Russian scientists discover huge walrus haulout in Arctic circle Reuters (resilc)
Terrified Boxer Gathers Up The Courage To Walk Past The Cat Animal Rescue (David L)
If you’re a polar bear, your location may foretell your future Yale Climate Connections
Two new greater glider species discovered: ‘Australia’s biodiversity just got a lot richer’ Guardian (furzy)
Ceramic jar containing over 100,000 bronze coins recently unearthed at a 15th-century former samurai's residence.
The jar was found in the Saitama Prefecture north of Tokyo. pic.twitter.com/QCXYi3eGtQ
— Marina Amaral (@marinamaral2) November 6, 2020
Astronomers use a contraption made from a metal pipe and two CAKE TINS to identify the source of a mysterious fast radio burst in the Milky Way Daily Mail (Kevin W)
‘Real world’ wives of UK ‘spycops’ seek justice for lives shattered by the undercover police operation RT (Kevin W)
Energy descent as a post-carbon transition scenario: how ‘knowledge humility’ reshapes energy futures for post-normal times Josh Floyd (Kevin W)
To batteries and beyond: Compressed air, liquid air and the holy grail of long-duration storage Utility Dive (resilc)
This could lead to the next big breakthrough in common sense AI MIT Technology Review
Today’s Internet Still Relies on an ARPANET-Era Protocol: The Request for Comments IEEE (Chuck L)
Biogen Alzheimer’s drug in doubt after criticism from expert panel Financial Times
#COVID-19
China seeks to flip the script on Covid blame game Asia Times
Science/Medicine
Dogs can detect COVID-19 quicker and more accurately than nasal swabs, study finds New York Post
SARS-CoV-2 Infects Human Engineered Heart Tissues and Models 1COVID-19 Myocarditis BioRxiv
Prothrombotic autoantibodies in serum from patients hospitalized with COVID-19 Science Translational Medicine
Some People Already Have Antibodies That Recognize Covid-19, Thanks to Common Colds Gizmodo (Kevin W)
Tinnitus is being exacerbated by COVID-19: Study Outbreak News
Aspirin to be tested as potential COVID-19 drug in UK study Reuters
The WHO is hunting for the coronavirus’s origins. Here are the new details. National Geographic (David L)
Researchers found a new coronavirus mutation capable of sparking another pandemic BGR
How a Coronavirus Mutation in Minks Could Wreak Havoc on Vaccine Development Slate
Coronavirus live news: 200 people in Denmark infected with mink-related Covid since June Guardian
UK/Europe
Operation Moonshot: rapid Covid test missed over 50% of cases in pilot Guardian
Denmark tightens North Jutland restrictions in response to coronavirus mutation The Local (resilc)
US
CDC Report: Officials Knew Coronavirus Test Was Flawed But Released It Anyway NPR (David L)
Judge Orders the Release of Data on Emergency Loans for Small Businesses ProPublica (UserFriendly)
Brexit
NI traders ? https://t.co/5sBn70ViZm
— Dr Anna Jerzewska (@AnnaJerzewska) November 6, 2020
Brexit trade deal: Michel Barnier says UK ‘blocked progress in key areas’ Sky (guurst)
Daily ferries to France starting from January to bypass Brexit congestion Irish Times
Folding bike maker Brompton performs Brexit U-turn Yorkshire Bylines (guurst)
New Cold War
RUSSIA CAN, THE UNITED STATES CAN’T CUT THE ICE John Helmer (Chuck L)
Syraqiatan
Israeli Official Warns of War With Iran if Biden Returns to Nuclear Deal Antiwar (resilc)
Trump Transition
Steve Bannon dropped by attorney in criminal case day after suggesting Fauci and FBI director beheadings CNN. Being at a remove from the throne has not improved Bannon’s behavior.
Trump will no longer receive special Twitter treatment if he loses election Guardian (Kevin W)
Trumpism has arrived in America, just like Moditva in India The Print (J-LS)
Mark Meadows, Trump’s Chief of Staff, Has Contracted Covid-19 Wall Street Journal
2020
How America’s election count looks to the rest of the world Boing Boing. Resilc: “I spent hours once in Dublin trying to explain to an Irish CPA why we have shit healthcare. He could not understand why we had no national system.”
A Great Example of Better Data Visualization: This Voting Map GIF Core77 (resilc)
GOP Comes Up Short in Challenge to Nevada Ballot Count Plan Bloomberg (furzy)
Now We Know: Trump’s 2016 Win Was No Fluke Capital Spectator
Glum U.S. House Democrats lament 2020 election losses Reuters. Resilc: “A+ Robbie Mook.”
The biggest Trump meltdown the world has ever seen is imminent. Be prepared Independent
Democracy’s Afterlife Fintan O’Toole, New York Review of Books
The Black Nebraska Lawmaker Who May Have Delivered the Presidency to Joe Biden American Prospect
Will the Democrats Ever Make Sense of This Week? New Republic
NONWHITE VOTERS ARE NOT IMMUNE TO THE APPEAL OF RIGHT-WING POPULISM Intercept. As Lambert said, “volatility voters”.
With Biden on the brink, Democrats rage at Trump voters for turning out Fox (Kevin W)
Hannity says Pennsylvania should hold a ‘do-over’ election Boing Boing
Will Mitch McConnell’s Senate Make America Ungovernable? New York Times. Resilc: “‘Becoming’ and ‘may make’????????????? wtf??????”
The Lincoln Project got $67,000,000 to do literally nothing and the Black organizers that helped Biden win probably are short on rent this month.
— Benjamin Dixon (@BenjaminPDixon) November 7, 2020
Lincoln Project
✔️Made 0 phone calls
✔️Knocked 0 doors
✔️Sent 0 texts
✔️Stole memes from teenagers to build clout on social
✔️ Fundraised from the clout
✔️ Contracted their own companies to produce ads to run in safe blue metros
✔️ Still fundraising more— Tony Choi (@tonykchoi) November 7, 2020
What Biden will and won’t be able to achieve on climate change MIT Technology Review (David L)
Andrew Yang tears into the Democrats for becoming a party of ‘urban coastal elites’ who have abandoned the working class and are more concerned with ‘policing cultural issues’ after their dismal results Daily Mail. Zelda: “Yang tells truth, gets shot down.”
Why Capitalism Was Destined to Come Out on Top in the 2020 Election CounterPunch.
Our Famously Free Press
Lara Marlowe: Robert Fisk, my former husband, was the finest journalist of his generation Irish Times
Facebook Can’t Seem To Do Anything About ‘Stop the Steal’ Groups Vice
McConnell and Pelosi are once again at odds over the size of a coronavirus stimulus package CNBC
US seizes $1bn in bitcoin linked to Silk Road site Guardian (resilc). Normally we say “prosecution futures” but the seizure happened after the prosecution.
The Colonization of the Ayahuasca Experience JSTOR (Micael T)
A Quick Look Under The Hood Of The October Jobs Report Heisenberg Report. Resilc: “That figure has surged over the past two months. As Bloomberg’s Katia Dmitrieva puts it, ‘one-third of the unemployed haven’t had a job since the first round of coronavirus layoffs in April.’”
How much of the stock market’s rise over the last 11 years is due to QE? Here’s an estimate MarketWatch
Class Warfare
On Election Night, Cuomo Issues New Order on NYC Evictions Curbed (J-LS)
Debt Collectors Will Soon Be Allowed To Reach You By Text Or On Facebook CBS
Antidote du jour (Tracie H):
And a bonus (guurst):
86 years to the Kronotsky Nature reserve, home – among many other species – to Eurasia's largest protected brown bear population. Video filmed by inspector Liana Varavskaya shows this year’s cub ‘taking a deep breath’ before jumping into water to catch up with mum @kronoki pic.twitter.com/S9n5WmV1h9
— The Siberian Times (@siberian_times) November 2, 2020
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
445 comments
Comments are closed.
McConnell and Pelosi are once again at odds over the size of a coronavirus stimulus package CNBC
Good to see the normal functioning of the legislative branch of government resume. Looking forward to the resumption of governance by executive order ⸮
She had a cool $2 trillion before the election and threw it away. She’s one hell of a negotiator.
