¿Cómo están ustedes, compañeros? (laudatorio)
— Chatham Harrison dba TRUMP DELENDUS EST (@chathamharrison.bsky.social) October 6, 2025 at 5:52 PM
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MAGA Republicans are in a witness protection program—hiding while Trump orders them to gut Medicare, Medicaid, and the ACA. They’ve always hated programs that make CEO billionaires pay their fair share to keep Americans healthy. I’ll keep fighting to protect health care for every family.
— Senator Ed Markey (@markey.senate.gov) October 6, 2025 at 4:55 PM
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?? Marjorie Taylor Greene breaks with Republicans on Obamacare funding, saying she’s not a fan of the law but demands action to prevent a premium hike. “I’m absolutely disgusted that health insurance premiums will DOUBLE if the tax credits expire this year.” She says GOP leaders don’t have a plan.
— Sahil Kapur (@sahilkapur.bsky.social) October 6, 2025 at 8:28 PM
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They are legit freaking out and scrambling idk what to tell you. All this shit about Healthcare is because they're suddenly in deep shit.
— Schnorkles O'Bork (@schnorkles.bsky.social) October 6, 2025 at 9:01 PM
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Everything about this speech indicates how much they know they're losing right now and need to change the narrative.
— Schnorkles O'Bork (@schnorkles.bsky.social) October 6, 2025 at 10:24 AM
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oh so u r saying u need to fix this problem Mikey-boy?
— Schnorkles O'Bork (@schnorkles.bsky.social) October 6, 2025 at 10:32 AM
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SHERMAN: Who will own the political impact if health insurance does go up 200 percent?
MIKE JOHNSON: That's putting the cart like a mile in front of the horse.— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) October 6, 2025 at 10:33 AM
On The Road – Captain C – Netherlands, September 2024 Part 13: Van Gogh Museum Part 2
Baud
Correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t the Dems trying to fix a problem created by Trump’s big ugly bill. Did Republicans take away the tax credit, or did they simply not renew it?
Baud
Trump and Johnson and all Republicans talk in empty platitudes because they know their strength is in forcing people to choose between them and the hated libs. So many people can’t choose us, no matter what.
p.a.
@Baud: Don’t worry about the minutiae of ‘oo killed ‘oo, be like Republicans: just blame the other side. In the Dem’s case, 99.9% of the time it’ll be the truth.
Baud
Did Frankensteinbeck go over to MM’s place, or is he just living life out in the real world? I don’t think I’ve seen him in a while.
Derelict
According to Republicans, the only thing wrong with the American healthcare system is the fact that YOU get too much of it. So, yeah, they have ideas, they have solutions: YOU need to STFU and die as quickly and quietly as possible.
Baud
Coal is cheaper than gas!
iKropoclast
So, Speaker Johnson, you list several real problems we face in the US healthcare system and claim Republicans have “done it,” as in solve our healthcare problems and list only the Working Family Tax Cut.
I didn’t hear a mechanism for a tax cut to solve one or any of these issues. Hell, all I heard was the cut’s brand name, not what it cuts or how or for whom.
Balconesfault
@Baud: Republicans had to deal with two high cost pieces of legislation that were about to sunset – because sunset provisions were built into them to limit the deficit damage under CBO scoring.
They could renew:
Big tax cuts favoring billionaires passed in 2017
ACA subsidies passed in 2021
Or they could choose Door #3 – don’t renew either over deficit concerns
I make myself laugh sometimes
iKropoclast
@Baud: How many tons of coal equivalent to fill an 8 gallon Prius?
Kirklin
Another can they’re desperately trying to kick down the road is Epstein. Grijalva’s promised that her first official act on being seated will be to vote for the discharge petition. That’ll be vote 218 and will trigger the next stage.
satby
@Baud: dammit, made me peek. I picked a recent thread with 32 comments: 17 by TBone, smatterings of others but no sign of Frankensteinbeck unless he’s using a different nym. It’s a very select circle over there 😉
prostratedragon
A chant from a celestial choir
satby
MTG running true to her stupid form: against ACA, but her adult kids are on it so now we have to save it. She’s all about
Americaher own grifting ass first.satby
Oh, hallelujah, it’s raining!
Baud
@satby:
Didn’t mean to put you out. :-)
I figured there were people who visited there who might know.
Baud
@satby:
Discofied.
Bruce K in ATH-GR
@satby: Yep. It isn’t real to them until it hits someone they care about. Witness Darth Cheney on LGBT issues.
satby
@Baud: I look in occasionally. Mix occasionally wrote some good stuff
Edit: face it, blogs are a stagnating, if not outright dying, communication form.
Baud
@satby:
No dispute here. Blogs have been dying since Twitter became popular.
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
Kinda wonder if it isn’t time for the Democrats to start making these extortionate threats…like ACA subsidies this week, by next the price goes up to repealing the Medicaid cuts from the BBB. Week after that we’re adding the billionaires’ tax cuts. Week after that it’s the whole BBB and beyond that USAID and the Department of Ed and the other DOGE cuts get reversed.
Not married to that particular order but it seems like it goes from the least popular cuts to next least.
Layer8Problem
@satby: ” . . . 32 comments: 17 by TBone, . . . ”
Ah, memories. 🙂
MagdaInBlack
@satby: I found I was very quickly bored over there. And I admit I laughed at ..”17 comments..” ;-)
p.s. its raining here too, finally
p.s.s: Lets give ICE et al a nice cold rainy soggy Chicago day. Wouldn’t that be nice for them =-)
satby
@MagdaInBlack: @Layer8Problem: “engagement” is a double-sided sword.
I miss neither the bellicose negativity nor the spam of that crowd. I hope (aspirationally) that I’m one of the commenters dubbed “odious” by the group.
Quiltingfool
I got an email yesterday from Senator Hawley. I believe I received the exact same email several months ago; chock full of praise for Trump’s first administration and how he is handling the border problem so effectively. Oh, and he is also lowering the price of groceries too!
The first part of my reply was quite juvenile. I wrote, “You really need to cut back on your breakfast drugs. Seriously.” That might give a staffer who reads emails a giggle, who knows.
My God, that schmuck Hawley thinks his constituents are stupid. Then again, he did win the election, so…
Princess
I can’t stand MTG obvs but unlike the rest of the losers in the GOP, she seems to have the best grasp on what the MAGA base actually wants. They’d do well to listen to her. She’d be the most natural successor to Trump if she weren’t a woman.
Quiltingfool
@Baud: I was thinking about Frankensteinbeck too. I miss his comments.
I don’t think he is commenting at Mistermix’s blog. I think I would recognize his writing.
Baud
@Quiltingfool:
Thanks. We’ve lost a lot of good people over the past few years. I hope he’s enjoying life wherever he is.
Quiltingfool
@satby: Very select circle indeed. Sometimes there is light bashing of this blog, but whatever. To each his own!
satby
@Quiltingfool: a lot of former commenters have drifted away as the more freewheeling nature of this particular blog started to resemble a Midwest ladies sewing circle. Some are active on BS, some on SubStack, others probably other places. Too bad, I miss those days.
Baud
@satby:
I thought Substack was just long form writing.
Quiltingfool
@satby: Hey, I think I belong to a Midwest Ladies Sewing Circle! Does a quilt guild count?
We don’t talk politics at my guild, thank God. I’d probably have to quit because I think most of the gals are right wing. I do know one member is very anti-Trump (and she’s from Iowa!); we both keep our mouths shut about that.
satby
@Baud: lots of interesting threads break out in the Notes sections and on posts. But I especially like the variety and the ease with which you can block bad actors. Most of the ex media people are there, so I feel like I’m getting a modern, sane mainstream media, sometimes even with the same writers (like Krugman).
Baud
@satby:
Interesting. I thought it was just about reading. Maybe one day I’ll give it a try.
satby
@Quiltingfool: 😂 very genteel!
Kosh III
Rain here too! Woohoo.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch….
Yesterday I made my weekly call to my worthless Senators and Rep. to demand and end to gun violence by doing what the Aussies did in 1996.
I know it’s hopeless as they don’t care but I plan to do it weekly anyway.
I gave my # and name as they asked so they could reply and I said they won’t reply because I’m not a billionaire.
TS
Looking back at GOP House Speakers/GOP house leaders – interesting to see how it burns them out – having to make up stories to hide what they are doing seems to eventually backfire – and any thought of bipartisanship gets them voted out of their job & sometimes out of congress.
Quite the opposite with democrats – they thrive in the position working for the people.
Quiltingfool
@satby: My momma told me to never discuss politics or religion.
Fortunately, I can come here where we discuss both!
trnc
Mike Johnson would tell you with the most smug look we’ve ever seen that you’re wrong, so that’s prima facie evidence that you’re not wrong.
Suzanne
@satby:
There was a joke on 30 Rock some years back, and it’s going a bit viral on X these days, about “my politics are socially conservative and fiscally liberal”. Which was a joke because it’s an absolutely insane position. And yet, the older I get….. the more I realize that it’s essentially the position of probably 60% of this country.
Jesus take the wheel.
Baud
@Quiltingfool:
As long as the righties play by the same rules, it’s all good.
It’s only bad when they get to say what they want but you have to silence yourself.
zhena gogolia
@satby: I’m sure I am.
trnc
“We have lots of ideas.”
First news outlet to ask him directly if they’re ideas or just concepts of ideas gets my subscription.
TONYG
Mike Johnson: “We have the entire month of October.” That’s reassuring, coming from a man who has done essentially nothing useful in his two years as Speaker of the House.
Suzanne
@Quiltingfool:
I refer to that as “Liza Minnelli breakfast”, personally.
Geminid
@Baud: I’m pretty sure Frankensteinbeck is not commenting at Mixermix’s blog. James T. Powell shows up time to time, as does Quinerly.
zhena gogolia
I just gave up on Lena Dunham’s new show Too Much. Too many graphic bathroom scenes, and the heroine is so damn annoying (although her love interest is charming, but he’s not enough to save it). I started House of Guinness — it’s promising. Wish Steeplejack were here to discuss James Norton’s performance.
p.a.
Don’t all splitters consider the other groups the splitters? Judean People’s Front? Fuck off! We’re the People’s Front of Judea!
trnc
@iKropoclast:
Like he said, they have a month. Not a month to actually fix it, but a month for Trump to stir up daily bullshit to distract the media.
rikyrah
@Baud:
Yeah, that works a lot. But, when faced with literally not having healthcare…something very tangible..
rikyrah
Good Morning Everyone 😊 😊 😊
Baud
@rikyrah:
Good morning.
Baud
@Geminid:
I didn’t know Powell was back to blogs. Another good guy I miss.
p.a.
That was me into my late 20’s. Raised Cat’lic although a nonbeliever in my teens, basically Italian peasant-mentality: 1st gen American parents, but a union family.
Eventually understood the issues weren’t other people, but me.
Baud
@zhena gogolia:
They kind of warned you with the title of the show.
Geminid
@satby: The misleading caricatures of Balloon juice– including commenters here– inpired me to coin a new word: Strawblogging.
trnc
I get your point, but let’s not start deciding that ACA subsidies are only fine for people we like and that it’s “grifting” for anyone we don’t like. That’s their game, not ours.
satby
@Baud: most of the links I post are from folks I subscribe to there. I’m there more than here now. Except I’d never miss an Anne Laurie or Betty Cracker post 😀
satby
@trnc: and that’s not at all what I said, so don’t impute that fantasy to me.
satby
@Geminid: “strawblogging” 😂 love it!
Dorothy A. Winsor
Members of Congress buy their health insurance on an ACA exchange. I wonder how this affects them.
trnc
@What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?:
I do think they should have demanded more to begin with, and the top of my list would have been that republicans schedule oversight hearings for all of the illegal administration actions, but I can live with the simple and effective messaging of healthcare premiums spiking. I don’t think adding demands at this point would actually add any more pressure. They’re already feeling that.
Perhaps the one thing I would change is that they need to state more prominently that democrats were completely shut out of negotiations for the ugly ass bill and that repubs still refuse to negotiate over one simple provision.
trnc
@satby:
I don’t know how else to interpret “She’s all about her own grifting ass first.”
satby
@trnc: try English.
