What we're witnessing with #Melissa is ultra rare in the history of known hurricanes in the Atlantic. This level of sustained intensity and feasting on every joule of ocean heat content without any real disruption is incredible.
Not hyperbole: Jamaica is facing a generational catastrophic event.— Steve Bowen (@stevebowen.bsky.social) October 27, 2025 at 10:23 PM
===
As the government shutdown drags on, Democrats push to renew Obamacare subsidies while Republicans debate changes to the law.
— The Associated Press (@apnews.com) October 28, 2025 at 12:30 AM
… Fifteen years after the Affordable Care Act was enacted, the party remains united in criticizing the law but divided on how to move forward. That tension has come into sharp focus during the government shutdown as Democrats seize on rising premiums to pressure Republicans into extending expiring subsidies for the law, often referred to as Obamacare.
President Donald Trump and GOP leaders say they’ll consider extending the enhanced tax credits that otherwise expire at year’s end — but only after Democrats vote to reopen the government. In the meantime, people enrolled in the plans are already being notified of hefty premium increases for 2026.
As town halls fill with frustrated voters and no clear Republican plan emerges, the issue appears to be gaining political strength heading into next year’s midterm elections…
‘Concepts of a plan’
… Republicans say they want a broader overhaul of the health care system, though such a plan would be difficult to advance before next year. Party leaders have not outlined how they’ll handle the expiring tax credits, insisting they won’t negotiate on the issue until Democrats agree to end the shutdown.House Speaker Mike Johnson told a press conference Monday that the tax credits are “subsidizing bad policy.” Republicans “have a long list of ideas” to address health care costs, he said, and are “grabbing the best ideas that we’ve had for years to put it on paper and make it work.”…
A looming internal GOP fight
Even as GOP leaders pledge to discuss ending the subsidies when the government opens, it’s clear that many Republican lawmakers are adamantly opposed to an extension.“At least among Republicans, there’s a growing sense that just maintaining the status quo is very destructive,” said Brian Blase, the president of Paragon Health Institute and a former health policy adviser to Trump during his first term…
Also pathetic, and fallacious:
House Speaker Mike Johnson said Monday that he's not "100% sure" if active duty service members will be paid at the end of the week, as the government shutdown continues.
— PBS News (@pbsnews.org) October 27, 2025 at 3:57 PM
you’re the fucking speaker of the house, you interminable dipshit, this is literally your job to know
— GHOULLIKEHELLMACHINE (@golikehellmachine.com) October 27, 2025 at 4:07 PM
the asymmetry between what dems are expected to speak to and republicans are expected to speak to drives me insane, dems were expected to know the detailed results of biden’s last colonoscopy while republicans openly lie about what day it is, solely because they can
— GHOULLIKEHELLMACHINE (@golikehellmachine.com) October 27, 2025 at 4:13 PM
It’s wild to me that the “traditional masculinity” people love being lied to and insulted by this little gremlin with the most irritating, shit-eating smirk I have ever seen
— We can BBs (@bf4u.bsky.social) October 27, 2025 at 10:23 AM
===
Let’s be clear: the administration is choosing not to tap emergency funds available to provide critical food assistance for families in need.
Their own shutdown plan — which they recently deleted — confirmed they could. Read it for yourself:— Amy Klobuchar (@amyklobuchar.com) October 27, 2025 at 3:13 PM
===
For me argentina is the easiest one because there's 40 million people on SNAP and we're giving milei 40 billion. "The president could give every hungry family a thousand dollars right now but he's giving it to argentina instead for no reason at all. He hates america"
— Hemry, Local Bartender (@bartenderhemry.bsky.social) October 27, 2025 at 1:10 PM
===
SNAP is probably the most effective federal dollar we spend in terms of long term domestic economic outcomes.
that isn’t why you should support it; you should support it because it is a moral imperative to feed the hungry.
but it’s why even a growth-oriented ghoul shouldn’t oppose it.— ghost malone ergo propter malone (@proptermalone.bsky.social) October 26, 2025 at 9:21 PM
===
this isn’t dooming, necessarily, but barring extraordinary means, these outcomes are already decided. this is the path the republicans have chosen for the nation.
— GHOULLIKEHELLMACHINE (@golikehellmachine.com) October 27, 2025 at 4:47 AM
there are so many terrible outcomes now that are baked in, no matter what the republican party does. this will be a very hard winter.
— GHOULLIKEHELLMACHINE (@golikehellmachine.com) October 27, 2025 at 4:45 AM
On The Road – Math Guy – Cannon River at Cowling arboretum on the Carleton campus, Northfield, MN.
Nukular Biskits
Good mornin’, y’all.
Normally I’d be doing my pre-work walk at this time but woke up with what feels like a strained muscle. WTF? I didn’t do anything that I can think of to cause that.
I wonder if some of Cole’s travails are contagious.
As for the burning dumpster/shitstorm that is the Trump Admin, fuck. Sorry.
Nukular Biskits
But showering billionaires with massive tax cuts ain’t.
Baud
Trump and the Republicans have not lied about their hatred of government, poor people, and government assistance to poor people.
Baud
@Nukular Biskits:
Good morning.
Chris T.
Yes, why is Trump giving everyone in Argentina a thousand dollars of our food money?
(this is an intentionally faulty way of phrasing it intended to force Republicans to explain… ETA: but, the population of Argentina is quite close to 40 million, so it actually lines up pretty well!)
Nukular Biskits
@Baud:
About to suit up for another day of work.
You have the bridge, Baud. ;>)
Betty Cracker
Turns out Argentina has a shit electorate too — the Weird Fat Elvis party gained seats after Sunday’s election.
On a more pleasant topic, did anyone else see that endless baseball game last night? I nodded off in like the 12th inning but woke up in time to see the walk off home run in the 18th.
Ishiyama
@Betty Cracker: Oh my G-D that was something to behold! A Fall Classic, indeed!
MagdaInBlack
@Betty Cracker: Even I, who knows nothing about sports-ball, know 18 innings is…a lot
Betty Cracker
@Ishiyama: Hell of a game! And Ohtani starts tonight.
Gloria DryGarden
The buck stops here” used to mean, if no one else has handled it, I will. It didn’t mean all the dollars stop at my pocket. Beginning to wonder if th3 speaker is getting some massive bribes or kick back to lie so much, so outrageously, yet be so wavering and wimpy of knowing wtf is going on.
Were going to wish we had that Argentina money, to be able help the folks in Jamaica. I think trump should have paid that out of his private funds.
Shalimar
The problem Republicans have with healthcare is that voters getting screwed is essential to their philosophy. They believe the stock market has to go up and all of the insurance and drug companies need to make increasing profits for their investors. All those profits have to come from somewhere. Welcome to higher premiums.
MagdaInBlack
@Gloria DryGarden: Bribery, or blackmail? Or just plain mean?
Baud
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
@Shalimar: I don’t think nixing the subsidies does anything for health insurance companies or big pharmaceutical companies. It means fewer insured people which means only the chronically ill will keep their insurance- healthy folks will go back to gambling that they won’t get sick. So insurance companies will lose the healthy customers that subsidize the sick. Fewer people will be seeking health care, fewer prescriptions will be written so pharma loses – maybe not big but at least a little.
Suzanne
@Betty Cracker:
Hell being other people is not American exceptionalism.
I read about this, and I’m just…… always shocked (not surprised, but I retain my capacity for shock) at the conservative refusal to invest in people. Every business owner who hires employees knows that good employees are not easy to come by, Every parent can tell you about how much effort is required to turn babies into people. Ensuring that Americans have sufficient nutrition is really the first task of any functional government — and we will have nothing else good if we do not make this basic investment in people,
Baud
Via Reddit, actual CNn headline that has no basis in the Union’s message.
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
I don’t know what Republicans think they’re going to come up with if they do decide to replace Obamacare with something else but I guarantee it’ll give Obamacare a sterling reputation in comparison.
The Republicans seem to be getting farther away from extending the subsidies. Honestly I wonder even if the clean CR passed would Trump just veto it? He seems to be happy as a pig in slop inflicting pain and hardship so at this point it seems like he might just keep the government shut so he can double down on it.
MagdaInBlack
So basically we are about to experience our very own American “Shock Doctrine.”
Professor Bigfoot
@Baud: Ahhhh, thank you; my morning is started off right.
G’MORNIN’, all you lunatic Jackals! Joy of the day to you!
Baud
@What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?:
We shouldn’t be taken in by Republican posturing. That road leads to weakness.
lowtechcyclist
Yeah sure, if we give up all our leverage here, you’ll ‘consider’ our request. Uhhuh.
TONYG
@Baud: The 2024 presidential election has shown the world that a little more than half the people who bothered to vote are just shit people. They will remain shit people long after Trump kicks the bucket.
Deputinize America
@Suzanne:
Silly lady, doncha know that comforting the already comfortable is the only way to get continued productivity out of them, and that dumbasses who slog out work every day need to feel privation in order to be motivated?
Any other way is simply unamerican!
iKropoclast
I’ll consider what you want after you give me what I want is not good negotiating, especially if you accept the proposition that the person making that offer needs the second person. Also they can just get their own way on their own, anyway.
Knaves.
Professor Bigfoot
This piece is about the Kentucky GOP; but I suspect it applies to Republicans everywhere.
Professor Bigfoot
@iKropoclast: As a former B2B capital equipment sales professional I’d say… that ain’t negotiating at all.
That’s serving up an ultimatum… and whoever’s on the other side of that negotiating table is only rational to tell them to get fucked.
iKropoclast
@Professor Bigfoot: You’re absolutely right. But that’s the era we live in, Trump and the Republicans will not negotiate on even terms, there always needs to be some coercive element. See also, tariffs.
rikyrah
Good Morning, Everyone😊😊😊
Baud
@rikyrah:
Good morning.
rikyrah
@lowtechcyclist:
Consider😒😒
Nope
Professor Bigfoot
Oh, THIS is some fucking BOOOOLSHIT
ETA: Okay, that post is a year old so I shouldn’t have let it raise my blood pressure… but it’s still some first class bullshit.
Baud
@Professor Bigfoot:
Heh. The Centrists Fight Back!
ETA: Just saw your update. Happens all the time on social media. Stuff always gets recycled.
Mai Naem mobile
@Baud: every time orange pig starts a sentence with ‘low IQ’ I know it’s going to be followed by the name of a black woman. It will never ever be a white male. Never.
Baud
@Mai Naem mobile:
He knows what his followers want.
Professor Bigfoot
White Sox Fan in the Vatican Forced To Accept a Cubs Jersey.
The best part? The little “well played my friend, well played” smile on Leo’s face.
Harrison Wesley
For any tax experts out there:if I give money to pay military salaries,can I show that as a charitable deduction?
Ramalama
Well, doesn’t jacking troops for their paydays do something to combat readiness?
Also, Wilco and Billy Bragg are going to tour and perform their two joint albums especially Mermaid Avenue…and they will never make it to Montreal.
zhena gogolia
@Baud: Hers are the only videos I click on. She always makes me feel better.
Deputinize America
@Professor Bigfoot:
Ah, my wife’s Connecticut cousins, along with much of the rest of the vast, entitled landscape of suburban/exurban white women.
Deputinize America
@Professor Bigfoot:
My God, that’s magnificent.
Ohio Mom
@Harrison Wesley: I wouldn’t think so because you are not giving money to a charitable organization. The IRS decides what entities are or aren’t charities.
You can give a gift of money to an individual, subject to the gift tax exclusion. I lost track of what the gift tax exclusion is these days, something like $16,000.
Spanky
October 28, 1929
Black Monday
Stock market drops for the second day by 12.8%.
Happy Anniversary, everybody!
coin operated
Pastor Mike isn’t 100% sure if the troops are getting paid?
Well…the airman that one of my daughters is dating sure as hell isn’t getting paid. I’m 100% sure of that.
iKropoclast
For people who never seem to know what reporters are talking about when asked questions, these Republicans sure seem to get the deference of a knowledgeable expert when they issue new lies.
Scout211
State monitors to monitor the federal monitors.
