Amaury Guichon creating an intricate, edible dragon head: #AGoodPlace
Source: www.reddit.com/r/oddlysatis…— Michelle says: Be kind. Always. ❤️ (@snarkysillysad.bsky.social) November 2, 2025 at 7:23 AM
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Two-thirds of registered voters say Trump and his administration have fallen short of their expectations on the cost of living
www.nbcnews.com/news/rcna240…— Catherine Rampell (@crampell.bsky.social) November 2, 2025 at 9:39 AM
Trump Job Approval Among 18-29 Year Olds:
🔴 Disapprove: 75% (+38)
🟢 Approve: 20% (-22)
YouGov / Oct 27, 2025
(% Change With Feb 4, 2025)— Polling USA (@usapolling.bsky.social) November 2, 2025 at 5:16 PM
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the plan is to take the ACA apart brick by brick and replace it with nothing, there, i spoiled your top double secret healthcare plan
— GHOULLIKEHELLMACHINE (@golikehellmachine.com) November 2, 2025 at 12:50 PM
But they can't even take the bricks out! Like they barely zeroed the mandate penalty in a massive reconciliation bill after just a punishing and ugly session. The Medicaid Expansion demanded a SCOTUS case that could only be a half measure. Trying to zero ACA subsidies are going to murder them.
— Charlie Thomas (@cthomasjamh.bsky.social) November 2, 2025 at 1:03 PM
Basically I think we all need to stop and marvel at how well the ACA was put together that after 15 years of unrelenting hostility it still stands, the parts they can effect don't undo the whole (despite worries about the mandate penalty), and touching anything else is suicide.
— Charlie Thomas (@cthomasjamh.bsky.social) November 2, 2025 at 1:03 PM
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Donald Trump is sending $40 billion to Argentina. I want to send America's seniors an extra $200 a month.
The cost of everything from groceries to utilities to health care is up.
My new bill is an emergency lifeline for seniors struggling to survive in Trump's economy.— Elizabeth Warren (@warren.senate.gov) November 1, 2025 at 10:34 AM
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1) He did not
2) Throwing a glitzy, over-the-top "let them eat cake" party deliberately celebrating decadence and luxury in the midst of a government shutdown is not the same as a round of golf.— Patrick Chovanec (@prchovanec.bsky.social) November 2, 2025 at 2:17 PM
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I think Susie Wiles & the gang screwed up the shutdown fight by going with a "Trump is UNSTOPPABLE" narrative instead of a "Trump is being completely hamstrung by the EVIL DEMOCRATS", & I suspect it's because both they & Trump himself are insecure about his ability to project strength.
— Chatham Harrison dba TRUMP DELENDUS EST (@chathamharrison.bsky.social) November 1, 2025 at 12:17 PM
On The Road – Albatrossity – Day 2 at Canyon de Chelly (with bonus movie recommendation)
mappy!
Strength in affordable groceries. Strength in no-cost health insurance, lower mortgages, rent, insurance, dental… The paycheck vote. Yup.
MagdaInBlack
See, here’s the thing, Scott Bessent: I don’t give a rats ass how much golf Obama played oh those many years ago. I care about what your boy and his train wreck administration are doing now.
NotMax
Open thread FYI.
Ten Bears
I’m just a little guy, five five and a buck & a half. Got bigger hands than that
Pretty good with my fists too. Tired of waiting to apply the obvious solution
May not be fair though. Never seen “tough guys” who were such fairies …
Matt McIrvin
Bessent didn’t say Obama DID play a record amount of golf, he said he BELIEVES it.
We know he believes it, because Donald Trump said it, and that’s the basis of these bozos’ belief system.
rikyrah
Good Morning Everyone 😊 😊 😊
rikyrah
So, the approval of the Youth is below the crazyfication factor 🧐🤔
la_caterina
@rikyrah: Good Morning!!!
MagdaInBlack
johnpavlovitz.substack.com/p/staying-human-in-inhumane-times
Matt McIrvin
It’s just basic abuser logic. Doing something cruel and declaring that you had no choice or somebody else, usually the victim, made you do it is SOP and part of authoritarian parenting styles.
I’ve similarly seen it explained that ICE and CBP have no choice but to ignore rule of law and disappear and abuse people because “liberals let the problem get this bad”. Look what you made me do!
Jeffro
I love Liz Warren.
Gimme Warren II in 2028, whomever that is, and I’ll crawl over broken glass to get her elected.
Chief Oshkosh
Some good, positive points made about the resiliency of the ACA (Obamacare). Thanks for pointing those out!
For those who don’t follow Heather Cox Richardson, today’s post was all about how the Heritage Foundation and other “conservative” groups and individuals appear to be embracing Nazism. Like, actual Nazism. One wonders if the MSM will ever get around to reporting that.
Also, it appears more likely that Fuentes’ “groypers” (as near as I can tell, young American Nazis) infiltrated (don’t know if that’s the right word) Kirk’s Turning Point group. Haven’t heard much about Kirk’s killer recently, have we? Odd, that.
Link to HCR: open.substack.com/pub/heathercoxrichardson/p/november-2-2025?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email
MagdaInBlack
That chocolate dragons head is very, very cool, altho I admit I thought for a moment, at the beginning stages, that we were going BJ After Dark.
Professor Bigfoot
@rikyrah: Good morning!
Professor Bigfoot
Scott Bessent deserves the appellation Backpfeifengesicht even more than Ben Shapiro.
mappy!
Camelot. King Arthur Flour
Chief Oshkosh
@rikyrah: Good morning!
Suzanne
As I was noting in the other thread….. I am just fraught with anger. These people fucked with Americans’ basic needs of survival while throwing themselves a decadence party. Bessent can eat my whole ass.
zhena gogolia
@MagdaInBlack: He hardly played any golf.
Suzanne
@zhena gogolia: He also didn’t cheat at golf!
zhena gogolia
@MagdaInBlack: That’s good.
zhena gogolia
@Suzanne: And he looked damn good in golf clothes.
satby
@MagdaInBlack: love John Pavlovitz!
eclare
@zhena gogolia:
My understanding is that when Obama did play golf, he played on courses on military bases. Makes total sense from a security standpoint and from an appearance standpoint.
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
My biggest source of hope is I read A Fever in the Heartland by Timothy Egan. It’s about the rise of the Klan in the 1920s with a focus on the Midwest and the grifter who helped grow the Klan into a more or less mainstream organization. He was eventually convicted of murdering a woman he abducted and raped after years of serial abuse of women despite preaching the Klan values of sexual purity. By the time he was charged a rift had formed between him and the guy who revived the Klan in the south but by then it was a truly national organization with the exception of the Northeast maybe – most Western states had active chapters so it stretched from the Midwest to Colorado, Oregon and Washington and throughout the South. Then it all kind of fell apart at once. I’m sure his conviction and the publicity surrounding it played a part but it had to be more than that.
One other similarity to our current times is that the rise started in the aftermath of the Spanish Influenza pandemic. So maybe there’s something about pandemics that make people fascist curious. Anyway hopefully history will at least rhyme if not exactly repeat itself and people will come to their senses like they did back then. The long progressive era began in the aftermath.
Matt McIrvin
@MagdaInBlack: Knocking Obama for playing golf, and (I’d forgotten this) promising that he would never play golf if he became President, was a key feature of Donald Trump’s Twitter activity during Obama’s time in office. Then, of course, Trump spent over twice as much time playing golf than Obama even during his first term, because this is what Trump does.
cnn.com/2020/05/25/politics/fact-check-trump-obama-golf
Of course the amount of time Obama spent playing golf is irrelevant today, but the remarkable thing is that lackeys like Bessent continue to lean on lies from Donald Trump that were trivially exposed years and years ago.
satby
That top line poll question on “border security” is worded poorly enough that people who hate the felon are able to say he met their expectations: to ruin immigration, reduce even tourists coming in, and be brutal and lawless in going after immigrants. I mean, those were my expectations and he’s far exceeded them. It’s not a positive.
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
@eclare: I guarantee you Obama didn’t play golf even half as often as one other President I could name but apparently Trump gets a pass. W took a lot of time off but he wasn’t into golf – he liked riding his MTB instead. Coolidge was famous for being the laziest most do nothing POTUS in history, at least until Trump came along.