Layer8Problem
@Geminid: For me it was the utter certainty; a lack of recognition that they might, possibly, have it wrong, or at least leave that possibility on the table, to state their opinion but leave open the chance that more information would change things and that maybe those on the other side of the argument were acting in good faith.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: Not all jackals enjoy the enforced cheer and sermons of the latest incarnation of BJ. Maybe Frankensteinbeck is one of them.
satby
Mark Kelly succinctly makes the case on Fox News, which will reach people who otherwise might not hear it. Masterclass communication.
Baud
@schrodingers_cat:
I’m not going to presume a reason for his absence. I just noticed I hadn’t seen him in a while.
Eyeroller
@Baud: Substack is sort of like the old days of blogging but with mostly prominent authors. You usually have to pay for a subscription to comment. I only subscribe to Krugman’s substack though I believe I could get two more with my payment level.
I do worry about it since Andreeson is one of the major investors and it has a right-wing lean. But it does have a number of popular liberal writers.
Twitter and the like have been described as “microblogging.” I don’t think it destroyed blogs so much as it fits better on phones and everything has moved to mobile. I only read BJ or Reddit on my phone when I’m in a waiting room. I turn off notifications on Reddit so wouldn’t get them on my phone or email, but that dopamine hit seems to be what people want. Also everything now is Short Attention Span Theatre, possibly also a consequence of phone addiction.
Layer8Problem
@schrodingers_cat: Keeping morale up can’t hurt, and we have our share of doomers in comments making an effort to send us all under our beds.
Soprano2
@satby: I miss Kay’s viewpoint – I thought she added a lot even when I didn’t agree with her. I check in over there mainly to see what mix is writing and what Kay is saying. Quinerly is over there too, I miss her.
Another Scott
@satby: +1
Wonkette is on substack. I don’t read them much, but the readers comments on posts can get into the thousands. It’s very blog-like in some ways.
Best wishes,
Scott.
Scout211
Oregon GOP posted a fake photo of street violence in Portland.
. . .
. . .
Ha ha ha. Oregon GOP so funny. Make shit up, post fake violent memes to support Trump’s brutal invasion into Portland and when found out, make a joke?!
Grrrrr.
Steve in the ATL
@Quiltingfool: he should build a wall across the Missouri/Mexico border
Layer8Problem
@Soprano2: I’m of two minds about Kay. She was great on facts on the ground in Northwest Ohio. I hope she, Quinerly, and I guess MomSense are living their best lives over there. I don’t miss the rancor.
Baud
@Scout211:
CNN did something similar.
bsky.app/profile/boozybadger.lawyersandliquor.com/post/3m2lsz2qzek2y
Baud
@Steve in the ATL:
Missouri needs all those undocumented workers to work in their poultry plants.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: Agreed. I was just venturing a guess. IIRC Frankensteinbeck is Jewish and there is an increased tolerance for antisemitism on leftie blogs. So that could be a reason or he could just be busy IRL. Like a book coming out.
schrodingers_cat
@Layer8Problem: There is something between doom and gloom and forced cheer. YMMV.
Soprano2
@Geminid: I like that term, “strawblogging”. I think it’s easy to caricature people you “know” online, because it’s such a narrow picture. It’s like the idea that people you disagree with are all bad – that’s rarely true. My mother was 100% crazy conservative when it came to politics, but she also loved cats and gave a lot of money to one of our local animal charities. I know another woman (who works for the charity my mother donated to) who seems somewhat conservative on FB, but she also advocates for the homeless. People are complicated, and the internet sometimes hides that.
RevRick
@Derelict: For Johnson to claim that Republicans are the party of healthcare is such a whopper of a lie, it beggars the imagination.
When FDR proposed including national health insurance in the Social Security Act, the GOP firmly opposed it and he scrapped it, not wanting to jeopardize Social Security.
When Harry Truman proposed a national healthcare system, the GOP opposed it, and the proposal died.
When LBJ proposed Medicare and Medicaid, the GOP opposed them, screaming socialism, but the Democrats had a big enough majority to pass them, and they became law.
The GOP killed the healthcare reform proposed by Bill Clinton in 1993.
The GOP unanimously opposed Obama’s proposed ACA, but the Democrats had a big enough majority to pass the legislation.
schrodingers_cat
@Soprano2: There is no nuance to be found with people who wish you were dead or want you to STFU.
I mean even Hitler loved his dogs and was a vegetarian.
Karen Gail
Realized this morning that I no longer worry that orange one will have started war with another nuclear power; now all have to worry about is Miller pushing insurrection and we wake to a civil war. Then there is the possibility that California and Illinois will be pushed so far that we will start hearing that they are leaving the US.
Baud
@Soprano2:
People are complicated, but the current fascist iteration of conservatism is not.
I know we often have to hold our tongue because we need allies, but I’m not going to lie to myself about where things stand.
Steve in the ATL
@Baud: and to provide food that’s not snoots or toasted ravioli
Soprano2
@Layer8Problem: I think I liked her comments because we come from similar areas and see similar things around us.
I think summer of 2024 broke a lot, and the schism that happened here was one of those things.
Steve in the ATL
@schrodingers_cat: I would totally read “Don’t Tell My Parents I’m Commenting at Balloon Juice”
schrodingers_cat
@Steve in the ATL: So would I. I LOLed and scared my cats.
Soprano2
@schrodingers_cat: Try having your mother be one of those people. It was painful sometimes. I’m just saying not everyone who voted for FFOTUS is an unrepentant, irredeemable monster all the time. You know that’s what they say about us, right?
Soprano2
I agree with that. I try to talk to them about it when I can, but if you demonize them as always evil they’ll never hear anything you say.
Suzanne
@Soprano2: There’s also a lot of divides and differences amongst us that go beyond political orientation. How pragmatic or strategic someone might be, how inclined to compromise they are, introversion vs. extroversion, etc. Honestly, I think most Dems are probably fairly well-aligned on our political positions, or the differences are within “normal” amounts of divergence. But all these other things affect our views of how to conduct public life. And the older I get, the more I think those differences are more difficult to get past.
schrodingers_cat
@Soprano2: I get it. I didn’t speak to my mother for months because she was firmly in the pro-Modi camp during CAA protests. And now she is gone
I would make exceptions for family and people I am close to. Gently correcting them and finding points of agreement where I can. It works. Got my mother to see the monstrosity of some of Modi’s policies. It took a while though.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Soprano2: A lot of my neighbors voted for Trump. I don’t think they’re always monsters, but that vote affects my judgement of them. I can’t let go of my resentment of it.
David Collier-Brown
A friend used to say “time wounds all heels”. He was right, but I sure would have preferred less time spent getting here.
AM in NC
@zhena gogolia: James Norton will always and forever be the Original Hot Priest from back in his Grantchester days.
le sigh
schrodingers_cat
Thinking of changing my nym to Shankaracharya SchrodingersCat Saraswati
satby
@AM in NC: before that he was the murderer in Happy Valley, and a scary one!
Soprano2
@Dorothy A. Winsor: I hold my tongue a lot at work, although I have more allies here than I first thought. I keep wanting to tell them about the latest horrible outrage and ask “Is that really what you wanted?”.
Baud
@Soprano2:
I’m not condemning you for talking to her or asking you to demonize her to her face. I’m just not going to join in thinking the best of people who support Trump.
@Soprano2:
And Mike Johnson says the Republicans really care about health care.
schrodingers_cat
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Could never forgive my BS bot friend who made mouth noises making excuses for T1.0 and his Muslim ban.
I banned her from my life instead.
zhena gogolia
@Baud: I guess you’re right! I liked Girls so much, I thought I could handle it. But without Dunham’s charm and Adam Driver’s acting ability, it doesn’t work to have an annoying heroine.
satby
@schrodingers_cat: OMG
Does Saraswati have a meaning? It was the surname of one of my exchange students.
Another Scott
@Suzanne: +1
I’m remembering Kay’s comments on the TPP. It was easy to see that she was a lawyer, because I remember trying to push back on some of her comments with links and I still couldn’t get anywhere. She was extremely tenacious.
Some of us have our opinions, mention them, and move on. (Or try to. ;-) Some of us seem to think that we know the obvious way forward and those that don’t agree, well, they either aren’t worth dealing with or need to be persuaded with a few 2×4 whacks and 35+ comments to learn the error of their ways.
Blogs can and should have all kinds of participants. As should political parties. We’re not all the same. Life is complicated. Politics is complicated. Thought experiments aren’t real life, though they can be instructive. We need to have the grace to discuss and wrestle with topics that will have differences of opinion and will not be resolved easily.
Have a good day, everyone.
Thanks.
Best wishes,
Scott.
Professor Bigfoot
@satby: I am 100% CERTAIN that I am considered “odious” by that krewe.
Something something “badge of honor…”
Soprano2
@Suzanne: It seems to me that the hottest arguments are about “messaging”, with people always thinking we’re doing it wrong. I’ve come to believe that we should emphasize how “we want to help you” rather than “we want to help everyone”, because scientific evidence shows that the first frame works better with most people. I think that’s one reason the R’s “she cares about they/them, he cares about you” ad was so effective. It’s not what I think, its what I’ve communication experts say.
I agree about our different experiences contributing to this. I’ve always found that the worst decisions are often made when everyone in the room has the same views and life experience, because you all have the same blind spots.
ETA – I really need a vacation. I just found myself thinking “what day is today?” *sigh* I guess I’m still thinking about the end of the Chiefs game last night. It was a good game, but geez it’s hard to lose that way.
schrodingers_cat
@satby: That’s what religious teachers call themselves. Saraswati is the goddess of wisdom and learning.
For example, Dayanand Saraswati and many Shankaracharyas call themselves Saraswati.
I can write a commentary called Blogupanishada.
Quiltingfool
@Baud: Undocumented workers are also needed to do roofing, dry wall and landscaping! The rich folk at Lake of the Ozarks would be in a world of hurt if ICE showed up here.
We have plenty of white boys who could do that work, but many of them don’t want to; it’s hard work. And you can’t look at your phone and nail shingles at the same time.
My husband works with young white men. He isn’t impressed with their work ethic.
zhena gogolia
@AM in NC: The NYT had a big profile of him the other day, and Grantchester was not even mentioned. WTF?
piratedan
good morning all, I guess I am but one of millions of Americans who are wondering just how the hell will I be able to focus on work while the country is in the throes of a madman and the news wants to discus anything other than that.
On the bright side of things, I will have the pleasure of meeting more jackals face-to-face and share stories and know that we are of like mind on most issues and that we are not completely adrift in this age of focused miscommunication to keep us all not as informed as we would like and distracted from real issues. Almost feel like we’d be best suited to not focus so much on the GOP per se, but rather on those who have purchased them. They’ve traded any ethical position on issues into being puppets for some extremely rich, extremely deranged people.
RevRick
@iKropoclast: A gallon of gasoline weighs about six pounds, so that would mean a tank would weigh about forty eight pounds. The ratio of heat density between oil and coal is such that it takes 1.43 tonnes of coal to equal 1 tonne of oil. So 68.64 pounds of coal.
David Collier-Brown
@Quiltingfool:
Joking aside, I often directly address people’s staffs, suggesting that they add a particular argument to their appreciations on a given subject.
[I’m in Canada: the snail-mail volume to an MP is small enough that 2-4 constituency assistants can handle it]
Geminid
@Soprano2: I think the war in Gaza deeply affected Kay, and caused her to see Biden and other Democratic leaders in a different and harsher light.
Karen Gail
Ron Johnson: “Quite honestly, by now it should be obvious to every American that it’s not the Republicans that are a threat to our democracy. It’s President Obama, it’s President Biden.”
satby
@schrodingers_cat: Thank you! Her family are all teachers, maybe that’s how they acquired the name.
Layer8Problem
@Another Scott: If this were Reddit I’d upvote that.
And thank you John for having a blog that doesn’t send wrong-thinking commenters of any faith, party, or folkway into the outer darkness.
Baud
@Karen Gail:
See my comment at #2.
Baud
@Another Scott:
Agreed. Except for them.
Harrison Wesley
@Karen Gail: They’re both still President? Shut my mouth.