And to note:
Matt McIrvin
@Suzanne: They have a moral system based on the necessity of suffering. Not for themselves, but for people beneath them in the social hierarchy. If you’re at the bottom, you have to earn your way up by being tough and you get tough by suffering. Coddling the underpeople just ruins them morally.
Meanwhile, the successful need to be rewarded for the virtues that got them where they were.
sab
@Ohio Mom: The annual gift tax exclusion exclusion for 2025 is $19,000.
Geo Wilcox
@Gloria DryGarden: No not bribes, blackmail. They have some shit on Mikey and will use it if he steps out of line. You have to wonder why a freaky weirdo back bencher like him got chosen as speaker… because he’d fall 100% into line with Trump every time.
Deputinize America
@sab:
The gift tax and the exclusion have always been a joke.
The well-off buy the debts of their kids and doted-on family members, they also provide real estate and credit lines and ignore reporting requirements.
Suzanne
@Matt McIrvin: These are the kind of people that were spanked as children, and then they grow up to spank their children. And they say, “Look at me, I turned out fine.” No, you didn’t. You turned into an adult who spanks children.
This is one of the more depressing aspects of human nature, IMO. One would think that being the victim of mistreatment in some fashion would make one want to avoid that for others, but it doesn’t. Even on our side. We do not have broad solidarity between various marginalized identity groups in the way I think is logical and moral. It’s all self-interest, all the way down.
Deputinize America
@Scout211:
The Federal voting monitors will be Proud Boys in ICE costumery, and will be armed and aggressive.
satby
Paul Krugman’s newsletter today, lots more at the link (share widely):
sab
@Harrison Wesley: Ohio Mom is right. If you can’t find an IRS recognized charity to fund it through then it is not a charitable deduction. There is a gift tax exclusion for $19,000 per individual recipient, but that doesn’t help you for income tax.
That is why millionaires and billionaires set up their foundations. Those are charities that they can donate to while getting an income tax deduction, and they still get to control who the charity funds, all tax deductible.
Professor Bigfoot
#NotAllWhitePeople
In case someone here is following me on Bluesky. X^D
coin operated
Since we’re in an open thread…
I took note of all the Big Box retailers advertising mid-November Black Friday deals during Monday Night Football. They’re advertising Black Friday deals that take place two weeks before Thanksgiving, and we’re not out of October yet.
Something tells me the economy is in trouble if we’re seeing Black Friday ads this far out. Retailers are obviously nervous.
Peale
This damn hurricane just wants to take its time. Was supposed to land Saturday, then Sunday. Then Tuesday at 6:00am.
A moral Christian nation that wants to be a hegemony might be mobilising assistance. Unfortunately, we don’t live there. Instead, the administration is probably gleeful about the opportunity for photo ops deporting Jamaicans.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Betty Cracker:
How the hell does that even happen? His party had several local losses not long before. So much for Krugman’s prediction
I know Argentina isn’t the same as the US, but it makes you wonder if the same could happen here next year, amazingly
sab
@Deputinize America: They don’t all ignore the requirements. And there could be teeth if the IRS had the resources to enforce it.
It generally comes out at the estate tax end. Competent tax professionals don’t ignore it when preparing and signing estate tax returns because they also have reponsibilities and face repurcussions if they knowingly prepare false tax returns.
zhena gogolia
I like this People magazine headline:
Peale
@coin operated: the money they’ll need to pay health insurance has to come from somewhere, and that somewhere is Macy’s.
Suzanne
@coin operated: I’m not sure that the Black Friday ads are a portent. Black Friday has been expanding to a weeks-long shopping-palooza for years and now it competes with events like Prime Day.
Ironically, I am not planning to purchase many gifts this year. I genuinely don’t want anything. In fact, I’m trying to declutter the house.
Cliosfanboy
@Professor Bigfoot: I have been for quite awhile. :)
Soprano2
@Professor Bigfoot: I’m sure that could apply to a lot of them in Missouri.
Another Scott
@Harrison Wesley: It seems to me this discussion is a category error.
AFAIK, the only way the public can donate money to the federal government is for the general fund or a fund to make payments on the public debt. And it makes sense. Elected officials are supposed to decide what is done with public money, not any yahoo who sends a check.
NPR.org (from May 2023):
fiscal.treasury.gov/public/gifts-to-government.html
treasurydirect.gov/government/public-debt-reports/gifts/
Always remember the first rule: 47 lies about everything.
FWIW.
Best wishes,
Scott.
Paul in KY
@Betty Cracker: Go Bluejays!!!
Paul in KY
@Baud: Omarosa maybe?
Soprano2
@Mai Naem mobile: I think it’s funny that he thinks the test they use to evaluate people for dementia is an IQ test. The fact that he claims to have taken it multiple times is telling, even if most people don’t know that. That test is given multiple times to gauge decline over time. They probably told him it was an IQ test to make him feel better. I highly doubt he “aced” it. If he took the long form one, he couldn’t ace it because no one could. The man who leads one of the support groups I go to is involved in dementia research as a subject because of his family history. He’s taken the long form numerous times; he says even someone who is fully aware couldn’t “pass” it, because it’s too hard.
Scout211
Huff Post
Oh hell no! Are these media people nuts?
iKropoclast
As perceived by whom, exactly?
Paul in KY
@Professor Bigfoot: Best wishes to you, sir!
Soprano2
@zhena gogolia: Wow, I’m impressed by that headline! None of the “real” press has the stones to say that.
iKropoclast
@Soprano2: Not exactly news, but I’ll take it.
Steve in the ATL
@Paul in KY: why do you hate America?
Oh, right–that makes sense!
Another Scott
@Another Scott: I meant to add –
People who donated to do things like build the WWII memorial on the Mall weren’t donating to the United States Government. They were donating to a separate dedicated legal entity that was funding construction of the memorial. In that case, the American Battle Monuments Commission.
Best wishes,
Scott.
Paul in KY
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Only from watching soccer, but the average (male) Argentinian seems to be a dickhead.
Soprano2
@Scout211: What qualifications could he possibly think she has to do such a thing? They act like these jobs require no knowledge or expertise; all you have to do is be conservative, and magically you’re “qualified”.
coin operated
@Suzanne: I don’t watch a lot of TV, but it seemed like every commercial block featured a Black Friday ad. It was a bit weird to me.
Chief Oshkosh
@Shalimar: The stock market doing well and us proles doing well are not mutually exclusive outcomes.
They just like it that way.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Scout211:
And this Rich Greenfield felt completely fine just expressing this out in the open for the American public to see? Openly trying to curry favor with an aspiring autocrat?
It makes you wonder what these people were taught in school and if they ever really believed in our national ideals. They were incredibly quick to sell them out and comply, just like they would to any foreign authoritarian government they wanted access to
tobie
@coin operated: I wonder how long this game of saying “I don’t know” can go on till it wears thin. Yes, Pastor Mike repeats it endlessly like the mechanical wind-up doll he is. But so does every other member of this admin. RFK, Jr is the worst! I want the mash-up not just of the House Speaker but of every membes of the admin claiming ignorance about what’s happening at the agencies they supposedly run. It shows their disrespect for the American people as well as their incompetence.
piratedan
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): not saying its likely, but possible… lets be honest here and recognize that there is a certain element in our population that is more than willing to burn this mother down and if the GOP turning our country into a dystopian political hellscape suits them fine.. why? dunno, these folks never seem to grok the… I’m comfortable now, but if we burn our political bridges now, whatever is built afterwards will be awesome with little recognition that our society depends on all of us, doing their things. What happens if food doesn’t get delivered, do those people just continue to show up for work, if the sick are not made well, who takes their shift… u know the day to day stuff.
Couple that with the media treating the 47 Admin as if they’re Kevin Bacon at the end of Animal House is not exactly helping people stay informed and who, ultimately is responsible for the actions and deeds.
For fucks sake, people are going to actually believe that Democrats control the government even though they hold no majorities in the federal government.
I would love it if on one of these rare pivots to Democratic politicians by the media when they ask them about the shutdown if someone would simply stare into the camera and stated that if Democrats actually controlled the House they would be in session, working with the GOP to get a budget approved and people and troops would be getting paid and their health care would be protected. They are not, so none of those things are happening. Period.
tobie
@Scout211:
No, they’re craven and willing to abandon freedom of the press for a fistful of dollars.
Are there any Democrat-leaning billionaires willing to spend a fraction of their fortune to save American democracy? What could be more noble?
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@iKropoclast:
And since when is “perceived media bias” a bad thing when it comes to right-wing media? People like Greenfield apparently don’t have any problem with that, or the media subordinating itself to the government
iKropoclast
If the proles are doing well, the stock market is not doing as well as it could be. The system elevates owners over workers by design. The health and comfort of workers should be properly calibrated to maximize productivity, nothing more.
lowtechcyclist
@Professor Bigfoot:
Leo is the first Pope where I felt, “this is a human being that I can relate to.”
Professor Bigfoot
All you have to do is be white.
All the Black conservatives who kissed Trump’s ass… where are they today?
Kosh III
Of course the Repulsicans have a health care plan: Get sick and die.
iKropoclast
The media has done a good job convincing the unthinking that they strive for no bias and that this is a good thing. The fact is bias can’t be eliminated, being honest about bias is important, and their attempts to “appear” unbiased are actually an insidious method of getting people to accept their bias as unquestioned truth.
schrodingers_cat
@Professor Bigfoot: I am pretty sure they think of themselves as egalitarian and not like their MAGA cousins because they do hot yoga and occasionally eat at an Indian restaurant.
prostratedragon
Both teams had defensive gems in last night’s baseball game. Here’s one by the Dodgers (should be at 4:33).
lowtechcyclist
@Scout211:
And I wonder, who’s watching the man who’s watching me?
I wonder, who’s watching that man who’s watching the man who’s watching me?
Who’s watching the man who’s watching the man who’s watching the man who’s watching the man who’s watching the man who’s watching me?
–Si Kahn, “Who’s Watching the Man” (of course)
tobie
@iKropoclast:
This reminds me that I’ve never read a management consultant’s report that didn’t recommend downsizing.
Steve in the ATL
@lowtechcyclist: you couldn’t relate to Benedict XVI? You guys might have had the same totenkopf tattoo!
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@iKropoclast:
Exhibit A: NewsNation
“News for All Americans”
Sorry, I don’t consider a network that has Bill O’Reilly on a townhall to be trustworthy or “unbiased”
I guess Cuomo will do anything for a paycheck
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Paul in KY:
They’ve been a basket case for the better part of a century (not helped by us), so I shouldn’t be very surprised I guess. I just figured his goose was cooked given his party got a shellacking in recent local elections and the fallout from his policies. Maybe that promised bailout really did give him a boost?
lowtechcyclist
@coin operated:
Except I noticed the same thing last year. And maybe the year before.
It’s season creep, for lack of a better term. Halloween stuff shows up in the stores in mid-August. Christmas decorations start supplanting Halloween merch in late September. (Seriously, I’ve got a photo from September 21 of last year of three aisles’ worth of Christmas merch at the local Wal-Mart.) Black Friday sales start in early November.
It’s just the way it is.
Baud
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
Someone on Reddit said those local elections were in an area where the opposing party was strong, so not that indicative. Obviously they weren’t.
Aziz, light!
Every time Democrats expend their political capital saving people from Republican policies, the Republicans take credit for the save. Then they enact more bad policies. This is a never-ending cycle. It’s very tough love to do it, but I think the Dems need to let the chips fall.
iKropoclast
The Cuomo brothers are right wingers, prove me wrong…
Geminid
My take on Mike Johson is he got the Speaker job because he hadn’t made any enemies. House Republicans were getting desperate. They would float prospects like Tom Emmer and they’d get shot down by one faction or another. It was like lining a Rubik’s Cube with 8 sides and 221 individual squares. Johnson’s inoffensive nature made him the default choice.
As for Kompromat, Trump may have it but it’s not like he needs it. He can make or break most House Republicans with either an endorsement or by endorsing a primary challenger..
Now Trump’s trying to break Rep. Massie. I believe he has his candidate, a former SEAL (I think). Thomas Massie is hard target though, and that will be an interesting primary. There is a lot of money lined up on the anti-Massie side.