And San Francisco re-elected her overwhelmingly.
Not a single prominent progressive stood up for Shahid Buttar. Not one. First and foremost in their conspicuous absence, Bernie Sanders.
This is the other side of centrist Dems losing to Republicans: the absolute lack of courage among progressives to take on Dem leadership.
Buttar deserved better.
Phyl said something similar about the national race. Concerning the “Left” politicos; “With friends like these, who needs Republicans?”
As long as the political elites can frame the controversy as D versus R, nothing changes. Switch it to, “Upper Class” versus “Working Class” and you have the bones of a winning strategy.
Per the above, looking backward in History, it is plain as day to see that any attempt at ‘leveling up’ the socio-economic playing field has resulted in literally murderous responses by the elites.
The Left is going to have to “grow a pair.” Today, the issues are real “life or death” ones.
What I’ve been saying for years – with the proviso that they are aware of and can fight off the multitude attempts by the established order to scuttle them during the process. Bravery is one component, intelligent anticipation of prefidy is another. Can we afford to do the Lincoln thing (“keep your friends close – keep your enemies closer”)?
https://yasha.substack.com/p/shahid-buttar-the-cheesy-silicon Just read this.
I was so sad to read this about Buttar, whom I had supported from afar. I’m not familiar with Levine’s agenda but this sounds about right about EFF.
As happened to Alex Morse in Mass by Dems, Buttar was similarly smeared with lies probably set up by Dems? So sad for SF, for the country, for the world.
Sigh… “re-elected..overwhelmingly.” Pelosi is greedy, arrogant, incompetent. I sometimes think the rich are not only selfish but stupid.
Same here, on all counts…
Since she seems to be pretty successful at getting party unity supporting legislation she chooses, I don’t think it’s correct to call her “incompetent.”
Work in lefty politics in SF, Buttar is a total grifter, he didn’t run any field operations after the summer, just spent money paying himself 8.3k a month and on absurd software his pals or other grifters got him on. Drives around on top of a van rapping, just had absolutely no shot, I hate pelsoi wish someone serious had gotten that kind of attention.
Thanks for the local knowledge!
The post election conference call with Pelosi was the first shot across the bow. Hopefully more pushback against leadership will continue.
“She had a cool $2 trillion before the election and threw it away. She’s one hell of a negotiator.”
This assumes that Pelosi wanted a deal in the first place. Her first priority was not to do anything that might boost Trump’s re-election, such as pass a deal.
Or…
Second stimulus check updates: Dueling coronavirus relief bill visions cloud lame-duck outlook
Par for the regressive course.
>Why Capitalism Was Destined to Come Out on Top in the 2020 Election-[CounterPunch/Richard Wolff]
No matter who won, what U.S. politics lacks is real choice. Both major parties function as cheerleaders for capitalism
I’ve been following Richard Wolff’s work for a long time now. And although I think his analysis is accurate, I get dismayed at the efficacy of even using words like “capitalism” anymore. If you use “socialism, communism, capitalism, fascism” or any “ism” most people will have very vague and remote ideas of what these terms mean in their historic and concrete meaning. It’s not Richard Wolff’s fault, or even those who haven’t had the education/schooling (Greek skholē =leisure).
The “1%” vs. “99%” had purchase on the public consciousness for a while. And on the right, the framing the battle as that between common folk and the “globalist” is still bandied about, but it always seems to be tainted with nationalism and jingoistic adulterations. Until the emergence of a language that allows people to properly (emotionally/rationally) frame the reality that is accurately described by RW, using the lens of Marxism, it’s not going to be a threat to the ruling elite and consequently nothing will improve for the mass of people scraping by to maintain a dignified life.
The word “Marxism” carries a lot of ‘baggage’ in today’s America. It has been successfully demonized in the mind of the general public. A new, more emotionally neutral term must be deployed on the field of propaganda. Then, having switched terms, begin again to prosthelytize for “class” based solutions to our problems.
This problem generally makes me think of the attitude towards words of Humpty Dumpty in Alice in Wonderland.
“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.” “The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.” “The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master—that’s all.”
Marx
+++
too true!
Marriage is more than a word. It’s a sentence.
The secret to a happy marriage remains a secret.
Henny Youngman
Marriage is an institution. But so is a prison and an insane asylum.
And “master” in this sense means who has the power in society to be able to bend words to gainful meaning for a whole class, thus to be rammed down the throat by another. I do not for one second believe that Marxists, or DSA, or any stripe of Leftist can overcome this situation by preaching. Simply not enough money to power the PR. The practical issues of daily life will prevail, and the working-classes will only be convinced once the proper policies can be enacted under such political power. Sanders tried the FDR route, but got smeared anyway. His failure to message his campaign correctly was partly his reluctance to face the tiger and not wince, coupled with the media/Dem nexus’ insistence on lying about him constantly. A lose-lose wager.
Don’t be a sheep, be a hive? Many people’s individualism is offended by the idea of sacrificing for the greater good, especially today when common values are rarer and cultural fragmentation on a national level is high. What we have is a community mindset that always gravitates more towards tribalism on a local scale. People in urban areas seem to get past this because of their exposure to so many people. A certain level of acceptance occurs such that there is a sort of nihilism about people’s culture and values (although that may sound like a paradox to any sjw hating Republican who believes they desire a monoculture after their own values). That same nihilism promotes individualism however if only for the sake of having some sort of identity. Collectivism is in a weird way suffering from the problem it seeks to address, in which people are afraid they won’t be able to say “me too.” Every policy has to be designed to be utterly fair, but we don’t trust each other and the culture on average has a strong vein of selfishness and spite. It really really doesn’t help when those who promote collectivism create flawed policy that seems to mismanage the incentive system. They need to be on the top of their game and not join the culture war of tit for tat or it’ll never work.
Do I need to post that Mel Chin baton again or what :)
Honestly, what brings me back to center is the devastation on the streets. Even my very sheltered suburban good-middle-class-people are noticing that the people on the streets are recently arrived. I do not see “us” being ok with this many people wasting away before our eyes. I refuse to believe these people cannot be re-integrated into our web of life.
A new, more emotionally neutral term must be deployed on the field of propaganda.
It’s already been done:*
* Quoted here. Full text of Albert’s Parecon: Life After Capitalism here (free) or here (Amazon). Professional economists, or those interested in the actual mathematics behind the theory, see Hahnel and Albert’s Quiet Revolution in Welfare Economics and Political Economy of Participatory Economics here (free) and here (free), or here (Amazon) and here (Amazon).
Reminds me of the time Ford Prefect was trying to help Arthur Dent prepare for his first jump into hyperspace, saying: “It’s unpleasantly like being drunk.” “What’s so unpleasant about being drunk?” Arthur wanted to know, and Ford replied: “You ask a glass of water.”
As you state in your comment the language of the left is vague and remote from historic and concrete meaning. Even worse — nebulous discussions of the masses, the working class, and class struggle … using studiously precise Marxist jargon … quickly become anachronistic and dull. They are unconvincing to anyone who isn’t already convinced and even the convinced may reconsider their positions when they realize the nature of their fellow travelers.
I should add that I believe Michael Hudson is a remarkable exception. His language is simple to understand, clear, and convincing. His common sense arguments and plain language devoid of Marxist jargon left me surprised to realize he was a Marxist. I It wasn’t until listening to one of his interviews where he described his family and what it was like growing up that I became aware he was a Marxist.
Wolff is accessible and very good to listen to. His wife Dr. Fraad is too.
It has been important in the past few years to be explicit about Marxism precisely because of its baggage. A heckload of propaganda and cobwebs needed to be wiped off, showing a wider audience that the lens is a good one.
People needed to learn about Eg, The immense successes of the Soviet Union and Communist China in bringing large groups of human beings into the benefits of modern life (like increased life expectancy except under unmasked capitalism where that does a U-ey). And, the famines/ killed-568-jillion-people myths needed to be debunked.