Baud
@RevRick:
This is a full service blog.
lowtechcyclist
@Baud:
I’m in a similar situation on my HOA board, but I’ve got some leverage. 😊
I’m the treasurer, and I’ve made it clear to the largely RW people on the board that if they’re going to talk politics at our board meetings, they’d better figure out first which one of them wants to take over as treasurer. That has pretty much shut them up.
schrodingers_cat
@Professor Bigfoot: You and me both. BTW Kay was pissed off with me since 2020 primaries if not earlier.
She wouldn’t miss a single opportunity to call me names. Even though I had stopped responding to her comments.
And somehow sermons of comity never apply to valued commenters like Kay. I don’t ever recall her being attacked by FPers merely for expressing an opinion.
Soprano2
@Geminid: I think that’s right. I also think she was mostly right about Biden – he was too wedded to the old way things used to be when it came to Israel. I thought her idea that we should just enforce our laws was a good one, because it wasn’t hard to justify. I am also pragmatic, though, and I could see that electing FFOTUS was going to make things much, much worse for Gaza and the Palestinians. I also think the DNC made a mistake when they didn’t let even one Palestinian talk at the convention. That was a case when their fear of making a mistake overrode their common sense IMHO.
Suzanne
@Soprano2: I think we argue about messaging here (I certainly do), but I don’t know if those debates happen other places. I have another politics group I’m in with some friends, and the makeup of that group is a bit different. Most of the group is closer to my age or younger than here, it’s much more racially mixed than here, maybe slightly left-ier than here? Just as educated as here, though. But everyone votes for Dems, and some of them live in some really red places and that’s hard.
But the general orientation is much different. Again, if you looked at everyone’s voting record, they likely align to ours very closely. But if there is a theme, there is just much less institutional trust in the Democratic Party to be an effective actor. I think that is a factor of younger average age and more racial diversity.
Karen Gail
iKropoclast
MTG’s grift entails that these purportedly wasteful programs and spending that she denies others is just fine for her and her family.
People who disagree with Democrats aren’t grifters for benefitting from D programs, but they are grifters for voting to eliminate them and disparaging them for political points. only to them notice their utility and suddenly try to save these programs when they realize they are benefitting.
satby
@Another Scott: I want to have your patience and tolerance when I grow up!
[I better hurry up 😮]
Geminid
@Professor Bigfoot: Maybe not “odious.” You might only be a “Libertarian in a Trench Coat.”
But to be fair to Mistermix, he and most of his commenters do not trashtalk this blog. It’s only a few people, mainly one.
UncleEbeneezer
US Holocaust Museum:
piratedan
@Karen Gail: Guessing Rep. Riley has built a very awesome local group of friends in DC who have shared their relief of having National Guard troops on patrol for them.
or its just all bullshit and Riley never even leaves their vehicle on their commute to work.
Karen Gail
@Baud: I did see that. Is there the “most stupid elected official” award? Cause some of these people seem to be trying for it. What did notice is for all the negative comments about the abilities of women we sure seem to have a surplus of males who are enough to wonder if they should be allowed out in public without a keeper or off their leashes.
schrodingers_cat
@satby: He is the स्थितःप्रज्ञ निष्काम कर्मयोगी that Krishna advises Arjun to be in the Mahabharata.
Suzanne
@Geminid:
This is true for many of us, honestly. And the inevitable bad-faith caricature of pro-Palestine protestors is, I think, deeply damaging to the coalition and also inhumane, in my opinion.
There are absolutely bad actors in the pro-Palestine movement, but opposing the genocide in Gaza is a moral position.
Harrison Wesley
I’m proud I’m not ‘woke’. I’m ‘comatose’!
Professor Bigfoot
@Soprano2: True enough… but it’s kinda like when a Trump supporter says “you wouldn’t let politics break our friendship, would you?”
”You cannot possibly give a good goddamn about me, friend, if you would gleefully vote for someone who openly promises to bring harm to me and mine. Fuck you.”
Timill
@schrodingers_cat: Frankensteinbeck’s latest comment was apparently on Nov 5th last year in thread balloon-juice.com/2024/11/05/lets-be-done-with-him-at-last/
Which suggests a reason he hasn’t been around lately…
Castor Canadensis
@Karen Gail: I’m sure Charles would welcome them (re-)joining the Commonwealth.
Moderators: I’m David Collier-Brown, with a new nym
schrodingers_cat
@Timill: I do miss him though.
billcoop4
Would love to see that on the back of a sports jersey.
BC in NY
NotMax
@Harrison Wesley
Made me recall the five stages of alcohol consumption:
1) The verbose
2) The jocose
3) The bellicose
4) The lachrymose
5) The comatose.
:)
Karen Gail
@Professor Bigfoot: It’s the “gleefully” that gets to me; there is something basically wrong or evil about people who are gleeful about harming other people. I know with many who are doing all the horrible things in Chicago and Portland are getting a thrill from it; they are making videos of doing evil and people are lapping it up and cheering them on.
With the reminders of Holocaust being posted and seeing what is happening in this country I have wondered just how many “good” Germans had the same attitude as we are seeing from so many people who are thrilled that ICE is reenacting Gestapo moves.
Professor Bigfoot
@schrodingers_cat: I have a gold 3D print of dancing Saraswati who sits with the rest of my “religious” 3D prints: Laughing Buddha, Baron Samedi, Cristo Redentor… I call myself a “humanist with respect for all the human traditions of faith,” so… 😁
I wish I could find a file for Vishwakarma; as an engineer who worked with Indian engineers…
(true story- commissioning a test machine in a tire plant in India; and there was a small shrine to Vishwakarma outside the control room. We were struggling to get the machine to run correctly, and I went out to the shrine and said, “we could really use your help here, please?” went back into the lab, and things started working fine. REALLY it was my sharp and hardworking coworkers who did the deed, but asking for help definitely didn’t hurt! 😁)
iKropoclast
But what keeps morale up isn’t the same for everyone. For example those who want cheerleading and those looking to talk strategy and analysis are at odds.
Some here are looking for primarily affirmation and group affinity. And these can be wonderful and empowering things. Others looking to debate tactics and strategy are looking to improve their argumentation, refine the requests they make when calling Representatives, or perhaps trying to allay deeply held concerns.
These directly grate on one another. To the first set debating tactics implies the team is making mistakes and the most important thing is just to highlight the positive for the benefit of the team. To the latter set, resistance to even minor criticism makes the group appear inflexible and efforts appear wasted. This, too, can drain enthusiasm.
Unfortunately, not all our emotional needs are the same. We need to figure out how to build enthusiasm for ourselves and each other without stepping on each other’s toes.
jonas
@Quiltingfool: Of course grocery prices have come down. Who are you going to believe? Trump, or your lying eyes?
schrodingers_cat
@Professor Bigfoot: Saraswati is usually seated and plays a veena.
Lika a sitar but with 2 gourds.
This is Ravi Varma’s rendition
Suzanne
@iKropoclast: This is a good comment, thank you.
iKropoclast
@RevRick: Wow, I didn’t expect someone to actually do the math. Thank you, haha.
@Suzanne: Thank you ☺️
jonas
@Soprano2: In the end, Hillary was basically right. Half of them are just low-information, ignorant people who can’t see past the ends of their own noses and vote based on Fox News vibes or whatever people at church are saying. The other half are truly a basket of deplorable bigots who would rather see the country burned to the ground than share it with minorities, immigrants, LGTBQ people, etc.
Baud
@jonas:
Hillary was far more sympathetic to the first group. That, of course, got lost because HillaryHate was paramount.
Soprano2
@Karen Gail: At the symphony concert Saturday night they put up scenes from each movie theme they were playing (it was the music of John Williams). When they showed scenes from “Schindler’s List”, a chill went down my spine because there were always soldiers in the background, and I realized that’s what the current MAGA people want – for there to be soldiers in every major city in the U.S.
Professor Bigfoot
@RevRick: Dang, Rev- not only spiritual wisdom but you bring the “nerd with a calculator” energy, too?!! 😂
MY MAN!
Soprano2
@iKropoclast: That’s a great insight, thanks for posting it.
Jackie
@Timill: Could you direct us to Frankensteinbeck’s comment from the 200+ comments?
Professor Bigfoot
Now see, if they made that “Civil Libertarian in a Leather Jacket,” it would be accurate. 😂
Eyeroller
@schrodingers_cat: I used to name all my Linux computer after goddesses of wisdom, so for a while I had a work machine named saraswati.
lowtechcyclist
@Scout211:
They lie so much, they barely know what truth is anymore.
And bearing false witness against people is now ‘joking.’ Just like with the sombrero bit.
I bet they identify as Christians, but they think it’s A-OK to lie about their enemies. In Christ, there are no enemies. Opponents, yes. Adversaries, yes. But anyone that Christ loves as much as he loves me is not someone I can call an enemy.
Timill
@Jackie: 183 and 195.
Tim
Eyeroller
@Geminid:Hmm, I don’t think “libertarian” would describe any potential issues with the Perfessor.
artem1s
so we’re back to ‘we’ll have a plan in two weeks’ again. It’s healthcare week now instead of infrastructure.
Geminid
In the Rumours of War department, from Ankara-based Clash Report:
Breaking off negotiations is typically a prelude to some sort of military escalation.
Also, a rumor of peace from Clash Report:
Ever since the Assad regime collapsed last December, there has been constant tension and sporadic fighting between the Damascus government and the SDF, which controls northeast Syria and also two majority Kurdish suburbs of Aleppo.
The underlying question is the integration of those areas with the the Syrian state, and the integration of the SDF with the Syrian Army. On March 10, SDF leader Mazloum Abdi signed an agreement with Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharaa outlining general principles, but the agreement has not yet been implrmented.
The US sponsored and built up the SDF 12 years ago in order to push ISIS out of northeast Syria. It’s a formidable fighting force and a war with Damascus government would be very violent, with likely Turkish involvement.
Now it looks like war has been avoided. US Special Syria Envoy Tom Barrack and CENTCOM Commander Bradley Cooper met with General Abdi yesterday, right before he traveled to Damascus and agreed to this ceasefire.
Harrison Wesley
@artem1s: Plan? Maybe the concept of a plan.
Melancholy Jaques
@Baud:
Sounds like a big problem. Do we have people working on this?
Baud
@Geminid:
While war with Venezuela would be terrible, and doubly so without authorization from Congress, I’ll admit I’ll laugh and laugh at all the people who were fooled by Donald the Dove and its various iterations over the years.
Baud
@Melancholy Jaques:
Carl.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: Ezra Broder Klein still wants to make kissy faces with Rs.
Professor Bigfoot
@schrodingers_cat: Ahhhh!!!
This is the one in my “statuary garden” (actually my front porch)
Ayyyy, so much to learn, so little time left to learn it in!!!
Jackie
@Timill: TY
satby
@Geminid: that is very good news about Syria.
schrodingers_cat
@Geminid: Thanks for bringing these facts to the comments! I really appreciate that.
Belafon
@Baud: Someone should sell a MAGA approved clean coal oven.
Professor Bigfoot
Wisdom right here.
Eyeroller
@Suzanne: I have determinedly avoided commenting about IP issues. I certainly agree that it is a deep moral issue. But there was one thing that Kay was persistent about that really got on my nerves. She seemed to believe that people — not just students — had some kind of First Amendment right to camp out indefinitely on university property. I believe that the “encampments” were fertile ground for provocateurs and fomented extremism, in addition to being a nuisance. If students want to protest 24/7 they have that right, but they should take shifts from their dorms/apartments.
My university used to ban camping on the grounds entirely. Ironically I think they changed the policy to allow Jewish students to camp out for Sukkot. But then they didn’t set time limits, just said it had to be “students.”
Layer8Problem
@Baud: He better not be the one with the “Republicans and wingnuts hate this one cleverly crafted message that makes everyone vote Democratic!” spot.
Professor Bigfoot
It’s kind of a theme in Westerns— when the bully gets confronted he whines, “Aw, we wuz jus’ funnin’!”
Same as it ever was, I guess.
cmorenc
It’s a stunning sign of the times when MTG is talking constructive sense while the rest of the GOP is taling bullshit. On at least two improtant issues: Obamacare funding + release of Epstein files.
tobie
@Layer8Problem: A propos morale: I heard at the last minute that the ACLU was doing an online session on what your rights are when you demonstrate so I zoomed over there last night. Apparently 12,000 people showed up. Not too shabby!
Professor Bigfoot
@Melancholy Jaques: It’s a helluva problem.