Matt McIrvin
@What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?: Speaking of The Great Gatsby, I’ve heard its complete lack of any mention of the flu pandemic given as evidence that the public instinctively memory-hole these things.
The thing is, Gatsby definitely does mention the First World War, which features heavily in its character backstory, and I get the definite sense that the pandemic was really thought of as part of the same global disaster.
eclare
@What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?:
Ooh, I’ll have to look into that, thanks! Timothy Egan wrote one of the most harrowing books I’ve read. It’s about the Dust Bowl, The Worst Hard Time. It’s also aggravating because surprise! it was totally predictable.
Princess
@Chief Oshkosh: I myself have noticed that we’ve heard zero about Kirk’s alleged murderer since they released the obviously fake texts to his roommate. I did some digging several months back, and they were waiting for the accused to have a lawyer appointed. But yeah, no one cares about motive or affiliation or anything any more. I guess they figured out he was just a gun happy right winger.
Princess
@Matt McIrvin: Black people arent supposed to have leisure ever. White people should have as much leisure as they can afford.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@satby: I had that same thought. Yes, Trump is meeting my expectations pretty much all the way around
Hoodie
@Matt McIrvin: Bessent knows that Obama didn’t play anywhere near the amount of golf Trump has played. These guys have reached a point where they just lie about everything, parroting what they’ve learned from Trump. It’s a power move, safe now for shits like Bessent because Trump does it. Bessent is known to be a world class asshole and into the same dominance bullshit as his boss, but he acts like this because now it’s safe as a show of loyalty.
MagdaInBlack
@Matt McIrvin: The remarkable thing to me is the constant ” But Johnny down the street did it” excuse.
‘We are not talking about what Johnny’s mommy let him do. We are talking about what YOU are doing”
eclare
@What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?:
W also spent so much time clearing brush, I often wondered how much brush does your ranch grow? Full disclosure: I have never lived on a ranch, could be totally normal.
Suzanne
@eclare: The brush clearing struck me as normal. When I lived in AZ, I was routinely shocked by some of the trees and grasses and how much they grew.
But not up! Nothing in the desert grows vertically, except the saguaro. Everything else grows, like, outward.
EarthWindFire
@eclare: My father grew up on a ranch. Brush clearing is done but it’s not the regular thing W made it out to be. Dad had choice words about W the wannabe cowboy.
Edit after Suzanne’s comment: maybe it’s region dependent. Dad grew up in Wyoming, not Texas.
YY_Sima Qian
Over the past week+ I have commented about the drama surround the Netherland based Nexperia (maker of mature commodity chips that are integral to automobiles, consumer electronics & appliances), wholly owned by the PRC based WingTech since 2019, & effected seized by the Dutch government under US pressure. In response to the Dutch government employing war time supplies emergency powers to freeze WingTech out of Nexperia, under intense US pressure, the PRC government banned export of Nexperia chips packaged in the PRC (accounting for ~ 70 – 80% of total), Nexperia Global halted shipments of wafers fabbed in Europe to Nexperia China, the two Nexperias are going through a nasty & destructive divorce cold turkey. All these disruptions threatened to cause a shock of the global automotive (& other industries) supply chains nearly as intense as the COVID Pandemic.
Well, the Xi-Trump meeting (or rather, the prep meeting between Scott Bessent & He Lifeng before hand in Kuala Lumpur) seems to have resolved crisis for now. The PRC government is now reopening export of Nexperia chips packaged in the country, but only to approved customers. Apparently, Nexperia China is insisting on global customers to sign new supply contracts directly w/ the now de facto independent unit so that none of the money goes to Nexperia Global, & also insisting that the transactions be conducted in Chinese Yuan, rather than USD or Euro.
The loser so far has ended up being Nexperia Global, the Netherlands & the EU:
BTW, I think “de facto” is doing a lot of heavy lifting in the WH statement. There is no indication from the PRC government that the export controls placed on rare earth elements & rare earth magnets in Apr. ’25 have been loosened (especially wrt to the US MIC), only the significant broadening in Oct. ’25 has been suspended for a yr. Indeed, the PRC just added tungsten, antimony & silver to the export control regime implemented in Apr.
The Dutch government has also been gaslighting about the motivation behind seizing Nexperia from WingTech. “Corporate governance” issues only emerged when USG placed WingTech on the Entity List in Dec. ’24, & the Dutch government demanded firewalling Nexperia off from WingTech, which WingTech understandably balked at (given it is the 100% owner). In Jul. USG warned that a new rule is coming that will place all majority owned subsidiaries of companies on the Entity List under the same restrictions, as well, & demanded that Dutch government remove any Chinese control over Nexperia as condition to remove the company from the Entity List restrictions. The new USG rules was announced on 9/29, & the Dutch government, operating through courts at extraordinary speed, froze WingTech out of Nexperia operations & removed the Chinese CEO on 9/30. The Dutch government has claimed that it was acting independently of the US, responding to concerns about corporate governance (WingTech‘s refusal to fully firewall off Nexperia & potentially shifting more of the operations & R&D to the PRC) but the court proceedings clearly shows that their hands were forced by USG. In any case, nationalizing the subsidiary of a foreign firm for “corporate malfeasance” is unprecedented, & the Dutch court did not try WingTech management for corporate malfeasance. Well, the US just reached a ceasefire w/ the PRC, suspended the new rule targeting subsidiaries for a year, & the Dutch have been left to fend for itself in face of PRC retaliation.
WingTech has spent > USS$ 3.5B on Nexperia since 2019 in purchasing the company & in further investments, including a planned US$ 200M expansion for its operations in Germany (now surely cancelled), turning what was a loss making unit of NXP into a profitable company, doubling its sales, w/ improved R&D capabilities, & riding the rising tide of demand for mature commodity chips from the PRC EV/consumer electronics/appliances markets (nearly half of total revenue).
snoey
@Suzanne: He didn’t get along with horses at all, so he had to do some sort of ranching activity.
eclare
@Suzanne:
Thanks!
eclare
@EarthWindFire:
Wannabe cowboy, gotcha.
They Call Me Noni
@Matt McIrvin: Every time one of these spinless wonders just bald faced lies and verbally genuflects to T_ _ _ p you know that deep down they just hate their miserable selves. They show absolutely no shame or remorse while looking so utterly foolish.
different-church-lady
That means two-thirds of registered voters were FUCKING GULLIBLE IDIOTS a year ago. Which is a lot higher than I thought.
different-church-lady
@They Call Me Noni: Totally the other way around. They get a little thrill from each baldfaced lies. It’s a power trip.
Abnormal Hiker
@eclare: The only book by Timothy Egan that I have read is Pilgrimage to Eternity about walking the Via Francigena. I have walked many hiking trails in Europe, including much of the VF.
Of all the books I have ever read about long distance walking, Egan’s was to me the least authentic. There were very few descriptions of the interactions that other people usually report on.
Egan was about 4 days ahead of me in early September 2019 when I was walking through Great St Bernard Pass. The hardcover book was published on October 15, 2019. Perhaps he was too busy working on the book while he walked to interact much with other people.
Chief Oshkosh
Marcy Wheeler is highlighted at TPM: talkingpointsmemo.com/tpm-25/without-online-trolls-there-would-be-no-donald-trump
It’s her thoughts on why Trump lost control of the Epstein narrative back in July. Basically, her take is that he relied a lot more on online trolls than many people understand, and that troll army was momentarily disorganized by Bondi’s statements amounting to “nothing to see here, move along.” There is some juicy detail at the linked piece, but here are some excerpts:
eclare
@Abnormal Hiker:
Huh. Interesting. Hate to hear that.
Eyeroller
@Matt McIrvin: My maternal grandparents were children during the “Kansas” flu and they definitely remembered it. My grandmother would talk about how sick she was and IITC at least one of her friends died. (I don’t believe any of my family members who died of flu.). So it wasn’t really memory-holed, it just wasn’t discussed much.
And yes it probably was lumped in with the Great War as another bad part of that time. Which it was, since troop concentrations probably started it, and troop movements definitely spread it.
TONYG
@Jeffro: Warren would have been my choice in 2020, but by the time the (ridiculously late) New Jersey primary came around, Biden was already the de-facto winner. The primary “system” is absurd.