Work (the right to live) is the battleground. Why obscure that?
Before you say that we are more than work, just lmk whether you want to eat a varied diet besides subsistence staples amenable to your microclimate, and whether you think having a sewage system other than on-site composting is important.
/and can we get a Caw in here?/ ;$
Oh, is the Holodomorocaust a myth in need of debunking?
Did the Great Leap Famine not actually occur?
This should be interesting, watching the Marxists attempt to rehabilitate their Gulag Socialism.
I await the results.
Catch up
You don’t need to await. Go get some real knowledge for yself besides preening over plastic.
Who gets gulag? Plastics-free gaslighters who promise someone they’ll be hired, then steal their ideas/ work product and bill for them as their own.
“Wolff is accessible and very good to listen to.”
I was going to make a similar point. As an example, framing the issue as who decides “what to produce, how to produce, where to produce, and what to do with the profits,” as Richard Wolff often does, can hardly get any clearer, in my view. And Bhaskar Sunkara, editor and creator of Jacobin, set out pretty consciously to produce a magazine of “jargon-free neo-Marxist thinking,” if this 2013 profile of him in the NYT is to be believed. Of course, we can still find the “studiously precise Marxist jargon” in places—e.g., the Hampton Institute refers to itself as “a proletarian (working class) think tank”—but things seem to be changing.
And, as a side note, I’ve never found Marxist jargon to be “studiously precise” at all—Marx didn’t have the precise language to describe some of what he observed. I’ve often thought that a lot of his critique would benefit from being translated into behavioral terms, e.g., contrived reinforcers (e.g., money in the form of wages, prices, profits and so on), intrinsic reinforcers (often referred to “utility” or “use value” or, maybe, “providing x based on need, rather than on the ability to pay”), etc. But I might be a minority of one.
I am fine with Marxist ideas but every time I hear a few too many Marxist terms used in a discussion or podcast I have flashbacks to student council meetings in college. They were often taken over by Marxists [Marcuse was in vogue at the time] who spent hours debating Marxism around issues like a 7-11 going up across from campus and never decided anything.
I get tired of hearing about Richard Wolff’s employee owned businesses. They may work in Europe … but are there any good examples of businesses started up by employees in the US? The only thing I can think of are the coop food markets that still survive from the 1960s.
I’m not sure that they don’t work here or wouldn’t but I’m not entirely convinced, either.
I’ve had very few experiences with employee-owned businesses and I won’t say they’ve been great (although they haven’t been that bad, either). I had baked goods from the famed worker-run Arizmendi Bakery in San Francisco—Wolff mentions it from time to time—and they’re distinctly lackluster. They look terrific but they taste utterly mediocre—almost like simulations of really good baked goods. (I actually recommend against buying their baked goods.)
I understand employee-owned businesses in principle but it might be that, as withpolitical entities, it helps to have a leader who has a vision and can have the organization hold to that—Arizmendi doesn’t have someone like Armando Lacayo who owns Arsicault Bakery, the #1 bakery in the US in 2016, or Belinda Leong who runs b.patisserie, with its scrumptious kouign amann, and it shows—which is to say that “democratic” and “autocratic” workplaces might have some of the same trade-offs as democratic and autocratic political entities.
Mr. Grimm, I think you need to look more into the range and scope of cooperative businesses. In the US, there are more and more worker co-ops in retail/wholesale, human services (day care, home care, nursing services), programming/IT, media, marketing, design – there is hardly a sector in which cooperatives, including worker co-ops – are not present and successful. My personal favorite is Equal Exchange, a worker co-operative specializing in fair trade of commodities like chocolate and coffee. (EqualExchange.coop)
For more information about worker co-ops in the US, please visit the US Federation of Worker Cooperatives at usworker.coop.
One of the reasons I’ve never gotten past half the first chapter of Capital, Vol. I, is that he uses three different meanings of “value,” and is not always careful which meaning he is using. Of course, he was using the language of his time, before “price” was adopted as a better description than “value,” and the book is translated into English, which is often less precise than German anyway. That, and the fact that each of the three volumes is huge, and each volume (I am told) admits that the previous volume ended with a mistaken conclusion — purposely!
Can we maybe try to reclaim the word populism from the anti-populists?
Owners and rent extractors?
RE NONWHITE VOTERS ARE NOT IMMUNE TO THE APPEAL OF RIGHT-WING POPULISM and the Yang piece:
I had an experience that I think sheds some light on why non-white rural voters had a higher turn out for trump.
It is the digital divide.
I have been on a bit of a digital sabbatical after having the data on my phone cut off because one would think “Unlimited Data” means just that. So looking for other media inputs I turned to my radio which gives me three choices for news; NPR and two conservative stations. I know from my travels that NPR is no where in more rural areas. And NPR is awful and boring anyway. (I miss 1010WINS radio in NY!)
So I would imagine being blasted with right wing radio all day would make one go home and look up right wing stuff when you get what ever little internet you have. Every where I went in rural areas i see people sitting in their car listening to the radio, working while listening to the radio. Coastal elites have probably not turned on a radio in 15 years.
The left wing needs to stop trying to reach working class people through all these subscriber based services. This means less podcasts, less twitter and more AM radio, more door knocking, more town halls, etc.
(And I am sorry for missing out on the antidepressant thread yesterday.)
the Righty domination of the am dial began with billary’s telecom bill…and clear channel and rush limbaugh were on it like stink.
the original captive audience were people who had to sit in traffic.
i lived in austin during that time, and sat in traffic…i’d listen to rush, and his eventual clones, with dismay…yelling at the radio…marvelling, after i turned that sh&t off, at still being able to hear those “golden tones” from cars and trucks all around me in the gridlock.
an alternate universe was being constructed….then fox came along(part of the long term nixonian coup, it turns out)…then the internet, and away we went.
now, way out here, i hear rush, et alia, in the lumber yard, in the liquor store, and from vehicles at the bank drive through.
as it’s always been, it’s herd reinforcement….for , as you say,when the internet is not available.
i worried about this in the early 90’s, when am radio was all the Right had…and the contours Rush was carving out were new and obviously crazy. But repetition, ad nauseum, have given that pocket universe material form….and like the excellent article from Fintan, we’ll have to learn to live with that insanity right next door.
I remember driving cross country in the early 90s and experiencing Limbaugh in the radio for the first time before he was well known. I was somewhere in the middle of Utah trying to stay awake after hours of driving I found talk radio to be less of a soporific than music, and flipping through the channels I ran into Limbaugh who was talking about a some hydroelectric project that threatened to drive some small species of fish to extinction, which at the time was big national news. Limbaugh was not in favor of preserving the fish, and brought up the need for people to make a living, taking the needs of the working class into consideration.
My recollection is that he was far more subdued than he has since become, because I remember thinking that he sounded fairly reasonable, and that while I didn’t think we should knowingly drive species to extinction, he did provide some food for thought (including IIRC what constitutes a species, a very valid question I now know). He hit the bigtime not long after and at some point he jumped the shark and became a shill for the usual corporate interests, but I wonder if back then he might have actually believed what he was saying. Definitely not hard to see why he developed a following.
Side note: for anyone who has never done so, I highly recommend taking an overnight solo drive barreling through the midwest listening to whatever talk radio you can find on the AM dial. It’s really a hoot.
paul harvey
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=loTpM-7LNd8
“for our nations first 150 years we led the world, not with guns, not with butter, not with money, but by example”
…and I thought that it was Mighty Midas Mufflers…
There were plenty of guns for the first 150 years.
mostly I just liked listening to paul harvey when driving across the country in my younger days
My nighttime AM driving memories are of Jesus radio…
But wasn’t it Reagan getting rid of the fairness in broadcasting/equal time regulation that gave rise to right-wing talk radio?
Apropos nothing really, but I see the US today as The Girl With Away Eyes.
https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=stone+girl+faraway+eye&atb=v214-1&iax=videos&ia=videos&iai=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DVyK1bZZ7E-s
The intertoobz tell me I’m wrong, but I swear I remember it taking place under Carter, in 1977. The FCC handed down a decision that it would no longer forbid an entity from owning both a newspaper and a television or radio station in the same town. I’ve been trying for years to verify that memory without success.