Too many Americans* don’t understand or care that “nobody is free until everybody is free,” and since they consider themselves superior to “the rest of us,” well…
How do you get people to accept that people different from them are also fully human and full citizens with all the same rights, privileges and responsitbilities in a culture that’s told them for the last four centuries that they are superior to all others?
Melancholy Jaques
@trnc:
They should demand the resignation of a cabinet member. I’d go for Noem, others might want RKFjr. But we need to demand something that we can convince people is a good thing. Unfortunately, our side doesn’t do pitchforks & torches very well. Can’t even get people to drop the FTFNYT.
Layer8Problem
@tobie: That’s encouraging!
p.a.
@cmorenc: Issues and “ideological consistency/inconsistency” are sometimes a way to distinguish true believers from fellow-traveller/frauds of any political stripe.
In general true believers may be more dangerous, but analog clocks are right 2x a day.
Geminid
@Suzanne: I think this issue cut a lot deeper with Kay than with most other people here. Kay was more than upset; she was very angry about it, and very angry at Biden and Blinken.
As for the pro-Palestinian protesters, my personal opinion is that they were poor allies for the Palestinian people. I won’t get into it now though; I’ve explained this before and I’ll probably do it again before too long, but now is not the time.
Suzanne
@Eyeroller: IANAL, so I have no position on the camping issue. But there was a lot of conflation of people with a pro-Palestine position with “Genocide Joe” people, and that is a whole pile of bullshit. Lots of smart and engaged Democrats are appalled by what is happening in Gaza.
I even saw some discourse out there about how Democrats should support Israel’s actions in Gaza because Jewish people are perceived as more loyal Democratic voters than Arab Muslims. As if the lives of Palestinians are just pawns on a chessboard to win American elections. I am sure I don’t need to elucidate the Islamophobia baked into that worldview.
Suzanne
@Geminid:
I agree with you on this. But I also don’t think something this important should turn on this. As I’ve said, this is a moral issue. The nature of American protests is not pertinent.
Deputinize America
The infosphere is locking down in favor of Trump. I was able to have ChatGPT work on these topics 4 months ago:
tobie
@Eyeroller: I occasionally comment but generally avoid the topic with people who are unable to discern any differences in the way the war was prosecuted under Biden and what’s happening now with Trump in office. I see pretty major changes in IDF brutality since Benni Gantz and Gadi Eisenkot left the unity govt in Israel, and, after that, when Yoav Gallant was fired and Herzi Halevi stepped down, but I’m not a military expert. I trusted Biden curbed excesses and I believe Halevi left the military when Trump was elected because he knew what was coming.
iKropoclast
Better poor allies than none at all.
Karen Gail
@Melancholy Jaques: I don’t like public confrontations; I’m more the sneak in and unlife them while sleeping kind of person. So don’t ask me to take up torch and pitchfork.
Professor Bigfoot
That’s just flat out sick.
IT’s true that Arabs generally consider themselves “white” and vote with the GOP for more, but it seems to me that a central focus of Jewishness is justice, and this would be unjust AF.
I, personally, am far less concerned with Gaza because we’re close enough to cattle cars and concentration camps right here…
Soprano2
@Baud: I thought the same thing. He keeps saying he wants peace, but he seems to only be able to threaten people and take military action against them when they don’t do what he wants.
Eyeroller
@iKropoclast: That’s not always true. The US public is generally islamophobic and the more extreme “allies” were almost certainly counter-productive.
The US public (especially white people) doesn’t like protestors in general and is especially skeptical about any minorities. It was very easy for bad actors/agents provocateurs to change the public attitude toward BLM.
Geminid
@Suzanne: I never thought the protesters were representative of the large number of people who were appalled by Israel’s actions in this war. That’s part of my criticism. They never drew the the larger group in, and there were distinct reasons they did not
UncleEbeneezer
@Geminid: Kay and MM always did the most to gaslight anyone who tried to center the victims of the 10/7 Massacre, highlight the horrors that Hamas perpetrated that day or advocate for the hostages. They downright bullied anyone who dared disagree with their virulent Anti-Zionism, simplistic views of the I/P conflict and chased away several valued Jewish voices from this space. It’s somehow fitting for BJ that on the second anniversary of the worst mass-killing of Jews since the holocaust we don’t have anything about that horrific day or its’ victims but instead nostalgia for two commenters/FP posters who did their best to always away from those atrocities and their victims.
NotMax
@Soprano2
“Peace? How about eternal peace?”
– Eleanor of Aquitaine, The Lion in Winter
.
Uncle Cosmo
@Quiltingfool: HedgeLord Haw-Hawley? How…quaint.
Suzanne
@Professor Bigfoot: I don’t know that Arab-Americans are a strongly GOP cohort. But I also don’t think it matters w/r/t Gaza. There are a precious few things more important than American presidential elections. This is one.
I think this is also a very strongly generationally-divided issue, both here and elsewhere. I mentioned the other politics group I’m in. At least there, almost everyone has a strong pro-Palestine position (and not a single person called Biden or Harris a genocidaire, though there was some criticism of their Administration). And some of the loudest voices there are BIPoC, who draw comparisons to Apartheid. I have also talked with friends in the U.K. and they have reported a strong generational divide there, too. And their younger generations are similarly much more diverse than older generations. So I think some of the criticisms we are seeing of Dem leadership and “gerontocracy” are reflecting some of this divide.
tobie
@Professor Bigfoot: Thanks for making this about values, not just the influence of a lobby. Far too often, I am appalled at what I read on this blog. I came back after Yom Kippur and read Cole’s two posts during the holiday and was, frankly, beside myself. Blaming Israel exclusively for the killings at a synagogue in Manchester was a step too far for me.
jonas
@Baud: I agree, that was basically her point. The first group is reachable in many instances (and had probably sometimes voted for Democrats in the past). The latter, not so much.
Suzanne
@Geminid: Agreed, you never did that. I should have been more clear. I saw a lot of that kind of comment, but not from you. Apologies.
lowtechcyclist
@Baud:
Hell, this whole country needs a metric ton of undocumented workers, since we don’t ‘document’ nearly as many immigrants as we actually need for the jobs we’ve got. And it isn’t just the crap jobs like agricultural labor or poultry processing. Anytime someone around here gets a new roof or new siding, the workers are all speaking Spanish, and who knows how many of them are legally here?
I’m not asking how many of them are legal, because whether they are or aren’t, I’m damned glad they’re here: unemployment is still only about 4.3%, and 4% is considered full employment so even now we’re pretty close, so we obviously need a shitload more workers here than we have people legally here to take those jobs.
I really think we Dems need to be talking this way about immigration: that we need these people. They’re here to do the quite abundant work that Americans don’t need anymore because we can all get better jobs than that.
NotMax
@lowtechcyclist
“Those rest rooms in Branson don’t clean themselves, you know.”
//
schrodingers_cat
@Professor Bigfoot: Democratic Presidents, Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton and yes even Biden expended a lot of political capital for the two state solution. Israel is our ally in a hostile and geopolitically important region so no President is going alienate Israel. D presidents have tried to be even handed while R Presidents have given Israel a carte blanche. So the goal of Pro-Palestinian orgs to unseat Biden and harm KH’s chances at election make little sense.
The proPal movement in this country has behaved like a Republican op from the get go targeting only Ds. Even now when they are no longer in power.
Martin
And this is why I don’t quite understand the Democratic ask right now. Hey, Trump, we demand you do this thing that will make you more popular with your base. Surely Democrats have asks that would force Trump to be less popular, but they aren’t asking for that. I know Dems want to help people out, but that’s supposed to be their ask in the midterms. They’re supposed to get something in return for that. They don’t get shit for bailing Trump out here.
Steve in the ATL
@Geminid:
@Baud:
Silly question, I know, in the age of T***p, but why the hell would we go to war with Venezuela? What strategic objective or national interest would be served? Dios mio.
iKropoclast
So…other people’s Islamiphobia is not protestors’ responsibility. To get that out the way.
It’s worth pointing out the media environment defined all pro-Palestine activism as per se extreme, per se anti-Semitic, and per se counter productive. There was a lot of working backwards through facts starting from desired conclusions, reports of incidents from all over that upon examination were all referencing the same incident, vast amounts of innuendo, and the base initial assumption that supporting Palestinians means ignoring the crimes of Hamas.
It was the same kind of fictions Republicans tell themselves about Democrats every day, except Democrats (elected and voters) were doing it about their own left flank. Pretty typical behavior in the party, and not just on this issue.
Frankly, I think elected Democrats’ response to protestors and, indeed, the issue itself were counter-productive.
NotMax
@Martin
The gall of Senate Republicans to adjourn and travel to a fundraising junket during a shutdown surpasses understanding.
NotMax
@Steve in the ATL
El Dorado?
“I saw it on TV.”
– Dolt 47
.
CCL
@lowtechcyclist: What a great idea! Being treasurer of any organization seems to be a lifetime sentence. I was stuck for 15 years being the treasurer of one organization – even after I moved out of state! No one would take the job.
Geminid
@UncleEbeneezer: My recollection is Mistermix never really talked much about the Gaza war. I remember one post, but that was the exception. He was much more focussed on Democratic Party issues.
Kay was fairly strident about the war and the US role in it, and she and I clashed repeatedly over these questions. I thought it was a fair fight myself.
Soprano2
It’s not pertinent to the issue, but it was certainly pertinent to the presidential election. I understand the utility of protest, but I also think sometimes they are counterproductive because they actually cause fewer people to support their cause than otherwise would. I listened to a podcast recently that addressed some of this – I think it was this Pod Save America episode about the roots of political violence, but I’m not sure.
I am particularly suspicious of the people who say it’s not worth protesting Republicans because they won’t listen to the message or care anyway. I’ve heard more than one person say that the one person who has a lot of pull with Netanyahu is FFOTUS, so wouldn’t you think advocating to him would be worth it?
Geminid
@Steve in the ATL: I don’t expect a full-fledged war anytime soon. The US could move from blowing up purported drug smugglers on boats to striking “drug labs” on land; the second rung of the escalatory ladder so to speak.
Ohio Mom
@UncleEbeneezer: Thank you for that well-stated comment.
There is at least sometimes some unexamined antisemitism in these comment threads but I don’t lose sleep over it. Some of it is malicious, some of it is unconsciously malicious. I have other fish to fry.
The day’s chores await. Chad Sameach!
Professor Bigfoot
@schrodingers_cat: I can only speak for myself in this: when the “pro-Palestine” folks told Black Americans that we should vote against Kamala Harris or we would be complicit in genocide, I was personally offended.
“Motherfucker, our parents, grandparents, died to get us the very right to vote; and Jews died alongside us in that fight.”
May the Universe forgive me, but my immediate reaction was “fuck them kids.”
Geminid
@Suzanne: No need for an apology. I took your comment as a general one and not directed at me personally.
NotMax
@Ohio Mom
Or, as it were, other fish to gefilte,
:)
WTFGhost
So, why isn’t there a competition among left wing influencers to AI the best “Trump in the bunker” video, you know, like the Hitler in the bunker meme, only showing poor, pathetic, delusional, less healthy looking, less rational sounding, Trump as the main character and Bondi, Hegseth, et al, as screamed-at people?
Doesn’t Soros know how to spend his money to best effect?
Deputinize America
@CCL:
No good deed goes unpunished.
iKropoclast
Read that as “hospitals, major pharmaceutical companies, and … playgrounds for some reason.
That’s an excellent concern. Might be best to address those concerns to the organizers, the parties responsible for decisions…
🤔
NotMax
@WTFGhost
Too subtle?
:)
JML
I clashed with her about it a fair bit myself. It often felt like anyone who saw some nuance, or didn’t think more direct and simple solutions were viable got painted as complicit in genocide.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Baud:
That’s a name I haven’t seen recently either.
Found him on BSky. He’s an author (Please Don’t Tell My Parents I’m a Supervillain series, which I think he sometimes promoted here from time to time)
Bsky link
He’s posted recently and fairly regularly there, so he seems alright
chemiclord
@What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?: That only works if the hostage taker doesn’t really want to shoot the hostage.
Republicans happily take that trade and start blaming Democrats for ever increasingly ridiculous demands.
What Have the Romans Ever Done for US?