Ramalama
@lowtechcyclist: The Creeps sure are in season.
prostratedragon
Emma Thompson on AI editorial assistants.
Ramalama
Also, sending out a cartwheel and a prayer to Jamaica. And I’m thinking back to #45 administration and the paper toweled response to Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico.
gene108
Republicans are stuck on healthcare, because government is the only solution. There’s no “free market” solution for healthcare. There’s no bargain basement brand chemotherapy to choose from or for doctors to order.
If you need medical care, you need medical care that meets a specific standard.
Sandia Blanca
@Professor Bigfoot: I am now, thank you!
Suzanne
@Professor Bigfoot: “Kamala Harris is not a reliable centrist”……. Yeah, that’s why I like her. Thank you, ma’am, may I have another. LMAO.
This reminds me of how Ted Cruz’s campaign tried to knock on Beto O’Rourke by showing a picture of him looking exceedingly hot with his bandmates when he was young. Or when Republicans thought it would make AOC look silly to show a video of her dancing in college, also looking exceedingly hot.
prostratedragon
Presenting the Epstein Ballroom
Shalimar
@Scout211: Charlie Kirk was very proud that his beauty pagaent winner wife was a homemaker. A traditional wife. He believed all women should do that. What are her qualifications to even be a reporter, let alone run the news departments for 3 networks?
It’s almost like everything they say is bullshit so we should just ignore it when the contradictions make no sense.
Professor Bigfoot
@Aziz, light!: I think we here have long accepted that this pain is necessary… but now we’re watching it play out.
They not like us, they really don’t care about anyone else’s suffering; so the only way they MIGHT change is if they suffer along with the rest of us.
Professor Bigfoot
@iKropoclast: They don’t have to be right-wingers.
Just bog-standard American white men.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
jonas
But isn’t that true of every single GOP congressperson these days? They’re all spineles toadies.
p.a.
1) Jamaica is in the Commonwealth. Is that organization just “political” or can it organize/deploy emergency aid when/where needed?
2) File under: “It’s irresponsible not to speculate”: from a NOT-A-NEUROLOGIST source: Kisunla is a once-a-month anti-alzheimer iv drug that requires mri’s to evaluate for both positive & negative results.
jonas
Well if you actually had an open search for the most qualified person, you might end up with a POC and then it wouldn’t be a “meritocracy.”
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Trump was looking like the walking dead in the Japan. The Japanese prime minster had to constantly show him what to do.
There is another film of Trump doing a campaign speech on an aircraft carrier in Japan and he looked like his usual self. I think he simply is incapable now of responding to any new stimulus but can function well enough doing his usual bullshit.
Professor Bigfoot
@jonas: Thomas Massie on the Epstein files.
He is a despicable wretch, to be sure; but “the boy’s got sand.”
Suzanne
@iKropoclast:
I don’t know much about Chris, but Andrew is broken in ways that precede politics. He might hold liberal political views, but it doesn’t matter. He’s a terrible person and can’t be trusted to hold a position of trust.
mappy!
When there’s no ROI (good faith, time and effort spent)…
jonas
What are the chances that the MSM actually reports on this minor detail rather than just offering “bothsides” bromides about who’s responsible for the shutdown? Worthless soundbite from a Republican, worthless soundbite from a Democrat and….scene.
prostratedragon
Meanwhile his minions are ever so busy.
Baud
Harrison Wesley
@Another Scott: So what does the guy who donated big bucks for military salaries get? Unless he/she/it is settling for the thanks of a grateful nation.
tobie
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: My cousin told me that the rumor in the medical community is that the mark on Trump’s hands comes from infusions of the anti-dementia drug leqembi. Who knows? We speculate because we’re in the dark about things that really matter to our national well being.
Gin & Tonic
@Suzanne: They are their father’s sons. I know Mario is near sainthood in the Democratic Party, but he was a ruthless political operator and a control freak.
jonas
@Baud: It will be interesting to see if Texas courts and judges are more captured by corporate interests or MAGA woo insanity. Good times.
iKropoclast
Always with the repetition…😏
You’re right. And I was trying to be cutesy with the Stephen Crowder framing device. But no matter your ideological outlook, if you’re always acting to elevate Republicans…
jonas
As I wrote the other day, I think this is why his staff is pushing the whole ballroom renovation thing. When he’s talking about renovating
hotels and time sharesthe White House, he’s back in his happy place from long ago and the dementia/confusion/idiocy isn’t as apparent.iKropoclast
@Professor Bigfoot: I asked how to follow you a couple weeks ago. It’s almost like you don’t want me on your feed…😢
Professor Bigfoot
@iKropoclast: Nearly 2/3 of white men went Trump; and you know well that very few humans are willing to do the introspection necessary to SEE how their cultural environment drives their choices and their beliefs.
There’s damned little mindfulness among my fellow citizens.
p.a.
@jonas: Tylenol is owned by Kenvue, a consumer health company that was spun off from Johnson & Johnson in 2023. Kenvue also owns other well-known brands such as Neutrogena, Listerine, and Band-Aid
Johnson & Johnson’s corporate capitalization is significantly larger than Kenvue’s
, with J&J’s market cap at approximately $462.41 billion and Kenvue’s at around $28.93 billion as of late October 2025. The difference reflects J&J’s broader focus on pharmaceutical and medical devices versus Kenvue’s specialization as a pure-play consumer health
Texas lucky it’s smaller now. Both info packets via google ai
Professor Bigfoot
@iKropoclast: Sorry, I missed it, but I am he and he is me and we are all together.
Harrison Wesley
@iKropoclast: Strange generational changes. Mario to his sons,George Romney to Mitt. Why do the kids turn right?
Deputinize America
@Baud:
Jesus fuck – talk about nutpicking a venue. This was filed in Panola County state court (East Bumfuck) – removal puts in in USDC ED Texass.
Give Texas back to Mexico – it’s unredeemable.
jonas
@p.a.: Regardless of how big the company is now, the larger issue is whether Texas judges really want to open the door to corporations being sued willy-nilly over made-up conspiracy theories. What’s next? Boeing dragged into court over chemtrails?
Oh, shit…
Jeffro
I was too busy watching the Chiefs finally get it together in the second half and rout the Commanders*. Mr. Swift had 99 yards and a tuddy!
*The Commanders are, in a way, the reason I started rooting for the Chiefs some 30 years ago!
Tim in Cape Fear
Say I flunked Civics: it’s up to Dems to get Congress back in? Shouldn’t the Squeaker just say, Get back in here, House? Am I missing a fine loophole here?
Suzanne
@Gin & Tonic: Mario Cuomo was exceedingly good at politics. Mad skills, as they say.
Andrew Cuomo is literally dangerous to the people he works with. He could have political views that closely align with mine and he would still be unacceptable for any kind of position of responsibility or power. Kind of like a Senate candidate from Maine that I could mention.
What I find strange is that there seems to be some people who align with me on Platner’s unacceptability, but then also seem to think that Cuomo is acceptable. Like…. why is that?
As some of us were discussing yesterday….. I appreciate consistency. I aspire to it.
Another Scott
@Harrison Wesley: Again, see Rule #1.
As far as I know, all that we know about the “donation” is summarized in this APNews.com story. Note the caveats at the end.
Also, FederalNewsNetwork.com:
The law is clear about this stuff.
FWIW.
Best wishes,
Scott.
Jeffro
fixed ;)
Suzanne
@Harrison Wesley:
Class privilege is a real thing.
jonas
@Tim in Cape Fear: Speaker Johnson could reconvene the House and start working out a budget compromise in two seconds if he wanted to, but Trump doesn’t want him to. Plus it would put the Epstein File issue back on the front burner and they don’t want that either. So here we are.
We don’t have a Congress anymore — it’s the fucking Russian Duma.
iKropoclast
@Professor Bigfoot: Word, thank you.
iKropoclast
Privilege.
p.a.
@Suzanne: Yeah. Born on 3rd, think they hit a triple.
Glidwrith
@What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?: Loss of those subsidies puts us back to pre-Obamacare. Death spiral for the insurance companies because no one can afford their premiums.
Suzanne
@p.a.: Weird things are happening within the white people cohort right now w/r/t class. The white lower classes are voting for Republicans and the white upper classes (really starting at household income of $100K or more, so not even really that “upper”) are voting for Democrats. This wasn’t the case even as recently as Obama’s elections, it’s a new thing.
I am interested in this. Sparrows and curtain rods seems like part of the explanation. But only part.
Glidwrith
@Tim in Cape Fear: The thugs are pretending they can’t pass the CR without Democratic votes because of the filibuster. But the Thugs could get rid of it with a simple majority vote. They don’t want to because then the thugs have to take responsibility for cutting healthcare subsidies and food stamps.
Squeaker knows this and is lying.
Another Scott
@Another Scott:
Meanwhile, … FederalNewsNetwork.com (from yesterday):
Reality always gets a vote, eventually.
Grr…
Best wishes,
Scott.
Bupalos
Yeah but I still feel like an EV might be less convenient for me and the vacations I take and solar panels aren’t as attractive as my premium shingles. Also I’m busy and it doesn’t matter what I do, someone else has to do something or else I’m just a sucker with a less convenient vacation drive. When everyone else does something then I’ll do it too.
jonas
@Professor Bigfoot: MTG, another horrible person, has also been outspoken on the Epstein Files. And getting the insurance subsidies fixed, but that’s only because she found out one of her own kids, who of course by definition isn’t a shiftless moocher like all the others who depend on the ACA, might be affected, so now it’s a priority.
Paul in KY
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): I’m going to have to think the bailout helped his party. Would usually think TACO will stiff them, but this is all about bailing out some donor billionaires so I guess he’ll come through with the money.
After all, it’s not like it’s his money anyway…
p.a.
@Suzanne: Is Class Status Anxiety (Bad Bunny! Try That in a
HickSmall Town) that much different than “they have no curtain rod or sparrow, ha ha.”?Racism as layer cake?
Paul in KY
@lowtechcyclist: I have neighbors that put up all their Halloween crap in early Sep. And they have alot of stuff.
Paul in KY
@Shalimar: Pro Tip: Everything they say is bullshit
Matt McIrvin
@Shalimar: Phyllis Schlafly built a high-powered career as a public figure and political kingmaker on the insistence that a woman’s place was in the home as a submissive domestic caretaker.
Betty Cracker
@prostratedragon: Thank you, Emma Thompson! Also, I wish getting rid of that irritant were as simple as turning off the option! That closes off one avenue, but AI is coming from every direction. They will monetize it or kill us all trying.
Omnes Omnibus
@Matt McIrvin: “One must really admire that sacrifices she made.”
Paul in KY
@Suzanne: Didn’t like their dad (maybe subconsciously) and went that way to stick it to them/their legacy?
Suzanne
@p.a.:
If it was purely about status anxiety w/r/t race, then it would not be logical for relatively richer white people to support policies that help minorities and lower-SES white people. Sparrow-and-curtain-rod theory doesn’t explain that.
Of course, the makeup of that $100K-and-up group is changing, as well.
prostratedragon
@jonas:
An urgent question
Scout211
This makes sense to me because that drug and the other infusion medication for Alzheimer’s can cause brain bleeds. That’s why my husband’s neurologist nixed it for him.
The “routine MRI” may have been a check for the brain bleeds that is required periodically for those infusions. And when Trump claims he “passed” the MRI with the best results, he just means that he didn’t have that severe side effect.
It’s irresponsible not the speculate. ;-)
ETA: I read somewhere that Trump’s golfer granddaughter mentioned in one of her TikToks that the bruise on his hand started toward the end of 2024.
iKropoclast
@Betty Cracker: An approximately one in five chance using my phone’s built in search function will prompt me to try their AI features. That answer will always be no.
Hell, I’d like to eliminate AI response from my search results. Ignoring it is insufficient, by my estimation
Paul in KY
@Matt McIrvin: Phyllis made alot of money doing that.
Miss Bianca
@Geminid: I read an article somewhere (not going to bother to find a link) that indicated Massie has a pretty comfortable war chest himself.
