“Girls Just Want to Have Fun” peaks at #2 today in ‘84
“We got every racial group of girl—mixed, Spanish, white, black, Asian,” said Lauper, “so that every little girl who looked at that video would .. understand that every young woman, older woman, every person is entitled to a joyful experience.”— Carl Quintanilla (@carlquintanilla.bsky.social) March 10, 2026 at 2:12 PM
Schumer on the SAVE America Act: "It is not about showing ID when you show up to vote. It's about the voter registration rolls, destroying them, purging them, not letting people know, and taking the rights in an algorithm but together by DOGE and Musk — it's an outrage"
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) March 10, 2026 at 3:23 PM
I just left another briefing on Iran.
Here's the only part of Trump's plan that is clear to me:
He won't spare a cent for the 15 million Americans who will lose their health care, but he'll spend a billion dollars a day bombing Iran.— Elizabeth Warren (@warren.senate.gov) March 10, 2026 at 2:05 PM
Trump has spent more in 10 days on his reckless war in Iran than America spends in two years on community health centers providing medical care for low-income and uninsured Americans.
Our priorities are out of whack in this country.— Rep. Jim McGovern (@repmcgovern.bsky.social) March 10, 2026 at 9:46 PM
Then those people are idiots.
— Patrick Chovanec (@prchovanec.bsky.social) March 10, 2026 at 6:10 PM
Freedom’s just another word for Repubs are gonna lose..
— Dana Houle (@danahoule.bsky.social) March 11, 2026 at 12:14 AM
I am sure this will only reinforce his sense of white victimhood.
— Patrick Chovanec (@prchovanec.bsky.social) March 10, 2026 at 6:55 PM
when Olaudah Equiano was 11 he was kidnapped out of coastal Africa and sent into slavery, he bought himself as an adult and settled in UK, he spent the rest of his life fighting to abolish slavery, though he didn't live to see it, his book was key in the passage of a bill banning the salve trade
— Henry (@henrythedog.bsky.social) March 10, 2026 at 5:32 PM
Harvey Milk spoke of the need for Hope, that you cannot live on hope alone but without it life is not worth living.
Dr. King said he might not live to see the promised land but he had seen it
Equiano didn't live to see the fruits of his work, but he built a better world he never got to see.— Henry (@henrythedog.bsky.social) March 10, 2026 at 5:32 PM
Baud
For your morning reading pleasure.
Jeffro
if there’s a lot of “popular sentiment” that there’s some sort of “demand to impose Sharia law” in this country…
…maybe the Squeaker could help his fellow Americans out, spare them all that anxiety and needless worry, and help set the record straight?
No, Mr. Squeaker? Why not? Where did that kind of nonsense start, and who spreads it? Who benefits from ramping up Americans’ anxieties over a non-existent problem like that?
narya
Two things related to those last two clips: First, I finally saw the “Milk” documentary. I knew about him, and the murders, but only vaguely, so the documentary was lovely (and heartbreaking) to watch. Second, a recent episode of Gastropod was about vanilla–and about the enslaved person (Edmond Albius) who figured out how to pollinate it by hand in such a way as to make vanilla production at scale possible and profitable. We need ALL of us; we all deserve to thrive.
NotMax
Repeated from overnight. Atmospheric punches from today through the weekend (have seen predictions of this mess lasting through next Tuesday, but those are currently outliers).. Also have read forecasts of 55 – 60 mph soggy gusts Saturday and Sunday.
Running low on vodka. Gonna try to sneak out in the morning to restock the larder.
Betty
@NotMax: Best of luck in getting through the ugly weather.
Jeffro
Bouie in the NYT: trump is the anti-trump
(gift link)
satby
@Baud: good links!
That the hacker was so disgusted by the child porn on the FBI servers he threatened to turn them in to the FBI and they had to set up a video call to prove they really were FBI sounds like a twisted Pink Panther script.
Gin & Tonic
Might I suggest an alternative?
Baud
@Jeffro:
It’s almost as if the conservative push to sweep the separation of church and state under the rug was a bad idea.
twbrandt
Re Mike Johnson’s remarks on sharia law: I live in a majority-Muslim city (Dearborn, MI). We follow the same laws the rest of the country does, you idiot.
Baud
If sharia law regulates which bathroom a trans person has to use, does a right winger’s head explode?
satby
Little concerned I’m not hearing from my friends down Kankakee way this morning after tornados touched down, but the power’s out there too. Still raining here from the same storm system, but the tornados were sw of me.
NotMax
@Gin & Tonic
Oh, there’s other choices in-house but habit is a strong motivator. Priorities.
Although don’t really need one, plan to bake a fresh back-up loaf of bread Wednesday morn.
;)
p.a.
Time for Scalito to make a speech blaming the Enlightment.
SFAW
@Baud:
From your keyboard [sic] to FSM’s noodle-y earlike appendages.
p.a.
@NotMax: Just another day in Paradise…
but seriously, stay safe.
narya
Also, speaking of vanilla: 25% off at Penzey’s on vanilla. I’m (always) tempted by this sale, but I currently have TWO large, unopened bottles, so I can probably restrain myself.
SFAW
Yesterday, I commented that the more I see of UnHoly Mike a/k/a Pastor Porn-App, the more I loathe him. Unfortunately, that streak continues.
His continued existence is Example # 2,781,449 that there is no such thing as a Just God, because a Just God would smoke Mikey where he stood.
Soprano2
@Jeffro: There are people who want to impose something that’s a lot like Sharia law, but they aren’t Muslims. I bet the people who think someone is trying to impose Sharia law on them aren’t worried about those people. Many of them probably are those people!
ArchTeryx
In a complete non-sequitur from all the doomscrolling (which I am as guilty of as anyone):
Stunning (SFW) digital painting of my deuteragonist, mar-Tykoni, the Grand Matriarch of the Explorer Pod:
drive.proton.me/urls/VGPBEQN9EM#Gj6cVhEBJWTg
Artist is Amber Davis.
She’s everything our current mobster pResident is not. A selfless and visionary leader, intelligent, and driven. She doesn’t command respect. She just goes out and earns it with dedication and hard work. To underbus one of her own people would be unthinkable to her. And she’s always trying to learn new things.
The painting depicts her experimenting with a visual art form. Her people primarily communicate by sound, just like our own whales and dolphins, and she is trying to understand us “Tinies” better.
Mister, we could use a leader like mar-Tykoni right now. This fucking country needs an enema.
NotMax
@p.a.
Bring on the witchsmeller.
:)
gene108
@Jeffro:
My one observation about Trump after 10 years is he is not a singular force. Yes he has a dedicated large cult like following of voters that keeps him electorally viable no matter what he does, but he has an incredible amount of support from elected Republicans, right-wing media, etc. to promote his lies, and defend anything he does or has done.