@trnc: I just think it would be good politics for them to start throwing their weight around, acting tough and show that the other side isn’t the only one that can issue threats and make demands.
A few GOP Senators said they would do anything they could to fix the Medicare cuts after voting for the BBB. Josh Hawley was one. So throw their words back in their faces while making yourselves look like you’re standing up to the bullies, making demands, and fighting harder for more.
Professor Bigfoot
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Thank you, I just popped right over to give him a follow.
NotMax
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
all right
/there’s always room for pedantry ;)
Suzanne
@Soprano2:
My point is that our position w/r/t Gaza should be first and foremost about human rights and ending this terrible suffering, and what wins more votes in our election is secondary.
piratedan
@schrodingers_cat: concur, if they were passionate about supporting Palestinian rights, wtf are they now? It shouldn’t matter which party is on power in the US if you are attempting to influence policy.
It’s the forever bane of the Democrats that supposedly passionate single issue voter proponents of policy end up being grifters or opposition plants that turn off normies and conversely, when the same behavior is revealed on the other side, it’s rarely disqualifying.
pragmatically Palestinians should have their own state and autonomy, I support that, yet all of the media attention on a select few and thru the filter that media presented it ends up looking like a political hatchet job by the same nefarious actors that help keep us all divided from finding any kind of common cause.
satby
@Martin: because they’re doing it for constituents? Quaint, I know.
WTFGhost
@satby: What I think is funny, is Marge being all whiny about R leaders not having a plan. Yes, they have a plan: they’ll get over it, before the midterms, and if not, the damage done is so severe, the next R President can declare a federal emergency over debt management, and stop spending on any liberal priority.
At this point, the Blue states might well secede, and good luck Red states, you economic powerhouses you! Too late to make yourself slave states again – today, slavery is supplanted by keeping people poor and scared so they work themselves to death for an employer, without ever having the time and resources to try to make a change.
On the minus side, those sadists who imagine overseers with whips, they won’t be satisfied, but, on the plus side, it’s a lot cheaper – you don’t even have to provide a hovel or gruel, except the stuff you claim is coffee. And people call it humane, so long as all the scars are on the inside!
OH! But, yeah, they needed an educated workforce, to make real money, so, you were too effing incompetent to have good schools and make minor sacrifices now, for the betterment of all of your people, and all of humanity, because you’d rather keep whining about how we ruined old-style slavery, that you didn’t even build up the educational infrastructure for new-fangled slavery, because you preferred whining to pulling yourself up by your
state budgets and democratic leadershipbootstraps.iKropoclast
Missed opportunities…
jonas
Where most Americans, save for the irredeemable deplorables noted above, are, and what a clear Democratic platform/message needs to contain is 1. control the border. Zero tolerance for illegal crossings and human trafficking (esp the latter) accompanied by 2., legal paths to immigration that meet our labor (skilled and unskilled) needs and reduce the incentives to enter illegally. Saying you’re going all-in on controlling the border isn’t popular in some progressive circles, but a lot of independent voters want to hear it and won’t trust Democrats on immigration otherwise.
Trump and Fox News convinced a lot of voters (including not a few POC) that the country was being overrun by millions of illegal/criminal migrants under Biden and that the gang members and low-lifes needed to go. What they did *not* vote for is ICE Gestapo thugs invading cities, tearing kids out of their mother’s arms, and willy-nilly deporting workers, even those here legally, to concentration camps in El Salvador or wherever. Sane, legal immigration policy is popular. Dems need to portray Republicans as out of touch bigots on the issue and push for these reforms.
CCL
@Deputinize America: Truth.
Melancholy Jaques
@schrodingers_cat:
I’ve always inferred from circumstances that these movements of the moment that flare up in election years only to disappear when the Rs win are at the very least funded and promoted by the Rs. The attacks against Ds “from the left” are not exactly what they are represented to be.
NB – I’m sure some were sincere, but they don’t get politics.
What Have the Romans Ever Done for US?
@chemiclord: They’ve already been shooting the hostage for 9 months. It’s about highlighting all the awful stuff that they did with the BBB, keeping it fresh in people’s minds, and proving that you’re fighting to fix it.
Everyone is paying attention right now and I think it’s good politics to use the attention to highlight all the unpopular stuff the Republicans just did with that bill and what awful consequences are right around the corner if it doesn’t get fixed fresh in peoples’ minds. Plus show you have a spine. I’m convinced the Republicans don’t want to have that conversation on a number of issues – now is the time to force them to have it. I think it only gets worse for them if that happens. But I can see how people could disagree with that opinion and that’s fine. It’s a free country, or was until last January.
WTFGhost
@piratedan: To be brutally fair, any D single issue voter could say that they are trying to be like pro-life voters. What they don’t understand is, pro-lifers were never about purity, until they had the political power to move elections, (step one), and, they had an easy way to make their issue resonate (“BROTECT THE PABIES!”), and an easy attack ad (“BABYKILLER!!!”) (step two).
Why would “protect the Palestinian” single-issue voters get smeared, by comparison?
1) no powerful lobby
2) no easy support/attack ads.
An equivalent in Republican circles was, there was a substantial anti-porn lobby for a while, but, you’ll notice porn is now a personal problem (because there’s enough porn being monetized by wealthy people, who don’t do the icky work of producing video and curating content).
It would fail at step 1, maybe being enough people to piss a few “Moral Majority” candidates off, and play spoiler roles, but never enough to hurt *or* help, and, face it, just try to write the ads, without going viral for being *bad*, so it would fail at step 2.
Jim Appleton
Thanks for this.
Your helpfulness may be limited, but it’s appreciated for laying bare Pastor Mike absolutely knows he’s lying.
Martin
@Karen Gail: Keep in mind that argument sits perfectly alongside Kirk’s ‘random gun violence is the price we pay for a 2nd amendment’. They mandate that cities give guns to everyone and then mandate that federal troops occupy those cities as a result of their own policies.
zhena gogolia
@UncleEbeneezer: I noticed that.
p.a.
Doesn’t say much about us as a whole if the stop-the-
genocide-pick-your-description movements about Gaza were mostly performative anti-semitism/anti-Democratic sandbagging, saying we are “nothing to see here move along” people.If Repubs are “go for it for Jeebus” enablers Dems are “please stop or I might have to do something… sometime… maybe.”
USA!USA!
Martin
@satby: And we wonder why Democrats lose elections. Democrats screamed that Trump would raise your healthcare costs, and then that didn’t happen and Trump will point that out every time and note how Democrats are such liars. And voters will fall for that every time. That’s why touching the stove is important.
What you fail to note is that there are other things that constituents care about that Democrats could focus on. They aren’t going to get everything, so at least demand the stuff that will lose Trump support rather than the stuff that will gain him support.
Harrison Wesley
@Steve in the ATL: They have lots of oil and other good stuff. Much too much to be left in the hands of commies and cartels.
Melancholy Jaques
@iKropoclast:
It’s worth pointing out how deeply embedded the negative views toward Palestinians are in America. The Hamas attacks that got that whole story started certainly confirmed those views. It’s worth pointing out that there was not one thing that Biden or Harris or Democrats could have done to change that during the election campaign. It doesn’t make it right, but it’s naive not to recognize that. And it’s worth pointing out that continuing to go back & forth with each other on this issue, like the getting Biden to withdraw issue, isn’t doing anyone any good.
Belafon
@Melancholy Jaques: Yes. I propose we offer incentives like more affordable health care, making education more affordable, providing access to food, and improving the ability to afford housing. We might also consider infrastructure spending in areas that typically don’t vote for us.
But I’m not willing to compromise on the rights of minorities, women, or LGBTQ+, and immigrants are welcome in the country.
WTFGhost
@trnc: For political messaging, “we were shut out of negotiations” isn’t good as a main messaging driver. “They tried to hurt you!” is all about the two groups you care about.
During a panel discussion, *then* you can try to stick in the knife, and twist it, but even then, you’d want to make it look like the Republicans pantsed themselves, tied their shoes together, and then tried to pull a too-tight-in-the-neck shirt off, and then say “we wanted to help them!” Not that they shoved you outside the negotiating door… that they refused to leave the clown car long enough to ask for directions.
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
@Martin: So what would you demand. Defund ICE? I honestly think at this point Democrats and even a majority of normies might be warming up to that idea. If it’s popular then it would be a reasonable demand that would lose him something that is popular with his base but not with anyone else. But then I don’t see him ever agreeing to it.
But Trump is being asked to undo what he just did with his BBB. I think most people are aware of that. Backtracking this soon would be a major loss of face for him.
Professor Bigfoot
Damn skippy. If I’m gonna die on a hill, this is it.
And it’s a damn fine hill, ain’t it?
Professor Bigfoot
Duplicate deletion.
But it is a damn fine hill.
Old Man Shadow
So, where have Republican ideas to fix health care been for the last 50 years? 25 years? 15 years?
Where is the bill that fixes health care, Pastor Mike?
And why did you vote for the previous bill that broke the subsidies if you don’t have a viable replacement ready to hit the ground next month when Open enrollment happens?
WHERE IS THE FUCKING BILL, PASTOR MIKE?
ExPatExDem
It would be funny but for the fact that you sincerely believe that Biden “expended a lot of political capital for the two state solution”.
He spent zero political capital on it. He did go to great lengths to alienate young voters and Muslim voters with his abetting of a genocide.
Melancholy Jaques
@lowtechcyclist:
You’re right, of course, but I would ask – beg – Democrats to rephrase it to “our country is already benefiting from the labor of over 10 million unauthorized residents. That’s 10 million people buying groceries.”
iKropoclast
And why did you vote for the previous bill that broke the subsidies if you don’t have a viable replacement ready to hit the ground next month when Open enrollment happens?
They have a Working Family Tax Credit that, if I were to take the literal interpretation of what the Speaker is saying, will solve a whole team of healthcare systemic issues he rattles off.
I mean I don’t know what qualifies as a working family or what tax is being cut how much or how a tax cut of any nature touches on certain issues (like having enough providers for a region). But they’ve “done it” says Pastor Mike.
Matt McIrvin
@Melancholy Jaques: The last bit will just convince them that if we deport all those people their groceries will get cheaper.
Belafon
@Matt McIrvin: We’re supposed to be able to have their labor without paying them.
Old Man Shadow
If you’re going to bring up electoral calculus, then acknowledge the fact that cutting Israel off completely would have soured a lot of other voters and gotten him and all Democrats lambasted by the media as terrorist sympathizers.
There was no good electoral choice other than trying to get a cease fire which didn’t work because the Israeli government didn’t want one.
West of the Rockies
@satby:
Do you talk about Bruno?
Spanish Moss
I am sorry to see that we are criticizing Kay in absentia, as seems to happen from time to time. Unless I missed something that happened later, she left on Feb. 26, 2025, when negative remarks about her were front paged in “The Missing Piece” post. Understandably, she objected. As posts touching on civility often do, comments got ugly. Eventually they were closed.
A number of commenters left at that time. I left too, in a sense. I still read BJ and support it with my patreon dollars, but with a couple of exceptions I don’t comment anymore. Discussing a commenter on the front page, without their permission, then leaving the post up with no redactions felt like a violation to me.
BJ still means a lot to me. Discussions in forums with minimal rules are a mixed bag. I learn so much, but some of the viewpoints and aggressive styles are downright disturbing. Occasionally offensive. But we are all works in progress, and I try to keep that in mind. For sure, commenting or posting here is not for the faint of heart. I try to focus on the insights and perspectives rather than personal style, otherwise there are people I wouldn’t read at all and then I would miss out on something valuable. I am sorry when anyone goes.
Melancholy Jaques
@Suzanne:
Voters don’t think that way, so politicians don’t act that way.
ExPatExDem
@Old Man Shadow: I keep hearing this, and yet wrapping both arms and legs around Israel had no measurable benefit to Harris, but had definite measurable harm.
“We have to support Israel” is an outdated conventional wisdom of the last century.
Martin
@Melancholy Jaques: The attacks by Pro-Pal against the left is because they thought they understood the Democratic moral position against <checks notes> genocide, and the party never showed up on that moral position. They didn’t criticize the right because they already were clear that the right was fine with genocide of brown people. If the party didn’t want that treatment, they should have shown up on the thing their electorate thought they were clear on. Turns out there was an Israel exception to that moral position and Harris could never really attack Trump and the GOP on that because they weren’t operating from a sound position – and they knew it. It only looked like a GOP op because the Democratic party allowed it to.