Matt McIrvin
@Tim in Cape Fear: Johnson is lying. It’s what he does. Yes, they have the power to reconvene Congress and end the shutdown without a single Democratic vote. They don’t want to, because they want to inflict cruelties on the people and blame Democrats, either for the shutdown itself, or for the compromises that they might bully Democrats into making. They see this as a win-win.
From inside their bubble, it is. Nobody believes Johnson’s lies except MAGA, but their whole strategy is base retention and if they can get the media to hammer their party line hard enough, it might eventually recapture independents. It hasn’t so far.
Professor Bigfoot
@Suzanne: Higher incomes correlates with higher educational levels.
A lot of those high incomes are Biff with his high school degree who inherited his father’s car parts business, of course, but education really does seem to be a differentiator among white people.
Almost as if having a higher education helps white men understand how white supremacy and the patriarchy constrain them almost more than they constrain all of us who aren’t straight white and male.
Paul in KY
@Matt McIrvin: I think TACOs OK with it cause he can just do what he wants and doesn’t need to think about Congress, or those pesky Epstein files being released.
iKropoclast
@prostratedragon: Catapults? I’m hoping this is a reference to maybe an assistive device for launching planes off a carrier or anything that makes sense, not medieval weaponry.
Paul in KY
@Professor Bigfoot: Might be more ‘We need poorer people to have a life, so they don’t kill us all someday.’
Suzanne
@Paul in KY: Maybe. But I think it’s really just simpler than that. When you grow up with wealth, you really only interact regularly with other rich people and you don’t grok how other people live or observe the social forces that make class mobility so hard. We only see our privileges in contrast, right?
Professor Bigfoot
@jonas: If Winnie and Frankie could enter into an alliance of convenience with Joe against a common enemy… I’m willing to let MTG and Massie cook, despite their less that noble motivations.
Omnes Omnibus
@iKropoclast: Medieval catapults generally were neither steam nor electrically powered.
iKropoclast
@Omnes Omnibus: So, say you were an idiot trying to modernize an old idea and don’t know how anything works…
Omnes Omnibus
@iKropoclast: I am listening… Oh, you meant Trump.
Matt McIrvin
@iKropoclast: It’s aircraft carriers. The need to go back to steam catapults on aircraft carriers is one of the longstanding bees in Trump’s bonnet, because he heard some story years and years ago about new linear-motor-based catapults having some technical trouble and it lodged in his skull forever. It’s one of his conservative grandpa obsessions with old technology, like going back to wasteful high-flow shower heads and toilets.
The funny thing is that the amusement industry has been perfecting this tech for decades. There are electromagnetic launch coasters all over that use the same tech– in fact they’ve mostly moved on from the LIM tech used in these catapults to more efficient LSM, but the LIMs are still out there running.
Professor Bigfoot
@Paul in KY: That works. ;^D
Juju
@Nukular Biskits: You got a sleep injury.
RevRick
@Shalimar: The GOP economic policy can be boiled down to essentially three tenets:
1). Cut taxes to the bare bones, especially for the wealthy;
2). Slash regulations on businesses to the bare bones;
3). Oppose any downward distribution of wealth.
At their foundation, the GOP subscribed to the Free Labor theory of the market, and have held on to this fantasy despite the predations of large corporations. They see this as a moral imperative, because they believe that people are fundamentally lazy cheaters, and so they require the stick of starvation to go to work. The carrot is a measly paycheck to ward off starvation.
zhena gogolia
@prostratedragon: I just sent that to my trusty IT guy.
Bupalos
@Professor Bigfoot: I understand that using rough “nearly” figures is intentional inaccuracy for propaganda purposes, but how about reeling it in a little with “nearly 6 in 10.” That will still be rounding up, but a little better.
BTW as regards overlapping identity propaganda, roughly the same ratio of white men with a college degree voted for Harris as white men overall voting for Trump. But of course identity essentialists only will allow and assign one “real” identity and chuck all the rest in the garbage.
iKropoclast
I was on one of those once, The Hulk at Universal. I had heard of the technology before, but I didn’t know that this coaster used it. Thrilled and delighted barely begins to describe how I felt.
Suzanne
@Professor Bigfoot:
Agreed. But I also think education and class are bifurcating white people. Like, “assortative mating by educational level” is so much more a thing than it used to be even a generation ago. More women are educated and they are partnering up with educated men, and they take their two relatively high incomes and combine them and they live somewhere pretty nice, away from where the working-class white people live. And they both work, probably make about the same money, and they do all that “intensive parenting” stuff, like club sports and instrument lessons. And they are less likely to go to an evangelical megachurch or mix socially at all with working-class people. So it isn’t just education changing people’s viewpoints, it’s the change in the social order represented by women having education and the change to the family and cultural values that it brings.
The gender-plus-education gap among white voters is huge.
Apparently when you layer age on top of this, the gulf becomes even wider. Makes sense….. there were relatively fewer women getting higher education as recently as roughly 25 years ago.
Martin
@Suzanne: But it’s not an unintended thing. The whole fucking theory of the Democrats back with Clinton was to win over middle class/professional class whites from the GOP. That’s what the tech revolution was in political terms. The whole strategy from the Dems was that tech would backfill the loss of middle class jobs due to wage erosion during the ’80s with tech jobs. It’s why California flipped from a red to a blue state. The idea that we’d retrain coal workers as programmers is a Democratic idea, and it’s why Democrats lost the working class, because the bargain was that the core of the party would be the middle class and we’d bring POC along for the ride. Problem is that Democrats were as committed to middle class priorities as Reagan was. That’s what neoliberalism is about – shift the core of the economy from wages to assets. That’s what defines the middle class from the working class – the middle class own a home, they have a stock portfolio. If wages are stagnant for them, it’s okay provided those assets are outrunning inflation – and boy did they. I didn’t retire at 53 because of my generous public sector salary – I never once made the median salary for my area. But my stock portfolio skyrocketed, the house I paid $400K for is worth $1.7M. That’s how I retired. And that’s what the core of the Democratic Party kind of looks like.
I noted in the election analysis that Democrats have increased their voting share of white voters in each of the last 3 elections and lost in the voting share of voters of color. Those voters of color aren’t necessarily voting GOP, a lot of them are just not voting. And those voters from the data are generally working class blacks, latinos, asians etc. Right now there is no party for the working class. Both parties claim to be for them, but none of their policies actually help them. The Dems aren’t shutting the government down because of the Medicaid cuts, they shut it down because of ACA cuts. The working class don’t get health care from the exchange for the most part – they don’t earn enough. The ACA is for the upper tier of the working class but mainly for the middle class – contract workers, self-employed, small business owners etc. I noted that in 2021 Dems tried to raise minimum wage and 8 Dems voted against it. Not just Manchinsinema but a bunch of rank and file folks.
This strategy started in ’92, when Dems went in on an asset economy over a wage one and they haven’t backed off. A lot of the working class held on, in part because it was clear the GOP wasn’t going to treat them better, and in part because historically Dems would come through, and they really haven’t. Apart from the American Rescue Plan, which was really good but temporary, Biden’s economic plans mostly benefitted the middle class. Billions in EV tax credits didn’t help the working class – they all went to the middle class, particularly middle class whites. That provision targeted me, and the government doesn’t need to give me incentives. And the auto unions hated that provision because EVs require less labor to build, so every shift toward EVs costs them jobs/hours, with no commensurate increase in wages to make up for it.
This is why I keep saying that Democrats are fighting the wrong fight. They chased the middle class starting in the 90s to reshape the electorate – and they won. Go to a No Kings Rally. These aren’t union people – they’re white collar and stay at home moms and all that. Democrats won – they clawed back the white middle class that used to be solid Reaganites, at the expense of the working class, and it’s killing them. They need to reshape the electorate again. They need to get the working class back. Instead of engaging in a culture war with the GOP, they should put a laser focus on the real villains of the last 50 years – the investor class. Billionaires should be the focus because they’ve taken half the national wealth. That’s why I think Mamdani is such a compelling politician because he’s really good at that message – like REALLY good. But it also means knowing what that part of the electorate needs – and that’s hard to do if you don’t live it. But if you look at local politics, a lot of it is centered on things like transit, because cars are getting too expensive for the working class. Minimum wage has been taken up as a policy of cities. I’ve repeatedly pointed to Newsom’s idea to create a kind of European style union for fast food workers here in CA where they get some collective bargaining rights without having to unionize and it applies statewide to all workers classified in those jobs. We’ll see if it works in the longer term. But there’s been fuckall happening at the federal level.
There’s a concept in economics of a ‘K shaped recovery’ to a recession. That’s when one portion of the population recovers strongly and another portion weakly, usually because of how the recovery legislation is structured. The US has a K shaped economy with asset holders feeling like things are fantastic, and non-asset holders getting fucked. That’s why going into 2024 the defense of the Biden economy by Democrats looked so out of touch. If you were in the middle class – things were great. Your retirement portfolio had never looked better, your home equity was through the roof, and those things massively overwhelmed the effects of inflation on food, rent (which you probably don’t pay), healthcare costs (which you probably don’t pay because you’re in a job that your employer covers) and so on. But the working class were getting hammered. We acted like inflation is a fleeting thing, but when the inflation rate goes back down to 3%, things don’t get cheaper, they just stop getting massively more expensive. You still have to keep paying the inflated rates and if wages didn’t keep up (they didn’t) whatever hole you were in just got deeper. The effect on credit card interest was devastating, with the average rate jumping to 24% from 16%, which for the 60% of Americans (concentrated at the lower end of the income scale) who carry a balance represented a 50% increase in interest payments overnight that never subsided. Sure, inflation got better, but their minimum credit card payments were much, much higher. A lot of the Democratic middle class didn’t see that either.
So it’s not weird – it’s intended. But it started a long time ago and people are just now starting to notice. You didn’t see it with Obama because as a POC, he helped hold the coalition together in a way that Biden or Clinton couldn’t do. He bought the party some time. We didn’t really use that time well.
prostratedragon
@iKropoclast:
Aircraft launchers. But steam-powered ones have been obsolete for a while and for some very good reasons.
Bupalos
@Betty Cracker: Kind of a trash game if you ask me. Terrible defense, massive freaky blown call that probably flipped the outcome in the end. Everyone trying to jack homers for 7 innings off third-tier relievers- the most boring extras you’ll ever see.
On paper it looks like a classic, in real time it was a thoroughly bad game of baseball.
Bupalos
@Martin: As always, I’m in complete agreement here. There are global systemic factors making all of our politics more destabilized, but the basics of the Democratic decline is right here.
UncleEbeneezer
Oh so NOW Oliver Willis wants to talk about SNAP, ACA etc?…
I remember damn well when people were arguing for centering these issues in our election messaging but Willis and all his fans only wanted to scream “Genocide!” He is one of the worst examples of the LoyalDemsBut™ who only want to hammer and bash Dems before elections but then suddenly cares about these issues once we have no power.
Matt McIrvin
@Martin:
To repeat what I’ve been saying: YOU CAN’T not engage in a culture war! The culture war engages with you! The Republicans are driving it, and what you’re asking for is surrender. And they will then kill minorities and LGBT people in huge numbers.
I think we can do two things at the same time.
iKropoclast
@UncleEbeneezer: We’re spending money toward depriving our people and depriving the Palestinian people. I won’t fault anyone for pointing any of this out. And absent a state of war, I would never try to justify our country inflicting worse harm outside our borders than inside.
Professor Bigfoot
@RevRick: An entire political party of pre-Visitation Scrooges, eh
ETA- hit me as I hit send— once again, they not like us.
They are pre-Visitation Scrooge, we are post-Visitation Scrooge. 😉
Deputinize America
@iKropoclast:
I rode The Hulk nearly 30 years ago, and its name fit, because I was green when I stepped off.
Bupalos
@Professor Bigfoot: There’s a lot of research suggesting that college itself tends to change these attitudes less than one might think. It’s another correlation/causation thing. The people who go to college tend to already have more enlightened views.
iKropoclast
Ding, ding, ding; give the man a prize.
These arguments that we need deemphasize culture issues over kitchen table issues? Well, my kitchen table seats two gay men and an immigrant.
Professor Bigfoot
@prostratedragon: I think it’s less that steam cats are obsolete so much as that electromagnetic launch systems are better in terms of reliability and usability.