They Call Me Noni
@different-church-lady: But yet they are completely powerless over their own actions and words. They are like marionettes and FFOTUS pulls the strings.
TONYG
@EarthWindFire: George W Bush was the prototype of the cosplay style of politics that Donald Trump perfected a few years later.
TONYG
@They Call Me Noni: My theory is that they’re trying to (and maybe succeeding in) establishing a medieval system. The courtiers flatter the king. The serfs and peasants (99.99% of the population) face only neglect or violence.
Suzanne
@different-church-lady:
I was musing on something over this weekend: I feel like I am less surprised by voters being incoherent and idiotic than some other commenters here. Maybe I just know more dumb people?
Like…. I see people make bad decisions all the time! Very human, emotion-driven bad decisions. Bad relationship decisions, bad financial decisions, bad parenting decisions. Harmful habits, addictions, dysfunctions. Inability to delay gratification. Overreactions, retail therapy. Poor predictions of risk. It just seems absolutely in keeping with this behavior that many people will be taken in by false promises, because they are at their core unhappy or frustrated and thus don’t think clearly.
This is much of why I also am more accepting of “vibes politics” than others. People make a lot of decisions based on vibes and it doesn’t seem reasonable to expect them to set that aside. Even if I think they should.
Librettist
Late note on the Lincoln crapper – that’s not marble. They print porcelain now, and those large faux marble tiles are big with the McMansion set.
frosty
@eclare: I read Egan’s The Big Burn when we were in Idaho and took a hike to the mine where Ed Pulaski saved 40 men.
After that, his dust bowl book and now I want to go to Oklahoma. He’s a great writer.
Matt McIrvin
@Eyeroller: My great-grandmother died of flu in 1921, resulting in all of her children being adopted by different families–a huge event in my grandfather’s young life, obviously. He was born in rural South Dakota to Norwegian immigrants and was adopted by Danish immigrants (one of whom was the preacher), so the language spoken at home changed.
Paul in KY
@snoey: Napoleon had terrible trouble with horses too. They had to get him to ride in carriages to stop him from killing himself via fall from a horse.
Matt McIrvin
@Suzanne: I grew up in what was then very white conservative territory and my adolescence was the Age of Reagan, so my default assumption is that most people instinctively hate liberals, and it’s never that surprising to me when reactionaries win.
To me, the greatest political anomaly of my entire life was that the United States elected Barack Obama President twice. That was not supposed to happen according to any mental model I have. And I think a lot of the right thought the same way and took it as this baffling psychological blow.
(But for me, it was… what? That was the guy I supported IN THE PRIMARY! The candidate I support in a contested presidential primary is not supposed to win the election. That just does not happen.)
lowtechcyclist
@Suzanne:
Before reading the morning thread, I went back to see what I’d missed during the night, and their sending out letters to grocery stores to ban them from giving any discounts to SNAP beneficiaries currently having to do without – well, that just took my breath away with its absolutely unnecessary and uncalled-for cruelty.
Not only refusing to feed the hungry, with the money right there to do it, but blocking other people from helping out as well. Just fucking evil.
And then the Gatsby shindig and the marble bathroom on top of all that. If someone had put all this in a novel a year ago…
eclare
@Librettist:
I have an old porcelain tub, and that shit is very, very slick. I have to be very careful in it, even with the adhesive stickers. I’m even careful with what kind of soap I use, nothing with lots of moisturizers.
Fingers crossed FFOTUS takes a shower in there to test how great it is now!
Matt McIrvin
@lowtechcyclist:
I’m still waiting for the explanation of how THAT is the Democrats’ fault.
Suzanne
@Matt McIrvin:
Yeah this. Politics is more about our feelings about one another than it is about the candidates. The Democrats have become associated with a few archetypes that lots of people dislike. Including, but not limited to: “your blue-haired niece who goes to Oberlin”, “the nerdy dude who you picked on in school and who now drives a nicer car than yours”, “the validictorian who was a pleasure to have in class”. (And yes, there’s a ton of gender, race, homophobic bigotry buried in these.)
But, like….. maybe y’all just have very functional, sane, rational friends and family who make good decisions? LOL.
Suzanne
@lowtechcyclist:
The party of “local control” and “government out of private business” and “support from charity, not the government” is, as usual, 100% full of shit.
MattF
@Matt McIrvin: I think that Rs calling the ACA ‘Obamacare’ was supposed to be a scare tactic— and it backfired badly. Now it’s a reminder that Obama was responsible for instituting affordable health care for a large number of Americans. I also think ‘Obamacare means no more high insurance premiums for existing conditions’ ought to be highlighted much more.
frosty
@Matt McIrvin: The Democrats support the USPS. USPS delivered the letters. Connect the dots. QED.
p.a
I know we need everyone we can get, but until they show up to vote, especially in off-year elections, polls of 18-29 year olds are just fantasy-art sketches of dragons and orcs to me: cool but unreal.
Librettist
@Suzanne:
Time Kaine, Tim Walz. The big dad energy is agita for angry divorced guys perpetually making their exes miserable.
RevRick
@MagdaInBlack: Yeah, before he started his carving it did have that certain shape.
JML
They know they’re still not allowed to use the N-word (yet), but every time they lie about Obama and try and blame things on him and so forth it’s just race-baiting to what’s left of their white right-wing pseudo-Christian national base.
The hate and hate enabling from these people is staggering. It never ends. They truly are the worst people.
CCL
@Matt McIrvin: similar here. She survived, but was bald – had to wear a wig and her finger nails stopped growing. Her second son was a toddler and remembered not being allowed to be in the same room as his mother. I always thought he probably was a failure to thrive child. My family always knew about the influenza – and of course, the Katherine Porter short story/novel, Pale Horse, Pale Rider.
eclare
@MattF:
Wasn’t Obama asked at one point what he thought about people calling it Obamacare, and his response was (paraphrasing) I’m glad people think I care?
Cliosfanboy
@eclare: I imagine trump in a huge slimy tub like Baron Vladimir Harkonnen in Dune.
Professor Bigfoot
@eclare: TrumpCare == Don’t Care
YY_Sima Qian
@Matt McIrvin: The Obama years (from the Dem primary in ’07 on) was the 1st time I became deeply engaged w/ US politics (& policies). I really thought his reelection heralded a turning of the page of the US on its racist past (long arc of history & all). I found Trump’s election in ’16 unfathomable, even though I was no fan of Hillary (still isn’t). But then, I found Trump winning the Republican nomination unfathomable. By the ’24 election I was much more jaded.
Soprano2
@Suzanne: It’s as if none of them ever studied the causes of the French Revolution, or how that turned out for people like them. It’s enraging how they’re thumbing their noses at Americans.
tobie
@Chief Oshkosh: I’m following all this closely because it is alarming as hell and extends to the White House. J. D. Vance wrote the foreword to Kevin Robert’s book Dawn’s Early Light:. in 2024, The Guardian referred to Roberts not only as the President of the Heritage Foundation but also as the architect of Project 2025.
different-church-lady
@Suzanne: It’s the very conundrum: how do you create a politic where you trick a bunch of bad-decision addicts into making good decisions despite themselves?
I still think the heart of it is social media, which is equivalent to a hypercharged reward system for bad decisions.
Soprano2
@Dorothy A. Winsor: He’s actually exceeding mine, so far it’s worse than I thought it would be.
cmorenc
@frosty:
I can think of nothing that makes me want to go to Oklahaoma, except perhaps as an unavoidble drive-through on a road trip from NC to destinations much further west than Oklahoma. To be fair, it’s likely that snowbirds from the North who pass through my original home area in NC along I-95 along their way to Florida, have a similar take on eastern NC. as just an “unavoidable pass-through”.
different-church-lady
@Suzanne:
Say WHAT? When I was in school the nerds were always at the bottom of the pig pile. Any attempt by a nerd to pick on someone else backfired quicker than buying a product from the Acme Corporation.