It’s not just Trump who cannot delay instant gratification. The entire radical right-wing Republican reactionary movement could not delay wanting to enact their agenda. The mass deportations, attacks on transgender people, gutting of federal department and agencies, attacks on anti-discrimination policies like DEI, gutting the federal government, etc. all had to be done in a hurry with reckless abandon.
gene108
@ArchTeryx:
Cool character design.
rikyrah
Good Morning Everyone 😊 😊 😊
gene108
When I was n college went to the bar/live music place near campus. It was on a break and the place was largely empty. There less than 10 of there.
The band sucked it up a played. At one point they were started playing a blues-y tune. Singer said you all have heard this one.
They played “Girls Just Want of Fun” as a sad blues-y number, and the lyrics are kind of depressing.
gene108
@rikyrah:
Good morning.
ArchTeryx
@gene108: I get away from all the horror however I can.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@gene108:
I love genre-bending renditions of songs, taking something upbeat like that and really ramping it down.
Or taking something depressing and ramping it up:
youtube.com/watch?v=Q75qJ3vCmBw
Baud
@rikyrah:
Good morning.
rikyrah
@gene108:
Because they are on the clock.
They know it.
When people like you and I told the apolitical what the GOP planned to do because we had read Project 2025, we were called hysterical.
That’s crazy.
Nobody would actually do that, they told us.
Now that they see we are right, the GOP knows that people hate what they are doing, which is why they want to enact national voter suppression
Baud
I’ll hand it to the anti-abortion people for rejecting instant gratification at the federal level. They know what they want to do is unpopular.
Scout211
Journalists or political activists?
schrodingers_cat
I just can’t get over the fact that people reelected this person after knowing everything about him. Truly an example of विनाश काले विपरीत बुद्धि
topclimber
This post unfairly implies that Johnson is biased against Muslims. He just doesn’t have any use for ANY law that holds the GOP accountable of fails to punish the afflicted.
Baud
Reposting the good news.
Jackie
Reposting from last night’s thread:
The flips keep coming! Democrats have flipped 10 seats since FFOTUS’s reelection; Republicans 0.
Soprano2
@schrodingers_cat: That’s why I think people cannot be given any kind of pass for voting for him in 2024. People in 2016 knew a lot less about what he would actually do and what kind of person he was; I think a lot of them thought he was the guy they saw on The Apprentice. Voters in 2024 didn’t have that excuse – they had 4 years of actual experience to draw on. Plus, they put out a roadmap of what they wanted to do called Project 2025!! It’s like the people who heard them say “mass deportation” over and over again, and yet didn’t think he would deport their friends, relatives, landscapers, construction workers, etc.
Jackie
@Baud: JINX!
mappy!
Has today’s reason for bombing Iran been posted yet?
ArchTeryx
@Baud: It didn’t stop them from winning that battle. And a lot of people are going to die because of it. Have already died because of it.
And they’re coming after birth control, without an apparent plan to stop them.
schrodingers_cat
@Soprano2: They knew and they didn’t care. Is my conclusion.
Baud
@ArchTeryx:
Blue states are still free states. Federal action is the only way they can stop that. They’ve not pushed it for political reasons.
cmorenc
@Jeffro:
If Trump was successfully impeached (or dies before his term ends), that would leave us with President Vance, who does have a far more competent understanding of harnassing government to the visions of his techbro supporters, but not the malignant charisma Trump unfortunately has appealing to the uglier impulses of 27% of the electorate. A dilemma for those of us who hope to return the country to its best side, like just after Obama won in 2008 is: are we better off hoping the country can muddle through another 2 years and several months of Trump, or would we actually be worse off in the long term with Vance?
mappy!
@Scout211: Grifters posing as politicians. Political activists posing as reporters. There’s a theme in there somewhere…
schrodingers_cat
OT cool and gory stuff I discovered in my deep dive through Indian history.
I found out that the railway station near my house in Mumbai where I usually commuted from on the western line was the site of British Marine barracks, protecting the old Fort of Bombay. Name of the station, Marine Lines. And it was also the sight where 2 Indian soldiers were blown off from a cannon as a lesson to “natives” in 1857.
Fuckers even built a church in Mumbai called the Afghan Church to commemorate their war dead. Fuck Kipling and the horse he rode on. White man was not at all burdened by killing or impoverishing the natives.
ArchTeryx
@Baud: And that’s exactly what they’re gonna try. At this point, is there anything they can do to make themselves MORE unpopular? As was said they are on the clock, and they want it all.
NotMax
@mappy!
Irradiated fentanyl smuggled in tankers?
//
Betty Cracker
@gene108: IMO, it remains to be seen whether Trump is a singular force or not. It’s true he’s propped up by the party and corrupt components of agencies and the judiciary, so he can’t wreak havoc on his own. That makes Republicans complicit in Trump’s crimes and assaults on democracy.
But it’s an open question whether another figure can inherit or build on their own a large enough cult following to take power. None have so far, so arguably Trump is singular in that regard, and we should hope he is.
schrodingers_cat
@gene108: He is the avatar of white grievance, as is the senator from Vt. They are the two manifestations of the same malady. Like Durga and Kali, two avatars of the same tendency.
Jeffro
@cmorenc: I’d rather have Vance’s negative charisma – AND a Democratic Congress – working for us heading into 2028.
Vance can try to competently advance the malignant MAGA agenda, but EOs are not law, and having a real Congress holding public hearings on everything under the sun for two years.
PLUS (I almost forgot!) the sheer humiliation of being the first president to be successfully impeached and removed from office would send Orangemandias into a spiral he’d never come out of. Soooo worth it!
cmorenc
@gene108:
In part, it’s because elected Rs support some parts of the RW agenda, but in even larger part it’s because Trump has such a commanding grip on a controlling share of the GOP electorate that they fear his retribution if they cross him. See the pickle John Cornyn is in over in Texas.
oldgold
@cmorenc: I would prefer Vance to Trump. His extreme negative charisma would neuter him politically.
rikyrah
@cmorenc:
Impeachment is important to me because we need all of his crimes spelled out.
And on the record.
That will never be a waste of time for me.
cmorenc
@Jeffro:
Me, too. It’s terrifying to consider what a force Vance would be if he did come across as a charismatic version of a much younger Ronald Reagan.
LAC
@Soprano2: Thank you! If they want to get it right this time, fine. But to have to give them some mealy mouth grace for 2024 is and, for me, a ridiculous ask.
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
That’s the big question, especially for the sporadic voter that Trump brings out.
It’s not like we’ve been blown out like with Reagan. And while Vance has learned how to hate with the best of them, it remains to be seen whether he has that populist magic.
But we lost before Trump and we can lose after him. The racial divide is still there.
Scout211
Virginia jackals, is this a good thing or no?
Baud
@Scout211:
Are they divorced or is that just repetitive?
mappy!
@NotMax: For a moment there I wondered if it was going to be about inmates released from asylums flooding the gulf.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: I doubt it. He has the charisma of wet dish rag. But who knows what wp (and his deluded white wannabe voters) find attractive.
p.a.