Bupalos
@Matt McIrvin: I think there’s an argument that the way to engage in “culture war” is less overtly in a political sense. There’s a fair amount of recent evidence that a march forward not loudly backed by partisan politics accomplishes our goals better. One thing that is really clear across cultures and histories is that when the citizenry gets poor and stupid it also trends more revanchist socially. It takes improvement in the material circumstances of life to create the room for an open mind.
Admittedly thorny question though.
Jeffro
A lot of politicians are pandering to the white working class, instead of pointing out to them that they’re being used by the GOP.
“I’d love to help you, but first you have to quit being a sucker.” isn’t the worst opening line.
“there’s no substitute for having an actual safety net: health care, good schools, preK, and policies that don’t push up prices (like tariffs)”
Matt McIrvin
@iKropoclast: Hulk doesn’t use a linear motor, weirdly enough! It uses a gigantic bank of rubber tires driven by conventional motors to launch the train. That’s a technology that’s commonly used to propel or launch trains at lower speeds, but it’s extremely rare for a launch coaster of that size and power. The only other one I can think of is Decepticoaster, the Transformers-themed clone of Hulk at Universal Beijing. Back when Hulk was first built, its manufacturer was too technically conservative to attempt a launch so they had to contract out to another company to make that bit.
Velocicoaster at Universal does use LSMs, as does Stardust Racers at Epic Universe. I haven’t been on those. I have ridden the amazing Pantheon at Busch Gardens Williamsburg, Phobia Phear Coaster at Lake Compounce, and Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster at Disney, which all use LSMs.
There are a whole lot of other launch technologies that have been used over the years: cables pulled by dropped weights or flywheels, hydraulic systems where fluid is propelled to drive a hydraulic winch by compressed nitrogen (the late lamented Kingda Ka was one of those), compressed-air launches.
Bupalos
@iKropoclast: Does this assume that centering our social issues in our formal politics somehow leads to progress on them? Because it seems to me that hasn’t been the case.
Suzanne
@Martin:
Thanks for your great comment. I agree with you, mostly. But I think you’re discounting the full nature of this social shift. Middle-class-and-up people have embraced the change to the social order that has resulted from women having education, thus earnings, thus social status independent of their husbands, thus relationships that are interdependent rather than patriarchal.
Go look around any conservative media and it is evident….the income inequality that they are worried about is not between the 99% and the 1%. It is between blue-collar men and white-collar women, and the reduced social influence those men are feeling in every arena of their lives. Hence the nonsense that went viral a couple of weeks ago from Helen Andrews saying that society won’t survive our high-status professions becoming majority female.
Professor Bigfoot
@iKropoclast: Yup.
It’s why arguments like “we should have a civilized discussion with these so-called Nazis rather than punch them.”
SOONER OR LATER, the MFs WILL get to (generic) YOU.
Only blind narcissistic fools think they’re “safe” from neo-Nazis or neo-Confederates.
NOBODY IS. Not even the Nazis and Confederates.
iKropoclast
@Matt McIrvin: Sounds like you make a nice little hobby out of knowing all this. I would love to see all these. Someday I may yet again achieve a travel budget. Things have been hard since Biden left office.
Professor Bigfoot
DELETED on accounta it’s a duplicate and I got some weird cloudflare error.
Also, MAGA delenda est.
Belafon
@Bupalos: But we’re all waiting on you.
prostratedragon
@Professor Bigfoot: Well, ok, you’re the engineer.
Paul in KY
@Suzanne: Good point. Maybe it was just easier to get a job in wingnut welfare.
Matt McIrvin
@Professor Bigfoot: Trump sort of has half a point here: the particular LIM catapult system developed by the US in fact has had persistent reliability troubles. But the solution is not to go back to steam–that’s the “drunk at the end of the bar who has a simple fix for everything” solution. Lots of other countries have been doing the same general thing we’re doing.
Paul in KY
@Omnes Omnibus: Charles the Bold found that out at the siege of Nancy when his fancy electric catpults wouldn’t work due to the cold weather!
iKropoclast
No, but this accepts false right wing framing. No one is asking for extra rights or extra effort. All you have to do is not put bigotry into policy.
The Republicans fixate on trans folk and spend their time in elected office passing laws to prevent trans people from living normal lives. Resisting those initiatives isn’t doing too much and the opposition to these initiatives aren’t the ones keeping all the rhetorical focus on them. This whole framing puts the onus on the oppressed and their allies not to resist.
It’s abuser logic
ETA: You know what did help? At least in terms of gay rights, media representation. If we see positive depictions of immigrants or trans people in media, maybe we should share them.
But also diversifying candidates helps with positive representation
Geminid
@Professor Bigfoot: Electric catapults also put less stress on the aircraft launched.
Professor Bigfoot
@prostratedragon: and longtime warship nerd. ;^)
iKropoclast
@Geminid: I’d wager there’s a lot less waste involved with electric v steam too. Both in terms of the efficiency of the mechanical action itself and fuel usage to get it working.
Matt McIrvin
@iKropoclast: Actually going to these parks more than occasionally is an expensive hobby, and my old body is aging out of being able to take the punishment of the most intense rides. 22-year-olds can ride rides like Hulk all day long, but I can’t. But it’s fun to geek out about them.
More or less accidentally, this awful year ended up being my greatest year for riding roller coasters ever. Pantheon was one of the highlights. Others included the 105-year-old Jack Rabbit at Seabreeze, the 111-year-old Rutschebanen at Copenhagen’s Tivoli (with steel-nerved brakemen riding on the train), and riding Busch Gardens’ Loch Ness Monster again after 32 years away. Also, I got my daughter interested in riding the old-school wooden coasters. It was a bright spot for me.
iKropoclast
@Matt McIrvin: I do love classic coasters too, not everything needs to be the new shiny. Also it sounds like your second most recent trip to Busch Gardens was the same year I went. I was 10.
Geminid
@Miss Bianca: To some extent, Massie’s reelection race will be a proxy fight over US policy towards Israel.
Professor Bigfoot
@Matt McIrvin: you sure got that right.
I’ve been watching the Chinese warship development program, and I may have mentioned here that not only are they building pretty frigates and corvettes, they’re taking them to sea and seriously working them up. They are learning quickly lessons the USN have been learning for decades.
I can tell you from personal experience, they will copy any damn thing. But as an engineer, it is very difficult to copy ANY system and have it perform as well as the original.
But the clever so-and-sos ABSOLUTELY WILL improve on it until it’s as good as or better than the original.
Fujian is the first Chinese CATOBAR carrier, and she uses electromagnetic launch. Rumor has it that their next one will be nuclear powered as well.
Martin
Of course. That was always expected. We saw that first hand. Part of the runup I describe to Democrats chosen demographic strategy was a rising middle class off of higher education, a kind of ‘everyone should go to college’ strategy. But there was never investment in higher education to allow for this – a consequence of the Democratic neoliberal embrace was austerity for public spending, so the widely available opporutnies in higher education started to suffer, which became REALLY pronounced in 2008. This lead to two things:
2 isn’t entire correct – a lot of the loan forgiveness was to people who went to trade programs and were outright defrauded, but the perception was still there that it was the kid who went to Brown and now works at a hedge fund who benefitted. The messaging around the loan forgiveness wasn’t very good, evidenced by me, being well versed in this stuff constantly being unclear who really benefitted from any of the given plans. If it wasn’t clear to me, no fucking way some NYT reporter will be clear.
Part of the problem in 1 was that trade schools were never part of the program and in the 90s they really got wiped out, and what wasn’t wiped out then got fucking nuked from orbit after 2008. The whole Democratic higher education push was centered on tech and services, not on trades, not on manufacturing, not on working class excellence but on professional class. Engineering made out like bandits (where I did much of my career) but only at the high end. The engineering technology programs – technicians, the real hands-on folks, they got clobbered, and those are the jobs most available particularly to rural communities. I would always say about engineers – the petroleum engineers really only have jobs in a handful of regions in the US but every town over a few thousand people will have at least one civil engineer.
My son’s company is a good example here. They’re a smallish (100 or so) employee engineering firm that makes equipment for the semiconductor industry. They should be booming right now. They’re on the outskirts of Silicon Valley but they’re shifting their manufacturing, which they have done on site to Vietnam. Two reasons for that:
That’s literally every part of the US economy – and it’s been happening for an entire generation and sometimes you don’t see the problem until that last generation start to retire and realize there’s nobody to replace them. One of the the things I did in my job early on was hiring technicians to teach students machining, etc. Guys like Ruckus. But it was super clear that the population pyramid for workers with those skills had almost nobody who was born after a certain date. My best source was K-12 shop teachers who got laid off when every school in the US dumped their shop programs, but they were quickly aging out. Anyone younger was such a unicorn that they were in high demand and well outside my budget. And good luck finding a trade program that will teach you those skills now. We had those programs so the engineers wouldn’t be completely clueless in how things were manufactured, but it’s not like any of them would be trained well enough to do that work, and that part of the program was so expensive to run that there was no way we could have such a trade program ourselves. We tried for years to get funding to do exactly that, but the feds even under Obama weren’t interested nor was the state under Democrats. Why fund training for $60K per year blue collar workers when you can fund training for $120K per year white collar ones, amirite? The latter are the ones really driving GDP, they’re the ones that industry wants to employ because IP is decoupled from wages so they’re super profitable. That was apparent when I started my career in the 90s. That started under Clinton.
Professor Bigfoot
@iKropoclast: I think that’s true, although on the American bigs (the Nimitzes and the Gerald R. Fords) power efficiency really isn’t an issue, Hyman Rickover for the win. ;^)
I think recovery time is an important differentiator— the more aircraft you can get off the deck faster, the better.
iKropoclast
@Bupalos: Question, actually: What do you think happens to the rent situation if Trump wrongly puts my roommate into immigration limbo for a couple months?
Paul in KY
@Matt McIrvin: How about that one at Cedar Point that’s like a dragster and goes vertical and ride only lasts 15 seconds or so? Have forgotten the name but never will forget the one time I rode it.
Geminid
@iKropoclast: Electric catapault systems take up less space. And even if they didn’t, redesigning a Ford-class carrier to allow for steam catapults would be a naval architect’s nightmare. Or rather, 20 naval architects’ nightmares. And a gazillion hours of overtime for shipyard workers working on the current one.
Also, it would require redesign of the new and future drones the Navy intends to deploy. If you were to launch one of those with a steam catapult, it would end up a snarled ball of carbon fibers dropping into the ocean.
Matt McIrvin
@iKropoclast: Back then, the new hotness at Busch Gardens Williamsburg was Drachen Fire, a gigantic multi-looping coaster made by Arrow, the same people who had made Loch Ness Monster and Big Bad Wolf. I remember wondering why it didn’t have a line.
Well, we learned the reason. Drachen Fire was a tremendously exciting ride, but it beat you up BAD. Your head would just ping-pong between the restraints. I rode it multiple times like the young idiot I was and I was sore for days after.
I kind of assumed that big roller coasters were just like that now, and in hindsight, I think it put me off riding them for decades because I was never quite in the superhero daredevil mood to take that punishment. Around 2010, I went to Canobie Lake Park right down the road and tried their 1936 classic woodie, Yankee Cannonball. That got me a bit interested again.
And I started reading up on coasters, and thought to myself “hey, whatever became of Drachen Fire?” Turns out the ride was infamous–it was modified and then shut down after just a few years and a series of personal-injury lawsuits. It wasn’t just how big coasters were now; it was the result of Arrow pushing their old-school track design practices past the regime in which they were useful, and a well-known cautionary tale in the industry.
These days, the only coaster they’ve got running that they had back then is Loch Ness Monster. Big Bad Wolf was torn down years ago to great lamentation, but now they’ve got a sort of tribute ride called “Big Bad Wolf: The Wolf’s Revenge” which is much tamer, but cute. And there are all these huge rides that were entirely new to me.
iKropoclast
@Geminid: @Professor Bigfoot: So, you guys know all this. I was able to intuit the broad outlines of it.
What the fuck is wrong with our President?
