment, I don’t know why people keep very large dogs around (pit bulls, mastiffs, German shepherds, Dobermans, etc.) that (if the dog wanted to) could easily seriously injure them or kill them? Same goes with any wacko that keeps a pantherine cat.
Paul in KY
@RevRick: Don’t understand why this wouldn’t have been a good explanation for the inflation: ‘Rich people lost alot of money during 2020 and 2021. They are trying to get it all back now.’
Completely true also. Too.
Eyeroller
@Belafon: I don’t see any way to get there right now because tiny individual contributions don’t really help that much. I guess such funds mostly support NPR and PBS (except there were areas that really needed the CPB). But as I said, what we need is a billionaire who will buy a major at least regional outlet and instead of acting like Charles Foster Kane, endow it so it can lose a little money for a long time. I don’t see anything like that happening soon.
Citizen Dave
Re: The old racists die off theory. I remember when I first heard the John Lee Hooker song “The World Today” and I thought, Yes, these old assholes will die off and it will be a better country/world. But that didn’t happen. The song was released January 15, 1971, on the Hooker N Heat (Canned Heat collab) album. A long spoken word tune, very unlike the usual Hooker song. google.com/search?q=john+lee+hooker+the+world+today+lyrics&sca_esv=74352027cc1c8752&sxsrf=…
Look here now, you find so many old people
They’re not hip to the modern days
They want their kids to live like they live
But no, them days are gone
It’s a brand new world
One way to solve that problem, it takes time
The old coots die out, leave it to the young kids
Be a beautiful world
And then there won’t be no fighting on campus anymore‘
Cause my kids and your kids
When they grow up and get drunk
They understand all old coots are gone, in their grave
But as long as they live
There’s gonna be fighting in every town, hey, hey
In every campus, the young kids walking out, hey, hey, hey, hey
The old folks, when they gone, when they gone
It’ll be a better world to live in‘
Cause the young kids is the world today
prostratedragon
Miss Bianca
@Eyeroller: The Colorado Sun, an online newspaper (online newspaper? um…) that rose from the ashes of the conflagration that consumed the Rocky Mountain News and threatened to consume the Denver Post, was apparently funded by a billionaire initially, but who, as billionaires are wont to do, even the “good” ones, got bored and wandered off to the next preoccupation.
They decided to make up the lack with soliciting subscriptions from their readers and they are doing OK now. And doing very good “objective” work.
As the publisher recently noted at the Colorado Press Association conference, “It’s much more sustainable to depend on thousands of Coloradans than one billionaire.”
Eyeroller
@jonas: Inflation was a genuine issue globally and hurt incumbents around the world. But I agree that there was no real effort to counter the constant hammering by the MSM, who far exaggerated how bad it was in the US. I found it telling when poll after poll showed most of the public thought they were personally doing just fine (and were acting like it) yet still said the economy was terrible overall. But some still deny the power of media narratives even on people who don’t directly consume them.
I am pretty sure it was Betty C. with her way with words who said that a lot of people had a “cargo-cult” belief that re-electing Trump would magically make it 2019 again. We know that human cognitive biases can make it hard for a lot of people to grasp cause and effect and this may be an example.
Fair Economist
Some of both, I think. Fox viewers are more gullible than average people, but almost everybody is influenced by misdirection and repetition.
We don’t need a Fox News, but we do need something that can competently dwell on the right things to downgrade opinions on the Republicans. For example, a media outlet that asks “what’s wrong with Trump” every time he forgets a name, act like he’s still in the 80’s, stumbles, etc. Or constantly reporting on gun violence in red states, and talking about where the criminals got their guns. That’s actually what Fox used to do: they weren’t factually inaccurate, they just only reported good things for Republicans and bad for Democrats. After 25 years, they brainwashed their targets so thoroughly they could go full crazy.
Professor Bigfoot
@Paul in KY: I have two Yorkies and an Italian Mastiff (Cane Corso).
Guess which one is the sweetest and gentlest, and which ones are ready to go to war at any time. 😂
Eyeroller
@Miss Bianca: I was really sorry when the Rocky Mountain News went under, though I’d moved away by then. Glad to hear an online outlet (that’s why I am not using “newspaper” too much anymore) is succeeding. But even subscriptions are iffy and it’s hard to see. how to scale that.
I assume the billionaire did not leave behind any trust fund for the outlet.
Belafon
@RevRick:
The difference being we’d never had a black woman as president before. That’s why you can’t just argue they’re baked in. We saw the margin effects of being a woman when Hillary ran. Then we added being black.
Baud
@Fair Economist:
Seconded.
Anyway
@Betty Cracker: NYMag/Vulture had a good writeup of how the left became seen online as humorless scolds and people in the comedy industry voted for Cheetolini (vomit) out of a desire to protect free speech… I mean I cannot even …
This is such a steep hill to climb for Dems
Eyeroller
@Fair Economist: IOW do to Trump what the MSM did to Biden, and treat Ds the way the MSM treats Rs for the most part. Yes, that would help. It would need to have at least some national reach, however, and that is expensive.
But what we get instead seems to be what we sort of beat to death here, which is self-proclaimed leftist journalists, influencers, whatever, bashing Ds as hard as or harder than Rs. See the “Cold Gray Morning” thread about an article in Wired for an example.