TerryC
Doesn’t take much to create endless brush. I live on 17.4 acres (same size as Mar-a-Lockup) and after 20 years of planting 1,000 or more trees a year I now have plenty of brush to keep myself busy. Working on my first couple of “dead hedges” right this moment.
different-church-lady
@lowtechcyclist:
It’s exactly what we all keep saying: the cruelty is the point.
jonas
Each one of Trump’s golf weekends costs the taxpayer millions because he charges his staff and Secret Service to use his own luxury resorts. Once again, all together now,”can you imagine if a Democrat…”
Suzanne
@Librettist:
Oh yes. Hillary said, at one point, something like, “I remind a lot of men of their ex-wives”. The birthright of the mediocre white man is to fail upward — part of that is having a wife and children to push around — without having to put forth much effort. Archetypal liberals are a bunch of types who stand in opposition to that effort.
Matt McIrvin
@Suzanne:
Except that the Republicans now have that guy. Well, actually they don’t, they have that guy for the specific case where the nicer car is 15 Bugatti Chirons.
Professor Bigfoot
@YY_Sima Qian: I hear you on both counts.
Trump’s 2016 election sent me into a fugue state after which I set about amassing an “arsenal” and becoming a good shot.
But in 2024 it feels more like resignation.
Like, “Okay, so this is just how its gonna be… white folks are just gonna white folk.”
MattF
@Soprano2: De Tocqueville’s thesis about the French Revolution was that the French nobility (unlike the British nobility) became useless over time. So, MAGAt partying when they should be governing is actually a positive sign for us.
Chief Oshkosh
@tobie: Yep. It is beyond alarming. We’ve got 21st-Century Nazis/Klansmen running all three branches of the government.
Soprano2
I see this too. I think a significant amount of it is driven by something my SIL said to me once – “I feel like we’re never going to get ahead, so might as well enjoy life any way you can”. They lived in my FIL’s house rent-free, her husband (my husband’s brother) was a mechanic who made good money. They hardly ever had a car payment because he would buy older cars from people who couldn’t afford the repairs, fix them up and drive them. They had 4 kids, so yeah lots of expenses, but think how much easier your life would be if you didn’t have rent or a house payment or a car payment. They were so bad with money that they ended up filing bankruptcy! I think this kind of thing is about people who have no goals or thoughts of the future; they’re only living for the present.
prostratedragon
Today in international mockery: Maduro imitating a familiar dance.
Suzanne
@different-church-lady: I said “the nerdy dude who you picked on”. Yes, the dude at the bottom of the social hierarchy.
From my observations of the Spawns and their friends, it’s a bit better for nerds these days than it used to be. I think fandom has helped a bit with that. When I was young, doing well in school was decidedly uncool.
But this is why Vivek Ramaswamy’s hilarious tweet about how Americans need to spend their weekends at the science fair just made me laugh so hard. Like, dude…. you’re in the party with the meatheads and choads. Most people who want to spend the weekend at the science fair are Democrats, you idiot!
jonas
When he wasn’t telling reporters that his private investigators running around Hawaii had totally discovered a “shocking” coverup regarding Obama’s birth certificate and citizenship status. Has anyone ever asked him why he never released the results of that incredible, shocking investigation?
gene108
Squeaker Johnson must know lowering insurance premiums is easy. Let insurance companies deny a whole bunch of services that the ACA forces them to cover like pre-existing conditions, annual checkups, etc.
And every Republican post-Obamacare healthcare idea involves giving insurers the ability to deny basic care the ACA requires, and denying people with chronic conditions adequate insurance by sticking them in high risk pools.
Matt McIrvin
@YY_Sima Qian: I’m kind of astonished that Trump isn’t more popular than he is, actually. Both times he won, I figured that he’d rapidly become an extremely popular President through totalitarian idea-manipulation methods (building on the model of what happened with George W. Bush after 9/11), and he hasn’t been, even after the murder of Charlie Kirk handed them what they thought was a 9/11-like event.
This time around, he even has the kind of control of the mainstream political media that autocrats expect, and even that hasn’t done it for him. He’s retained his base, but that’s it, and all the political energy is just going into base retention. That genuinely surprises me. He’s messing with elections in ways that might make it hard to dislodge his movement, but he does not have the people with him.
He was probably popular enough during his first term that he could have won reelection in 2020 were it not for the COVID pandemic. But the same pandemic and its aftereffects cursed his opposition and he got back in.
Chief Oshkosh
@Professor Bigfoot: I’d be interested on your take about Marcy Wheeler’s piece. I suspect that all of the trolls she references were/are white…and so much more.
talkingpointsmemo.com/tpm-25/without-online-trolls-there-would-be-no-donald-trump
lowtechcyclist
@Suzanne:
I’m trying to think of any principle they’ve consistently held onto that didn’t have to do with racism, sexism, or guns.
Paul in KY
@Professor Bigfoot: That makes a good sign!
Iron City
@Soprano2: Like my dog?
H.E.Wolf
At least some of those nerds may have been autistic and (for various reasons) undiagnosed.
I wonder if some of the right-wing resentment of “autism” [in quotes, because they view it as a Bad Thing] at its current, knowledge-based diagnosed rates, could be related to anger at losing a handy, socially-approved source of people to pick on?
As in: they visualize themselves back in grade school, and *thwarted* from bullying someone… and they experience their version of incandescent rage.
Scout211
Things are looking good here for prop 50. The No on 50 campaign has quietly disappeared.
In 2024, making the election about Trump was not a winning strategy. In 2025 and hopefully in 2026, it appears to be a winning strategy if this election in California applies to other states.
California Democrats made Prop. 50 about Trump. Polls show it’s working as voting ends
. . .
Paul in KY
@cmorenc: I am 100% sure that generic Eastern NC looks so so much better than (insert any part of) Oklahoma!
Another Scott
@Soprano2:
I remember days like that.
I think it often comes down to not having enough of a financial cushion to look ahead, and the enforced American mania to consume more.
[ insert statistic about most American’s not being able to find $400 for emergency expenses without taking out a loan or similar. ]
I remember having to – literally – count every single penny (including taxes) when buying groceries for the month. For the first 5 years of my life when I was out on my own, there was never anything left at the end of the month. An extra $500 a month of income would have made a huge difference to my mental health and quality of life.
My wife’s former office roommate would talk about his doctor daughter and banker son-in-law who lived in the “bad part of town” in Greenwich, CT. [ groucho-roll-eyes.gif ] How he told them that it was important to
havesave half their income… That is a fantasy for something like 3/4 of the country, and a stretch for 20+% more, but his daughter and SiL could do it.So, I have some sympathy for your rent-free relations. They don’t see a way to get out of their economic situation, so they’re going to try to make the best of it as they are now. And, of course, they’re going to fail because it’s expensive being poor (or near poor).
Getting to the point where everyone in America isn’t driving themselves mad because they don’t have any breathing room is going to take a lot of work. :-(
Thanks.
Best wishes,
Scott.
Suzanne
@Matt McIrvin:
We jackals here overestimate how much people care. (It’s because we care.) I don’t like this, but lots of people genuinely don’t perceive a material difference in their lives that they connect to a Democrat or a Republican winning the presidential election. And since tons of people don’t really have deep and coherent political values, they judge success of the government based on stupid factors, like if they could buy an $80K pickup truck at a low interest rate.
This is a real problem, and it’s part of why I think Dems (the ensemble cast) need to be stronger at the performance aspects of politics. I have been pleased during this shutdown by how our pols have been managing this.
lowtechcyclist
@tobie:
Killing off the programs that feed the hungry and heal the sick, yeah, that sure sounds Christian to me. //
Paul in KY
@Suzanne: Actually, I think Sen. Clinton reminded some people of the nerdy, high achiever, busybody girl they resented/were jealous of in HS.
Professor Bigfoot
@prostratedragon: EXCEPT— he can’t help himself, that man has rhythm! He meant to mock that uncoordinated pumpkin-faced twatwaffle, but he manages to somehow make it look good! X^D
Matt McIrvin
@H.E.Wolf: Conservatives are really, really resentful of disabled people and the ADA in general. Seeing wheelchair ramps and Braille signs makes steam come out of their ears. The disabled are all fakers, or they’re lazy people, or God is punishing them for somebody’s sins, or they’re gross freaks who shouldn’t be out in public. Accommodations for them are wokeness gone wild, an unacceptable burden on business, etc.
This is true even though many of them ARE disabled (almost everyone becomes disabled in some way eventually). They carve out a little personal exception, just like with abortion.