Omnes Omnibus
@Matt McIrvin: Even if the class warfare people are right and fixing that will fix everything else, we kind of need to keep marginalized people alive until the the revolution comes. Don’t we?
iKropoclast
I vaguely remember that, though I couldn’t have put a name to the memory. I DO remember being a cool 90s kid with my radical Drachen Fire print shirt.
Geminid
@Professor Bigfoot: The Ford class carriers’ electrical generation capacity is much greater than that of the previous ones. I think that’s because the Navy intends to equip them with energy weapons for ship defense when those are ready.
Omnes Omnibus
@Matt McIrvin: Even if the class warfare people are right and fixing that will fix everything else, we kind of need to keep marginalized people alive until the the revolution comes. Don’t we?
Matt McIrvin
@iKropoclast: He’s a toxic narcissist who has been coddled by inherited great wealth and yes-men and used to being able to bully the much less powerful for his entire life, AND is probably increasingly cognitively impaired. All this has the effect of turning his feeblest mental farts into pronouncements of genius in his own mind.
Checking them against reality is simply not necessary. It’s what Jacob Bronowski, talking about the epistemic hole the Nazis lived in, called “the knowledge of gods”.
Professor Bigfoot
IMHO he’s a wholly owned subsidiary of Putin’s FSB, as are most of his party.
I can’t prove it, of course, but if he were a bought and paid for agent of Muscovy, what would he be doing differently??
Matt McIrvin
@Omnes Omnibus: We need to do it all. This is very hard but I don’t think it can be escaped.
Professor Bigfoot
@Geminid: That makes sense. the bigs are the biggest missile targets in the entire ocean and ANY defense system can be saturated.
iKropoclast
Well, I think I found my little research rabbit hole for the afternoon. Thanks for that.
Bupalos
@iKropoclast: my perception is that the “throwing x under the bus” formulation we see here so much is generally in relation not to actually voting for anti-x legislation or taking anti-x positions but rather to the suggestion that centering other priorities is a tactically better way to go. I feel like I see it most wrt Saunders, where trying to center economic policy that cuts across partisan divisions is thought to be somewhere between betrayal and crypto-racism.
I do see potential problems with this kind of tactical retreat as well, there are downsides to essentially falling back to milquetoast “all lives matter” frames and universalizing language. But sometimes it is just objectively the way to go, when your electoral position requires.
Another Scott
@Matt McIrvin: +1
But not only that, the message has to be tailored to the locality and the circumstances.
“Fix the damned roads” works in Michigan and exurban Virginia. It’s probably not going to mean much in San Diego or Maui.
If there were some magic approach to winning elections consistently, then we wouldn’t have so many close elections. This stuff is hard, and the reality of the playing field is changing all the time. People in the trenches doing the thankless work understand this.
Thanks.
Best wishes,
Scott.
Paul in KY
@Martin: I always learn something when reading your posts. Sometimes it is “By God, are we fucked!!’ but I still learn stuff. Appreciate you posting.
Bupalos
@Professor Bigfoot: He’d be doing quite a bit differently. I think the desire to see Trump as a foreign agent is kind of a defense mechanism against seeing him very much a domestic American production.
Slightly surprising to see you of all people in that camp?
Hamlet of Melnibone
@Suzanne: Yeah, it’s a pretty big swing. I’m in an affluent suburb that used to vote for “moderate” Republicans ( fuck you, Erik Paulsen ), but it has swung strongly to become a pretty safe Democratic district, albeit one that elected Dean Phillips.
I think a big piece of it is education levels. If you’ve been to college, you’re better equipped to see through the Republican bullshit.
Also, many affluent people are aware of how much they have to lose. This Republican craziness is leading to chaos and potentially could destroy the US economic system. If you’re winning the game, you don’t want to flip the board over.
That’s one of the things that makes the billionaire behavior so crazy-making. They are risking destroying the system that backs their wealth for just a little bit more. It’s insanity.
Paul in KY
@Matt McIrvin: I actually rode The Bat at Kings Island back around 1982 or so. That one killed somebody and then was completely removed.
Matt McIrvin
@iKropoclast: They’ve got a launch coaster with the dumb name of “Verbolten” that inherited much of Big Bad Wolf’s layout–I didn’t get around to riding that one, though many fans like it. “BBW: The Wolf’s Revenge” is actually in the area where Drachen Fire used to be, and aside from all the references to Big Bad Wolf, there are a few little Easter eggs referring to Drachen Fire in the theming if you look carefully.
Other rides I loved there were Griffon, their 200-foot vertical dive coaster, and the woodland hypercoaster Apollo’s Chariot, famous for the bizarre story about Fabio having a violent collision with a goose on its inaugural run.
Matt McIrvin
@Paul in KY: What I heard was that the original Bat was torn down for just being a maintenance nightmare–Arrow didn’t bank the track, relying on the swinging cars to do all the banking for them, but that put too much stress on the mechanisms and they wore out at an unsustainable rate. By the time they built Big Bad Wolf they’d learned better.
(There’s a suspended coaster called The Bat at Kings Island now, but it’s the former Top Gun/Flight Deck, renamed in honor of the original Bat.)
iKropoclast
Sanders. And I’ll agree sometimes people will squint at an image at an effort to see racism. That’s a trauma response. That’s also usually individuals and not elected officials, so you know what? That’s valid. They can do that.
For Sanders part, I’ve seen very little to suggest he wants to promote white supremacist policy. I HAVE seen some generalized obliviousness at how policy affects different communities differently.
A discussion of billionaires that ignores redlining and environmental racism is incomplete. Bernie had a lot good to say, but we need someone more rigorous and comprehensive.
Sanders is also resisting the impulse to underbus communities. I hardly see him lately without him remarking how Republicans are selling a dark fantasy on immigration to get people to blame immigrants for their problems. Willingness to cede these fights is just one step away from wholly embracing racist policy.
First they came for the immigrants. I had to protect my 401K, so I said nothing.
Then they came for the trans people. I’m reflexively fearful of being attracted to a dude, so I said nothing.
Paul in KY
@Omnes Omnibus: Certainly if they vote for us.
Martin
@Matt McIrvin: Of course you can – look at Mamdani. You have had ‘Democrats’ Cuomo and Adams going full culture war around Muslims and Jews and he just elides his way through that and pivots it all to class. And it’s working really well. I mean, Silwa is more of an ally on that front than some of the other Dems are. Even he understood (and he’s dumb as rocks) that ‘fuck the billioniares’ was a better political message.
The main problem I think Democrats have is that they’re afraid to reshape the electorate – which is the thing that has carried Trump to success. They’re still running the Clinton era concentrate the middle class playbook (which Obama and to a lesser degree Biden continued), which to be clear did work – the soccer moms that were supposed to be part of the permanent Republican majority are the ones with the ‘In this house we…’ signs in the front yard (note too the general lack of POC at the No Kings protests – it’s mainly a white middle class movement), and while we didn’t vilify the working class in the process, we did largely abandon them. That can be fixed.
Paul in KY
@Matt McIrvin: I remember the swinging chairs. Thank you for the real scoop on that!
Suzanne
@Hamlet of Melnibone: As with all things in our common life together, the economic issues and social issues are inextricably interwoven. We are living through huge social changes, and they are changing the nature of who are the “winners” and “losers”. Our values are changing, and that is changing the nature of the family. Urbanization is happening at incredible pace, and that changes the nature of the neighborhood, and one’s role in the economy.
One of the things about the nature of these changes that is difficult is that there is no political fix for them. I agree with Martin’s take that the Dems need to get the working class back, as well as many of the reasons we lost them. But I also think that much of what they genuinely want back is something that Dems cannot provide, even if we had consolidated political power and more resources. Because social status is, by nature, a scarce resource.
Matt McIrvin
@iKropoclast: Last episode of his epic series The Ascent of Man. Bronowski visits the pond at Auschwitz into which the ashes of bodies were flushed, and makes a powerful defense of science as one of the humanities, with its key feature being not technological wizardry but humility, the willingness to admit error and test beliefs against data. The scene has haunted me for my entire life.
iKropoclast
Comes across like a proposal for Democrats to not act on behalf of the people who are voting for them and instead chase after wishy washy “negative peace” liberals who don’t reeeaaaallly wish harm on people but refuse to notice or question why their preferences are so straight, white, and male or notice how widely they’re actually catered to by society, top to bottom.
@Matt McIrvin: Sold.
Another Scott
@Martin:
As opposed to the lack of POC at Mamdani’s rallies??
Your selectivity is quite, er, selective at times.
FWIW.
Best wishes,
Scott.
Geminid
@Professor Bigfoot: The new destroyer class also has much more generation capacity than the previous one. That’s one reason some people blamed the Nitze for causing the terrible earthwuake in Turkiye in February of 2023. It had just made a port call at Istanbul.
This might have been a Russian propaganda op, but “HAARP” energy waves and earthquakes are a fertile field for conspiracy theories.
Matt McIrvin
@Martin: Mamdani’s running for mayor of New York City! It’s a microcosm in some ways but it’s a very, very different environment from the United States as a whole.
(As for the lack of POC at No Kings rallies, I think discussion here has long since hashed out a major reason for that: they all know they’re in considerable danger if they come out to these demonstrations in numbers. Compare No Kings to the BLM demonstrations after the death of George Floyd, or for that matter the counterprotests to ICE raids in LA. We do what we can, and a bunch of white wine moms coming out is a way to sustain the mass movement without inviting head-breaking violence. Obviously it can’t be the end of the story.)
Professor Bigfoot
@Suzanne:Martin’s take that the Dems need to get the working class back
The white working class.
Working class Black folks reliably voted Democratic and have done so for decades.
The entire discussion around “getting the working class back” hides the fact that people who are not white work, and generally vote for Democrats.
Y’all, just say you want to win white people again.
tam1MI
@iKropoclast: These arguments that we need deemphasize culture issues over kitchen table issues? Well, my kitchen table seats two gay men and an immigrant.
Martin
Sure, but this is classic class deflection. The rich pay for both party candidates and policies and turn them against each other. The GOP isn’t really where they say they are – that’s just the political messaging and electoral strategy. The billionaires are off the table in the strategy, but if you look at polling and focus groups, GOP voters do see them as a problem – but nobody is championing clawing back their wealth to benefit the rest of us. Certainly the Democrats aren’t. So if nobody is saying that it’s easy to conclude that it’s not possible. So what is possible? Well, turning on the professional class. Which because the Democrats did successfully capture them aligns perfectly with the political strategy. That’s not a coincidence – it’s the whole point.
The question then is should Democrats engage with this conflict and defend the middle class, or agree with why the working class is angry and instead steer it toward the investor class, which is the real problem. The top 1% has captured half of the nations wealth. Of course they’re the problem when it’s that scale. Note how unnecessary the electorate has even become now that some anonymous billionaire can personally make payroll for DOD.
Democrats could stick with the old system, but I think we’re going to get rolled, even with how unpopular Trump is. The electorate is hurting and we can’t wave that away – we need to speak to it. But it’s not like some OBGYN is at fault for why the manufacturing base has been hollowed out – they don’t have that power. But the owner of the manufacturing company does. The shareholders do. But I think Democrats are too afraid of losing their billionaires to go there. So they kind of powerlessly just try and defend, and that’s just not working.
The GOP voters aren’t screaming about billionaires because nobody is indicating that’s possible. Maybe Democrats should? Bernie got a lot of interest from GOP voters because he said it was possible. Now, I think Bernies a bit of a crank, but he got the nut of the right idea there – shifting from identity to class politics. In the hands of better messengers, I think that’s the right direction. I’m not sure why Democrats are so afraid of the shift – Harris raised a fucking mountain of money and still lost. They’ve overindexed on fundraising and not enough on finding the right messengers. I think they can afford to give some of that money back to reshape the electorate.
tam1MI
Not to mention that, every time Dems follow the ” ignore culture, war issues, focus on kitchen table issues)/ it’s the economy, stupid” mantra, they end up losing elections on culture, war issues.
iKropoclast
@tam1MI: Haha, that’s what I said
@tam1MI: Oh, there we go. You’re absolutely right. Although I suspect there’s a little motivated reasoning and burnishing of priors built into these assessments, retroactive foresight, all that shit.