Professor Bigfoot
I will accept that it was not at all the ONLY thing, but I will argue with my very last breath that it was the CENTRAL thing, the ONE THING without which none of the rest of it would hold together.
Miss Bianca
@Suzanne: You know, Biden was actually pretty damn funny, but except for the “noun, verb, and 9-11” crack that helped depress Giuliani’s pretensions, he never got any credit for it. Funny (not funny) that.
Eyeroller
@Anyway: The “comedy industry” has long been dominated by white males. No suprise they want “free speech.”
Baud
@Anyway:
And they can’t admit even now they were wrong and that we were right.
ETA: There are former Republicans that do a better job admitting they were wrong.
Professor Bigfoot
@Eyeroller: Once you start seeing these “coincidences,” you start seeing them everywhere.
Wanderer
@p.a: “I was thinking”
There’s the problem… thinking is great but messaging must be simple, visceral and easy to read. I propose Dump Trump as such a message. In our area the r side posted Trump good Harris bad signs everywhere. They worked.
Eyeroller
@Professor Bigfoot: Take my wife! Please!
In the old days the humor was mostly misogynistic. Now that’s back and there’s more racism.
Professor Bigfoot
@Baud: Now try getting them to see the thread from Nixon’s “Southern Strategy” to Reagan’s campaign announcement in Philadelphia MS on a platform of “state’s rights” to Trumpism.
Bonne chance, mon ami.i
Fair Economist
@Betty Cracker:
That’s definitely it. People who are well-informed on politics voted 2:1 for Harris. We’re just outnumbered by those who aren’t informed on politics. It’s them we need to get through to.
Fair Economist
@Eyeroller:
Dammit, where’s the like button?
Professor Bigfoot
@Eyeroller: Lord yes. “My wife wants electric everything now. Electric mixer. Electric stove. Electric washer. So I got her an electric chair.”
Har har har.
(I can’t remember if that was Henny Youngman or Red Skelton, but I remember laughing right along, back when… and now I hear this kind of stuff I’m like “f’real, bruh?”)
RevRick
@Belafon: Hillary got what was the second highest popular vote total ever and Harris got the third highest vote total ever.
Both were carrying economic anchors besides race and gender. With Hillary the recovery from the Great Recession had dragged on for too long and Harris had the COVID-related issues. Hillary also had Benghazi and emails, issues that would particularly engage/enrage conservatives at the time.
Because the margins were so small, the causes are overdetermined. Liberals like to seize upon race and gender as the reasons for Clinton’s and Harris’ defeats, ignoring the real complaints about crime and inflation.
Miss Bianca
AS ONE DOES, FREQUENTLY, OF COURSE! ; )
Suzanne
@Miss Bianca:
Agreed that he is funny. But I think he did get credit, in the form of a general air of likability and unpretentiousness.
Honestly, I think this is one of the “communications” failures. Biden is genuinely funny and engaging, and I feel like his team wasn’t designing situations for him to show that off throughout his presidency. Unscripted wit is a really good way to show off sharpness, too. Must always remember to play off strengths.
Baud
@RevRick:
Race and gender were the real reasons. The other stuff is the stuff that affects the margins. Race and gender are the core.
Professor Bigfoot
@RevRick: I’m sorry, Rev, but it’s hard to think those things were enough to get that many people to choose a 34 count felon and adjudicated rapist over the former prosecutor, former AG, former US Senator and sitting Vice President.
The difference is just too fucking STARK, here.
Miss Bianca
@Paul in KY: Speaking for myself, the large dogs/pittie mixes that I’ve had have shown far more zealous interest in *protecting* me from any perceived threat than attacking me.
So, if I ever move back to the city as a single gal? Yep. I’m getting me a doggo with a big bark.
(Which could easily be one like my Susi, a fluffball who fancies herself an investigative reporter. That bark will wake the dead.)
Paul in KY
@Professor Bigfoot: See your point. But if it wanted to, the Corso dog could seriously mess you up. The yorkie not so much. Understand you have loved your big dog and well raised it so it would never do that. However, the capability is there.
Paul in KY
@Professor Bigfoot: Red was a pretty funny guy. My parents and I loved his show.
Paul in KY
@Miss Bianca: That is a reason. Protection for you from them!
Professor Bigfoot
@Paul in KY: Point taken; but that’s also been my experience of the pets I’ve known— the meanest li’l fucker was a Chihuahua who loved my (now) wife’s daughter and NOBODY else. :^D
Our rescue mastiff came with her name— the dumbest name I’ve ever seen but the most approprate for this dog- “Sweetie.”
But man, her bark can be SCARY. Which is why I really don’t worry about home invaders. 😉
Eyeroller
@Baud: Race and gender probably made a large chunk of the electorate — and, I am convinced, the press — less likely to trust Harris and listen to her messaging on the economy and the other “kitchen table” issues. There is an assumption that white men are competent to deal with problems like inflation, and suspicion of everybody else.
Professor Bigfoot
I believe firmly that a lot of that assumption is entirely subconscious. We’ve been trained by our society and the media thereof that, well, we hear CEO and a white man’s face comes to mind, doesn’t it?
Some are unwilling to grapple with these subconscious and unconscious beliefs and choices and would rather rationalize them..