@rikyrah: +10
NotMax
@mappy!
Think bigger.
Inmates injected with HIV released from asylums flooding the gulf.
//
suzanne
@Soprano2:
I very much understand this sentiment emotionally, but I have no idea what it means practically. The question of whether or not I maintain or establish close personal relationships with MAGA is easy; hell naw. But I don’t that that’s what we’re really getting at.
But, in reality…. we have no passes to give. Anybody can register or vote the way they want, no one needs our permission. Any candidate can run for any office. A political party isn’t a social club. And just from a basic arithmetical perspective, we do need more people on the Blue team. We should want to change some FFOTUS voters’ minds and get their votes.
I heard it said, “The Dems look for traitors and the Republicans look for converts” and there might be some truth to that.
Scout211
Still married. Just badly edited.
Betty Cracker
@rikyrah: I agree with you about that principle. As a practical matter, we don’t know what will be happening a year from now when Dems will hopefully control the House. If the current shitshow continues unabated and the country is in shambles economically and internationally, maybe a sufficient number of Repub senators would vote to remove the shithead.
I don’t think they are loyal to him out of love. They are with him because they want to hang onto power, and if the political calculus flips so that supporting Trump threatens their own power, they’d throw him overboard in a heartbeat.
Jeffro
@Scout211: my two cents? The McAuliffe name/brand isn’t worth a whole lot around here, and might even repel some Dem primary voters on net.
I do know I want that redistricting referendum to pass, that’s for sure! So far I have only seen “VOTE NO” (GOP-sponsored) signs but signs don’t vote…we saw pretty much the same thing in last year’s gubernatorial campaign and the GOP got trounced despite having more signs (at least in my area)
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
Might have happened after Jan 6 if Mitch McConnell had whipped his caucus.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: Yep I don’t see the Rs impeaching the Orange stain on our history.
Baud
@suzanne:
Agreed. I myself feel a smidgen of guilt for thinking during the Obama years that we didn’t need to accommodate moderates who weren’t great team players because of where the country was headed.
Geminid
Ankara-based Clash Report says the U.S. requested “temporary” use of a Romanian air base and that the Romanian government is expected to approve. USAF refueling tankers and fighter jets would operate from the base, supported by as many as 500 personnel.
Also, Iran announced it is withdrawing its football team from World Cup competition; and Spain has withdrawn its Ambassador from Tel Aviv, leaving its Charge d’Affairs to conduct official business.
Sandia Blanca
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: Thank you for that link to the amazing Austin Lounge Lizards! Another Texas band that took a good song and gave it a fun twist was the Derailers: https://youtu.be/-aCGE9W4tpQ?si=uxr7JxayIb7–6cK
Baud
@Baud:
@schrodingers_cat:
My comment was unclear. I meant if he had whipped his caucus to convict rather than whipping them to give Trump a pass.
Betty Cracker
@Baud: Yes. I think everyone thought Trump was toast politically at that point, and McConnell figured there was no reason to alienate the rabid base with removal. Oopsie!
Also, Shoegate update!
Paul in KY
@ArchTeryx: She’s very cute.
Jeffro
@rikyrah: agree 100%
So does TNR:
Baud
@Baud:
We can’t afford to say no to anyone who will work with us in good faith, but that doesn’t mean there’s going to be mutual trust going forward. It’ll be more like a business arrangement.
YY_Sima Qian
Edward Luce on the trap that Trump has maneuvered himself & the US into (or was maneuvered into) w/ his illegal war on Iran (gift link to FT piece below):
Scout211
New Emerson College Poll for California governor.
My goodness, these regular polls are all over the map. Maybe voters’ preferences are all over the map, too. But my guess is that it’s the polling.
Paul in KY
@cmorenc: I would prefer Vance to what we have now. How sad to say that, but I just think he’s more ‘normal’ and will act in a more ‘normal’ manner than Cheetolini.
He still sucks ass, etc. etc.
Scout211
@Betty Cracker: Clods in clodhoppers.
narya
@Baud: And, as others have said (here and elsewhere), you don’t get to immediately LEAD anything or dictate policy. An essential piece of it is repair and making amends.
Matt McIrvin
@Soprano2: I think it was Lauren Boebert who disparaged separation of church and state in a way that made me realize that these people literally cannot conceive of freedom in the sense that we generally mean it. To her, either “the church directs the government” or “the government directs the church”, and separation of church and state meant we had chosen the second, the worse option. That the whole point of the First Amendment’s religion clauses was that we don’t do either one was something she just couldn’t conceptualize. One or the other had to be on top!
And that’s really the conservative view of everything. The world is a dominance hierarchy and if they’re not on top, they must be on the bottom. If Christians don’t oppress Muslims then Muslims must be oppressing Christians. There is no third option.
Jeffro
@Matt McIrvin:
Spot-on.
Cooperation, collaboration, community…??!? Does. not. compute. for them.
suzanne
@Baud: The party is made up of its members and thus we have to accommodate (though, again, what does that genuinely mean in this context?) everyone who’s in it.
I am seeing people freak out about Graham Platner on social media, saying things like, “We can’t let this happen”….. and I’m sympathetic because he is a hard NO from me….. but, like, what is the proposed action? Voters in Maine are gonna vote however they want. There’s no mechanism to make him go away other than the election.
Baud
@narya:
They certainly wouldn’t be my first choice. But with everything in flux, anyone can do anything if they have enough support for it.
Paul in KY
@schrodingers_cat: TACO is way way way way way way worse than St. Bernie.
I know you hate his guts, and I don’t like him at all due to his actions in 2016, but having St. Bernie as President would be (compared to what we suffer under now) like having Santa Claus and Abe Lincoln combined as POTUS.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: Anyone can vote D but I have the right to decide who I want to support with $ and sweat/time, canvasing, collecting signatures etc.
Baud
@suzanne:
Correct. The two steps to power are (1) win your primary and (2) win the general election. Everyone is entitled to their opinions and can protest and participate in the democracy in other ways. but those two things are still the fundamentals.
Ohio Mom
@cmorenc: I wonder the same thing but then I remind myself that it’s completely out of my hands. It’s just a depressing thought exercise.
It’s related to wondering if I should root for economic collapse. Sure, that would most likely cause a massive blue wave but Ohio Family would suffer. But again, out of my hands. I guess I could become a prepper if I thought they was a sensible option (I don’t).
Baud
@schrodingers_cat:
100%
schrodingers_cat
@Paul in KY: BS would have been a massive flop as a President. Fingerwagger would have been a disaster.
I was talking about how both are white grievance mongers. Whether he would have been better than the orange one. I have no idea. I guess it is possible.
Melancholy Jaques
@Soprano2:
The two most common excuses are that people were misled or that they had some legitimate grievance that justified voting for that asshole. Both are bullshit.