Everyone acts like the pro-Pal movement was wrong. They weren’t. They were right, their sin was that they were too early. Look at the shellacking that Slotkin and Torres got recently for defending the party position as it stood on Election Day. But that was showing up in polling way back in Feb 2024 and Democrats did nothing to address that. We even had Dem pollsters remove the topic from their polling in the hopes that people would stop talking about it rather than address it. And it’s not like the problem will go away – it’s going to be an issue in ’26. It’s not over, and it’s not better.
Melancholy Jaques
@piratedan:
This is something that we don’t seem to be able to change. Everyone, from the media, to normies, to Democrats themselves, has higher and different standards for Democrats.
Hillary Clinton calls half of Trump supporters deplorable and the entire media world erupted in condemnation, some of which was supported by Democrats. That asshole calls Democrats gnats in a speech to our military and it isn’t even a story. That’s just one of several hundred examples.
ExPatExDem
@Martin: The fact Trump was able to position himself as the peace candidate was a complete own-goal by the Dem Party.
iKropoclast
Well, the conversation on the topic has shifted. Maybe it might have shifted faster if D leaders actually led on this issue. It’s not like the pro-Palestinian position is explicitly anti-Israel. It’s a pro-both and freedom for all position.
Now we have a potential cease-fire under Trump with real potential to develop into a lasting peaceful solution. Granted, this would have come about in roughly this shape regardless of who was President.
But now, Democrats have probably baked in another generation of suspicion on matters of war and peace, a renewal of the stain from the Iraq AUMF.
Melancholy Jaques
@Martin:
Could not agree more. Democrats may succeed in getting health insurance subsidies restored, but the voters will not reward them for it. It’s not how they think.
Baud
@Melancholy Jaques:
That’s how I see it too. Especially when it comes to the Democrats themselves.
Suzanne
@Melancholy Jaques: Yeah, you’re right. But maybe it’s Pollyanna-ish to want our leaders to lead, rather than follow.
WTFGhost
So, let me suggest that what you’re thinking isn’t wrong, it’s misguided. Why? Immigration is where Republicans want to fight. If you start thinking “I’ll make my message include ‘control the border’,” then you’ve just ceded ground to the Republican, who can try to make you look weak, because the Republican will do more.
In 2016, Trump started saying “we can’t have refugees coming into this country without extreme vetting!!!” Well, refugees *do* get extreme vetting, but not in boldface, with a mandatory three exclamation marks, so he could always say “It’s not enough! We need more, and better, and my predecessor was WEAK for not doing as much as I will!”
And then, when he’s out of office, he can immediately say “the border went to hell the moment I left office! When I’m back in office, we’ll be back to extreme vetting!!!” except, it’s no longer about refugees, it’s now about “biggest mass deportation ever.”
Now, in 2024, conventional wisdom was not to engage – cover it, so you don’t have a glaring weakness, but, try to find another place to plant your zingers, because the Rs can always go more extreme – you can’t beat that with “more reasonable.” Reasonable people get rotten eggs thrown at them by Republican “pranksters.”
Today, I’d say, don’t engage on “I WILL CONTROL THE BORDER!!!” because, again, you leave them lots of room to go further right than you’re willing to go, so now you’re the weak one. I’d say, maybe you can reverse course, by making the traditional strength a weakness, e.g., “We’ve seen what Republicans want on immigration – they want to deport green card holders and naturalized citizens, the people who’ve played by the rules! They want to throw someone’s abuela to the ground and shove a gun in her face!” You’d find the worst youtube you could, of ICE-out-of-control (“Bad cops bad cops; whatcha gonna do, whatcha gonna do when they gun down you, bad cops bad cops…”) and you’d play it in association with your opponent at every moment, you’d interrupt his speaking at his son’s grade school luncheon to ask “why do you want them beating up granny and taking her medication, throwing her on the floor of a detention center, with wild hordes of desperate people who never had a hope at a fair shot at living here, not under the trump administration!”
(The last will probably be said as the police drag you away, unless you look “like an immigrant” in which case, ICE would have beaten you down.)
Martin
@Old Man Shadow: The protestors weren’t asking for Israel to be cut off completely. The student protestors were asking for universities to divest from arms manufacturers (which has been an ask going back to Apartheid). They weren’t even making a government ask for the most part. And the non-student protestors were asking for the government to stop providing offensive weapons (stop killing Palestinians with American bombs was the loudest ask). Biden could easily have done that and offered up two exceptions: continued support for Iron dome, and the US would directly help defend Israel from missile attacks – which we did, without complaint by the left. Fuck, even Jordan did that.
There were loads of good electoral choices that you’re overlooking.
Melancholy Jaques
@Belafon:
I was being facetious
ExPatExDem
@Suzanne: The fact that the erstwhile liberal party couldn’t find its voice when clear crimes against humanity were being committed in Gaza was a huge fail.
No way to candy coat it.
iKropoclast
Some voters do think that way. Those voters are just deemed unimportant.
tobie
@iKropoclast:
This is bullshit. I wish that there were fierce advocates for a two state solution from the Palestinian side. There are not. And the encampment slogans like “Israel out of Palestine,” “From the River to the Sea,” and “Globalize the Intifada,” were calls for ethnic cleansing. No, this doesn’t make any of the radical and eliminationist policies from the Netanyahu crew okay (though Biden, Gantz, Eisenkot, Gallant and Halevi did keep it in check). But there’s no point sanitizing a position, widespread on the left, that is toxic too.
Old Man Shadow
Well, they are right on the question that what Israel is doing is ethnic cleansing and genocide which are both morally wrong.
Whether they were right on the best way to reach a minimum of human suffering was playing a part in enabling a fascist despot and his cadre of racists who objectively hate non-whites and non-Christians and whose son-in-law was dreaming of paving over Gaza and building luxury high rises, to seize control of America is a matter for debate.
ExPatExDem
In what fictional universe did Biden keep it in check?
iKropoclast
Sounds like a standard to enforce when primaries start rolling around next Spring.
Give me something I haven’t already though of, leaders. Push that envelope.
Kirklin
@Suzanne:
I thought they were supposed to figure out where the crowd was going then get out in front so they appeared to be leading?
RaflW
@Baud: From the AP: “The [coal] sales are going forward despite the government shutdown because the Trump administration did not furlough workers responsible for reviewing fossil fuel projects.”
Just a total mockery of essential workers. That coal is going to sit in the ground for years, maybe forever. Opening the bid this week or next month won’t matter for shit.
Suzanne
@tobie: The most recent data that I have seen (can’t find the link right now) indicates that just over half of the Palestinians support a two-state solution. That has waxed and waned over years, but. “roughly half” has been an accurate descriptor for a long time. We Dems can, and should, stand for that.
tobie
@Martin: Actually at my university they were calling for a complete boycott, end of all academic exchange programs, invited speakers, etc. Meanwhile we did invite speakers who celebrated Oct 7 and patently lied in their publications. The double standard never ceases to amaze.
On that note, I’ve always wondered why leftists haven’t called for the US to stop selling arms to Turkey. In addition to jailing the opposition, Erdogan’s regime also cut off water supply to one million Kurds in Syria at the end of 2024 by bombing electric plants with — check notes — American fighter jets. Our outrage is always manipulated for political ends. Best to be mindful of that.
Ruckus
@Suzanne:
Humans are generally selfish – it’s part of survival.
However – as the world has at least tried to do, we have at least attempted to work on the concept of getting rid of one for all and all for one. Which of course is shitforbrains concept of everything – as long as he’s THE ONE. Of course that’s becoming a tad more difficult as he seems to be aging out rather rapidly in several ways. Physically he’s been rapidly aging out for some time, mentally – it’s too late…. and has been for some time.
iKropoclast
Well, what I described was my position, so we know it’s a real position at least someone held. And I will solemnly attest that everyone I either spoke to or watched/read online who was concerned with Palestinian rights and freedoms was on that same page. Indeed, I’d wager my very soul that a vast overwhelming majority of people who want peace and self-determination for Palestinians want the same for Israelis and literally everyone else.
Sorry to try to disabuse you of your prejudice.
ExPatExDem
@Suzanne: It’s also very easy to support the Leahy Act and the Arms Export Control Act.
The US government has literally been ignoring its own laws to supply Israel’s war.
marklar
@UncleEbeneezer: Thank you for this comment.
October 7 is a tragic day for Israel and Jews throughout the world, and triggered a tragic series of events on subsequent dates for all who care about Jewish and Palestinian self-determination (and the ability to live their lives in peace).
tobie
@Suzanne: I was talking about the campus protestors and Palestinian leaders. The Palestinian people have been betrayed by many including their leaders. I have no doubt that the majority of the people in the region want peace, the right to determine their national destiny, and some stability in their individual and collective lives.
Belafon
@ExPatExDem: Show me that one.
What the pro-Palestinian movement got wrong was when parts of it turned anti-Israel, and when the choice between the two places became the test.
tobie
@ExPatExDem: You may have missed it, but fighting was paused from January to April 2024 as Blinken was trying desperately to bring an end to the conflict. You may have also missed the ceasefire negotiated in Dec 2025 and which held until Trump took office. I could go on but I don’t have the patience to argue with someone who has already arrived at conclusions, facts be damned.
Melancholy Jaques
@Martin:
I am not so sure that “their electorate,” meaning people who vote for Democrats, had the same views as the pro Palestinian protestors. I am sure that we Democrats did not lose the election because Biden failed to withdraw military support from Israel.
Betty
Meanwhile!e back at the ranch, Bondi is being a despicable jerk at the Senate Judiciary hearing. I know it is not surprising, but nonetheless disheartening to see a top official behave this way.
Belafon
And I can say that us trying to promote “It was wrong for Hamas to attack Israel and it’s wrong for Israel to respond by leveling Gaza” got no traction because neither extreme wanted to hear it.
iKropoclast
I strenuously object to the bolded characterization. I’d even go so far as to as to say it was establishment Democrats who enabled the fascist despot and racists, last election cycle yes, but also consistently over the last few decades. One way to tell was that the arguments were the same “it’s all anti-Semitism and we should probably arrest and blackball these students.”
Suzanne
@tobie: The positions of campus protestors shouldn’t have any impact on the Democratic Party position. Again, this is a moral issue.
Belafon
@Melancholy Jaques: Israel and Palestine never came up on the facebook stuff that came from the Right. It was eggs and immigrants.
RaflW
I’ll go ahead and be pedantic: If Johnson said “The whole month” around 1pm on Oct 6th, he only had 82% of the October remaining. If someone gave me a pumpkin pie with more than one slice eaten and said “Here’s a whole pie” I’d know they were a liar.
But of course Mikey lies all the damn time anyway.
iKropoclast
The bad-faith conflation of support of P independence with support for Hamas has a lot to do with this. Support for Hamas’s actions are probably in the low percentages of one percent. Yet, to speak on the matter in public for the first several months after the attack so many demanded you denounce Hamas with every sentence as a sort of piety, or else everything else you say can be ignored.
Let me be clear. No one thinks what Hamas did is ok. This is a version of “what about black on black crime” repainted for international politics.
tobie
@iKropoclast: Good grief. You used the royal “we” in the post I responded to. You may have missed it, but we did actually have a ceasefire in Jan 2025 which would have held if Trump hadn’t been elected President. The IDF’s operations have changed dramatically since Trump took office. Even infantry and officer assignments in the IDF are now (post-Trump’s inauguration) handled in a different way than in any previous conflict. Painting everything with a broad brushstroke got us Trump.
Suzanne
@Belafon:
The correct position.
Although, as noted, Israel used American-supplied weapons in their disproportionate response, and that, to me, is the crux of the issue in this country.
RaflW
@Betty: Until there are some political and social costs for prominent Republicans being colossal jerks, the disrespectful shitshow will continue.
I find the rudeness, plied on top of the dehumanizing, the lying and the corrupt thievery all truly awful. And polls show it’s not a winning strategy, but the consequences at the ballot box have simply not had time to materialize (and … will they?).
Baud
@Melancholy Jaques:
Yeah, I thought that was the consensus here.
IMHO there are many people who don’t want to admit that their cohort helped bring fascism to the US, but also want people to feel that failing to satisfy their demands was instrumental in the outcome.