Geminid
@Miss Bianca: Thank you, now I see my typo. It’s *ANCA*.
I mainly wanted to see their posture on the prospective Armenia/Azerbaijan peace treaty, which is a hot topic here. Predictably, ANCA adamantly opposes the treaty as a betrayal of Armenia’s soveriegn interests. Armenian Prime Minister Pashinyin sees matters differently though.
Suzanne
@Professor Bigfoot: There’s long been associations of incompetence, unseriousness, and emotionality with women. So I find it entirely plausible that some squishy voters had some entirely valid concerns about inflation and general economic issues….. and then they concluded that a white man was better at solving those problems.
Miss Bianca
@Suzanne:
A white man who is a 34-count felon, a bankrupt “businessman”, patently corrupt and sleazy, among all his other sins? Yeah, ok…sure; there’s nothing wrong with their reasoning faculties at all, is there?
Geminid
@Suzanne: Thought sounds entirely credible. I would add another specific economic concern: high interest rates.
Suzanne
@Miss Bianca:
I didn’t say there was nothing wrong with their reasoning. There’s a lot wrong with their reasoning. But we have to remember that racism and sexism don’t usually operate as seething rage and hatred. They’re much more subtle and nefarious than that.
Deputinize America
LOL – the Commerce Department says the economy is running GREAT, the government is putting up gigantic Kim size posters of Donald Trump, and he’s talking about “many people” wanting a dictator. When this train trip finishes in Zurich on Sunday, why don’t I want to return?
Princess
@Professor Bigfoot: The fat that the pollsters refuse to even ask about it stands out so starkly to me. They don’t want to see it.
Ramona
@Another Scott: this is interesting.
Honus
@Professor Bigfoot: and for Lincoln, too.
prostratedragon
Jamelle Bouie looks at the Big Brother images now hanging over DC, and gets all Guy DeBord about them:
Down in the comments, Sanho Tree posts the earlier image I was reminded of.
Geminid
@Deputinize America: I read in Visegrad24* that there were riots in Lausanne Tuesday night. They said this was highly unusual for Switzerland. Are you hearing about this story?
* Visegrad24 is based in Poland. They used to post mainly about the Russia/Ukraine war from a pro-Ukraine point of view, but now they also publish a lot of anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant material.
Melancholy Jaques
@Citizen Dave:
That was definitely what I believed when I was back in high school (Class of ’73). And it certainly seemed that every one of the kids in my high school believed it too.
But man, 40 years later I’m on facebook and it connects me with high school acquaintances and all but one of them are rabid racist assholes. What the fuck happened to make them like that?
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@Baud: I’d really like them to ask if they agree with Hegseth and Trump that women don’t belong in the military, especially in leadership roles.
Professor Bigfoot
@Honus: Lincoln’s win was in a four-way race— the USA just got LUCKY on that one.
Melancholy Jaques
@Eyeroller:
Which is puzzling given that we have seen repeated demonstrations of right-wing narratives that become generally accepted. I could list them, but we know all of them. From the Clintons must have done something wrong in Whitewater to Hunter Biden’s laptop. Or just ask your low info friends to tell you everything they know about Hillary Clinton.
lowtechcyclist
@Professor Bigfoot:
This.
Which makes it a sonuvabitch to poll for, of course. Especially because the same people who don’t think of themselves as racially prejudiced but vote that way anyway, aren’t going to acknowledge the extent of Trump’s racism either.
Suzanne
@Geminid: FWIW, I think affordability is a really big problem and it hurt us a lot. I think we here kind of thought of it as a stalking horse for other things during 2024 and didn’t want to look at it too closely.
Uncle Cosmo
Um….no. The Rethuglican “coalition” is defined by people who want one or (usually) more groups of Others to be punished for having gotten something that should have been theirs.**
As such, the Thug-adjacent are happy when any of those groups are punished, and are willing to wait until the authorities get around to punishing the others.
Folks on our side of the aisle customarily want a number of groups lifted up out of (various forms of) misery, and tend to remain displeased so long as any of those groups are still subject to any form of discomfort.
Their side is willing to wait on immiserating the rest; our side wants everything fixed stat.
** Or for even existing in a manner as a rebuttal to their entire way of life.
Omnes Omnibus
@Steve in the ATL:
Not really, but thank you for your contribution.
Eyeroller
@Suzanne: For decades the public has consistently rated the Rs “better for the economy” in the face of mountains of evidence to the contrary. This crosses class and to some extent racial boundaries. I can think of no other reason than that the water in which we swim is filled with beliefs that “businessmen know how to run an economy, businessmen know how to make budgets, businessmen know how to make an efficient operation, and by the way successful businessmen are white males.”
Omnes Omnibus
@Paul in KY: Getting out of Waukegan for any reason should appeal to anyone.
Matt McIrvin
@Eyeroller: The other thing is, left-wing comedians tend to see partisan cheerleading as a comedy killer and will go hard on their own side for not measuring up. Modern left political comedy is tough on Democratic politicians and I don’t think we can change that, it’s not in our side’s blood.
tam1MI
@zhena gogolia: Ugh. I guess now we know what the new editor is all about. Cancellation time.