Great observation. If you work with your hands, you can get a durable waterproof radio for very cheap and have endless political commentary.
Very true. And Amfortas is right that this is another thing for which we can thank the Clintons.
I lived in the Midwest for many years and had many occasions to make long road trips across Kansas, Oklahoma, Missouri, and Texas. There were long stretches in which the radio choices were maybe 1 or 2 classic rock stations and 8 or 10 “talk” radio channels. These included not only Limbaugh or similar political yappers, but incredibly right-wing religious programs. Truly an alternate universe.
Of course I’ve had garage mechanics and cab drivers listening to Limbaugh in upstate NY as well. But here it does seem that there is more competition, and the information bubble is a *little* more permeable.
Same experience for me! Living and driving for years in Kansas and Missouri and now living in upstate NY (where one occasionally sees a big Confederate flag flying from a passing pickup).
In those Midwest years, I’d typically tune in to FM stations but occasionally out of curiosity switch over to AM — particularly for some of the religious programing. I’m about as left as it’s possible to be, but those booming, apocalyptic preachers with their soaring and blood-curdling messages were really something. For people trapped in dead-end, back-breaking and/or mindless work racing from one job to the next among two or three jobs to keep food on the table, these voices offering a sense of cosmic purpose may be their only tonic.
What does the left have to offer? White fragility lectures?
“White fragility lectures?”
and those academically ‘pushed’ puritystreet’ rights, that are all the rage in campuses and downtowns across the Wide Realm.
And yet there’s all those Americans who are some combo of hungry, sick, homeless, unemployed, broken, often beaten who are never seen, ignored, or if they are lucky blessed with contempt. It strange that the more people suffer this, the more ideological and social purity is demand; the more people like Bernie Sanders and organizations like the DSA are noticed, the more Identity Politics is thrust into our collective face with shouts of anti-racialist and class reductionists ever louder.
White fragility my big white hairy tuchus.
This is just like all those Stormfront morons who can insist racism ain’t that bad despite all evidence or all the libertarians (or so called Liberals) in the Bay Area who insist that all those homeless people are just lazy or addicts even when housing is evermore expensive.
It’s like this in agriculture rural Wisconsin. AM right wing radio in the barns while they work milking cows and on the radio in the car of the rural mail route person. Charlie Sykes was the master and he has seen the light (or followed the $) but the damage he did remains. It’s the constant message being pounded day after day after day.
I agree that one of the most effective ways propaganda is injected into mainstream culture is through the radio. And I agree that a lot of people, are subjected to these perverted shock jocks by the fact that they control so much of what is out there. Their corporate enablers, the “clear channel” or “i heart radio”. and the others couple of venues out there…. coupled with the “mainstream media”… i.e.. fox and friends…. I can’t say I even know what “america One” is…. ? but I guess more of the same.
I Too used to have to listen to rush back in the eighties and early nineties… and he has been incredibly reliable to be pushing absolute BS, the whole time… but back then it was reagan and his trickle down BS.. then came newt gingrich( who was really the first “trumpian” a-hole… who made attacking the “other side” the plan… no ends… just hyperbole all the time… as a means of taking center stage… But back then it was on “1010wins”… i do recall…. on long island NY..Wasn’t IMUS in the morning on that station too?. another one who peddled opinions… under the guise of entertainment… it is how people “get in”… like howard stern… they got under people’s skin… and the central scrutinizers were watching.
the vertical and horizontal control over all these right wing orifices… is near complete in a lot of places, after twenty years of media consolidation… thanks to clinton and the telecommunications act of ’96/
Add to that the fact that NPR does such a poor job actually reporting news, and in a real sense is as perverted as fox, for those who choose to listen…. but in another direction.. which is obvious to any right wingers out there that NPR is “national propaganda radio”…. It cements the opinions of the right wingers that “the media” is lying.
Again all this is ” right wing, and left wing” of the same corporate bird…. and the corporations don’t really care whether team D or team R are in control…. because they DO the same things…. allow them to steal anything they want…to trample anything they want… to pretend they have “morals”. and most importantly, to legally go where only criminals should be.
And that is why, your racial heritage can’t protect you from the mountain of propaganda that is leveled against all living persons, from every angle, all the time…
Our brains have not evolved to be able to allow in only real information…. like a sponge in the water, everything gets stuck somewhere…
Good point. One would think that radio in this digital age is a medium of the past, and in certain ways it is. But I read recently (can’t remember where) that this isn’t the case at all for AM radio, where the right-wing talkers are abundant. And compelling. And highly profitable for the station owners who, otherwise might struggle to find consistent audiences.
The repeal of the Fairness Rule in broadcasting opened the door to this situation. I imagine there’s a great deal of lobbying by the radio industry to ensure this is never restored. I’m not even sure that I would want that myself.
So the question that occurs to me is why left-wing voices aren’t equally present and compelling on the AM airwaves. One obvious answer is that some of the message wouldn’t be welcome to advertisers. But I think there’s more to it than that. Lefties in the US just typically aren’t as forceful as righties and the economic messages that might gain traction with AM’s blue- and pink-collar audiences are inextricably entangled with a package of repulsive idpol. (This is also one reason that, along with Andrew Yang, I believe the Democrat brand is now poisoned past the point of recovery.)
There is also the problem of funding. There are a lot of Right wing wealthy people. Indeed, I’ll suggest that American Capitalism selects for such. These people spend some of their “spare change” supporting radio “hosts” who promote their interests. On the Left? Where does the money come from? Who determines the spending patterns?
The sad career of “Air America” tells a cautionary tale about how this “market” is “run.”
Read, (not hear,): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_America_(radio_network)
There used to be good public radio broadcasting in the US but it seems to have disappeared for lack of funding. There is one late night program called The World hosted by Marco Werman on pri (which I thought stood for “public radio international”). I listen to it in my area from 1 am to 2 am. We used to have a broadcasting station on the Tantramar Marshes that sent programs through international stations all around the world but it was cancelled, probably “to save money.” Now I listen to late night radio from Ireland, Germany, Australia, and England. Canada broadcasts over these same airwaves during the morning in a program called “Ideas.” I often listen to these programs and learn a lot more about how the world works and what is going on than any TV or radio program during the day.
Talk Radio is blah, blah, blah, blah.
i guess there’s always Granma….the Cuban radio station.
when i was a kid, my dad….a short wave radio buff since he was a kid in the late 40’s/early 50’s…gave me a short wave radio of my very own(still have it), ran a wire antennae out the window and into the trees.
he was shocked when i immediately found Cuba….they had an english service back then…late at night, listening to some guy translating Fidel’s 5 hour rambles.
i consider all that a sort of pre-internet.
you could get Radio Free Europe, Deuche Welle, various BBC World Services….for africa, and so on…lots of really weird religious programming (“The Overcomer!!!”—and Dr Gene Scott, with his horseracing)…and a million spanish language marxist outfits from all over central and south america.
what’s a shortwave transmitter cost these days?
pirate radio…a la Wolfman jack and his 50,000 watt monstrosity just across the mexican border….
Heard It on the X by ZZ Top
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zvgGNaTH7ds
Had a similar rig in the pacific northwest (remember HeathKits?). IIRC Radio Moscow was easy to catch. Don’t recall hearing Cuba…
That makes sense. Radio Havana was (is?) easy to find in the Eastern U.S. When I lived in Pennsylvania I often listened to several hours of Cuban jazz on Saturday night. Not so clear here in Colorado.
I am at an age where Wolfman Jack cannot be mentioned without me immediately thinking about American Graffiti and the character played by Richard Dreyfus meeting with the Wolfman and asking him to convey a message to the blonde girl in the T-Bird played by Suzanne Somers.
I’d suggest that funding on the left comes from, well, somewhere. After all, those failed Senate runs in KY and in SC raised a good chunk of money.
Just to be clear, there’s an awful lot of money sloshed around every 4 years. On both sides. But its a big club and we ain’t init.