In my high school, the kids who got picked on the hardest were the mainstreamed students with cerebral palsy. I always keep that in mind. Trump is into mocking them too.
lowtechcyclist
@cmorenc:
Well, the Woody Guthrie Center and the Bob Dylan Center are both in Tulsa. So there’s that.
Paul in KY
@Suzanne: From what I’ve seen at my son’s school, nerds have it alot better than we did back in the early to mid 70s. To many Biffs at my HS (one is too many).
Suzanne
@Paul in KY:
You mean Tracy Flick. Yes, another female archetype who people hate. The thing is, Hillary has been in public life long enough that she’s embodied many of these archetypes by now, and lots of men hate them all. Tracy Flick, the type we now call “the girlboss”, the midlife cringey wine mom, the bitchy ex-wife.
As a fellow nerdy, high-achieving girl in high school who conservative boys hated….. I see her.
Paul in KY
@Matt McIrvin: At least in my HS we didn’t pick on the poor devils that had CP! Man what HS did you go to? That crazy one in Dazed & Confused!?
RevRick
@MattF: And yet still, some people will insist that they don’t want Obamacare, but will happily sign up for the ACA.
YY_Sima Qian
@Matt McIrvin: That’s what gives me hope for the US in the medium to long term: Trumpian MAGA is far too transparent in their malice, far too expansive in the targeting of their hate, far too crass in their discourse, & far too incompetent in their execution.
What makes me despair in the short term is the entire edifice of the system of checks & balances which the civi religion in the US has been built on has proven hallow.
What I fear the most is a post-Trumpian MAGA authoritarianism that appears urbane, rational & competent to the majority, which would be appealing amongst the wreckage left by Trumpian maladministation, while methodically target each [potential] opposition group in turn to cement control over power.
Professor Bigfoot
@Chief Oshkosh: To me it highlights the gullibility of white Americans.
That nearly 2/3 of white men and well over half of white women bought this bullshit tells me there’s something endemic to whiteness that makes white people particularly vulnerable to white supremacist messaging. 🤔
(William of Ockham rolls his eyes)
Paul in KY
@Suzanne: I bet you were so badass in HS! Enjoy reading your comments.
UncleEbeneezer
@Chief Oshkosh: Right-wing trolls get only part of the blame. You can’t explain Trump’s success without Left-wing trolls as well. They obsessively dragged Hillary down as well as Biden and Kamala. Of all the trending topics that were used to weaken our Dems, very few of them didn’t have a significant helping hand or slightly different version, from the Left. Hillary’s Emails, Crooked Hillary, Goldman Sachs, Biden’s Age (2020), Afghanistan withdrawal, train derailment, Covid “Lockdown” policies, Biden’s Age (2024) and then finally Gaza. Right-wing trolling absolutely holds Trump aloft on the Right, but it is the Left-wing bullshit that hurts Dems enough to let Trump eek out narrow wins.
The sad truth is just about everything we are going through now is the result of people on the Left and Right working in tandem because they both hate Dems (for different reasons). They may have completely different ideologies but the horseshoe is held together by their mutual agreement that anything is better than letting mainstream Dems run things.
And yes, it is definitely a white thing, in general.
H.E.Wolf
@Matt McIrvin: The folks who think and behave like that are sad, sorry, stunted people.
If nothing else, they are a reminder to the rest of us to think, and do, better.
Professor Bigfoot
Minor edit.
Suzanne
@H.E.Wolf:
Yes, I think this is very much part of their worldview. Conservatives are hierarchical. Bullying is a way of enforcing status games.
Paul in KY
@Professor Bigfoot: Yeah, a message that says your skin colour makes you the ‘Chosen People ™’ will be appealing to some portion of those fed the propaganda. Sad it appears so many slurp it up (either consciously or unconsciously).
H.E.Wolf
… and throws his razor against the wall in disgust.
:)
UncleEbeneezer
@lowtechcyclist: None. It’s isms/phobias and guns, all the way down. Maybe Climate is just pure nihilism/greed.
Belafon
@different-church-lady: There were nerds who directed their resentment of being picked on at other nerds.
Josie
@Suzanne:
This is exactly what I thought when I saw his rant. He certainly picked the wrong party if those were his sincere beliefs.
schrodingers_cat
@Professor Bigfoot: They are not gullible. Trump says out loud what many of them are thinking. They are relieved that they don’t have to make mouth noises about accepting others not like them.
H.E.Wolf
@Professor Bigfoot:
Beat me to it.
And now, I’m going to go forth and make this Monday a day worth having!
All my best to all y’all. Let’s show ’em what we’re made of.
Suzanne
@Professor Bigfoot:
Yeah, for sure. The biggest thing I see among this set is just blithe confidence that it will all be okay. Which is, of course, white privilege. They can make all sort of bad decisions and nothing truly bad will happen to them!
As I said above…. tons of terrible decisions, in every arena of life.
RevRick
@Professor Bigfoot: Yes, the GOP basically has only two options when it comes to providing healthcare. Either they go:
1). Full on Medicare+ for All…. I know, you need a moment to catch your breath from laughing hysterically…. Or…
2). Entirely dismantling the ACA, and especially the patient protections parts, creating a situation where insurance companies sell garbage policies, and that results in the complete collapse of the health care industry and modern medical treatment.
In the latter case, if you get in a serious accident, the first thing the EMS crew will ask will be about your health insurance so they can determine whether or not you’ll bleed out at the scene.
Shalimar
The most insane thing to me is that every single one of those 30% who say Trump has done fine on inflation and cost of living also said Biden was doing horribly on inflation and cost of living even though both have objectively gotten worse in the last year. It’s awful.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Matt McIrvin:
Don’t disagree with any of that regarding base retention.
I’ve actually thought the opposite about how his popularity would go, ie., down.
I think that while many people beat on the electorate in general, we as a country are showing remarkable resilience…well, resilience in terms of polling popularity if that makes any sense.
We’re just so big and so diverse although modern technology combined with modern propaganda techniques right out of Goebbel’s playbook with a heavy dose of wealth inequality driving the messaging and assaulting basic social institutions are doing a right fine job of proving me wrong in the long run.
no body no name
@lowtechcyclist:
I’ll give you four immediately. Poor people, rich people, religion, fossil fuels. All of which they are on the wrong side of as well.
They are extremely principled they are just principled assholes.
Suzanne
@Paul in KY:
When I was in high school, a group of mean kids decided to be cruel to a disabled girl by voting for her for Homecoming Queen (or something, one of the dances) and then pointing and laughing at her up on stage when she won. We also had a Latino Heritage Club, and some white kids got pissed about it, so they found some teacher to agree to sponsor a Caucasian Club. Yes, we had actual Nazi students, too, and race riots (one with cops helping out).
Booger
@lowtechcyclist: So Woody Guthrie and Bob Dylan are concentric? Who knew?
Melancholy Jaques
@Scout211:
I watch a lot of sports and that audience leans right so there is usually a flood of right-wing ads. A week ago, the Arnold ad was every other commercial break, then – poof – gone.
Matt McIrvin
@Paul in KY: A big prison-like suburban HS that was kind of on a socioeconomic boundary, with a lot of associated tensions. But the junior high was actually worse.
I always laugh at the inspirational stories about how someone defeated “their bully” by finally punching them in the snoot. What, there was only one bully? They weren’t, like, a criminal syndicate who would get six huge guys to corner you in the locker room later on and beat the shit out of you if you tried that?
Soprano2
@Another Scott: But here’s the thing – they weren’t poor, or even near poor! They didn’t know or understand how to save money or think about the future. I think a lot more people are like that now even as they age. I believe more people used to “age out” of that mindset as they got “grown-up” jobs, got married, had kids and bought houses. They put aside the attitude they had toward life and money in their teens and early 20’s and thought more about the future for them and their families. This was regardless of income. In our times I think there are more people who never grow out of the mindset that they should always have everything they want right now. I think that’s one part of the problem young men are having right now – some of them think their lives should be easy and great right away, and when that doesn’t happen they get angry and disillusioned, and never look at any of the decisions they’ve made as being responsible for the plight they’re in.