I think the threat of cancellation is Melania appears on the cover will be more effective in this case. Otherwise you risk getting lumped in with MAGATs quitting because Melania didn’t appear on the cover.
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
Do left wing comedians make fun of lefty politicians? I don’t follow the comedy scene anymore so I don’t know.
Omnes Omnibus
@Professor Bigfoot: I watched Sixteen Candles a couple of weeks ago. It was the first time I had seen in 20 some year. Rapey as fuck and racist to boot. That was a considered a sweet teen comedy in 1984. Did I mention how rapey it was?
Suzanne
@Matt McIrvin:
A lot of people on our side believe that “dissent is the highest form of patriotism” and consider criticism of politicians to be part of the role of active citizens, too. This is just part of the way we’re different from Republicans. And this is to say nothing of the intra-coalition fighting, too, which I think is terribly damaging and alienating.
I don’t think any Dem/lib/prog media would be uniformly enthusiastic about candidates and I think that’s okay.
Steve in the ATL
@Omnes Omnibus: don’t sass me or I will start posting jangly songs!
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@Eyeroller: Its because they are judging based on how they are doing personally, their own economy. Gas prices are a very big part of that.
Baud
Race and sex isn’t just about the candidate. It’s also about who the candidate will lift up. White male Dems will face headwinds because of that.
Melancholy Jaques
@Professor Bigfoot:
And from the very beginning, everyone in the political media refuses to say that white supremacy is the essential core of that asshole’s appeal. As I said back in 2016, the remarkable thing wasn’t that he beat Hillary Clinton, but that he beat all those other well known and well funded Republicans without even having a campaign organization. His brazen and unapologetic racism was what Republican base voters had been looking for their whole lives. Many of those who came to his rallies said it plainly. But when Hillary called them deplorable the entire media universe went at her with pitchforks and torches.
Omnes Omnibus
@Steve in the ATL: You don’t have the guts.
Baud
@Eyeroller:
We also refuse to sell ourselves as good on the economy. We prefer to complain about how we’re not good enough.
Kristine
Idk if anyone else has posted this, but if you’ve been thinking about buying Martha Wells’ Murderbot ebooks, there’s a Humble Book Bundle deal where you can get all those ebooks plus some of Wells’ fantasy novels with a portion of the proceeds going to World Central Kitchen.
The deal will be running for a couple more weeks.
Miss Bianca
@Melancholy Jaques: So, what (as if we didn’t already know) does that say about our mainstream media..?
Steve in the ATL
@Omnes Omnibus:
I’ve been in a Down Under mood lately, so here’s some Australian music that is neither AC/DC nor the Wiggles:
Rebecca’s Empire
The Hummingbirds
Sunnyboys
and for those nostalgic for the early 80’s, The Jigsaws!
rikyrah
@Professor Bigfoot:
This is how I felt on Tuesday evening. I couldn’t believe I was starting to pay the Gas company so early. It’s not even SEPTEMBER 1ST
DA HAIL?
Steve in the ATL
@Omnes Omnibus: while I was typing the response to you, my Spotify mix started playing Milwaukee’s own the the Shivvers. Damn AI.
Paul in KY
@Professor Bigfoot: I bet your Corso is a real sweetie! The bark is a great theft deterrent!
Paul in KY
@Suzanne: And of those particular white men, TACO could do it! God help us all…
Mick McDick
Left wing people are not as susceptible to propaganda as right wingers. Case in point: In the 90’s I had a job that entailed driving a pickup truck most of the day. I like talk radio, and usually listened to Rush Limbaugh. He didn’t change my mind about anything, he only made me angry and kept me awake. He also made me aware of the rising theo-fascist movement in this benighted country. Schopenhauer called it out:
“The majority of men… are not capable of thinking, but only of believing, and… are not accessible to reason, but only to authority.”
Omnes Omnibus
@Steve in the ATL: Okay, so you did have the guts, Or did you fall for my genius level manipulation?
Paul in KY
@Melancholy Jaques: Facebook helped, IMO.
Steve in the ATL
@Omnes Omnibus: reverse psychology FTW
Now listening to 1980 punks the Sleepers (the Sleepers UK on Spotify) with their classic Angel in a Raincoat
Paul in KY
@Omnes Omnibus: They’ll be happy to be in Chicago. If they’ve never been, they’ll be smitten with it (as they will only be in the really nice parts, protecting the tourists).
StringOnAStick
That graph at the top, the one on the right: am I correct that the % of people who think the economy is getting better is, wait for it, wait for it; 27%?
Paul in KY
@Melancholy Jaques: God, I wish she’d called them ‘racist assholes’. I always thought ‘deplorables’ is such a too-edumacated word for that. The kind of thing an overpaid and over-focused-grouped consultant/lawyer would come up with.
Paul in KY
@Steve in the ATL: I like Airbourne. They’re sort of a poor man’s AC/DC. Have seen them and they rock hard!
Trivia Man
I am enjoying Gov Wes Moore recently. I met him ladt year in Wisconsin, very impressed with his presence, content, and personality.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@Mick McDick: I don’t agree. A lot of the horseshoe left believes things that are not true.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
Duplicate
Paul in KY
@Steve in the ATL: I liked the Sunnyboy’s song the best. Thank you for the links.