That’s just funding on the other right.
Agreed. Now that the Neo-liberal Democrat party has appropriated “Left” as a disinformation trademark, what do we call the ‘real’ thing? Go back to earlier times and refer to the “Radical Left?” A basic Marxist political program would deserve a less “toxic” sobriquet.
I must admit to being baffled. (What is a ‘baff’ anyway?)
To be baffled is to be confronted by a baffle, “a usually static device that regulates the flow of a fluid or light”. Confronted by same, physically or metaphorically, with the entailed impedance of the force/movement of [light/fluid/desire], leads to the experience of bafflement as confusion or perplexity, “especially so as to frustrate or prevent from taking action.”
Source: American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Ed.
I listened to Air America almost daily during its short run and Randi Rhodes was quite forceful. But she may be the exception that proves your rule. Wonder what happened to her? I used to like Thom Hartmann personally, but I can see how he and other radio lefties can come across as pretty milquetoast.
And maybe the best show the network had was Rachel Maddow and Liz Winstead, the latter being one of the creators of The Daily Show. Maddow was really quite good on Air America, before MSDNC started waving Benjamins at her and telling her to talk about Russia.
Seriously for what purpose?
We need to ditch the whole left wing right wing stuff. It’s the 81% v. 19% that we should be worrying about and creating. The Dems and Reps serve The Machine and are nothing more than a distraction. Yeah, I know Reps are mean and Dems are always fighting for but are too nice to ever win. These will morph from one side to the other as they need to. Republicans used to be “good” Lincoln / Teddy Roosevelt then Democrats were “good” FDR, Johnson. Yeah, good is relative.
If anything, we need to change the hearts & minds of the Top 10%. Which we probably can’t reach in any significant fashion.
In the words of Doctor Who. Dinner with a Slitheen clip:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VLZOFZggG4w
Yes, and I speak as a (U.K. Labour Party) door knocker and leaflets hawker. While I never expect any kind of breakthrough or even necessarily a polite dismissal in my Conservative heartland town, in our CLP (constituency Labour Party) group, we do at least put up a show and try to encourage the faithful to turn out. And you can convince some waivers — a fairly futile endeavour for Westminster polls but we do shift the dial in county elections where people are happy to cast a protest vote.
None of this is in the least effective without an appropriate policy platform. I was repeatedly turned away and often as not given an earful by what should be potential swing voters — squeezed middle, mortgaged-up-to-the-hilt house-and-car-needing-work, just-about-managing couples and families, plus single people trying to pay £1,500 a month rent on a mediocre 2 bedroom / 2 bath apartment — because all I could do was sugar-coat elite-agenda, implausible, not-on-the-electors’ wavelength nonsense with some vague notion that it wouldn’t be as big a screwing as the right will give them.
Not, I hasten to say, any message which would resonate, regardless of how it was conveyed.
“We All wanna be on the SAME SIDE, Right fellas?” .. “You could have a Taste of that Good Life too now, if ya want .. hell, who wouldn’t!” — quote from one of the ‘sellouts,’ in the film “THEY LIVE”
We’re living the Dream now … aren’t we
Moral of story, kiddies – beware of any-and-all Ghouls, whatever the color their ‘suit tie’ be.
I agree totally, but the left is not explaining this to rural people. so I was speaking not as someone being on one side or another, but more as an anarchist. :) We need anarchist pirate radio!
Spot on. My mother had right wing radio on all day.
I get a kick out of my mom, a librarian. She complains that my aunt has to have MSNBC going all the time and then yells at my dad when he tries to watch Fox. Her view is both channels are disseminating crap. She also feels social media is a waste of time.
I think your mom is onto something.
My phone has a builtin radio receiver that will only work when headphones are plugged in, unfortunately it only gets FM. And, since I don’t do much driving I don’t listen to the radio unless I’m walking these days.
You have limited time and unlimited interest and opportunity to take in various media content, but I prefer playing my guitar and other instruments when ever I can. So when I’m cooking, eating, walking, those are the moments when I would be inclined to listen to radio. What I’ve seemed to have lost is the capacity to sit still and listen exclusively to the radio. I’ve changed and the radio has as well whether we will again be best friends who can tell.
Good luck getting an actual Left station funded and keeping it on the air. Advertisers won’t touch it, and there’s no “subscribers” for a subscription model. I’m not saying it shouldn’t be tried, but I wouldn’t put it on top of the list based on chances for success. Crowdfunding is the only potential avenue. If you can get it up and running for a while then maybe it would be sustainable based on donations, if it’s in the right area.
I listen to these guys almost every day, when I’m driving here and there. I like to keep my finger on the pulse of the currents of thought that are being disseminated by the likes of Hannity, Rush and Levine. I then see bits and pieces of their rhetoric reflected back to me from different directions, including from these commentary pages. It takes a surprising amount of focus to listen to it with a somewhat objective and critical mind, and I often have to switch it off for a minute to process what they are saying in the context of my own point of view. They don’t give the listener any chance to reflect on what they are saying, and I’m convinced that their dedicated listeners don’t even have their own points of view at all. These guys hammer their bullet points non stop for the entire time they are on air, and it’s all very emotional language and vocal tones, of course. If you are interested in finding out where so many people are getting these crazy ideas from, then I recommend tuning in from time to time.
They all broadcast in the daytime of course. At night you get the supernatural programming, the Art Bell show and others like it. There seems to be some connection between the hard right and new-agey, occult ideas as evidenced by Hitler’s interest in such as well as by the strange overlap of new age hippy culture and the QAnon movement.
Re reaching the working class through AM radio, or for that matter radio period, the left tried it with Air America: Big Business banded together to starve them of advertising revenue and destroyed them. Also hurt that Management decided to go with a lot of people that didn’t have a lot of radio experience, which helped to dampen the ratings.
If they can find some heavy dollars to support a network that won’t demand that the left be frozen out of the airwaves, good luck.
Even here in the ‘burbs around generally pinkish Toronto, talk radio is right-of-center, though that admittedly means something rather different in Canada than it does in the US
I suspect strong similarities with the US: I think that the corporate interests that own media infrastructure in the US and Canada going from right-center to hard right wants front people that talk up their interests of low taxes and a strong MIC because it benefits their bottom line. Lefties support safety nets and cutting defense, which cuts into their profit margins for those corporate interests, which is why you rarely if at all hear a lefty on talk radio, outside of the subscriber options.
Mysterious translucent vaporware has been descending from the cloud and experts are baffled, not having seen such a phenomenon since the ides of May, with some of it in the loftier climes appearing to be white, although this is merely conjecture and not yet confirmed.
Be very careful Wukchumni! That “translucent vaporware” is the essence of White Supremacy! (It blankets everything in Blankness and obscures the Earth tones underlying reality.)
A minor note tangentially related to the item about the impact of Brexit on the folding bike maker Brompton:
US readers interested in low-cost folders may wish to look at the offerings of a small design/outsource/retail entity called “Downtube bicycles.” I’ve been riding the bottom-of-the-line model, the Nova, for about 2.5 years and am very pleased with it. A single wrinkle is that the maker advises taking a newly received bike to a local bike shop for adjustment to ensure that everything (the brakes are an especial concern) was properly adjusted by the factory. There is a checklist enclosed with the bike. If you are not confident of how to do this yourself, it will add a significant % to the final cost of the bike.
I also upgraded the shipped tires, which are of fine quality but small diameter and higher pressure, to mountain bike tires and puncture-resistant tubes. One needs off-road tires to ride on my town’s roads.
Thanks for the reference. These bikes aren’t cheap! Interesting though.
Agreed — not cheap, especially if you go above the bottom of line model, the Nova. But a bargain compared to Brompton and any of its European competitors. And the bike, folded, easily fits in the trunk of a sub-compact. Prior to the CV pandemic, I was renting a car about once a month for necessary travel out of town — the Nova got me to and from the rental agency — and using the Nova, with a big camping pack, for shopping and other in town travel. The net cost (provided that you can get adequate auto coverages through other sources than the rental agency) is considerably lower than having a 24/7 motor vehicle.