Matt McIrvin
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: What I don’t see is the mechanism for that opposition to turn into real power on the federal level, with the ability to do more than tread water, because the political institutions are so broken (really the endpoint of a 30-year process) and Trump is busy breaking them harder. The best we can do for now is to try to strengthen regional and state institutions (which could theoretically become national ones if the US breaks up, or at least keep people alive if it doesn’t). But that means anyone in a state run by a tinpot autocrat is SOL.
Suzanne
@Soprano2:
I don’t know if it’s a generational mindset, or if, for most white people, there was just a rising tide that lifted their boats and made relative success fairly likely.
I do think the era of cheap consumer goods but expensive education makes this a very difficult cycle to break.
Soprano2
@Suzanne: Come sit by me! I had a boy tell me when I was 15 “You’re cute, too bad you’re such a bitch”. LOL Kids told me I was “too conscientious”, and I didn’t understand what they meant (they meant I was serious and no fun).
Paul in KY
@Suzanne: Glad I didn’t go to that HS. We had our share of cruel people, but that is some nasty stuff you are recounting. Hope the picked-on got their sweet revenge (usually/hopefully by driving up to the drive thru window in their Lexus and encountering one of them all greasy and beat down)
Matt McIrvin
@Suzanne: The funny thing to me is that the actual Tracy Flick in “Election” did nothing wrong. This dude with an extraordinary capacity for bad decisions just hated her vibe and destroyed himself trying to stop her. The movie is really ABOUT this whole phenomenon and many people who saw it didn’t seem to get that.
Soprano2
@Professor Bigfoot: I think that because we were so appalled at everything FFOTUS did in the first term we forget that for many Americans, especially the white ones, FFOTUS’s first term felt pretty good until Covid happened. I stand by my belief that many people were voting to go back to 2019, because that’s what they thought having FFOTUS as president again would mean. They didn’t listen to anything he said this time, they voted based on how they felt before Covid. ETA – I also go back to the person who did voter focus groups who said it was impossible to test many of the things in Project 2025, because most of the people in the focus group literally didn’t believe politicians would do those things. They refused to even express beliefs about them except that no one would do that. She said she had to water the proposals down a lot to get people to say they didn’t like them. I think lots of people really didn’t think he would do these things, because they didn’t think anyone would do them.
Citizen Alan
Did she then go on to kill them all with her telekinetic powers?
Paul in KY
@Matt McIrvin: Agree on the ‘fighting back’. The bullies always had ancillary-bullies there with them and you’d really get a whupping if you tried that. The bop-them-in-nose strategy does and can work when it’s a single bully.
Jeffro
@tobie: Kevin Roberts, Stephen Miller, Russell Vought, Mike Davis, and Brendan Carr all need to be dragged before a Democratic Congress in 2027
(and then just dragged, period)
Paul in KY
@Soprano2: I too feel that if COVID had never happened, the shitheel probably would have been re-elected.
Matt McIrvin
@Paul in KY: Some of the bullies I knew ended up in the school-to-prison pipeline… and others turned out fine. Some of the less violent ones seemed to forget they had ever been bullies and wondered later why I was holding grudges.
Paul in KY
@Citizen Alan: Crossed fingers….
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
@eclare: I read The Worst Hard Time too. Hopefully getting over this bout of fascism won’t require an economic collapse on the order of the Great Depression.
Soprano2
This is true, but it’s almost impossible to call them on it.
Paul in KY
@Matt McIrvin: We wuz just joking…hyuck, hyuck.
no body no name
@Suzanne:
Not just education but housing and basic cost of living. Retirement is a dream that’s not going to happen. Most people are doomed.
Matt McIrvin
@Paul in KY: Except that even there, you were running the risk that the school administration would come down hard on you for fighting, which, in 1981, they worried much more about than bullying, because it was disruptive.
A friend of mine got in that situation and ended up telling off the vice principal when they hauled him in. “If you won’t defend me I’ll defend myself!” He had some chutzpah.
Geminid
I saw a clip of Ruben Gallego campaigning with Mikie Sherrill in northeast New Jersey. It’s a majority-Latino town and Gallego is addressing the crowd in Spanish. I think he called Sherrill “La Mikie.”
eclare
@Suzanne:
That poor girl! Makes you wish she had Carrie’s powers.
Is that where they got the idea? Because that is the plot of Carrie.
Geminid
@Paul in KY: A friend thinks that if Trump hadn’t been such an idiot about the pandemic he would have been reelected easily. That was an opportunity to show leadership in a crisis and he botched it.
Suzanne
@Matt McIrvin:
Well, yeah. Tracy Flick tried hard. She very clearly wanted more from life than her town could provide. She was uppity, and mediocre men hate that. Ask me how I know!
Also see Leslie Knope as another type of woman that conservative dudes hate.
Suzanne
@Citizen Alan: LOL, I know, right?! No, she stood up there while they laughed at her and it was awkward as fuck, and her bullies got no sanction. No discipline, no social punishment.
As for the Nazi kids…., every one of them was fucking gross. Literally unwashed, poorly groomed, bad nutrition, dumb as a fucking stump with grades to match, unmoisturized.
Eyeroller
@Paul in KY: Not necessarily. What I’ve seen of Charlotte looks very much like a larger Oklahoma City.
Eastern Oklahoma has rolling terrain and some old ranges (Boston Mountains in the north–though these are mostly in Arkansas), Ouachita Mountains in the southeast. These are pretty low as mountains go (they are very old and have nearly eroded down) but it’s not flat.
Edit: there are also a lot of lakes in the eastern part of the state (where I am from, and I never spent much time in the western part since cross-country trips when through Kansas or Texas for me). But nearly all those lakes are Army Corps of Engineers projects.
lowtechcyclist
@Professor Bigfoot:
I think I’m a pretty decent writer, but I’ve always found good editors to be invaluable. :-)
Melancholy Jaques
@Geminid:
I’m pretty nervous about Mikie Sherill. I see Obama is also there.
schrodingers_cat
@Soprano2: I have and then have walked out of that relationship. Punctures their sense of self, because they don’t see themselves as bigots.
I also agree its not always possible.
Geminid
@Geminid: I think Trump still would have won relection in 2020 if he’d had Susan Wiles managing his campaign. That’s probably the pitch Wiles made when he interviewed her the following April.
Matt McIrvin
@Paul in KY: I did find that as high school went on, I was able to silo myself into circles where I didn’t have to deal with the worst kids, and some of them dropped out. The worst time was junior high school (7th-8th grade in my county) and 9th grade in HS. Everything was more chill by the end of HS.
And then in early college, I somehow ended up in a situation where a lot of the boys were catty little assholes again, though they weren’t violent (to me). It was more of a Mean Girls situation, but with 19-year-old boys. I think maybe boys go through it later?
TONYG
“fallen short of their expectations”. Now that is a poorly worded question and, therefore, the results understate the level of anger at Trump. If someone were to ask me whether Trump has “fallen short of their expectations”, I would answer “no”. I expected Trump to be shit, and he has been shit. Trump has met my expectations.
Dave
@schrodingers_cat: Eh quite a few are gullible, quite a few are absolutely happy someone is finally telling the “truth” about those people, and of course there are plenty that are both.
Don’t underestimate the unreality inhabit with its attendant absolute lack of the ability to apply critical thinking that is the base existence of a lot of the yahoos.
You can occasionally get them to think temporarily but as soon as the old safe narrative is reinforced, and it is, almost all immediately revert to an pre-modern form of… well we will call it thought.
zhena gogolia
@TONYG: I agree.
Eyeroller
@Geminid: I disagree. There is considerable evidence that both Trump and Biden/Harris lost to a large extent due to the pandemic, but for different reasons. Susie Wiles and Cory Lewandowski aren’t exactly geniusing their way through the second term currently.
Matt McIrvin
@Soprano2: The big-ticket cost-disease items, education and health care and housing, take up way more of an income than they used to, so it’s harder even for middle-class people than it used to be.
That said, I think there is also an industry devoted to giving people bad advice, particularly when it comes to education and housing. It seems like people get driven to buy way more house than they can afford because it’s the done thing and they have to keep up with the Joneses.
I live in a duplex and if you read any article about what my income is supposed to pull, I should be living in a McMansion. But what would I do with that? Accumulate a bunch of junk to put in the extra rooms? I’m thinking of retiring early.
Dave
@Paul in KY: Partly because that singular bully is often essentially an outcast themselves.