Sure Lurkalot
@Omnes Omnibus: 16 Candles is very rapey and sexist and ageist and ableist. It’s a couple hours of offensive shit I too thought was sweet and funny in the 80’s.
My 80’s workplaces were along those lines too.
Miss Bianca
@Steve in the ATL: Hey, I like it! Particularly the Sunnyboys – I am *such* a sucker for 60’s style jangle pop.
Makes me nostalgic for my old band, The Strolling Scones – my late lamented friend, our bandleader, was a freaking *genius* at writing songs like this. :(
Baud
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony:
Much smaller group than MAGA and even Q-Anon, I think.
No group of humans is perfectly immune.
Paul in KY
@Steve in the ATL: To me, more garage rock than punk. Nice song, though!
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@Baud: I put the MAHA (woo) people in that category. They mostly were leftists. They never were that grounded in the truth, and now they’ve gone completely into propaganda land
There’s a lot more of them than I thought
Eolirin
@Professor Bigfoot: Of course it was. Without the overwhelming support of white men Republicans can’t win anywhere. It’s what keeps things close enough that we can lose on the margins.
Jeffro
(late to the party, as always)
to answer Dana Houle’s questions: can Dana (or anyone else) come up with a better explanation as to why trump – easily the most obviously corrupt and stupid president in American history – appears to have a solid “floor” of around 40% on most issues?
It’s. The. RWNJ. Noise. Machine.
It’s our own North Korean propaganda network, operating on full blast 24/7/365.
Miss Bianca
@Sure Lurkalot:
@Omnes Omnibus: It’s been so long since I’ve seen Sixteen Candles that I can barely remember it – are the other John Hughes movies as bad? I was a little too old to be his target demographic back in the day…(just saw The Breakfast Club on the library shelves while I was browsing and wondering if I have been missing anything by never watching it…)
Baud
Via reddit, iconic images of the occupation.
I don’t know what force would cause Americans to tolerate this other than bigotry.
Steve in the ATL
@Paul in KY: @Miss Bianca: I am here to serve. There’s so much great music from there beyond what’s made it here.
Belafon
@Suzanne: She was agreeing with you.
Baud
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony:
I feel as if the MAHA people have the most grounding in reality of the various cults. There are a lot of health and nutrition issues that should be fixed. But they’ve now partnered with right wingers so they’re just going to make everything worse.
Belafon
@Steve in the ATL: Amyl and the Sniffers is a popular group on the radio station I listen to here in DFW.
Eolirin
Did anyone else notice that the percentage of people who think Trump is making the economy better is 26%? That’s basically a rounding error on 27%.
Steve in the ATL
@Paul in KY: @Belafon: will check them out, but if you guys mess up my algorithm….
Anyway
Decades of successful
propagandamessaging by Chamber of Commerce, various arms of Koch PACs, Third Way, Pederson (still dead) institute etc etc — they conflate “economy” to asset bubbles.Omnes Omnibus
@Miss Bianca: I was in college rather than high school when most of theme came out. But in answer to your question, I am not sure. I did see that in them at the time, but I haven’t rewatched any of the others recently. I mean Breakfast Club was awfully damned white but so was any Chicago suburb along Sheridan Road in the ’80s.
Matt McIrvin
@Miss Bianca: No, they’re all that bad. Eighties teen comedy was so terrible that the stuff Hughes put out passed as thoughtful by comparison, but it doesn’t hold up.
It’s the same environment that made “Revenge of the Nerds” seem subversive. Another extremely low bar.
Paul in KY
@Steve in the ATL: Completely agree. If you haven’t, check out The Linda Lindas. Real fun group of young ladies. Can really rock.
tam1MI
@New Deal democrat: I don’t know if FDR was stating his own belief, or just restating what he believed was the opinion of most Americans at the time.
Also hearsay evidence is notoriously unreliable.
Paul in KY
@Belafon: Have their latest album. Man, I want to see those guys live. I hear they really rock hard. Their lead singer sounds whack!
Omnes Omnibus
@Steve in the ATL: Shonen Knife.
Matt McIrvin
@Baud: They’re really not reality-grounded though, their fondness for unregulated nutritional supplements over real medicine is pure crankery. They’re laudably keen on exercise but combine it with unhealthy fad diets.
Eolirin
@Baud: That’s questionable. They almost all start from a position of identifying a real problem; for MAHA that’s that corporate interests in food and Healthcare are motivated to prioritize profit over the health of the consumers of their products. And that’s absolutely true.
But it quickly morphs into an outright rejection of science. This is how we end up going from a critique of added sugar and how little people are exercising, or an examination of the issues with drug trial methodology, to a rejection of the germ theory of disease or thinking that vaccines are dangerous.
It shares the common cult requirement that all expertise is rendered as being in on the conspiracy, leaving the members with no one to trust but the cult leaders. In the end it becomes just as divorced from reality as your average flat earther.
Even Q-Anon had a valid core hook about the way that wealthy and connected people could do things even as extreme as pedophilia and get away with it, as evidenced by what we know is true about Epstien, before immediately going off the rails.
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
Sure. If they were reality grounded, they wouldn’t have moved right.
Paul in KY
@Omnes Omnibus: They are still rockin! Have never seen them. Hope to some day. They don’t seem to hit the fest circuit.