I got my Nova during an end of year sale, with delivery included, and did my own adjustments. It was pricey compared to an off-shelf full sized bike from a major retailer, but the ability to easily store it in rented vehicles was very helpful.
“the maker advises taking a newly received bike to a local bike shop for adjustment to ensure that everything (the brakes are an especial concern) was properly adjusted by the factory. ”
There’s nothing a small, local bike shop likes better than having someone come in wanting them to put right a bike they bought online /s
My first recumbent trike was made in the UK (Cornwall) by Inspired Cycle Engineering, when the market was them and the Australian, Greenspeed. Since then they sourced their frames from China and still charge a bundle for them.
I’ve moved on to CatTrike, made in the USA, a company that has the skill to build some nice Aluminum frames. And, while I liked the Sturmey-Archer hubs, I gave up on their Taiwanese product as the play in their assembly created unloaded instability (wobble) in the front wheels (A very negative attribute).
I mean seriously, why would anyone hire Robby Mook after 2016?
Are the Democrats Losing on Purpose?
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2020/11/democratic-party-2020-elections-campaign-donations-failure
I actually laughed when I learned that. These people never go away. They are the true deplorables.
They’ll like the flowering shoom phase, attached by multiple ‘HiFee’.. to the Blu micorrhizal masses, as they are – hard to rid! The tops can be kicked off, or eventually decompose .. but new ones just pop up, somewhere almost ALWAYS right of center..
And I can’t help but wonder if all those discarded ‘tubs-half-empty’ of black-ice cream have something to do with that spread of ‘decay’…
Humm .. maybe its all those discarded ice cream tubs half empty, that are causing the spread of ‘decays ..
apologies for the variation in duplication, being as there’s no room left in the freezers ..
C’mon Man! Where else could you find a strategist with Robbie’s experience? What are the odds that the rest of Hillary’s entourage are just as talented? We really dodged a bullet in 2016.
Someone answers those emails from Nigerian princes and long lost European relatives with estates held up in EU courts. At some point, Mook’s marks shouldn’t be pitied.
The liberals I read online or know in real life never seem to talk about people like Mook. Or really, they don’t talk about much of anything except how bad Republicans are. There is plenty to talk about that falls under that heading but it also means they end up supporting the Democrats in all things.
“Steve Bannon dropped by attorney in criminal case day after suggesting Fauci and FBI director beheadings”
Must be getting slow or something. So Bannon said “I’d put the heads (Dr. Anthony Fauci & FBI Director Christopher Wray) on pikes. Right. I’d put them at the two corners of the White House as a warning to federal bureaucrats. You either get with the program or you are gone.” A real moronic statement from a disreputable character that is leading to his banishment from Twitter and now the exiting of his lawyer. But then the penny dropped.
In Water Cooler ‘jr’ & ‘SalonBee’ came up with links about the “Trump Accountability Project” which is compiling a list of everyone associated with the Trump campaign to make sure they get punished. They want to make sure that they get no jobs, no apartments, no dating sites, etc. And now AOC is jumping aboard this future train-wreck and wanting to punish anybody associated with the Trump administration. So I am not seeing much difference here between Bannon and AOC in wanting to terrorize underlings for doing the jobs that they were hired to do.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/aoc-donald-trump-2020-election-b1652462.html
I heard his attorney is Max (headroom) Robespierre, and i’m glad that cooler heads have prevailed in this matter.
I wonder if heads are gonna roll on this one?
You know .. when it gets down to brass tacks, we All have some bigbad Oxen that needs goring.
Ain’t no holies among us. I don’t care who contends otherwise.
Exercise of power. Interesting concept for Democrats.
Why are they so impolite?
So I am not seeing much difference here between Bannon and AOC in wanting to terrorize underlings for doing the jobs that they were hired to do.
Hmm, food for thought. Not disagreeing, but throwing this out:
If you find yourself in a war, you grab a gun and shoot back. What’s your other option? Try to recruit the second Lieutenants? A little time consuming, that. Consider you are under heavy and immediate fire, has anybody in political life except Trump himself received the level of absolute and unrelenting hate that AOC has?
Don’t pretend that most of these people don’t believe in their side, “they just wanted a job”. Yeah but they are generally True Believers if not at the start, certainly after being soaked in the brine for awhile. Do you expect to beat on other people and then go out to the pub with those people and say “hey it’s just my job”.
Finally the Right has way more money to “hire” and if necessary replace these soldiers so maybe you need a scorched earth plan when you find tactical (aka high ground) advantage.
Plenty of us have been complaining about (and now we get Biden, sigh) how the Dems just don’t get it, but AOC does.
Harming people’s livelihoods because of their political beliefs is illegal for public institutions, and is also illegal in some states for private institutions and corporations. To claim that AOC is just being smart by doing so is to enable her and others like her to throw away the norms that keep the country cohesive.
Anyone with a dedication to extreme idpol like AOC will have a political ceiling that will prevent them from achieving meaningful change. When AOC had a chance to fight for people using her giant megaphone during the first set of stimulus packages, she stayed quiet and supported Pelosi’s passage of corporatist bailouts. She seems more content to pose for magazine covers than to use her power to enact change.
As a last criticism: The most succesful social programs are those that include all. If AOC and others like her had their way, any programs will be means tested not just by income but even by identity — with certain programs restricted to intersections of particular identities. This is not the way to create consensus on big changes or towards creating popular or lasting programs,
+1000
+1001
This is shockingly bad stuff.
+1002
“This is not the way to create consensus on big changes or towards creating popular or lasting programs,“
It is a great way to divide consensus and kill popular programs though.
+1003
and a stealth way to bring austerity to social security or Medicare
AOC’s tweet:
-Is anyone archiving these Trump sycophants for when they try to downplay or deny their complicity in the future? I foresee decent probability of many deleted Tweets, writings, photos in the future-
Definition of complicit : Associated with or participating in a questionable act or a crime
Looking into political appointees committing and then hiding questionable or criminal activities only seems reasonable to me. I would like to see more of it.
Harming people’s livelihoods like voting against them or not appointing them to high political offices? Because that’s what she seems to have implied; not denying every Trump supporter a way to make a living.
Now your first paragraph makes more sense, you’re deliberately misconstruing the message as a way of instituting some anti-idpol purity test. Sure AOC dabbles in some ID-centric pablum that smacks of the Obama/Harris school of shallow political rhetoric, but lets not act like bigotry somehow doesn’t exist because most of us here have a class-based politics or that, more importantly that kind of messaging doesn’t resonate with her constituency. She’s still out there advocating for a progressive (and universal) platform and this lumping her in with the basic liberal is just a lazy take.
lots of lazy takes over here these days.
To this…”Cuibono
November 6, 2020 at 1:30 am
months and months of hand-wringing over the state of things around these parts but few good ideas bout what should be done to right the ship..why is that?”
I replied this…
“tegnost
November 6, 2020 at 10:44 am
M4A, re impose glass steagall, stop bailing out banksters and corps….you haven’t heard that “around here”?
Oh and thanks on the way out to trump for gutting the TPP and getting rid of the mandate.
What are bidens solutions, or even his ideas for “righting the ship?””
maybe you have an energetic and thoughtful reply? Or maybe too lazy to go into bidens expected and clearly wonderful policy prescriptions, something that would surely be a tiresome enterprise?
“M4A, re impose glass steagall, stop bailing out banksters and corps….you haven’t heard that “around here”?”
All worthy goals. And repeating them ad nauseum is going to get us there?
Could be, who knows.
and what makes you think i voted for Biden?
I don’t know/want to know who you voted for, but if those are tired unrealistic goals, what are some more realistic alternatives?
maybe you need new glasses: “All worthy goals”
Not tired unrealistic goals.
I think it’s a bit worse than just lazy. It is actually an outrageous accusation that he is making and requires more evidence than some anonymous commenter’s angry fantasies.
Do you have any evidence at all that AOC wants social programs mean tested by identity or are you just making this up? So, for instance, if she supports Medicare for All she really just means Medicare for some ethnic groups?
If so, prove it.