The more common type of bullying is more or less aggressive reinforcement of social hierarchy and acceptable norms with the potential thoughtless cruelty of children and teens (who can also be wonderfully kind as well upbringing and environment matter) making it relentless.
Fair Economist
@Suzanne:
My blood family is fairly functional and sane – none of my relatives has ever been divorced or had a serious drug problem. I tended to think that was normal until I started paying attention to our in-laws, for whom that is *very* not true.
With friends I just don’t put up with crazies
My husband’s family has a lot of relationship trouble. Hmm. Maybe I should go clean the bathroom.
Soprano2
@Matt McIrvin: The girl bully in our class is ashamed of what she did, but refuses to even talk about it.
Jeffro
@Eyeroller: I think your take is a good one re: both trump and then Biden losing…everyone knew trump wasn’t doing jack sh!t about the pandemic, and everyone blamed Biden for not making everything wonderful quickly enough
...now I try to be amused
@Matt McIrvin:
We saw a preview of Obama Derangement Syndrome in Clinton Derangement Syndrome. The reaction to Clinton’s election was “Dude, where’s my permanent majority? I was promised a permanent majority.” That opened the door to Gingrich.
Soprano2
@schrodingers_cat: Most of the ones I know are people I work with, so for obvious reasons I can’t call them on it. I try to do what I can, but when you have to be with people 5 days a week it’s hard.
Geminid
@Eyeroller: Trump barely lost in 2020. I think a more creditable response to the pandemic would have made the difference.
Or, a better organized campaign operation, which is what Wiles and LaCivita provided in 2024. My take is that Trump was a worse candidate in 2024, but he had more efficient campaign management.
Matt McIrvin
@Eyeroller: I think that the moment COVID-19 mutated into the Omicron variant, which kept the vaccines from actually quashing the pandemic and knocked them back to their originally stated purpose of preventing severe illness and death, Biden and Harris were doomed. There was no campaign-strategy choice that could save them.
Biden had bet everything on his health apparatus’s ability to bring society back to normal functioning primarily through vaccination, on the basis of the vaccines’ unexpectedly strong ability to prevent transmission of wild-type COVID and the first variants, and in early to mid-2021 that looked possible, but by the end of the year it wasn’t.
Some mutation like Omicron may have been inevitable given the general behavior of coronaviruses, but expectations under these conditions are nearly impossible to manage. People want an all-or-nothing cure, not something that requires statistical reasoning to think about. And that created the opening for people like Ron DeSantis to say that the administration had “lied about the vaccines” and for the right to insist that they were largely ineffective, that it wasn’t worth the danger of side effects, all manner of conspiracy theories.
Omnes Omnibus
@Geminid: If frogs had wings, they wouldn’t bump their asses a-hoppin’.
Suzanne
@Fair Economist:
Wait, really?!
God, my mom and both of her siblings have been divorced at least once each. My BioDad has been divorced four times. We have at least one alcoholic in every generation, literally going back at least six generations. Fewer financial or gambling problems, though I know plenty of people with that stuff in their families. Mr. Suzanne’s family also has some messiness. It is what it is.
Soprano2
@Matt McIrvin: There’s a nice, cute house in my neighborhood for sale right now that would be perfect for a single person or a young married couple to live in, but because it’s an old house with a one car garage and one bathroom I fully expect it to turn into a rental house. (I’m so sad the woman who owned it is selling and moving, I loved seeing her and her old white dog walking in the morning, plus we have the same opinions about politics.) Young people want to buy a three bedroom, three bath, two car garage house for what this one is selling for, and it makes them mad that they can’t, so they don’t buy anything.
Fair Economist
@Matt McIrvin:
When we bought a house we followed the traditional rules of “no more than 33% of income committed to housing”, and a 20% down payment. The sales agent we were working with (new house in a development) said she had never seen somebody take out such a small loan relative to income and asked if we were sure we didn’t want a bigger house.
We would have made more money on paper if we had, because we bought near the bottom in the 90’s California crash. But it wouldn’t have done us any good, since the hubby is sentimental and would never had agreed to move to extract the equity gains. We’d just have had to pay more in taxes, upkeep, and to do more cleaning. Our current place has been plenty, even while our adopted son was here.
schrodingers_cat
@Geminid: He did not barely lose. He lost by a margin of about 7 million in popular vote and 72 EC votes.
Fair Economist
@Suzanne: Yeah, really. TBF, it’s a small family – one brother, parents, grandparents, one aunt, and 4 cousins. Even so, I now realize I have been quite fortunate. I was well into adulthood before I realized I basically came from a family of freaks.
I won’t say there’s been no bad judgement – but even there not a huge amount. My brother has terrible taste in his choice of business partners. On a smaller scale, yeah, everybody does stupid stuff. But still, not too bad.
Jackie
I don’t get it: Pelosi’s 85, she almost lost her husband to an attack directed at her, and Democrats are panicking?
I’m pretty sure Pelosi will be readily available on speed dial – if needed. She will be known as one of the best – if not THE best and most influential Speaker of the House. She’s done her time for America. If she chooses to not run again, I say good for her!
Matt McIrvin
@Jackie: I don’t see any signs of actual panic in the text of the article, just a vague allusion to “bracing”. This is how it’s supposed to work as far as I can tell.
Matt McIrvin
@Suzanne: Um. On this score I’m just gonna say “no comment”.
Geminid
@Melancholy Jaques: I’ve been sweating the New Jersey election all along. Ciattarelli only lost by 4 points in 2021, and Trump performed much better in New Jersey in 2024 than he did in 2020. I need to hunt up a good New Jersey news site for election night coverage.
Fair Economist
@schrodingers_cat: Trump lost in 2020 by a fairly wide margin in the popular vote; but because of the Republican advantage in the Electoral college if there had been a shift of just 0.4% in the popular vote he’d have won in spite of getting thrashed in the popular vote, just like 2016.
Paul in KY
@Matt McIrvin: Yup. The fighting strategy was best done not on school grounds. Administration toadies usually demoralized me (and others).
Paul in KY
@Geminid: Yeah. If he had showed some leadership, I assume less people would have died. Sort of a Sophie’s Choice there.
Geminid
@Jackie: I’ve figured Nancy Pelosi would retire for a while now. I think Steny Hoyer will too.
Paul in KY
@Eyeroller: Thank you for your observations on OK. I’m sure there has to be some scenic beauty somewhere in that state! Especially now that you’ve posted about it.
Matt McIrvin
@Fair Economist: Yeah, part of the reason Trump’s effort to overturn the 2020 election result was such a nailbiter was that there were several knife-edge states that nearly all fell just barely in Biden’s favor (I think North Carolina was the only one that didn’t), and there were recount and election-challenge efforts in all of them.
In 2024, Trump won all of them.
Paul in KY
@Matt McIrvin: You are always going to find mouthy, quick-with-the-put-down, snots in college. I ran into my share at UK. Hopefully they are all dead by now.
PatD
@Jackie: I think it’s long past time since Pelosi should have retired but this would be welcome news. Scott Weiner, who is termed out in the CA Senate, announced he would challenge in the primary and I’m assuming he would beat the DSA candidate fairly easily.
Paul in KY
@Dave: Good point there.
Paul in KY
@Geminid: And due to Pres. Biden delaying his exit and putting VP Harris in a bad way, he had an easier opponent than in 2020.
Matt McIrvin
@Paul in KY: I think the big difference between now and then is that today, schools HAVE anti-bullying policies. They may or may not be effective, but they exist and the administrations have to be officially against bullying.
40 years ago there were literally none. There was this earlier laissez-faire social model, which I think the coaches teaching PE and such still internalized, that kids were supposed to be allowed to fight it out (it’ll make a MAN out of you! either by fighting back or by conforming to the norms of bully society), but the fighting was increasingly disparaged, so it created this situation where bullies could just run rampant and there was no sanctioned response.
And this is one of the “woke” things that pisses off conservatives, actually. Many of them are explicitly pro-bullying and upset about anti-bullying programs in schools. They see it as a mechanism of social control. Bullying keeps the weirdos down and instead weirdos are allowed to run free being weird, and that leads to every kind of social disintegration.