Baud
@schrodingers_cat:
One can speculate that he would have been more unpopular, but I think anyone from Bernie to Manchin and Sinema and even Fetterman would have been “better” from our perspective. Frankly, a good number of Republicans also would pass that test.
Ohio Mom
@suzanne: I found the AOC OpEd on public housing. She wants to repeal the Faircloth Admendment, which prohibits any net increase in public-housing units.
My apologies if you are already aware of this: nytimes.com/2021/01/04/opinion/public-housing-faircloth-amendment-repeal.html
Paul in KY
@suzanne: To me, it means that I can forgive a dumbass who was gulled by TACO and that stupid show back in 2016 and voted for him. No forgiveness (IMO) for voting for that POS in 2020 and/or 2024.
Must note that my forgiveness is void where prohibited by law (probably Sharia Law).
schrodingers_cat
@Melancholy Jaques: Yep and the same people are now preemptively making excuses for Platner. He is a Nazi, so what? We have no choice but to welcome him.
OMG GOP is turning Nazi, but hey let’s put out a welcome mat for a Nazi. The cognitive dissonance is mindboggling. Because filibuster argle bargle I can’t support the twice elected governor of ME. Who BTW stood up to the Orange Menace.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: Probably true. The bar is low. My cat would be better for us. And he throws everything on the floor when he is pissed.
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
This is the core reason why separate but equal cannot work. Everything is a power hierarchy to them, especially race.
suzanne
@Baud: Yes. We have no way of kicking anybody out who we find objectionable. All we have is persuasion.
When people say “we shouldn’t give FFOTUS voters a pass”, are they arguing that we shouldn’t try to get FFOTUS voters’ to show up for the Dems next time? How would we ever win power with that approach?
Matt McIrvin
@Paul in KY: I am more scared of Vance–I think he’s more willing to commit to a coherently fascist ideology and actually kill all of his political opponents, and is competent enough to make it happen. That he seems more normal is part of the problem; he could build an elite consensus in favor.
Belafon
@Jeffro: He disrupted the slow march Republicans towards authoritarianism were heading down.
Baud
@suzanne:
Well, from my perspective, liberals have a bad history of being overly apologetic and forgiving, which to me just invites people to think they can take advantage of us (the whole “mommy party” thing is wrapped up into that.)
So I get the sentiment that’s being expressed about no forgiveness. But you are also correct that we have no choice but to ally with people who we might find unsavory, since we are alone not a majority. Of course, there’s no easy way to implement that, since each person has their own red line about who they can work with.
Betty Cracker
@Jeffro: It’s an interesting thought experiment because the volume of crimes to investigate and prosecute is going to necessarily impose a triage situation. If it were up to me, I’d prioritize public corruption and insider trading investigations to deter other would-be despots and oligarchs and the ICE thugs to deter future would-be brownshirts.
Jackie
I take this as a good omen for Democrats:
Less than HALF showed up to listen to FFOTUS and Johnson’s lies and BS!
Geminid
@Ohio Mom: If Cincinnati area Ohioans and northern Kentuckians notice a bad smell this afternoon, it’s Donald Trump. He’s scheduled to speak at the Verst Logistics plant in Hebron, next to the Northern Kentucky-Cincinattii airport; time 4:30pm.
Hebron is in Rep. Thomas Massie’s district and Trump is expected to come after the defiant congressman. The timing’s not great for Trump though, because Trump’s unpopular war on Iran tends to validate Massie’s “America First” positions on Middle East conflicts and military aid to Israel. Massie seems very confident as to his reelection and he may have good reason to be.
schrodingers_cat
We need to make the MAGA-neoNazi brand poison and that can’t be done by welcoming Nazis into our fold. Like the supposedly progressive wing aligned with the Vt senator has done
And people making excuses for this shit, we see you, you are not half as clever as you think you are.
Baud
@Jackie:
Agree it’s a good omen. Thanks for that.
suzanne
@Baud: It’s so strange to me to think about elements of human relationship like “forgiveness” and “loyalty” w/r/t political coalition. This is the language of friendship.
Baud
@suzanne:
“Democrats fall in love…”
prostratedragon
@schrodingers_cat: My translator gives me “Destruction Black Opposite Wisdom,” which is not far from my guess. I too at some level will never really get over this.
LAC
@Baud: But we are not talking about moderates who are not team players. We are talking about strategies by folks not directly impacted by virulent racism and bigotry of this administration to offer succor and space at the cost of the steady voter base impacted by this administration. There is this false narrative that their concerns were so unique that their voting for the Turd Reich can be rationalized. If someone is telling you that all your problems are because of brown and black people or a woke agenda while hoovering what little cash is out of your pocket … AGAIN, I question how reachable they are.
But to our …allies, godspeed…just please do not tell us about your nervous smile when one of them asks you about how to handle the n words or f words when you are out there on voter drives. True, you can’t solve racism in 2026. But you can stop acting like we need to be almost apologetic for our core principles.
Melancholy Jaques
@schrodingers_cat:
Agree that white grievance is a large part of Sanders’s appeal. Thing is, I never thought of Vermont as a center of white grievance. Upper Ohio Valley, Michigan, and other parts of the industrial wasteland, sure. But Stowe? Ben & Jerry’s?
schrodingers_cat
@prostratedragon: It means when your end is near you make self sabotaging mistakes.
Matt McIrvin
@suzanne: I keep thinking of a video that the writer/YouTuber Jason Pargin posted in December– he called it his holiday message. The central point was that people with terrible ideas, as much as we may despise those ideas, are a huge part of our society and we can’t simply “banish them to the Phantom Zone” like criminals on the planet Krypton. Even ignoring the immorality of eliminating them somehow, we couldn’t practically do it if we tried and our society couldn’t function without the mass of them. We cannot keep them down and deny them a voice in society either, without becoming monsters. So as impossible as persuasion may seem, it is the only remaining option.
Baud
@LAC:
Of course, most Trump voters are dedicated Republican voters and are not reachable and don’t even want to be reached by us. The only thing we can do is shift the margins. Because of racism and other bigotries, I don’t see a path to FDR type culture-changing supermajorities in the near future.
As to how to actually successfully increase our margins, I have no idea.
Melancholy Jaques
@cmorenc:
It’s also because the Rs don’t have anyone or anything else to offer their voters. They’ve been nothing but war & tax cuts for decades. They don’t even argue that they are going to make anyone’s life better. Their campaigns are always about making some despised minority’s lives worse.
Mr. Bemused Senior
@schrodingers_cat: I have often thought that Trump has a self-destructive streak. In the past he has been able to step back from the brink, but no longer.
Baud
@Melancholy Jaques:
Sanders is successful in Vermont because he worked his way up through Vermont politics over his career. Like any ordinary pol.
I don’t think VT is a hotbed of “socialism.” It has a Republican governor.