Nothing is credible anymore. To me, anyway.
Belafon
@RaflW: It would be great if some Democrat would say “We’re trying to save Republicans from themselves, again. Same as it ever was.”
Baud
@RaflW: 100%
Melancholy Jaques
@iKropoclast:
It’s not they are unimportant in any absolute sense, but it is true that such voters do not determine election outcomes.
There is a lot of “I want my party to take morally correct positions even if it means they will never have power” in the discussion of this issue and others. It’s a valid point, no doubt, and I generally agree, but it requires that we accept the reality of the second part of that sentence.
The Gaza situation was a no-win situation in an election year. Please tell me you understand that. Take the position that is moral, but accept that you are putting America’s worst people in power. And not just for this election. The decision to withdraw military support from Israel at that time would be a decision with at least a decade of adverse consequences for Democrats in every election and probably even longer. The Democrats’ decision to nominate an anti-war candiate in 1972 was still a liability in 2004. Withdrawing support from Israel would have caused a split in the party that would not heal as long as the people splitting were in office. I’m not asking you to take a position against your morals – why would I? – I am asking if you can accept the consequences of your position.
tobie
@Suzanne: What are you talking about? Democrats did limit the kinds of bombs that could be sold to Israel (no more bunker busters). They did sanction various West Bank settlers. Biden did condemn Israel’s prosecution of the war numerous times. His admin did stall Israel’s campaign from Jan to April 2024. Finally he did negotiate a ceasefire which held until Trump took office. You may not have liked what the admin did but even to suggest that they were not trying to limit damage and end the conflict is a lie worthy of Stephen Miller or Hegseth.
You do not have a monopoly on morality. How dare you?
ExPatExDem
@tobie: At this point, you’re just making shit up. Meanwhile, in the real world:
Suzanne
@Melancholy Jaques:
The thing is….. I think we’re getting those consequences anyway.
Interesting Name Goes Here
@Melancholy Jaques: In this day and age, it’s immoral and irresponsible to give them enough benefit of the doubt that they are sincere until they prove otherwise. At no point in my life have any of these moral movements resulted in anything beneficial to the people they’re allegedly advocating for. If these people had been around for the ’50s and ’60s, Jim Crow would be a part of the Constitution by now. They are not to be trusted, ever, on any issue – not Gaza, not student loans, not weed, not the basic time of day. It sucks, but that’s the game they have chosen to enroll all of us in (for most of us, against our will).
Suzanne
@tobie: Biden did not fully limit arms transfers to Israel.
In my opinion, this was an insufficient response. I get to make that judgment.
surfk9
@What Have the Romans Ever Done for US?: The Republicans are doing a political own goal. They are allowing the opposition to frame the debate while appearing to be totally feckless. The Democrats get to set the narrative at least six months before they normally would.
Melancholy Jaques
@Baud:
Me too, and now I’m mad at myself for engaging on a subject I keep telling myself to scroll past.
Serious question for everyone: Are we going to keep arguing about the last election or try to win the next one?
Baud
@Melancholy Jaques:
I just wanted to know where Frankensteinbeck was.
WTFGhost
So let me get this straight:
A bunch of terrorists, who live among the Palestinians committed a horrible, horrible, crime.
A full, brutal, military response occurred, causing huge amounts of suffering among people who had nothing to do with the crime, other than being Palestinian. People have lost their homes, have no means of support, and are in an actual war ravaged zone, with fighting going on around them.
And you’re saying “because there aren’t loud, vociferous, Palestinian campaigns for ‘TWO STATES NOW!’ it proves that the Palestinians want to wipe out Israel.”
You’re saying, if they didn’t want to wipe out Israel, which is//was, remember, beating the ever living shit out of them, they would be screaming “TWO STATES NOW,” and not “ISRAEL OUT OF PALESTINE!” Is that it? When Israel isn’t even talking two-state solution?
If so, you’re asking Palestinians to be saints, and further, to be saints who speak, and act, precisely as you’d expect them to, before you’ll consider them to be anything but anti-Israel. It’s okay to be angry, and it’s okay to be unwilling to extend empathy to others, because you’re too angry at them.
But don’t say the other people are bad, because you can’t empathize with their position.
ExPatExDem
@tobie: Why are you lying?
05 February 2024: Israeli gunboats attack a clearly marked UNWRA aid convoy, resulting in a suspension of UNWRA operations for 3 weeks, affecting 200,000 war refugees.
12 February 2024: Israel starts a bombing campaign of Rafah.
29 February 2024: IDF soldiers open fire on refugees waiting for food aid, killing 100 and injuring 750.
18 March – 01 April 2024: IDF raids Al-Shifa hospital, rendering it unusable and killing 400 people in search of Faiq al-Mabhouh.
01 April 2024: IAF launches airstrike on clearly marked World Central Kitchen aid convoy, killing 7 aid workers and resulting in the withdrawal of WCK from Gaza.
Israel was war criming with wild abandon during the period you say Blinken brought a pause in the conflict.
West of the Rockies
@Geminid:
I guess that’s better than Strawdogging.
Ramalama
@Baud: I wonder if Tina Fey has enough time to spin up a new show called “Not Enough.”
Belafon
@Melancholy Jaques: Republicans ran ads in Michigan pushing Democratic support for Israel and ads in places like New York pushing Democratic support for Gaza, not just on TV. They knew how to play towards people’s biases.
Israel and the Palestinians will only be solved when either one of them is destroyed or the world decides what’s happened is enough. And the world hasn’t decided that.
tobie
@Suzanne: I never said he paused all arms shipments. Thank you for confirming. In addition to blocking sales of 2000-pound bombs, Biden also blocked 500-pound bombs. And he blocked the assault on Rafah for 4 months, which ended up not being bloody. All the hostages had been moved by then. What if — and I know I’m out on a limb here — he was trying really hard to manage a complex situation? Then Trump came and made it easy for Israel to bomb with abandon and withhold food and medical shipments. This didn’t happen under Biden’s watch.
iKropoclast
Maybe it’s a matter of perspective, priorities and all, but I said essentially the same thing about their failure to break even a little with Israel, just upthread here.
One thing worth noting, Republicans now seem likely to be the ones to get to benefit from a peace dividend if the current cease-fire proposal holds.
2024 wreaked havoc on my opinion of Democrats. It wasn’t the malign influence of protestors or right-wing propaganda. It was decisions top Democrats made on several things all year (that fucking nomination).
I really don’t understand the pervasive belief here that the actions of protestors who are mostly being ignored are more impactful with respect to the public image of Democrats than actual decisions Democrats make.
ExPatExDem
That’s what I’m asking. What did we avoid by Biden/Harris clinging to Israel?
The Dems lost everything.
Old Man Shadow
@iKropoclast: I imagine you do.
But that was the practical result of not voting, voting in protest, or voting for Trump. A fascist despot and his cadre of racist, theocratic enablers now control the United States of America and his plans for Gaza are quite clear and do not include Palestinians any more than Netanyahu’s plans do.
You can blame Democrats all you like, but 2024 and 2016 were key elections for the future of America and Trump’s views on Israel were well-known
And the human suffering continues.
iKropoclast
Bitterly, one might say. Cold, dead hands type shit…
Old Man Shadow
@ExPatExDem: Alienating voters who do not pay attention to Israel/Palestine but would hear non-stop that Democrats support terrorism and want to see Jews killed from media.
Suzanne
@tobie:
I have no doubt that he was. I think sometimes, we try hard to do things, and fail anyway. I believe we should have stopped American arms transfers once it was clear that our weapons were being used as such in Gaza. I voted for Harris, and I absolutely would have voted for Biden, but I don’t think this issue was handled well.
ExPatExDem
@Old Man Shadow: You mean the Liz Cheney Republican voters who were going to rally round Harris?
Yeah, that worked well.
Baud
Martin
Were you part of the negotiating team with the students? I’ve done that. What’s more, I’ve done that with Israel/Palestine protestors. This is how things go after the first interactions:
Them: We want the US to stop selling arms to Israel!
Me: We’re a public university – we can’t deliver that. We can only deliver what we can control.
<demand for selling arms to Israel gets dropped>
That doesn’t mean they don’t want it and aren’t going to call for it while banging a drum, but it’s not an actual ask any longer – it’s something we can ignore, because they now know what can and can’t be delivered. People here keep acting like anything that came out of any random person’s mouth is an ask that must be addressed, but it’s not. Your pragmatic goal is to take the wind out of the movement, not check every box that they can think to create. Here’s what the agreement out of Brown looked like.
The Uncommitted movement’s demand was ‘not another bomb to Israel’ which doesn’t seem like an insurmountable ask for Democrats to address. They didn’t ask for an end to humanitarian aid. They probably would have accepted defensive arms like Iron Dome still be supported. The party doesn’t need to meet every literal interpretation of that statement, they can negotiate a reasonable result. Note too, their ask for a speaker at the convention with the party getting to review the statement was also rejected.
tobie
Even Wikipedia admits the raid on Rafah did not begin until May 6, 2024. And Biden demanded, and got, a pause in fighting every day in May and June to allow for aid delivery. Yes, the war was run differently before and after he left office. Facts are such a pesky thing.
ExPatExDem
@tobie: Look, I get that you’re on team Israel in this conflict, but your assertion that there was a significant pause in Israeli crimes against humanity during the period you mentioned is demonstrably false.
Harrison Wesley
I know this may sound really controversial, but maybe a new thread is in order. This one is going full merry-go-round.
iKropoclast
@Old Man Shadow: But that was the practical result of not voting, voting in protest, or voting for Trump.
The thing of it is, Id wager anything that the overwhelming majority of those concerned for Palestine likely did vote for Harris. This is borne entirely from interactions with people and the view from my admittedly limited social media.
If you have data that shows otherwise, please share. But spinning up fantasies of a depraved, extreme left isn’t only a Republican pastime.
Professor Bigfoot
@Harrison Wesley: SO YOU HATE MERRY-GO-ROUNDS?!
(sorry, just flat couldn’t resist 😉)
tobie
@WTFGhost: I have enough of a memory to recall all the efforts to create two states from Jimmy Carter onwards. Olmert’s plan was quite good but Abbas walked away. That was the last serious discussion in 2008. The current war began in 2023 but the conflict itself has been there since 1948.
Castor Canadensis
@Belafon: It would be a lot of work. At the very least it would need a grinder-into-dust, powerful blowers and a stack scrubber, and that would only get rid of the dust, not the gases.
[A friend’s father used to build stack scrubbers. See en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wet_scrubber%5D
Matt McIrvin
@Melancholy Jaques: I knew supposed liberals on the other side of the coin, who refused to support Biden or Harris because they were not pro-Israel enough (and, specifically, that Biden wasn’t crushing the protests with a Trumpian iron fist proved that Biden and Harris were antisemites). I thought it was an insane position. But it was just an impossible situation.
Harrison Wesley
@Professor Bigfoot: I’m the original Carnival Killjoy.
Bruce K in ATH-GR
@Matt McIrvin: The Trumpists and the Netanyahu-ists couldn’t have engineered a more perfect Kobayashi Maru situation for the Biden administration if they’d done it all deliberately.
JML
@WTFGhost: here’s the problem: you’re ignoring the fact that Hamas has been the actor speaking for and behalf of the Palestinians who are actually in Gaza & the West Bank. They can’t be minimized as a fringe group, even though they are a terrorist organization, when they not only organizationally controlled Gaza, but also had popular support of the people.
Part of the true mess of this is there’s no credible organization and leadership of Palestinians that has support of the people there on the ground and is actually there. There are a lot of reasons for that (including the fact that the corrupt Netanyahu government helped keep Hamas in place and undermined other groups) but it’s a reality.
And Hamas is and was a terrorist group. But not a fringe one. Who else do you negotiate with?
We could walk away from Israel, say the failures of the corrupt Netanyahu government and actions of the IDF under that government are too much and we’ll not support genocide. That will certainly make many people feel better about themselves. Will it lead to a lasting peace? (Electorally, we know that it would have cost the Biden/Harris campaign, but we’ll never know if it would have been determinative)
And for the people claiming that no one on the pro-palestinian wasn’t advocating for genocidal actions…just because no one around here was, doesn’t mean that no one was. There were plenty that saw this as the moment to literally wipe Israel off the map, and they didn’t give AF what happened to any of the Jews living there.