Geminid
@schrodingers_cat: If Trump did not barely lose, how come people here were in state of suspense for three days afterwards? I know Trump lost the popular vote by millions, but I was talking about the vote margins in the battleground states that determined an Electoral College majority.
Paul in KY
@Jackie: Me too! Enjoy some oh so well earned retirement!!
Fair Economist
@Soprano2:
Some of that comes from getting their reference points from media, where baristas on Friends live in spacious Manhattan apartments and all the influencers they watch drive Lamborghinis and spend hours on their exercise and skincare routines. My best friend in childhood was the son of a successful stockbroker – but he still had to share a bedroom and bunkbed with his brother. These days you’re considered trailer trash if your kids have to bunkbed.
Belafon
@Fair Economist: My family has had its share of alcoholics (my grandfather, for instance, died from it, they found him in a park), but we also have a streak of people who I would call now ADHD because there are many of smart people who were always looking for that thing to make them a lot of money but would abandon one path after only a couple of years when it wouldn’t pan out quickly and move onto something else. Thus I have many family members, like my father, who are masters of many fields. My father, for instance, has done auto repair, fiber optic installation, professional photography, and carpentry. And this was trying to get us out of what I tended to label as almost middle class.
No, most people aren’t good with money. If we were, they government wouldn’t need to deduct social security from our paychecks.
schrodingers_cat
@Geminid: A lot of the suspense was also created by the incumbent announcing “victory” when the votes were still being counted. But I agree with you about the battle ground states.
Scout211
Agree. But since Scott Wiener has already announced his candidacy, she will most likely not run again. I almost typed “definitely” (because that is what I think) but I’m leaving a little wiggle room with “most likely.”
It’s official: Scott Wiener is running for Nancy Pelosi’s seat in Congress
sab
@NotMax: Yikes. I don’t like squash but I at least thought it was exceptionally nutricious. I guess I can give up on recipes trying to make it palatable.
Paul in KY
@Matt McIrvin: Think you have some really good points in this post.
Ohio Mom
@TerryC: It’s not that GW had so much bush at his ranch, it’s that we were supposed to believe he didn’t hire that job out — of course he did, when the camera man was gone.
gene108
@Professor Bigfoot:
I saw a YouTube Short recently, where the person said white people can afford to be gullible, because of their privilege in a society that’s built to accommodate their beliefs no matter what those are.
This is doubly true for white men, in my opinion.
I think part of it is white people are rarely in groups where most people are not white. Their work place, their social life, etc. is made up mostly of other white people. They’re never out of their comfort zone culturally, so I think it breeds a certain intellectual laziness because there’s nothing they encounter that challenges their worldview.
Geminid
@Paul in KY: Yes, there were several factors that contributed to Trump’s win last year. It was what social scientists would call a “multiply determined” event. I’m just saying he could not have pulled it off without the team of Wiles and LaCivita. This was a much better managed operation than in 2020 or 2016.
I bring this up from time to time because for the past year, many Democrats have been kicking their own and each other’s asses for losing that election. I think they’ve exaggerated their own deficiencies because they have underrated their opponents’ competence.
Suzanne
@gene108:
Yes this. Historically, it has worked out well for white men. They can fuck up and they’ve generally been shielded from the worst consequences. Even poor white men often had dependent wives who couldn’t leave them. Prohibition was partially about this…. efforts led by women whose husbands spent all their money on liquor and they couldn’t leave.
sab
@Fair Economist: My dad saved like crazy in his 403(b) much to the consternation of my mom who wanted to waste all their money on prep schools when we lived in a perfectly fine public school district.
That money he saved kept him comfortable in a good nursing home until he was almost 100.
We spent my inheritance on a one storey house that I will promise to my step-daughter if she takes care of us because we will never be able to afford a decent nursing home.
She knows about that sort of thing because her mother had MS. Children’s Services put her mom into a nursing home when she was in her early thirties and her into foster care at age four. My husband was able to adopt her at age ten when her mom had finally given up.
The whole story is tragic but it just shows most families don’t have means for serious problems that will happen.
I do think that if husband hadn’t adopted step-daughter her already bad life would have spun out of control when she aged out of foster care.
And we would never have had her as a daughter or her lovely daughter as a grandchild
ETA Stepdaughter does not know that I still have and I treasure a photo of her mom and her. She was about three and a half and bubbly smiling. Her mom was also happy and proud looking with her pretty happy child. The photo makes me want to cry every time I see it.
Geminid
@Geminid: Ah. Missed the edit window. I would better have said: “…have exaggerated their own deficiencies, and one reason is that they have underrated their opponents’ competence.”
A “multiply determined” exaggeration.
Captain C
@snoey:
According to his wife he once tried to milk a male horse.*
*She may have been joking. Maybe.
Professor Bigfoot
@gene108: This is why I make it a point to follow women and Jews and Muslims and even some white dudes (#NotAllWhiteMen) on Bluesky to get the perspective from folks I don’t get to talk to about this stuff here in the grass-touching world.
sab
@Professor Bigfoot: It should make me enraged whenever I see it but I love your obligatory #not all white men hash tag. My husband sees it and sees it as a challenge to not be one of the mostly other white men.
Harrison Wesley
@Captain C: ….and let’s not even get started on horses’ asses.
satby
@sab: hey sab, email or text me, ok? I mislaid your #.
prostratedragon
@Professor Bigfoot: IKR?😄
Denali5
@MagdaInBlack:
A friend of mine hosted a small get together Saturday evening.There was talk about favorite books, places and movies. We all felt healing by just being together.
Interesting Name Goes Here
@Scout211:
Gee, I wonder what changed between then and now…and why am I seeing the same black cat twice?
The voting public is, by and large, maliciously idiotic.
Paul in KY
@Geminid: Wiles and LaCivita both did competent jobs and helped TACO. Unfortunately true.
sab
@satby: I forgot how to e-mIl you. Blog knows my real email
Ruckus
@Matt McIrvin:
How can they admire and desire him without ignoring every irrational thing that comes out of his mouth?
Which of course is most every word that comes out. Especially after they become sentences.
satby
@sab: skinluvvers at g mail dot com
sab
@satby: trying to reach you. Ask the blog.
Ruckus
@EarthWindFire:
maybe it’s region dependent
Most things about the world are region dependent. Weather is different depending on region. Population can be region dependent, especially if many people don’t want to live there, even as many that do think the area is great. Humanity isn’t one example, copied over and over again. Look how much this country has changed in the lifetimes of geezers still breathing. And yes I’m one of them and believe me it’s different than 70 years ago. Life moves on, sometimes forwards/better and sometimes in full throttle reverse. Or the exact opposite. But this world has a lot going for it that it didn’t have, in my lifetime. And that will change in the future as well. And humanity is part of that change. In all ways good, not so much and pure shit walking. And we have to, ALL OF US, recognize that not all forward movement is in any way positive. Especially when the driver is a delusional old geezer, without a license or any knowledge of how to drive.
sab
@satby: trying to reach you. Ask the blog.
satby
@sab: I got it. Thanks.
artem1s
@TONYG:
IMO Soviet/Stalinist style communism is barely a step above the feudal serf system Russian had before WWII. American Oligarchs want to be Robber Barons again. It’s no fun living in a country where anyone can invade your country club after they hit the PowerBall or MegaMillions.
artem1s
it also gave the FuckyouIvegotmine Republicans to claim “their” Medicare wasn’t a handout like those free loaders on Medicaid. ACA was intended to expand Medicare (eventually) to those under 55 who needed affordable health care. Every GOPer I know who’s benefiting from the passage of ACA claims they’re not freeloaders like those on Obamacare.
Origuy
@Matt McIrvin: The reason it’s called the “Spanish” flu is that wartime censorship restricted the discussion of the pandemic. Since Spain was not being a belligerent in WWI, its media discussed it openly, leading to the perception that it originated there. Although censorship would have ended by the time of the publication of The Great Gatsby, people probably still didn’t talk about it much.
Sherparick
@MagdaInBlack: Also, Trump played more golf in one term then Obama did in 2. Bessent, Hegseth, Noem, Rubio, RFK Jr., & Bondi are all in a neck & neck competition for worse cabinet members in American history.
Kayla Rudbek
@Matt McIrvin: this is why I say now, scratch a pro-lifer, find a eugenicist, as they never say anything about encouraging disabled people to have children.