Paul in KY
@schrodingers_cat: He has to be better (hypothetically)! Andy Dick would be a better POTUS than what we have now. Thus, St, Bernie (and many, many, many other people) would just have to be better.
suzanne
@Matt McIrvin:
Yeah this. And persuasion isn’t about offering friendship or support, because fuck that. That has never been the argument. It’s about getting people to reprioritize their competing interests.
CCL
@schrodingers_cat: and who is, worse yet, old and a woman! /s
stinger
@Betty Cracker: I want video of them walking in those. New dance craze: The White House Shuffle.
schrodingers_cat
@LAC: The thing that gets me is that all their sympathy is reserved for T voters while actively shitting on the Democratic base of black women and Jewish people and older white people with a conscience who vote D.
These are the same people who called Kamala a cop, insisted that calling her a coconut was a compliment when she became our nominee and cheered the people calling Biden, Genocide Joe. They want to go back to the D party pre Civil Rights or so it seems.
Oh and BTW Vt senator had always been a guaranteed anti- immigrant vote in Senate until he ran for President.
Paul in KY
@schrodingers_cat: Yes! Your cat (and either one of mine) would be a better POTUS than TACO!
Melancholy Jaques
@Scout211:
The two leading Rs are a FOX asswipe and a sheriff who is an Oathkeeper & rabid Trumpster. We Democrats are all over the map because no one has really campaigned very much, so it’s name ID at this point.
Steyer runs TV ads, but I don’t think they are penetrating. He isn’t coming into this as an already famous person.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: True he is their Suzie Collins, they are both pretty popular in their respective states because they are good at representing their tiny states and bringing in the money and maintaining a good staff for constituent services.
suzanne
@Baud:
Yeah this. He gets crapped on for “only naming post offices”, but in reality, he’s done most of his work through the strategy of adding amendments to bills. He represents his constituents to their satisfaction. If they get sick of him, they can vote him out.
Betty Cracker
@Baud: Racism was arguably worse during FDR’s time, and he got culture-changing supermajorities thanks to general economic desperation. That scenario doesn’t look out of the question in our immediate future. We’ll see.
Gvg
@Paul in KY: if Trump is removed by impeachment, the vice President then President will behave in a much more legal way because of the impeachment. And so will future Presidents for at least awhile, which is also good. If there is not a public backlash against it, it will stick a lot better.
That would also help repair some of the damage done to our foreign relations, I think. Hard to estimate that.
I really wish we would end making ambassadorships a reward for rich donors and go to an all professional service.
Ohio Mom
@Betty Cracker: Maybe this has been noted before, is Trump sending the message to his underlings that they will have big shoes to fill if something removes him from office?
Nah, that’s too sophisticated for Trump’s brsin to have come up with.
Matt McIrvin
@suzanne:
I think it does involve maintaining some of the connections we already have with family or neighbors, if we are privileged enough to do so. Sometimes going no contact or ending the conversation is an important survival strategy and I world never deny it to someone who needs it, but shunning doesn’t seem to be that politically effective.
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
Sure, but he also knew to do the bare minimum on civil rights. You didn’t see any real progress until after WWII with a Truman. Today, civil rights is core to being a Dem, and it’s also what holds us back among a large number of voters
ETA: The Great Recession didn’t help us in a permanent way, although the timing was different than with the Great Depression.
Scout211
Jill Biden is releasing a new memoir and as much as I love her, I expect that I will be avoiding all
infightingdiscussions here about “that time in 2024.”Old wounds have not healed, I fear.
.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: The Japanese internment is a feature not a bug for many who want a return to the FDR days is a sneaking suspicion I have.
Matt McIrvin
@Betty Cracker: FDR also openly tolerated a white-supremacist regional faction in his own party. Truman dared to piss them off and it was the beginning of the end of the New Deal coalition, though it took half a century to play out.
Some of our brocialists have a dream of getting the Dixiecrats back by adopting a culturally conservative populism. But the demographics of the electorate alone are wildly different. And they just assume we wouldn’t lose any constituencies in our coalition as a result. We would.
suzanne
@Matt McIrvin:
100%. If someone needs to protect their peace and cuts MAGA out of their lives, awesome, more power to them.
We should just never fool ourselves that this is a strategy to persuade people to join our political coalition. Shunning and shaming and estrangements are ineffective at that end. In fact, there’s a ton of evidence that they do the exact opposite thing, they alienate people and harden their viewpoints.
So, approach this with clarity of your ultimate goal!
schrodingers_cat
@Matt McIrvin: Good points.
WTFGhost
I wonder if the news media has finally caught on to how Republicans first invent a problem, then, spread FUD about the problem, then, claim to have always opposed the problem, that never existed, before they invented it, because (and this is the clever bit) “of the concerns of their constituents” which they helped create and stoke.
Paul in KY
@suzanne: I’m thinking about my personal interactions with them. If they want to come to their senses and vote D, then I would be ever so happy!
Ohio Mom
@Betty Cracker: Maybe this has been noted before, is Trump sending the message to his underlings that they will have big shoes to fill if something removes him from office?
Nah, that’s too sophisticated for Trump’s brsin to have come up with.
Jackie
@Scout211: I’m with you! Nobody is better than rehashing yesterday’s grievances than BJers.
Paul in KY
@Matt McIrvin: Definitely not without risks, having that unctuous creep as POTUS.
ArchTeryx
@Paul in KY: 100% would make even the Matriarch blush. She’s not used to being called ‘cute!’
She’s also a whole lot better that our excuse for a leader, simply by virtue of her giving a shit about her responsibilities. We are the shadowed path for the Halavahdon. They don’t want to make our mistakes.
WTFGhost
Okay, so, if that mass of people is okay with murdering a bunch of us, we’re supposed to let them murder us, so as not to deny them a voice in our society, because that would be monstrous?
Sometimes, persuasion is that punch in the face that teaches a bully that you are not easy pickings. Sometimes, persuasion is a massed resistance against the gestapo in MN. Sometimes, persuasion is a sad, shamed, “oh, dude, you did not…”, and an unwillingness to associate with said dude for a bit.
Very few people learn morals from conversations; they learn them by experience, and persuasion involves changing experiences, not just engagement
cmorenc
@Jeffro:
A perverse benefit of WW2 and the generation of Americans who served and lived through it was that our citizenry was united with a true sense of community and national purpose – it was widely considered shameful for individuals to avoid serving in the military or to sacrifice for the national effort, and post-war the GI Bill and postwar prosperity was the greatest and broadest force for upward social mobility there ever has been in our history.
Among the many tragedies of the Vietnam war is that it is the clear point at which the unity of our citizenry began to unravel, as well as a perverse side effect of the hard-won success of the Civil Rights movement over about the same period. For all the reversals that began when Reagan won in 1980, Reagan appears almost benevolent by comparison to The malevolence of Trump. Reagan was more wrong-headed than malevolent.
schrodingers_cat
@Mr. Bemused Senior: It applies to him too, but I was thinking about the American voters who voted him in for the second time.
suzanne
@Paul in KY:
Yeah. This. That’s a win.