NotMax
@Matt McIrvin
Schlafly as an anti-feminist activist couldn’t hold a candle to the now forgotten Mary Kilbreth.
Geminid
@Matt McIrvin: The New York City mayoral race is one of three major races this fall, the other two being the New Jersey and Virginia governor races. The electorates are comparable in size, with New York’s being the smallest.
New Jersey’s and Virginia’s electorstes are more similar to those of the national battleground states though. Yet, Mikie Sherrill and Abigail Spanberger are ignored in these discussions and I wonder why that is.
Professor Bigfoot
@Geminid: You mean the Flight III Arleigh Burkes?
I know they’re cramming a whole bunch of VLS cells in ‘em, but that’s an interesting thought WRT power requirements at sea.
Spock voice: Fascinating.
Suzanne
@Martin:
The reason that I have concern about it as an electoral strategy is that I think that a return to FDR-esque class politics is not possible without a return to FDR-era norms around gender roles, race, religiosity, and rurality. And I don’t want those things back.
I want a new thing. Heavily taxed rich people, yes. Strong social safety net and public goods. But with a liberal social order. And I do not detect, based on their voting behavior, that the working class is willing to make that bargain.
Professor Bigfoot
The white working class, ja?
RevRick
@Professor Bigfoot: Charles Dickens is a mixed bag of beliefs. On the one hand, having grown up in poverty and being forced to work at a young age in the most polluted part of London, he definitely was a critic of predatory capitalism. On the other hand, living in proximity to crime-ridden areas (all-white), he held decided tough-on-crime attitudes.
His Tale of Two Cities, after all, not only contrasted London with Paris, but also noted that both cities themselves were bifurcated between rich and poor.
Bupalos
I don’t mean to get into a specific defense of Bernie, but to me, this is a kind of example of unrealistic demands on politicians, who in the end have to DO POLITICS not theory, and not conduct upper level seminars. Like, you practically won’t find a Bernie speech were he doesn’t mention the exact term you just seemed to say he leaves out. He extends the fight against billionaires and rapacious capitalism to its interaction with racism, sexism, xenophobia…. In ways that frankly are already to highfalutin for the most effective politics.
It’s simply not accurate to say he doesn’t address these issues. What he does is organize them from a centralizing perspective of the concentration of wealth. And that’s where the trouble comes in and the claims of “underbussing” emerge. As in any attempt at coalition, the groups want the organizing to be under their banner, where they feel the burn. And they want the leader to be like them and they want to trust him or her through identity, symbolism, and a kind of mystical feeling of oneness. This is never going to work for minority coalition, which by definition the left is going to be. It can only work for majority faction, which is what Trump is.
This is why I feel it’s actually important that we get some of these anti-oligarchy populist leaders that specifically don’t appeal by identity. We need a Jasmine Crockett, a James Talerico, a Graham Platner, etc.
If we don’t have someone too black, someone too Christianist, someone too Latina, and someone too white-male-insensitive for the majority of the coalition, we aren’t going to have a meaningful coalition.
Omnes Omnibus
Sorry, no, they cannot.
Professor Bigfoot
The white working class, ja?
iKropoclast
Six hours, or so I understand.
Martin
@Another Scott: Are you trying to argue that Mamdani is mainly appealing to middle class whites in NYC? Just say that if you are.
Note, Mamdani is not pandering to POC here.
Matt McIrvin
@Paul in KY: Top Thrill Dragster! That was originally a hydraulic launch like Kingda Ka. That one has had a checkered history: it was notoriously unreliable and the park president said buying it was the worst business decision he ever made, though it was great at attracting people to the park.
A few years ago, there was a terrible accident in which a piece flew off of Top Thrill Dragster (some kind of flange associated with a sensor system) and hit a woman in the head. They shut it down and it was clear it wasn’t going to survive in its original state–I think they were also looking for any excuse to upgrade its systems to something more reliable.
An electromagnetic launch was the obvious choice, but the trouble is, LSM or LIM systems aren’t powerful enough to get the train over that 400+-foot top hat in the space available. So they made it a swing launch, like Pantheon or Phobia Phear Coaster–it launches forward and rolls back, then backward up an enormous new spike element, then forward again over the hill.
The weird decision there was WHO they contracted to do it–not Intamin, the original manufacturer based in Liechtenstein, but Zamperla, an Italian company primarily known for flat rides and kiddie coasters.
It was a big swing and, as it turned out, probably another bad decision. The ride reopened as “Top Thrill 2”, ran for about a week, and then had to shut down again because of some kind of mysterious but apparently alarming structural trouble with the coaster trains… which kept it closed for another year while Zamperla worked the problem.
Last I heard, Top Thrill 2 is running again. The fans all say the new launches aren’t a patch on the sheer terror of the original hydraulic launch, but the swing launch is still fun. I haven’t been to Cedar Point so I can’t say from personal experience.
Sister Golden Bear
@Betty Cracker:
Tired: I want to keep watching the baseball game, but I need to sleep.
Wired: I can go to sleep and resume watching it in the morning.
Also too: Generations from now no one remembers the origins of the game, only that it must continue to be played.
Suzanne
@Professor Bigfoot:
I specifically did not put that word in because I have not seen data that indicates the racial breakout within the working class cohort. That data is probably out there and I haven’t seen it.
But I suspect that you are correct.
Omnes Omnibus
@Suzanne: I keep saying it. Populism can be very dangerous to marginalized communities and simply to those who are a bit different.
Omnes Omnibus
@Suzanne: I keep saying it. Populism can be very dangerous to marginalized communities and simply to those who are a bit different.
Baud
@Omnes Omnibus:
@Omnes Omnibus:
You DO keep saying it.
Suzanne
@Omnes Omnibus: I know you keep saying it! I keep agreeing with you!
Omnes Omnibus
@Baud: Weren’t you going on on a trip? ::side-eye::
Baud
@Omnes Omnibus:
You’ll miss me when I’m gone.
iKropoclast
So, I actually made a point to mention that Bernie is very explicitly avoiding throwing constituencies under buses. I think his issue comes in with his one-size-fits-all approach. His speech to the DNC will be approximately the same as his speech to an Ivy League graduation, a black church, his podcast interview; with negligible adjustments.
Audiences want to be seen. Bernie sees academic leftists and blue collar workers. This is a fine thing, both are poorly represented. But when he is in front of different audiences, he should do more to particularize his statements to his audience. Also, he should (have) recognize the lack of trust he has among black audiences and maybe spend more time in their venues in their terms. Not just big name stuff like the Breakfast Club. Show up at a church and don’t be the feature, just sit and listen.
I supported him at least his first go at the Presidency. His message is good. We should be finding new people with the same message and a broader outlook rather than fixating on this one man.
Bupalos
duplicate
Bupalos
@Professor Bigfoot: Black alignment with Democrats is a historical legacy from the civil rights movement, which in my estimation ended about 40 years ago with the death of desegregation. It saw consolidation for a time and is in the midst of a slow erosion that has accelerated and may become a deluge in the same model as with hispanics.
As you always note, it’s still a demographic that overwhelming votes dem, but even with more overt racist messaging, Republicans more than doubled the margin they pull through the Trump elections, and if they continue that trajectory your cottage industry of identity essentialism is going poof in your lifetime.
Politics is about self interest, and Dems have not and cannot deliver for their constituents. Most constituents will not understand why. Politics changes.
Baud
@iKropoclast:
Except billionaires like me. :-(
tam1MI
@iKropoclast: Haha, that’s what I said.
Redis decided to puke out on me right as I was about to type my reply. I guess I drew the short straw today, LOL!
iKropoclast
@Baud: Billionaires are well taken care of as a constituency by other politicians. If not for their money, they wouldn’t be a constituency at all, they’d be a small convention of hobbyists
Speaking of fixations..
Bupalos
Like Platner!
[Ducks]
Geminid
@Bupalos:
In your estimation!
Ed. Black people seem to estimate differently but what do they know?
At times, your political analysis is a tissue of projection. You have a desired result and you reverse-engineer facts to fit them.
But anyway, what do you make of the New Jersey and Virginia governor races? How do they fit into your theories? Will they matter only if Mikie Sherrill loses? I suspect so.
iKropoclast
@tam1MI: One of these new and ever-changing foibles that give this blog its charm. I don’t know if it’s related, but the site has been loading slow for me today. That could be the poor cell service where I’m visiting today, though.
Suzanne
@Omnes Omnibus: I simply do not understand why anyone could look at the voting behavior of white working class people and conclude that their revealed preference is for class-based politics.
Which is not to say that the Dems have served them well! The Republicans have unquestionably served them worse, economically speaking, though.
Matt McIrvin
@Suzanne: the idea is that they SHOULD have class-based politics, so we need to somehow remove their false consciousness.
Well, it happens in times of extreme economic pain. It doesn’t ever seem to last long since everyone gets the “temporarily embarrassed millionaire” feeling when the crisis is over.
Bupalos
@Geminid: I’m explaining why I set the end of civil rights wins around the mid 80’s. Bussing phased out then and I can’t think of significant civil rights initiatives since. I don’t know why this gets personal. If you have a different timeline or different take, why not just present it
Ed. I don’t really think “black people” particularly estimate the end of the civil rights era differently but feel free to make the case.
iKropoclast
@Bupalos: Civil rights are very much an ongoing concern and under the most significant threat in years.
Another Scott
@Martin: I thought the picture made the point, but I guess not.
Most of the people who show up to rallies [of almost any sort] in the USA are white people. Attendance says very little about whether minorities, of any sort, like the advocated policies.
That is all.
Best wishes,
Scott.
Fair Economist
@Matt McIrvin:
At my No Kings rally, there weren’t a many black people in the crowd. But I noticed quite a few honking and waving as they went by.
Suzanne
@Matt McIrvin:
This is not possible with political tools. This is changing people’s hearts.
Bupalos
@Omnes Omnibus: Any tool can be dangerous. Elitism can be and has been very dangerous for marginalized communities as well.
At its core, “populism” just means a form of politics based on the common people as opposed to the power elites, which uses forms of communication that are more related to everyday language and use.
Geminid
@Bupalos: I think it’s up to Black people to make that case and that’s why I said “seem to.”
But personally, I do not believe the end of the civil rights era marked the end of defacto discrimination against minorities in the US.
Ed. As for the personal nature of my comment, that was a more general critique of your pllitical analysis. I usually don’t bother to engage with you because life is too short, but I made an exception in this case
Fair Economist
@Martin:
Um, No. No even close. ACA enrollment is OVERWHELMINGLY among the working poor – nearly half of ACA enrollment is below 150% of the federal poverty line. Further, the current fight is about subsidies, which drop off precipitously above 400% FPL, about the median income. Middle and upper middle class get their healthcare insurance from their jobs, not the ACA.
It’s the mostly the working class that uses the ACA and almost exclusively the working class that gets the subsidies the Democrats are fighting for.
Omnes Omnibus
@Bupalos: Thank you, I do know what populism is. I find that its proponents can be awfully dismissive of its dangers. You may be familiar with this tendency from remembering comments on this from such commenters as Bupalos.
iKropoclast
Elitism? Populism? Both potentially dangerous?
Maybe it’s the hierarchical thinking.
Paul in KY
@Professor Bigfoot: We want them to come back to the good side. I want to get them (cause there’s a fuckton of em) without retreating one bit from who our party is and stands for.
We need (IMO) to show them in plain terms what suckers the GQP takes them for. How they laugh at them behind their backs and so on.
Paul in KY
@Martin: I’ve seen this: ‘But I think Democrats are too afraid of losing their billionaires to go there. So they kind of powerlessly just try and defend, and that’s just not working.’
We need people who aren’t afraid of telling the ultra-rich who donate to us: “I’m going to have to slag your class bad, as I have to get elected to help our country. It’s nothing personal. It’s just business.”
I actually think the vast majority would understand.
Paul in KY
@Suzanne: We don’t need the whole ‘Working Class’, just the enlightened and/or not-asshole ones.
Paul in KY
@Matt McIrvin: It was quite a ride back then :-) Glad me and my nephew survived it!