Wake me up when any of these Trumpers goes to jail for some crime he or she didn’t commit.
The term “ Trump derangement syndrome” should be applied to everyone in this era who takes something and blows it out of proportion. I think people should keep a lot of lists— lists of people in both parties who supported the war in Yemen, for instance. Lists of Trump apparatchiks, Obama apparatchiks, any group of people who willingly supported barbaric policies.
Not AOC’s greatest moment, and I’m not trying to defend that tweet, but also it should be clear that the hysteria over this is coming from the hard right, and disseminated through their usual channels. This is evidenced by the use of the term “extreme id-pol” above. Believe me when I say that the sources of deep concern over this tweet harbor a great hatred for AOC and are willing to use any tactic: truthful, ethical or not, to influence public opinion against her. That’s why don’t agree with her sentiment here, but I also take all of the yelling about it with giant grain of salt.
Or the love or the creation of celebrity status
Are you sure? Seems to me that the Top 1% and above are equal opportunity givers. Look at the money Bloomberg very publicly dropped this year on the Democratic side of the table. How about the woman who made the big donation to keep Warren in the race past her primary sold by date?
I suspect it’s more a question of your style of substance visual & talked about hiring practice. Or that what you mean are the people who are legitimately fighting for the bottom 80% as opposed to people of the Democratic institutions. Yes, there can be cross over. But I suspect those Democratic institutional people fall upward too just like the Republicans.
AOC
I give her major points for doing her research and being prepared from the little I’ve seen. Plus she is charismatic and charming. She’s definitely going places. I definitely don’t like how she’s saying Reps are all The Evil, let get ’em. Like Dems aren’t evil too. Sounds like she’s accepted and is fully engaged in the PR worldview of Dem v. Rep are The Evil koolaid.
To my mind, that also makes AOC a dangerous, dangerous Democratic celebrity tool. Trump level tool as it were but on the opposite side of the spectrum using techniques to cultivate her “base” and “The Evil.”
So fun that both sides use “The Evil” and use it so well.
From the article:
As long as we’re going for accountability, I sure hope that we’ll be looking at those Obama officials as well. I, for one, would really like to see a compare and contrast of the whole immigration deportation / holding machinery. Given Obama’s numbers, I suspect that he might not look so good if we had an accurate report.
AOC saying someone should archive the things Trump sycophants are saying and tweeting so if they deny saying it in a few years it can be used to disprove that denial smacks of the worst excesses of totalitarianism.
Bannon saying Fauci and Wray should be beheaded and their heads put on pikes in the WH front lawn is just fun and alliterative.
(insert eye roll emoji)
adjacent to that independent link:
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-election-2020/trump-loses-election-white-house-jared-ivanka-b1643395.html
““It should not be a hostage drama to try and get Trump out of the White House,” said David Axelrod,…”
man! what a country!
i couldn’t bring myself to vote for biden(i went Green), but i sort of rooted for him…because trump has been exhausting.
and it ain’t gonna stop, apparently.
Well, if he blockades himself in the Oval Office, the Democrats have experience talking him out with just a few possible downsides.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qNVhow85mQs
It’s gonna stop, when even the Murdoch empire is counseling a graceful exit.
David Axelrod, the impartial Trump expert.
Do you really think the exhausting drivel is about to stop? It’s been very effective for the last 4 years.
ETA: I specifically mean the drivel as opposed to the Trump piece of things. Although I don’t rule out more bits from the Trump camp otherwise the mini-series would be too short. Can’t have that with COVID numbers increasing, evictions increasing and holidays around the corner. Yeah, too cynical by far.
If he barricades himself in the White House then the laugh riot will continue. Would it really make a difference in what we fondly call concrete-material-benefits? As soon as the cellah’ dwellah’ takes office all I can envision is four years of groans whenever he goes off on his Mr. Nice/Pres. Normal routine resulting in displays of monumental impotence. I am truly going to miss all the guffaws.
We certainly went from “Count Every Vote!” to “Our Guy Wins!” very quickly.
Hard to find much wrong with what the Trump campaign is saying today:
“Beginning Monday, our campaign will start prosecuting our case in court to ensure election laws are fully upheld and the rightful winner is seated. The American People are entitled to an honest election: that means counting all legal ballots, and not counting any illegal ballots. This is the only way to ensure the public has full confidence in our election. It remains shocking that the Biden campaign refuses to agree with this basic principle and wants ballots counted even if they are fraudulent, manufactured, or cast by ineligible or deceased voters.”
Let’s just skip the certification process altogether, Mark Zuckerberg can just go on MSNBC with Keith Olberman and inform us who the next occupant of the Oval Office will be. Get rid of all that messy “voting laws” stuff.
“It remains shocking that the Biden campaign refuses to agree with this basic principle and wants ballots counted even if they are fraudulent, manufactured, or cast by ineligible or deceased voters.”
Uhh huh. Bless their pure hearts! All the Trump campaign want is the mostest honorable results; no self-interest involved! Who could be otherwise than in agreement with them!
Their luminescent virtue shines as powerfully as………. that of the haute doyens of the identitarian meritocracy. Precious twerps all. Indistinguishable in both their privilege, and their effulgent contempt for regular Americans.
Honestly a couple of large secret service agents forcibly carrying a resisting Trump out of the White House and tossing him on the sidewalk would be a rather fitting end to his Presidency.
I’m rather hoping for it.
Oh please. Don’t turn the normal transfer of power into a TV “reality show.” (Though I’m sure the TV ratings would be boffo. Is that the metric now? :-\ )
oh, please, Flora…
that’s where we’re headin, because that’s who he is.
congenitally a walking reality show.
he’s gonna fight tooth and nail.
pathological, sure.
still
i expect epic crazy.
Sorry, I can’t preemptively wave the modern ‘bloody shirt’ over the defeat of an electoral opponent in a regular election — or as regular an election as the US usually has. ;)
If the vote challenges fail, as they did for the Dems in 2016, then there will be a normal transfer of power. (Possibly to the ratings-craving MSM’s disappointment. /heh)
Athough, I admit that a normal transfer of power will be a bit of a narrative anticlimax after 4 years of MSM emotional ramping Orange Man Bad. (Where were they during W’s admin? )
I expect the MSM to shift gears and black out Trump as much as they can in the next couple months, to facilitate the transfer. We’re no longer going to hear about Trump every day, or hardly at all. I believe this strategy has already started. If you look at the Times front page there is hardly any mention of Trump or anything that he is saying right now.
{January 20th @ 1600 Pennsylvania Ave}
Knock knock
Who’s there?
For!
For who?
Foreclosure, you’ve got 30 minutes to get your stuff out of here.
Re-education camps?
Zoom is cheaper, safer, and employs more PMC.
And there’s a record for the nebulous cloud to keep forever.
Can we find the wayback machine for 2009 possibly? I’m still pretty stoked about the folks from previous Obama admin not even daring to slap a few more wrists for bad bank behavior. Foreclosure fraud, accounting control fraud, just a few to list.
As has been noted before, the settlements were a ruse. But hey the runway had to stay foamed, according to Timmy.
Right. Not to mention forgiving, or “moving forward” on war crimes of all kinds. But hey, we all know that Trump was “the most dangerous President in history,” — worse than Hitler, worse than Stalin, etc. etc. So let’s get our priorities straight. On the other hand, if there is room for Bush and McCain in the Democrat “big tent” then surely they can squeeze in guys like Bolton or Pompeo pretty soon. Our memory holes are pretty impressive.
And now we don’t have to wonder why people were lying to pollsters. How long before we have a Voter Accountability Project.
Cancel culture has gotten its act together and is taking it on the road. ;)
(Hope NC and other sites that didn’t toe the Dem estab’s official line have a good 1st Amendment lawyer on speed dial.)
Just wait until they get around to Roman-style Prescription Lists-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proscription#Proscription_in_ancient_Rome
Eventually we will get to Posthumous Rehabilitation so it will all work out.
Excellent point!