I mean….. I even talked to my fucken ex-husband and persuaded him to vote for Harris. He thought Biden’s foreign policy was bad and was tempted to sit the election out. I said that FFOTUS’s would be much worse, and he agreed. So Harris picked up a vote. He wasn’t thrilled about it, but all votes count the same! Take the W and move on.
Gvg
@Matt McIrvin: if the Republican Party ever really does break up into constituent parts, that would IMO cause the democrats to realign and both parties would end up somewhat different than before. That makes me nervous because I am comfortable in this coalition.
The US split its parties along civil rights lines long ago. It seems to me that other democracies didn’t and as a result they have some racist/anti immigrant people in all parties that they think they need. Most countries restrict immigrants even more than we do (but not all). That’s why our trans and other concerned citizens mostly can’t leave the US unless they have a lot of money.
Having taken a pro Civil rights stand, self identifying democrats gradually talked themselves into being more liberal than they started. Who you hang out with and who you are friends with influences you. We were also the pro education and pro environmental party plus pro labor. All of those groups influenced each other and probably changed them some.
Who’s in the Republican coalition? How have they changed each other? They seemed to have made business leaders who are idiots that don’t know how economics work or that the customer gets a vote.
prostratedragon
@schrodingers_cat: So, “opposite wisdom” is the thinking-doing that leads to “destruction;” “black” I guess would define the perilousness of the situation.
schrodingers_cat
@prostratedragon: IDK how you are getting black
Vinash is destruction
Kal is time (oh kala is also black)
I think google translate fucked up!
suzanne
@Gvg:
This is a really good question.
The GOP has kinda been, for basically my lifetime at least up until FFOTUS, a three-legged stool of lowercase-L libertarian capitalists of a range of income levels, social conservatives/religious nuts, and generally pro-military hawks/interventionists. Some overlap but also some not. Racism runs through all of those groups, but there is a big contingent for whom race is less of a concern than their taxes.
Betty Cracker
@Baud: & @Matt McIrvin: True, but the electorate isn’t the same as it was in 1930s-1940s, so I don’t think it’s necessarily true than a left economic populist would have to throw marginalized people under the bus to create a durable majority. Lots of people seem to operate under that assumption, and I can understand why in the wake of Trump, but maybe they’re wrong.
RevRick
@Baud: Sharia governs the inner workings of a Moslem community just like Bet Zein governs that of an Orthodox Jewish community and church polity governs the inner workings of a church. So, Sharia law is already happening in the United States in Moslem communities that apply it to themselves.
Our nation’s laws have always permitted religious bodies to adopt their own governing principles as long as they apply them in an internally consistent and fair way. In other words, the secular government will take a hands off approach as long as the religious body’s rules aren’t enforced in an arbitrary or haphazard way.
For example, my United Church of Christ requires me to be ordained, to participate in annual continuing education, and to participate in boundary training, racial awareness and cultural awareness trainings one every three years. Also, if I were to be fired, I cannot sue the church. That is our church’s version of sharia.
Ksmiami05
@Matt McIrvin: no. We’re better off fighting them and reducing their power everywhere. The Republicans are Bad people who need to be destroyed
suzanne
@Ksmiami05:
How do you propose to do that? Please list steps.
Matt McIrvin
@Paul in KY: No quarter for bad ideas, seventy-times-seven forgiveness for people who have had bad ideas. But they can’t keep spewing them without objection.
geg6
@Betty Cracker:
This whole shoe thing is fucking hilarious and depressing at the same time.
ironcity
@Scout211: I went and did the early vote thing in Loudoun County Monday and the signs were at least 80 yes/20 no. Got respectfully (?) engaged by a R
shillworker on the way in but otherwise really chill. Cautiously optimistic about results, now to really overrule the judge the Nazi party found inBumfuckBotetourt County and make it so.Matt McIrvin
@Ksmiami05: Ballpark, there are about 100 million of them. That’s roughly an order of magnitude larger than the victim count of the Holocaust. So, do you want to do 10 Holocausts?
We didn’t even do that to the original Nazis. We fought them until they stopped and the retribution that happened afterward was, for the most part, legally organized and from the top down. That required letting a lot of shitty little people walk free. It was imperfect justice but it always is.
Mr. Bemused Senior
@schrodingers_cat: Yes I got that after I wrote my comment. It’s a good proverb. I only hope it’s a warning as to the American people, not a foretelling.
frosty
@cmorenc: I’ll take the risk of Vance in order to show that impeachment and conviction is a valid consequence for war crimes, ignoring the Constitution, and destroying the country.
Otherwise the only thing we can do is sit here, wring our hands, wait years, and hope that we’re allowed to vote them out.
@rikyrah: Yes. What you said.
Geminid
@cmorenc: I think the Korean War marked another inflection point. That was the first war where Black Americans fought in racially integrated combat units.
Very few Black men fought in combat units during the Second World War. The vast majority served in non-combat arms.
One reason Southern politicians objected to President Truman’s 1947 order to integrate the armed services was that Black combat veterans would be more likely to resist racial repression in the South and other areas. They were right.
ArchTeryx
@Matt McIrvin: It wasn’t just shitty little people that walked free. Quite a few Nazi scientists ended up in our aerospace and rocket programs. They were politically useful, so they got free passes.
Paul in KY
@Gvg: I would pop a load if TACO was removed by impeachment. That said, I will believe it when I see it.
RevRick
@Gvg: The GOP will not break up, because it is, first and foremost, the white peoples’ party. It is the default party of white people. That is its reason for being — to maintain the caste system that exists here in the United States.
Now, it may become so repulsive to some white people who had previously supported it that they will leave it, either by no longer voting or even by joining the Democrats, like Joe Walsh. But the essence of the GOP will remain.
Eyeroller
@schrodingers_cat: Several things can be true at once. People did know Trump was a chaos agent, but in his first term he was relatively well constrained by his Cabinet and even some Republicans in Congress, so it didn’t affect many people’s daily lives (especially white people’s). People had nostalgic views of 2019 to early 2020, pre-pandemic, and were upset over inflation and thought the economy was good in 2019 so Trump must be good for the economy. And of course he has a solid base who love the racism and white patriarchal supremacism, but they wouldn’t be enough by themselves. Add in a large pinch of general misogyny causing reluctance to vote for a woman for President (especially among men), and here we are.
surfk9
@Melancholy Jaques: Swalwell is doing a lot of retail campaigning. He was going to do a meet and greet in Lodi, but if got cancelled. Porter is running a Southern Cal campaign. Not hearing of many events in NorCal. Steyer is running a media campaign. Mahan is running as the TechBro candidate.
Geminid
@Paul in KY: Trump would have to do a lot worse than he has for 20 Republican Senators to vote for removal, or even 16 if Democrats pick up four seats this November.