Steve in the ATL
@Paul in KY: yeah, it’s funny what got called “punk”. The Moderns? The Circles? The Speedies? The Letters? The Meanies? Long Tall Shorty? Some of it was more garage or mod revival or plain old power pop.
H.E.Wolf
@Steve in the ATL: I see your The Sleepers and raise you my favorite song (as of a zillion years ago in college) from the oeuvre of The Vibrators.youtube.com/watch?v=2HjY5pY2oDo
ETA: The lyrics were repellent to me then, and quite a bit more so now, but I still love the guitar riffs….
Melancholy Jaques
@Paul in KY:
At the time I thought her response to the media outrage should have been aggressive & hostile. She was right, they were wrong. But she was from the generation of Democrats for whom the defensive crouch was the default position.
Matt McIrvin
@Suzanne: The Onion had a great running gag going during the Obama years portraying Biden as this sort of shady aging rapscallion, which I think played on that. Biden sort of leaned into it for a while. But it was gone by the 2024 cycle.
Geminid
@Trivia Man: Maryland Governor Wes Moore is somewhat of an anomaly in that he never held elected office before he was elected governor. Off-hand, I can think of only two other currently serving Democrats who won statewide elections without prior elected office: Senators Jon Ossoff and Elizabeth Warren.
I expect there are more if state offices like Lieutenant Governor, Treasurer etc. are considered.
Most House members were elected to other offices first. For instance, 26 out of 31 members of the Democratic House Class of 2022 had been mayors, state legislators, or city council members before entering Congress. Reps. Nikki Budzinski and Maxwell Frost were two of the exceptions.
Baud
@Eolirin:
I suppose the difference for me is that, while pedophilia is horrible, it’s mostly a single problem, whereas the scale of the true problems with health and nutrition are varied and complex, which tends to more naturally lead to conspiratorial thinking.
I’m not excusing or validating any of it, but thinking about causes.
On the flip side, with RFK Jr., the MAHA folks have the greatest likelihood of doing the most harm to people.
JML
@Matt McIrvin: I don’t think that’s fair; some of them hold up better than others. Ferris Bueller’s Day Off still hold up and works well. And while Breakfast Club may be very white, as a period piece it still has things to say. (I won’t claim it’s perfect) Sixteen Candles is the one that has the most “what the hell were we thinking” stuff that’s played for laughs and is simply not ok. There’s some problematic stuff in Hughes’ work from that era, but it’s not all completely cringe and filled with Not Ok. Especially because he still got the emotionality right. And compared to the teen comedies that came before (and were still rolling during) this period where Hughes was big it’s a significant evolution.
Omnes Omnibus
@Steve in the ATL: IMO that is because punk was and is more of an attitude or ethos than a style. Talking Heads could be at CBGB and well as the Ramones because both played what they wanted to. The Ramones recorded with Phil Spector, but Tina’s fingers would bleed and drip off her bass.
NotMax
@Steve in the ATL
Goin’ back quite a ways howzabout Garbage by The Deviants?
;)
Steve in the ATL
@Omnes Omnibus: nice!
@H.E.Wolf: good stuff–up there with Sweet SwWeet Heart and Whips and Furs.
gvg
@Ten Bears: Try not to get too caught up in your own stereotypes and predjudices just like them. It can rot your brain, and is kind of excusing them too.
No, very few are at all like that. They are mostly almost like us outwardly.
Formerly disgruntled in Oregon
@Matt McIrvin: Dropout is awesome!
They have been driving incredible advances in improvised comedy (and more) for the past few years now. They’re only getting better. It’s the only essential paid streaming service for my teens. Sam Reich is a national treasure.
Melancholy Jaques
@Omnes Omnibus:
Yesterday a friend & I were discussing “Every Breath You Take” by the Police as a pretty creepy/scary song. I don’t recall people thinking that way back then.
Molly Ringwald wrote an essay in The New Yorker about those John Hughes movies and how she feels looking back.
Eolirin
Also to some of the previous conversation, we can’t escape that public views on crime and immigration are inextricably tied to racial issues, that policing in particular is heavily influenced by white supremacy, and that solutions to the actual problems in those areas are not what people want, they want the immigrants and people they view as being responsible for crime (people who are often not even the problem when you look at the stats) to *go away*.
There’s a similar thing with the economy. Views on the economy are relative, not absolute, and a large part of why Republicans poll better is because they’re coded for it, and also a lot of subconscious view of what makes a good economy requires suffering for hatred minorities. Relative status is part of broad economic vibes. Republicans are the only ones saying they’re willing to make life harder for other people, and for people who want their relative status to improve, that’s the only way it’s going to get there.
It’s all vibe driven and it’s rooted in white supremacist cultural structures.
rikyrah
@Kristine:
THANK YOU
RaflW
@Geminid: It looks like Pritzger never held elected office before Gov. of Illinois? He ran for but didn’t win a Congressional race, and served as an appointee on the state’s Human Rights Commission.
And he’s busting Trump’s balls on the regular.
Melancholy Jaques
@Baud:
Agree, but I put gender first & foremost because both times that asshole won, he was running against a woman.