WTFGhost
You float like a feather
In a beautiful world
I wish I was special
You’re so fuckin’ special
But I’m a creep
I’m a weirdo
What the hell am I doin’ here?
I don’t belong here
But I guess I’m going to survive. Again. For a while.
burritoboy
Martin wants to tell us a fairy – tale of how the white working class was supposedly [fill in verb you prefer – abandoned, whatever] by the Democratic Party.
The fairy tale only makes sense if we pay no attention to what the white working-class had been doing in the entire generation before Bill Clinton. And what it had been actively doing was migrating strongly to the right. That was its active choice. That was what it wanted to do. The Democratic Party had been trying throughout the whole period (from at least 1970 to the early 1990s) to preferentially focus on the white working-class only to be met with wild levels of over the top racism, the economic imbecility of the white working class, bizarre conspiracy theories, assholism, accusations that centrist Democrats were Communists, and so on.
Bill Clinton could only be successful in (correctly) rejecting the prior failed focus of the party on a failing and flailing group of people who absolutely didn’t want to be anywhere near the Democratic Party. Without focusing correctly on the white collars, Bill Clinton would be a trivia question now (i.e. Who was the one of the last Democratic governors of Arkansas?) Without Bill Clinton’s correct calculation, there wouldn’t be two parties in the US.
The white working class has nobody to blame but themselves and their long traditions of idiotic politics, racism, conspiracy mongering, economic illiteracy and general bad and stupid behavior. That they continue to view the Republicans (who mostly just want to kill them fairly openly) as their political saviors tells you this is a group that simply in the end wishes to commit suicide. I don’t think we can prevent them from committing suicide, but we don’t have to commit suicide along with them.
Martin
@Professor Bigfoot: Hold on. Your argument is that Democrats solidly have POC and that I’m trying to get white working class – emphasis on white. Who the fuck are Democrats supposed to bolster their electorate with if they already have all of the POC? All that’s left by your argument is whites. Should Democrats chase billionaires instead? As if they weren’t all white.
But that’s not my argument. In fact, you pied me because that wasn’t my argument. My argument, and the data I presented before is that Democrats in the last two elections have lost ground with everyone except white voters – they lost a little ground with white males and gained a little with white females. Democrats have held the white middle class in part because we’re not feeling the economic pain (because we’re middle class and therefore asset holders) and because the party has successfully put us in solidarity with POC. The problem is that solidarity doesn’t pay the rent and eventually economic realities overtake things – and Democrats have been losing ground with working class blacks and asians and especially working class latinos.
My argument is the way you win those POC back to the party is by focusing on wages, and the shape of the economy – moving it away from assets. I’m not overly sympathetic to the white working class because that class is so mischaracterized. Farmers are rarely working class – they’re asset holders, usually millionaires. Most of the GOP ‘working class’ are also asset holders – they are as noted above the kids who inherited the auto parts business. Yes, there are working class whites, but less than half the working class are white – so working class policies will mainly help POC. And that also tells us that working class whites are a pretty small share of the white electorate. Enough to swing an election, but then so too are the working class POC that the Democrats are losing to some degree.
I’m not sure why you’re so insistent on making the a race issue. Does it really hurt to promote working class policies to shore up working class POC if it happens to bring some whites along? Because that sounds more like an anti-white stance than a pro-POC one. One of the biggest beneficiaries of working class polices are immigrants. Should we throw them overboard?
Again, if Democrats haven’t lost ground with POC – which is your argument, who do they appeal to in order to gain the votes they need to win?
Paul in KY
@WTFGhost: Saw them in 2012 at Bonnaroo. Great light show. Didn’t play ‘Creep’ or ‘Paranoid Android’ or some other great tunes. The entitled fuckers…
Matt McIrvin
@Fair Economist: Same with Hispanic people at the ones I’ve been to. Not too many in the crowd, but they’re supporting us as they drive by.
Martin
@Another Scott: Mamdani did rally with National Action Network. You think there were a lot of white faces there? He did one at the African American parade in Harlem. Lot of white people there?
You know what mainstream media outlets have a bad habit of? Being filled with white reporters to go to events that are circulated among the white community. They don’t go to Harlem. They don’t go to the African American parade. You don’t see rallies not full of white people being reported on.
You also have the problem of people who go to rallies are people with time on their hands. If you’re working 2 jobs, you don’t have that luxury. That tends to result in more middle class people and retirees attending these things.
This might prove helpful.
Paul in KY
@Martin: I think the professor (and hopefully he’ll chime in) would say better turnout among those who’ve already been proud Democratic voters. Cause, if we already have POC and the like, who else can we get?
I want those ‘white’ voters who are hurting financially (from GQP policies) to understand in their marrow how the GQP has played them for suckers and rubes and only thinks of them as ‘useful idiots’. Then (without kissing up to them) we see who will come over to our side to fuck over the GQP for doing that to them or just stay home and not vote GQP. Either is fine by me.
Omnes Omnibus
@Martin: I think you missed Another Scott’s point.
Another Scott
@Martin: Biden spoke to the National Action Network.
Harris spoke to the National Action Network.
Schumer and National Action Network rally against Trump policies.
Etc., etc.
Your (apparent) thesis that the Democratic Party (represented in its leadership) walked away from the (POC) working class doesn’t hold water, because the people you are punching down on were doing the same things that the people you are now holding up as role models are doing.
It seems to me.
You, obviously have a different view. That’s the way it goes.
Best wishes,
Scott.
Matt McIrvin
@Suzanne: When I was in the first grade I walked home from school, about half a mile or so, in a crowd of other kids. The older, bigger ones would pick on us little kids a lot.
I noticed there were two distinct reactions to this among the first-graders. Some of us decided it was wrong to bother the littler kids. Others expressed an impatience to grow big, so they could be the ones doing the bullying.
Martin
@Fair Economist: Is it? Median income for ACA policyholders was $65K back in 2019, slightly lower than the national household median. So roughly half ACA participants are in the upper half of income earners. And ACA isn’t available if you are below the federal poverty level – you’re kicked off for Medicaid. There is no upper limit on income to be on the exchange though you lose subsidy support at 400% poverty level.
For sure the people who get the greatest benefit of ACA subsidies are those in the 100%-150% poverty level, but that’s an odd category. For instance, most years I’m in that category – and I’m not poor, but my house is paid off, I have no debt, I don’t need a lot of income despite being wealthy. A lot of early retirees filling the gap before Medicare kicks in are on ACA in similar situations – I’ve met quite a few. In fact that was a major policy goal of the ACA to keep early retirees healthy who were otherwise foregoing coverage and then hitting Medicare and getting the works done. A disproportionate share of Medicare expenses were people hitting 65, getting healthcare after a long time not having it, and needing a lot of expensive treatments that could have been handled with preventative care in the years before. A lot of older disabled workers are also on ACA not due to income but due to guaranteed coverage. My stepfather, despite being a retired C-level at BCBS was on the exchange after leaving the company because of his pre-existing condition until Medicare kicked in. He was an active opponent to the ACA as an executive so it was a bit of a bitter pill when it became his lifeline, but his former employer wouldn’t cover him. Notably, he’s quite a bit wealthier than I am but probably was fairly low income because when your house is paid off and you have no debt, you really don’t need much reported income. Every year I have to convince the state of California to not put me on MediCal, because I appear eligible to them.
I suspect based on KFF data that many working poor don’t have ACA policies, or any policies at all. You still have millions who are in the gap that medicaid expansion was designed to solve, and you have millions more who are eligible for ACA subsidy (including 100% subsidy) policies but are uninsured for whatever reason. But I haven’t been able to find any real income distribution data for ACA policyholders to tell for sure.
Note, none of this is a drag on the ACA. I’m on it. I think it’s a great policy, but it has VERY broad reach with two exceptions:
As such it’s hard to draw conclusions other than really poor people aren’t included in this fight, including the 10M or so people that are expected to lose coverage due to Medicaid cuts. What we do know is the largest premium increases are people over 400% poverty level. It’s not just a change in subsidies but for higher incomes (400%+) an increase in premiums.
Note, I’m not saying ACA holders aren’t deserving, I’m saying that the lowest income earners are being neglected here.
Geminid
@Martin: Medicaid expansion was an integral provision of the ACA, and a very consequential one. I believe that covered people making up to 150% of the poverty line, and it helped a lot of working poor in my state when Virginia Democrats pushed it through in 2018. In 2017, Ralph Northam made it one of his two central issues in his campaign for governor, the other being gun safety legislation
Martin
@Another Scott: That wasn’t my thesis at all. Leadership showing up for a rally also says very little about which policies they actually implement. See Trump doing fuckall for his supposed white working class rally base.
My argument has been that Democrats backing an asset based economy is inherently going to favor existing asset holders, which happen to be whites, and also going to favor concentrations of wealth because assets tend to compound unlike wages. This strategy helped build the post-Reagan democratic professional class, but it’s almost impossible to give that group asset benefits and help non-asset holders like the working class keep pace. Say what you will about inflation, it spent maybe a year at 9% under Biden and most of the time was 3%, but equities have sustained roughly 10% over the last decade and a half and in a lot of markets housing has sustained close to 8%. Prior to the tax revolution, those asset gains would have been pretty heavily taxed (if they were allowed to happen at all) and that income went to fund things like the expansion of public higher education. Remember, CA had Reagan as a governor before the rest of you had him as a president so the cause and effect from those polices are a bit sharper to see here. Instead we’ve more or less let assets run wild, cut taxing them, and seen a huge wealth disparity develop. So when inflation does come it doesn’t come for us equally. It comes for the working class who lack assets much harder, which sets them even further back. And the slow conclusion to all of this is that even the middle class start to lose their asset access to those with even more. ¼ of all single family homes are being bought by investors. The thing that was supposed to set up the next generation for success are now being held by a hedge fund charging them rent forever. The average price for a share of the S&P 500 is 10x higher (even accounting for inflation) than it was 20 years ago.
What all of this means is that the value of a dollar earned as wages keeps plummeting, keeps being devalued relative to what you can buy. Some of that shows up in CPI inflation, and a lot doesn’t. But this isn’t a policy difference between Democrats and Republicans – they both agree with this approach, and have agreed since the 80s. The idea that healthcare shouldn’t be a market, or that housing shouldn’t or that electricity shouldn’t isn’t open to debate. And there’s no way to not fuck over wage earners in that system, and if you make assets increasingly expensive to obtain, you lock more and more people out. This is why an increasing share of the population are seeing traditional work as pointless because you’ll never get ahead working for wages. Instead, trade meme stocks, or crypto, or be a creator so you have some IP (an asset) you control, and so on. These are generally terrible ideas, but the alternative is structurally also pretty terrible and Democrats not only have not opposed that shift, they courted the very people who brought it about – tech executives and the like.
Another Scott
@Martin:
That’s a lot of words, “backing an asset based economy”, but it doesn’t strike me as anything other than a strawman.
YMMV, and apparently does.
Best wishes,
Scott.
Omnes Omnibus
@Martin: The ACA is more than the exchanges.
Professor Bigfoot
@Martin: My argument is that the only way to get whites is to dump on others.
You disagree.
That’s fine.
Pie is delicious.
Ramona
@TONYG: Statistically a few of the shitty electorate will also have kicked the bucket by the time Trump does.
Ramona
@jonas: with the exception of Massie…
Ramona
@p.a.: Hmm? You have a point there:
Ramona
@Suzanne: Helen Andrews is a dingbat if she thinks that high status professions shouldn’t be majority female as a profession only is considered high status if it’s majority male e.g. originally, programming was an all female vocation.
Kayla Rudbek
@Suzanne: it was recognized as a military issue back around the time of WW1, I think (too many young men couldn’t meet the physical standards) and even the Gilded Age public schools worked on providing school lunches
Kayla Rudbek
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): a lot of them went to private religious schools from kindergarten through college and were trained by authoritarian leaders (and I went to school with a hell of a lot of them; my next college reunion will be interesting, shall I say)
Kayla Rudbek
@lowtechcyclist: I liked Francis as well, and Leo is like an Andrew Greeley hero coming to life in my opinion (seriously go read the Father Blackie novels)