The only ways I see Trump leaving office is death or resignation due to ill health. Article 25 proceedings are a theoretical possibility but I discount that heavily because I think he– or his handlers– would make a resignation deal first
I’m not saying Democrats shouldn’t impeach Trump if they gain a House majority this November. But I would give impeachment a relatively low priority because I think they’ll have other tasks that will have greater real impact.
Paul in KY
@schrodingers_cat: People who would like that are never going to vote for us. TACO has their nasty asses.
RevRick
@Betty Cracker: The electorate of the 30s and 40s was pretty much the same one as the electorate of the 20s, which had overwhelmingly voted Republican. Three years of the Great Depression under Hoover changed all that.
Baud
@RevRick:
Those whites could switch without compromising their racial beliefs. They can’t do that today. The open question is whether they will do so, and whether the switch will stick after things get better (again, see Obama).
RevRick
@frosty: I can easily envision impeachment, but convictions take 67 votes, and I can’t imagine many Republicans voting for that in today’s polarized environment. In fact, I will go so far as to say that that method of removing a President became null and void when the Republicans failed to convict Andrew Johnson.
Melancholy Jaques
@surfk9:
No one has shown up or sent a representative to our local Democratic Club. I expect more, I guess. In the early going, a candidate needs to show that they have a campaign, that work is going on, that they know what they are doing. It attracts the activist component of the base.
Paul in KY
@ArchTeryx: They are a lucky people, to have such leaders.
Paul in KY
@WTFGhost: Good points!
rikyrah
@Baud:
It was never about productivity. It was about CONTROL.
prostratedragon
@schrodingers_cat: Ok. This was my first time using it.
YY_Sima Qian
War & destruction creating disillusionment even among the most anti-regime Iranians, & strengthening the Islamist regime’s control (at least for the time being), whodathunkit? (gift link to FT article below):
Also, incredibly naive of any Iranian to believe that Bibi & Trump would be the instrument of their salvation.
Soprano2
@suzanne: What I mean is we can understand why they voted for him, but also have to remember that they fully knew what kind of president he would be. When they start saying “but I didn’t know he would do ‘x'”, I feel free to completely ignore that excuse because all indications were there that he would do all of the things he’s done. So I guess it’s more about my attitude toward them than about them.
suzanne
@Soprano2: Oh, if people voted for him and then they act like Shocked Pikachus, I silently assume they’re dumber than stumps. Agree with that.
Paul in KY
@suzanne: Thank you for getting that done! You can only eat an elephant one bite at a time :-)
ArchTeryx
@Paul in KY: mar-Tykoni is pretty unique. That’s why they put her in charge of the Explorers. She’s their Gene Krantz. Ask the Apollo 13 crew how common they think people like him are.
They have plenty of problems. They’re a young people, as we are a young country. But they have a lot more open minds toward associating with us “Tinies” than we even do with people of different colored skin. They had something we did not – proper mentors.
The story is still coming together but it’s taking shape. A very thin silver lining to this black time.
YY_Sima Qian
The left wing government in Spain forging a different path from the rest of the West (link to CS Monitor article below):
Spain’s economy has grown twice as fast as the rest of Europe. It’s left wing government was also the most successful among western countries to tame the pandemic-induced inflation, by employing highly interventionist policies.
There are important lessons for the US & rest of Europe.
RevRick
@Baud: The MAGA base? I’d say never, because Trump has gotten their threat/fear responses so ingrained that nothing will blast them out. But with some, I guess, the economic pain level might exceed the psychic benefit of white supremacy, and they’re gettable.
schrodingers_cat
@ArchTeryx: Not just our space program, the USSR had an equivalent of Paperclip. The Japanese too had committed some horrendous war crimes in the name of science.
pluky
@cmorenc: If he had that level of charisma Trump would never have tapped him for VP.
Baud
@YY_Sima Qian:
I hope the Spanish leader isn’t too old!
Soprano2
@Baud: Part of what it means to me is that I don’t want to hear their whining about high gas prices or high prices in the store. If you bought into the idea that he would raise tariffs and prices would go down, it’s not my fault you’re that stupid. Because yeah, thinking you’d raise prices on suppliers and think your own prices would go down is stupid even for people who only have a grade school education.
YY_Sima Qian
3 weeks out from a high stakes Xi-Trump summit in Beijing, the preparations on the US side is unsurprisingly shambolic:
schrodingers_cat
@Mr. Bemused Senior: Only time will tell, whether its a warning or a foretelling.
The quote is from the Mahabharata, where the eldest Kaurava starts a war that he cannot win, thereby signing his own death warrant and the destruction of an entire generation.
YY_Sima Qian
I know just the mention of Bernie Sanders can cause allergic reactions here (& I’m not necessarily a fan, either), but he is on point here:
Soprano2
@suzanne: I think it’s partly because the press and pundits seem to be always asking us to try to understand the people who voted for FFOTUS. Note, though, that literally NO ONE ever asks THEM to try to understand US. Why is it only one way? It’s because we’re expected to be nice and forgive them everything, while it’s ok for them to be mean to us and never forgive us for anything. It’s what the press does, for example with their different coverage of Biden and FFOTUS’s physical and possible mental difficulties. Remember when Hillary stumbled and they all said she was going to die from pneumonia? FFOTUS has evidence of all kinds of physical problems, but do they obsess over how he’s near death’s door? No, they do not. I’m sick to death of the double standard.
schrodingers_cat
@prostratedragon: Its not bad but does trip up at times.
Baud
@Soprano2:
Good point.
Baud
@YY_Sima Qian:
He’s not disliked because of his policy positions.
different-church-lady
No, he’s kept afloat by parents and neighbors who think they’re going to get two marshmallows as well.
different-church-lady
@YY_Sima Qian: NOT THE CARTOON NETWORK!!!
RevRick
@Soprano2: Most of those voters were in the double hater category, expressing intense dislike for both candidates, but had experienced the worst economic outcomes during the Biden administration.
If we want to win them back, we might want to avoid the smug superiority of calling them stupid.
different-church-lady
@Baud: Well, except the one little bit where his policy positions are blind to systemic racism, but otherwise…
YY_Sima Qian
Of course it does, & all of it going to the PRC (gift link to WSJ article below):
Kind of like how the PRC Is continuing to purchase Venezuelan oil. So much for recent US militarism 4D chess to contain the PRC.
Of course, the US & Israel can easily sink the Iranian tankers, but Trump probably does not want to blow up relations w/ the PRC weeks before his much sought after summit w/ Xi in Beijing, & he would actually rein in Bibi on this particular score because of this. Also, sinking Iranian tankers headed to the PRC will simply spike oil prices that much more.
prostratedragon
@Geminid: Those WWII men came back ready to go. Whitney Young, Floyd McKissick, and Medgar Evers are three names the come quickly to mind; James Farmer was granted conscientious objector status.