The reality is, the bad actors are calling the shots. No one is clean, no one is good here.
Martin
@What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?: You don’t need to defund ICE, you just need to ask to claw back the additional what, $90B in ICE funding in OBBB and restore them to prior funding levels.
They could demand that tariff revenue not be used for farm subsidies – any such appropriation needs to go through congress. They could demand that the Title X grants that Trump froze to Planned Parenthood and others be restored. They could demand that all university grants be restored.
But given their expressed problem was that the GOP could not be trusted to actually adhere to their budgetary agreements, the thing that would make more sense would be legislation that would provide enforcement – removing mechanisms that allow Trump to bypass congress. After all, by their argument it doesn’t matter if they get the ACA funding back, because they can’t trust Trump and the GOP to stick to the agreement – so it seems to me the ask needs to be mechanisms that address that problem. I’m also a bit shocked that they aren’t using this to shore up free and fair elections, making sure the national guard won’t be deployed to suppress voting, prohibiting DOJ from demanding all voting data from states (the issue that has resulted in the judge in SC getting her house burned down) etc.
Melancholy Jaques
@Baud:
Did we find out?
Steve in the ATL
@Harrison Wesley: JFC no kidding
Kent
Republicans passed Trump’s big ugly bill under reconciliation so with no Democratic votes.
Now they want Democrats to sign on and make those cuts “bipartisan” by passing a budget resolution under regular order (i.e. with Democratic votes) that does not reverse what they did.
They chose to pass their tax bill without any Democratic votes. Now they can clean up their mess with Democratic votes, or double down without them.
Nettoyeur
@Soprano2: Trump never even tries to persuade. He just threatens. Typical behavior for a businessman who never goes public and so never has to deal with biards and stockholders. Which how he managed to bankrupt multiple entereprises.
Suzanne
I will just note this: After More Than 100 Arms Shipments to Israel, Biden Withholds One
iKropoclast
@iKropoclast: Actually found some polling, myself. It appears roughly 29 percent of those who voted for Biden 2020 but not Harris 2024 listed Gaza as the main reason.
Harris got 6 million fewer than Biden’s total of roughly 82 million.
Assuming the exit poll figure is accurate (and assuming no new voters, admittedly unlikely), that’s 1.74 million people who changed their votes over this issue, nationwide.
This doesn’t appear to be enough to have turned the election.
Gallup in 2024 put sympathy for Palestine over Israel at about 30 percent. So about 4.5 million of the 15 million total voters
1.74/6.5 million suggest about 27 percent (👀) of those primarily sympathetic to Palestine did not vote for Harris. She got roughly 3/4 of the pro-Palestine vote.
Granted I’m not a statistician. But I don’t currently see evidence to suggest that the intransigence of Palestinian protestors cost Harris the election.
mrmoshpotato
@satby: It poured overnight here.
Martin
@Suzanne: I also note Adam’s observation that arms that were earmarked for Ukraine kept getting sent to Israel. Oct 7 was horrible, but it’s not a greater threat to Israel than Russia is to Ukraine.
Kent
@ExPatExDem: The 2024 election was not decided by Gaza. It isn’t even in the top 10 of reasons why voters in like 45 states shifted to the right between 2020 and 2024.
Baud
@Melancholy Jaques:
Goku found his Bluesky account upthread. We don’t know if he’s still doing the blog thing somewhere else, but his BS is active.
Steve in the ATL
@Suzanne: Bernie Sanders is a Democrat? A lot has happened while I was at lunch!
trollhattan
@Kent:
If Gaza had an impact it was people staying home, not voting for Donny “Because he’s going to fix the Middle East.”
tam1MI
I thought the whole BDS thing on campuses was tactically stupid on its face. Their goal was supposedly to get the US government to change it’s policies via a vis IP, harassing universities wouldn’t do a damn thing to achieve that and was bad PR besides.
Castor Canadensis
@Belafon:
Eek!
The Israeli and Palestinian governments arguably are the problem, while the Israeli and Palestinian people are victims of them. Even despite the massive Israeli protest against Mr Netanyahu’s government. Neither people owns their government.
Please don’t lose control of yours!
Suzanne
@Steve in the ATL: I think he could fairly be called a “human rights advocate” in that piece.
KSinMA
@lowtechcyclist: This!
p.a
You just have to demand they unmask, and follow the laws; habeas corpus, warrent searches, rules of citizen engagement (an especially quaint concept nowdays) and ICE will self-defund as the thugs slink away back to the swamps.
Interesting Name Goes Here
Ah, so we’re back on “the moral position” fuckshit.
I’m out.
p.a
@iKropoclast: Electoral College: where were those lost votes? Still prolly not determinative, but might be. Michigan? Penn?
iKropoclast
@p.a: So using my previous methodology, Biden total v Harris was 2.80 million v 2.74. 29 percent of the 60,000 difference suggests 17,400 votes switched due to Gaza. Trump’s margin of victory in Michigan was 75,000.
The national numbers may not match Michigan, that 29 percent figure is likely higher there. But not quadruple. Couldn’t be.
Michigan is the most likely case of a state swinging because of Gaza and, even there, it seems like a major stretch.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@Soprano2: I agree. She was mostly right. I think she has a realistic, grounded view of the people we need to bring into our tent as well. I also appreciated that for all her flaws, she’s a happy warrior.
gvg
@jonas: No it isn’t. People don’t think and aren’t logical. they don’t like “others”. That is deeply embedded in our instincts. It’s bad for prosperity and a modern society but tribalism is normal and hard to overcome. We have tried to increase legal immigration in the past. It almost always fails and hurts us except in the aftermath of some total disaster like WWII and the revalation of what the holocaust was.
We do really need more legal immigration and the demographics are inescapable. I hope we can take advantage of a backswing from this GOP Trump nonsense to improve things, but it won;t be as big as we need and if we make it too big we will lose again. We need to be subtle and propagandize and increase it gradually IMO
Not that bigotry isn’t wrong, just that its historically normal in every time and culture that I know of.
iKropoclast
Not only the government. Universities invest. Many invest in Israeli companies or in Americans weapons manufacturing. And the money they’re investing is coming from the six figure investments students are putting into their education. I think those students were very wise to observe this and demand divestment.
The government is not the only nexus of power.
Gloria DryGarden
deleted
tam1MI
@iKropoclast: the base initial assumption that supporting Palestinians means ignoring the crimes of Hamas.
We saw people right here in this very blog ignore or minimize the crimes of Hamas whenever they were brought up. That wasn’t an assumption, it was fact.
iKropoclast
I never saw that, not once. I have seen many accusations of commenters supposedly ignoring the crimes of Hamas, but those were of the nature of “you must denounce Hamas before and after anything else and maybe leave it to only denouncing Hamas now that I think of it.”
Just heaping loads of bad faith right there.
tam1MI
That’s what the Gazassholes tell themselves to justify helping to throw the election to Trump and, not incidentally, giving Netanyahu free rein to go all in on open massacre, but no one outside of those particular fever swamps buys that pathetic lie. Hell, most of the moderates that ousted Biden thought he was being TOO HARD on Israel!
Geminid
Since we’re talking about what *happened* regarding Gaza, I might as well comment on what is happening now. Initial talks about the US ceasefire plan wrapped up for a second day. From Kann News Arab Affairs correspondent Roi Kais:
These have been technical talks mapping out areas of agreement and disagreement. Tomorrow could mark a more decisive phase, with Trump envoys Witkoff and Kushner flying to Egypt this afternoon,* and Qatari Prime Minister Al-Thani scheduled to participate as well as Netanyahu’s envoy Ron Dermer. Also, Turkish Intelligence head Ibrahim Kalin will attend.
* Before Witkoff and Kushner left, they took part in a White Houdlse meeting that included Marco Rubio, JD Vance and Susan Wiles. This last is from reporting by Axios’s Barak Ravid.
iKropoclast
Hey, can you make the math actually math on this because I tried above and…no such luck.
ExPatExDem
@tam1MI: Right. It was definitely not Biden’s fault that he allowed Trump to position himself as the peace candidate. Because yay team blue!
satby
@Martin: but even mainstream media is talking about the huge, unaffordable hikes in premiums that ending the ACA subsidies will cause, especially since next year’s estimated premiums for the same plans are being mailed now. So if the Rs fold on this because of the pressure (and it’s starting to look possible) Dems get the credit. And if they don’t Rs get the blame, as they are right now for the shutdown anyway. Trump will only get credit from his true cultists anyway.
Gloria DryGarden
@Castor Canadensis: castor as in beaver, or as related to the castor bean plant?
Btw, there are 4 David colliers on blue sky, and one castor canadensis…
iKropoclast
Yeah, well, that’s two pieces of evidence in one statement that this particular group of moderates were and likely are still morons.
satby
@West of the Rockies: no idea what you mean
iKropoclast
@satby: Reference to the Disney movie, Encanto.
tam1MI
I hate to agree with this position, but… yeah. ☹️
iKropoclast
@tam1MI: I’d still like to see the math.
tam1MI
On that, I must sadly agree with you on.
satby
@iKropoclast: ah. Thanks. Never saw it.
satby
@tam1MI: @iKropoclast
and to you both, I suggest that was the objective.
satby
Oh Christ, I see Pax Moronicana has made it’s appearance.
tam1MI
I looked up the numbers for my state of Michigan on Wikipedia, and they showed that a significant amount of the Uncommitted vote went to Jill Stein and Donald Trump. HOWEVER, that swing was not decisive in pushing the state into the R column. (In other words, you could have taken every vote that the uncommitted people put towards. Jill Stein and Donald Trump, put them back in the Democratic column, and Michigan would still have gone Republican). Basically, in Michigan, it turned out that the Uncommitted people didn’t have the numbers to be able to swing an election on their own. What this means going forward, well… I’m sure Ezra Klein has an answer for that.
tam1MI
That’s fine for a long term project, but the situation in Gaza didn’t require long-term solutions, it was an emergency situation that needed direct short-term solutions as quickly as possible.
tam1MI
@iKropoclast: Hey, can you make the math actually math on this
Probably a dead thread here, but I was very careful in my phrasing on the, you are responding to. I said,” helping to throw “, not” throwing “, for a reason. As you showed with your much better math than I was able to summon 😉 , the uncommitted crowd tried, but they didn’t have enough numbers on their own to swing an election.
iKropoclast
And I’ll cop to missing that detail.
I’ll admit I was a little surprised when the number I got for Palestine supporters not supporting Harris yielded the crazification factor (27 percent).
Geminid
@tam1MI: I doubt very much that most of the moderates that “ousted” Biden thought he was being too hard on Israel. For one thing, I did not see any of them mention that issue. Neither did any approximately equal number of “progressive” Democrats calling for Biden to step aside.
I think almost all the Party’s moderates publically backed Biden’s handling of the war, and plenty of Progressive Caucus members did too.
WTFGhost
No, I’m not ignoring that. My point was very narrow: while the IDF has Palestinians pinned down and essentially helpless, you can’t try to call them antisemitic, or say they oppose a two state solution, because they’re not speaking the language of peace. Of course they’re not speaking peacefully, they’re getting the crap kicked out of them!
You don’t have to feel empathy for them – you can say “their fight is not mine, I don’t really care as much as I care about other things.” But you can’t draw conclusions, based upon your indifference and lack of understanding – not only is it morally wrong (knocking on the door of Bigotry, if not already in the house smoking a stinky cigar while dropping off an unflushed deuce in the pot), it’s bad reasoning – all-but bad *faith* reasoning, where you know you don’t understand the other person, but decide you do, too, “they’re just mean!” or hateful, or cheats, or anti-Semites.
That was my complaint – and that was my only complaint. I can’t render an opinion on many, many things, but I can say “the Palestinians are allowed to feel like the victims of a brutal war, and have the same feelings as you’d expect other victims of war to have. You might not want to appreciate their feelings, but you can’t act like those feelings are inhuman, or signs of being bad people!
Miss Bianca
@satby: Hey, I’ll accept a Republican doing the right thing for the wrong reasons.//
SteverinoCT
Way too late to the party, again. The Bloggess had a good friend that used to call it “Judy Garland trail mix.” As long as it’s all in the family…