In between, when he was running as an incumbent against an historically weak candidate whose campaign was handicapped by a pandemic, he lost badly, lost Arizona and Georgia. Obviously a lot of factors going in both directions, but I think the major factor was that a lot of Americans do not want to see a woman president.
Fair Economist
@rikyrah:
I’m sure you know this already, but:
One of the effects of global warming is slowing the jet stream, and making it wobble more north and south. Which means weather systems move more slowly, affect us longer, and are more extreme. Colder AND hotter, in alternation, although the hotter is worse.
Matt McIrvin
@Melancholy Jaques: I recall some discussion of “Every Breath You Take” being about a stalker. Sting himself said he intended it as a creepy song and was disturbed by people taking it as a sweet romantic ballad. But pop songs are a really dangerous place for dramatic irony and unreliable narrators–people will take the lyrics at face value if they listen to them at all.
rikyrah
Adam Cochran (adamscochran.eth)
@adamscochran
As much as I’d like to blame Patel and Bondi here it’s this guys problem.
Thomas Fugate III, a 22 year old Trump intern who was appointed to lead counter terrorism & threat prevention at DHS.
He gutted the department firing 75% of the staff, suggesting “domestic terror” and “domestic born shooters” weren’t the problem and that the department needed to “focus on illegals”
This department coordinates cross-agencies tips, and helps power online monitoring programs for proactively catching things like mass shootings before they happen.
But, given it’s got basically no staff, I imagine they are drowning in backlog, and too busy focused on the President’s made up agenda, and so didn’t catch the fact that the shooter was blatantly posting about his planned crimes online.
This is why we hire qualified people for offices; not partisan loyalists.
Today Trump’s loyalty pledge literally cost children their lives.
x.com/adamscochran/status/1960839295981212022
Fair Economist
@Melancholy Jaques:
I noticed. I remember thinking “it’s a stalker song!” I didn’t really talk about it, tho. I figured Sting was being ironic marrying such creepy lyrics to such a pretty melody. But he was going through a divorce at the time IIRC so maybe…
He parodied it later in his solo career (“Every cake you bake”) so that leans me to “it was ironic”.
Ooops, got ninja’d:
@Matt McIrvin:
He should have known better than to try to use the smoothest sweetest song he ever wrote for that. The emotion of the music overrides the lyrics. The song would have needed a lot more edge to seem like a stalker song.
rikyrah
@Eyeroller:
Thank you
Ramalama
@New Deal democrat: I was in West Berlin when the Wall was still up – 1988, I believe – and there was a common grumble against Turks among the West Germans I met.
As a clueless American, I was surprised, but then thought, Oh people always need a group to gripe about.
rikyrah
@Betty Cracker:
I think this is bull.
He got those voters because of:
MISOGYNY
CHASING WHITE ADJACENCY
They gave those bullshyt answers about ‘the economy’,but that was an excuse
Matt McIrvin
@Suzanne: This kind of intelligent, self-critical attitude will nearly always lose to propagandistic blind loyalty in a head-to-head political fight.
The only real advantage we have is that it’s better aligned to reality. But reality only affects election outcomes in a catastrophe, so we lurch from disaster to disaster.
rikyrah
@Melancholy Jaques:
It is literally The Stalker’s Anthem.
Now, I had loved the song for at least a decade before I TRULY listened to the lyrics.
Eolirin
@rikyrah: I do think we lost voters, not that they voted for Trump, but they just didn’t turn out, because there was a real sense of malaise and hardship stemming from inflation and credit card rates going up and they just weren’t excited about their choices. And they’re marginal voters so they need to be excited.
Part of why Trump managed to eek out a narrow plurality in the popular vote was because of falloff in Democratic turnout even in places Harris ended up winning. That might have made a difference at the margins in some of the closest swing states.
But yeah as to what motivated people actively voting for Trump? Yeah, all that.
Geminid
@RaflW: I figured I might be missing at least one.
Jay Pritzker ran for the IL09 seat in (I think) 1998; Rep. Jan Schakowski beat him. Now Schakowsky is retiring, and there are 13 Democrats in the primary race.
Paul in KY
@H.E.Wolf: I was in college from 77 – 81 and I’m pretty sure I never heard of these guys. Back then I liked some of the punk, but was more a Styx and ELO guy kinda guy.
WereBear
@mappy!: Thanks! Love it. The states who actually contribute to the economy, and so much else.
Paul in KY
@Melancholy Jaques: Agree she was completely right. Just the wording. Once again, that sounds like something the teacher’s pet, buzzkill, ultraprep person would say.
Paul in KY
@NotMax: Wonder if that’s where the band Garbage got their name?
Paul in KY
@Melancholy Jaques: I think Sting acknowledged back when he wrote it that the song is about stalking and is completely not a love song.
It is still a killer tune though.
Paul in KY
@rikyrah: They are never truthful about anything. So, yes, they were and are going to lie about anything they feel they need to, facts be damned.