Alert people were expecting this in the 1940s; check out the opening minutes of The Best Years of Our Lives for a clear sign that some understood things were going to change.
Paul in KY
@Geminid: Also the end of his misbegotten term. That’s the other way he leaves. Impeachment (to me) is a never-happen fantasy.
different-church-lady
@RevRick: It would be a lot easier to not call them stupid if it hadn’t been all out on the table for everyone to plainly see.
Plus, in that light the alternative to stupid is evil. Which, political outreach speaking, isn’t better.
suzanne
@Soprano2:
I will grant that that is annoying, but again….. this isn’t about personal relationship, or reciprocity, or anything like that.
Understanding the motivations and desires of potential voters is a critical part of persuasion! It is the core of political action! How would you ever expect to persuade anyone without some degree of cognitive empathy?
They don’t give a fuck about us because they can win without us. That sucks. But that’s the challenge ahead.
YY_Sima Qian
@Baud: Oh, I understand that.
YY_Sima Qian
The current state of affairs, what can one do but laugh:
Anyway
Me too! What he lacks in charisma he makes up with the support of Thiel and other tech overlords, can shamelessly gaslight* with the best of them and has been cannily consolidating support among the Bannon-Kirk-bros wing of the party.
*Gaslighting is a tough one to combat – so far neither mediots, pundits or D pols have been good at pushback
different-church-lady
I will note that a year ago we were all talking game over for democracy, and today we’re theorizing about how it will be after we survive this era/error. So, moving towards optimism, I guess.
different-church-lady
@suzanne: Except they didn’t win five years ago, and it still didn’t happen.
suzanne
@different-church-lady: Sure they did. They understood that lots of people were justifiably unhappy with their economic lives relative to pre-pandemic, and fed them a whole bunch of messaging saying Democrats cared more about trans people and immigrants than they did about their economic struggles. And that messaging landed with enough people that they won the next time.
That is understanding enough to effectively persuade.
YY_Sima Qian
@Anyway: & they now own the vast majority of media & entertainment & all of the social networks.
prostratedragon
@different-church-lady: You may scoff, but I’ve been hoping TCM isn’t part of the deal.
ArchTeryx
@schrodingers_cat: Yeah, they did. And China still hasn’t forgiven them for it, nor do they trust them. Considering even a fraction of what I’ve read the Japanese did in China during WWII, I really don’t blame them.
They didn’t treat our POWs much better, but you hear much less about that than about the Germans. And it’s a shame the Japanese are still dealing (imperfectly) with. They got their own fascist problems even today. A 40 year recession and completely sclerotic social culture will tend to do that.
Eyeroller
@schrodingers_cat: I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the two Presidents in my lifetime with the most alleged “charisma” were actors. Reagan for his entire career, Trump spent a lot of time playing a role in reality TV and even had some cameos/appearances in movies. That’s the type we should especially watch out for.
Soprano2
@RevRick: I’m not saying I would say it to their faces, but I’m sure thinking it. What else do you call thinking the president can make prices go back to 2019 levels while at the same time assessing tariffs on all the countries we buy stuff from? People have a basic understanding that if the price of food goes up, restaurants and grocery stores have to charge more. They didn’t apply that same logic to what FFOTUS said.
YY_Sima Qian
Interesting read:
It’s like the Israelis not in the thrall of Bibi & the far right understand reality, but are nevertheless trapped in their own solipsism in terms of coping w/ that reality.
Soprano2
@suzanne: I guess right now I wouldn’t be very good at persuasion. LOL I’ve been able to do it before, but with this totally useless war with Iran and them defending it, I guess I feel done. I hope they still think he’s a genius who’s playing 11-dimensional chess when they’re paying over $100 to fill up that gas guzzler they just have to have. I don’t want to hear their complaints about it. They got what they voted for, they can shut the fuck up about how bad things still are.
Paul in KY
@ArchTeryx: Sounds very interesting!
suzanne
@Soprano2: I don’t think anybody has to do persuasion if they don’t want to. What I object to is the framing that persuasion — a necessary pursuit if we’re going to win! Literally the core of democracy! — is “giving them sympathy” or “cozying up to racists” or something else bad.
Interesting Name Goes Here
@suzanne: And?
I could be “persuaded” that BMW drivers are the cause of so many of society’s ills and misfortunes, but if I act on that persuasion by firebombing BMW dealers on sight, there are many, many reasons why I would not be afforded the luxury of people understanding why I felt that way and who guided me to accept Molotov Cocktail Express Delivery as a career option.
These people voted to firebomb the country because of bigotry and racism and we’re supposed to just accept that. Oh, and “persuade” them not to do it again.
Right.
Gvg
@RevRick: some white people left the white peoples party generations ago. Quite a few of us here, including me. Even if the FDR version was pretty racist, it realigned with Truman, Kennedy and then LBJ. Whites who thought white supremacy was the most important thing have had plenty of time to clear out, but many have not. In spite of the still slight majority that vote Republican, there has been a pretty consistent other almost as big set of white people who haven’t been voting bigotry for multiple generations now. And if you were brought up white democrat, chances are your white parents were pointing out the bigotry every night at news hour and in the paper and discussions about ….everything going on.
Not everything wrong with republicans is racism. The misogyny was also pointed out, they have always been terrible on environmental issues, and their economic and tax policies have always been scams with terrible consequences for the poor and their own voters.
The mysterious thing to me is why anyone votes for them beyond the already very rich. The don’t give good results.
Geminid
@YY_Sima Qian: I think you gove opposition Israelis too little credit for awareness. Perhaps that’s because of your source. Shaul Ben Ephraim is an outlier, a self-described “Jew from Occupied Palestine” who lives in West Hollywood.
If you want to gauge the awareness of opposition Israelis, I suggest you look at Israeli journalists like Ben Caspit, Gill Hoffman and Noga Tarnopolsky.
Or amateurs like Iris Boker. You could not find an Isaseli who despises Benjamin Netanyahu more than Boker does, and her analyses of regional politics are step or two above those of many Western journalists.
Paul in KY
@YY_Sima Qian: He’s right about that.
Paul in KY
@YY_Sima Qian: At least that Ellison kid has a kind and empathetic face…
Paul in KY
@Interesting Name Goes Here: If we can get their vote in 26/28, you can BS them as much as necessary to get that vote. Talking about you the voter.
sab
@YY_Sima Qian: Israel is the size New Jersey with pretty much only one way out if you don’t want to go through Egypt: Ben Gurion Airport.
Bibi did an oops this time.
YY_Sima Qian
@Geminid: I recognize that Ben Ephraim is a left wing outlier in Israel, but the sentiments he describes I do see them in Israeli MSM & Israeli batted establishment as relayed through Western MSM. The solipsism is in the surprise at the inevitable developments they profess to be surprised at (as described by Ben Ephraim, of course).
Tarnopolsky is of course quite sharp & realistic. Thanks form” plugging Boker.
YY_Sima Qian
double post