Said in another thread that if Gov. Walz had been at top of ticket, I think we would have whupped his sorry ass. And that’s misogyny, as Kamala was more seasoned for the job of POTUS than Gov. Walz.
satby
@Geminid: JB Pritzker also never held elected office before he was elected Gov. of IL
Ruckus
@New Deal democrat:
Many, way too many human beings believe that they and humans that look and talk/sound like them are the top of the pile. And this has caused so much crap through out time that it really is amazing. Human beings seem to believe that whatever they see in a mirror is the hight of human progression, while often it is the exact opposite. We are in many ways different from others in humanity. Take skin color. It is the amount of basically one chemical that creates our skin color. Some of us have more, some have less, some a lot more and a few have far less. I’ve known a number with a lot more, one with far less and quite a number with more. One of them with a lot more was a woman I knew who died of sickle cell. Apparently I was the last person to talk to her in the hospital. I didn’t make it to my car when she passed away.
Humans have a lot of traits/behaviors. Some good, some not so much. Or not even close. Hate is one of our emotions and it can help us when others want us dead or as slaves. Which might be better but by only the very slimmest margin.
This concept that our skin color is what makes us better is bullshit, pure and simple. It is NOT how we look, it is how we act, especially towards other humans that is important. Greed and pompous arrogance seem to be two traits that are really, really bad. But we can ALL/ANY of us have any level of the good or bad sides of humanity and we can, all of us, strive to be better or worse.
Now of course many don’t strive and more than a few strive for worse. But then it is humanity.
WereBear
@Eolirin: And they don’t mean “better” because they are likely all Rapture people, and they think Trump will bring heaven on earth when we all “get through the Tribulation part.”
Where the evil liberals have been made to suffer and are wiped out.
Seriously.
Ruckus
@Baud:
The pony might be an easier get.
Captain C
@RevRick:
Both of which were utter bullshit nothingburgers. But the FTFNYT needs its fap material, so…
Citizen Alan
While largely anecdotal, I am fascinated by stories of people who were upset that their elderly parents turned into frothing Nazis before their eyes, only for them to turn back to normal after a few weeks of the kids secretly blocking Fox with parental controls the parents didn’t know about and then lying that “Oh, Fox got taken off by our cable provider” or something.
Citizen Alan
I was talking with a friend the other day about my pet peeve with the movie Idiocracy. I’ve always said that it was a decent, fairly amusing comedy, but it was 5 minutes away from being one of the most culturally appropriate satires in the history of American cinema. Just cut the 4 minutes at the beginning where Mike Judge snidely blames the coming Idiocracy on “natural selection” and “dumb people outbreeding smart people” and that 1 minute tacked-on “happy ending” where Joe becomes President. And then add a new ending scene that starts right after Joe proves that Brawndo does not, in fact, have what plants crave. Have the camera cut away to a sleek boardroom full of well-dressed and obviously well-educated people watching Joe on TV. They are the real Brawndo board of directors and the secret rulers of the world, whose plan to cull the excess population while boosting the value of their company has failed. And one of them says “We need to deal with this guy.” Scary minor chord. Roll credits.
Because the truth that Mike Judge refused to engage with is that the Idiocracy will not come about because “natural selection has a preference for morons” but rather because of a systematic campaign by wealthy elites over the last 75 years to destroy public education. And AI will finish the job by making it impossible for even intelligent individuals to educate themselves through self-teaching.
Citizen Alan
Yeah, but more with embarrassment than pride. At this point, I consider the NYT and the Post to be soft fascist propaganda, as opposed to the hard fascist propaganda of Fox.
Citizen Alan
@Paul in KY: I once shut up a casual friend of mine who was also an ex-military NRA humper with 11 different guns in his home who got huffy over gun control by saying: “Yeah, lets say the 2nd Amendment gives you the right to own as many guns as you can afford. But be honest — if your neighbor had 11 cats in her home, wouldn’t you think she was weird?” He got quiet and then swiftly changed the topic.
Ruckus
@Suzanne:
I believe that we have to understand animals (yes we are animals) and their living and surviving. We all have a will to live, otherwise many of us would not make it through some of the crap that ALL animals have to sometimes go through. And humans will remember and discuss issues for decades as if their lives depend on them, because often they do. And many people will break those issues if they think they can profit from that. In the open parts of our minds we often wonder why people do that but we have to remember that we are animals, we are born, live and die. And living in a nice house with a pool and driving a nice car to a reasonable, rational job is often a goal and often a goal achieved in this country at this time. But also never forget that greed is a human trait, one that many have figured out how not to follow, at least not at full speed, but that more than a few have followed to the letter. And some of whom have followed and failed as humans – spectacularly, not because they didn’t get there but because they did and they only understand that they DESERVE every last bit of everything. We even have a word for it GREED. And greed in a modern world is different than in a world of land and very small businesses, which is what the world was about a century or so ago. Look at our economy now and compare it to 125 years ago. Life and humanity has changed in a couple of normal lifetimes. A lot. It’s changed a lot and in many ways in the lifetimes of more than a few still breathing. But go back that 2 lifetimes and look at the difference. It’s stunningly different. And it’s still humanity. And some of that change started even a bit farther back.
Miss Bianca
@Citizen Alan: I seem to recall our very own Betty C sharing just such an anecdatum a few years ago.
Go from Fox News to Animal Planet – boom, you get your humanity back!
Paul in KY
@Citizen Alan: That would have made it even better.
Paul in KY
@Citizen Alan: Ha! My rule for cats has been maximum 1 per 500 square feet. Thus, for anyone to legit have 11 cats, they would need a home minimum 5500 square feet. That is a mansion.