Good to see her big concern is continuing the election past November, just like 2016, instead of pushing for M4A or increasing the minimum wage. Yep, we need to be more like a banana republic. /s
I’m looking ahead and encouraging others to do the same. There’ll be a runoff in Georgia. In 2022, 34 senators come up for re-election. In two to four years, enough states can vote to add their electoral votes to the National Popular Vote Compact, as Colorado just did (Prop. 113). One way or another, I’d like to live long enough to see the Southern Strategy broken. A commenter on Krugman’s piece suggested we have a chat with the voters of Kentucky about their re-election of McConnell via pork barrel projects, and let him explain to his donors… like they won’t be able to figure that out for themselves.
Punish them for supporting Trump? Trump has lost the election. That’s punishment. Once retaliation begins, it never ends; it only escalates.
Retaliation. That’s the word I was looking for. Isn’t retaliation against the supporters of the previous regime the kind of thing fascists do?
These are kinder, gentler blue fascists and not at all like those mean red fascists. /s
“Our fascism is good, enlightening and enabling. Yours is bad.”
Wow, this whataboutism is leading to an incredible terminological inflation. Trump wasn’t a fascist (though he may have fantisiced about being so) and the Blues are not even close. Trump is merely a plutocratic, racist, rhetorical populist and the Dems are Neo-liberals with a smattering of social liberalism thrown in. They both serve business donors in the context of a political system that is, and has been, dysfunctional for decades. No need to drag fascism into all this.
As a former member of a militant labor union I can’t see the difference between either party other than the sweet words. They are both groups of unprosecuted war criminals and financial criminals that do not represent the people around me.
Yeah, anyone who thinks this is going to end with a few Trumpanzees going to jail or being cancelled is smoking the hopium pipe hard. This momentum will carry over into leftists, libertarians, real progressives, anyone who questions the Rainbow fascists. Why wouldn’t it? Why waste an opportunity like this? The goofs out in the street right now honking and shouting will countenance anything under the rubric of “cleaning house”.
“Look forward not backward”? Sounds familiar.
The “Trump Accountability Project” is part of what happens when a fake fascist is replaced with real fascists. Obama’s NDAA came close to eliminating the Posse Comitatus Act. Purveyors of Russiagate–including Brennan, Obama and Biden–won’t be brought to justice for trying to overturn voters’ 2016 choice and trying to obstruct the peaceful transfer or power, but legitimate members of an administration and all those several degrees of separation outward are on a list and slated to be “punished.”
What’s happened to the Durham Investigation report?
Filed behind the Iran-Contra reports.
Which are next to the BCCI reports.
Just what was supposed to happen. They ran out the clock. And whatever revelations were uncovered, the perps will go unpunished, perhaps even rewarded by a future administration. As usual.
Also, I keep saying this, but if anyone thought William Barr would really expose the CIA or other “Deep State” actors, then they don’t know much about Barr’s background or career.
Into the memory hole. All the seditionists move on to lucrative assignments as their gigs on MSM TV wrap up over the next few months. Well played everyone, you are all credits to the Empire, the spice must flow. \s
I wonder if AOC would also be in favor of keeping a list of former Obama apparatchiks who went on to get nice corporate sinecures at the big tech companies and such, conspiring to keep wages down for the working class, as was just done with prop 22 in CA? What’s good for the goose….
Or bombing a few (million) folk’s.
hmmm…what do mechanical turk, prop22, and rahm emmanuel have in common
cue jeopardy music…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=73tGe3JE5IU
Surprised not more people are mentioning the exciting announcement of a brand-new Cabinet post.
AP, November 7, 2020. Washington D.C.
“Political watchers in D.C. were abuzz today with the announcement of a brand-new Cabinet-level post, the Presidential Rememberer. This new cabinet-level person accompanies the president at all times and is in charge of reminding the president where he is, whom he is speaking to, and what he is speaking about. The Rememberer is also in charge of reading out any numerical figures so the president does not struggle unnecessarily with the placement of commas. It is widely expected that The Rememberer chosen will be fluent in Chinese, as the president strongly wishes to continue his long-standing co-investment partnerships with senior individuals in the Chinese leadership designed to raise the standard of living of Chinese lower and middle class workers. It was not announced when a similar program might be implemented for American workers”.
Any wonder why respondents didn’t feel comfortable answering pollsters questions honestly?
People who hitch their career wagons to people like Trump do not have my sympathy, and many of them were revealed to be really awful people. DeVos, Miller, Giuliani, Barr, DeJoy etc etc.
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/without-qe-the-s-p-500-would-be-trading-closer-to-1-800-than-3-300-says-societe-generale-11604688442
In quantitative easing, a central bank creates credit out of thin air, which it uses to buy securities from banks and other institutions.
===================================================
USES TO BUY SECURITIES
Its funny how when homeowners needed someone to buy their houses (i.e., assets to the homeowner which are kinda the same thing as securities) when the housing bubble crashed, the FED couldn’t do anything to help out non rich people. Start giving the same benefits to the middle class that the FED gives to the rich, and the rabble will start thinking they are just as good as the rich.
Funny how supply and demand, moral hazard, Schumpeter and creative destruction etcetera etcetera goes right out the window when the rich may become poor (gasp) but somehow the oh so important market is the ONLY way to deal with all those people who bought homes…whose prices were driven higher by profit seeking financial institutions generating shaky loans and selling skeezy securities, which the FED had to support, because the penury of one rich man is a tragedy, while the bankruptcy of a million middle class is a statistic.
Funny…
and a translation of govermentalese flowery platitudes into fresno dan reality speak:
John F. Kennedy:
Kennedy warned: Let every billionaire know, whether he wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of wealthy people.
too cynical? prove me wrong – and Lehman is the exception that proves the rule (and how many Lehman people actually became poor)
This does not sound like a good idea.
https://mobile.twitter.com/TimOnPoint/status/1324889061560037376
Well. That escalated quickly.
I heard reports that W. Paul Cockshott (Towards a New Socialism) has been banned from Facebook in the anti-extremist purge but cannot confirm.
Astronomers use contraption made from metal pipe and CAKE TINS ….
If there is an annual MacGyver award in astronomy, I think that these guys are locks for it
Their prize: a brand new roll of duct tape and a Swiss army knife. Good job to those guys, very cool.
don’t forget the paper clip
As far as I can tell from the article, the antenna was made by one guy (doctoral student at Caltech).
Think of that metal pipe as a rather short, focused ‘string’ between tin ‘cans’ … kids have had it down pat for ages – so simple, even an astronomer could build one!
“Voting Map GIF”
“Land doesn’t vote. People do”
They should be careful what they wish for after checking that population-centered map. Otherwise it might end up translating as “A Continent doesn’t vote. Only half a dozen urban cities do.”
I don’t understand what you’re trying to say. There are a lot more than six urban centers in that mal. Why would care be needed to communicate the population distribution of the USA?
Andrew Yang:
It’s unfortunate Yang included social identity terms like “coastal elites” that allowed people to easily dismiss what he said and ignore his important point that Dems don’t represent or care about working Americans. Social identity plays perfecting into Team Blue’s play book of immediately ignoring valid economic class issues by seizing onto irrelevant and distracting social identity shiny objects.
Better to stay on message, like:
1) When’s the last time Democrats supported a national $20 or even a $15 minimum wage?
2) When did Democrats supporting ending cheap immigrant labor imports?
3) Why do Democrats oppose healthcare for Americans and oppose Medicare4All?
4) Why do Democrat not end wars and cutting war spending but in fact start wars and increase war spending?
5) Why do Democrats oppose taxing the rich and won’t reverse huge tax cuts for corporations?
6) Why do Democrats do nothing about the the Fed’s endless subsidies to Wall Street?
7) Why do Democrats support letting corporations trash America’s water and air and natural resources and stick us working folk with the clean up bill?
8) Why do Democrats do nothing to stop corporation donations that steal American citizen’s govt from them?
Are those rhetorical questions?
“polirzation” twice. Somewhere, the last copy editor on Earth is crying bitter tears.
> last copy editor … crying bitter tears
Or perhaps the most recently still alive one is turning over in his grave.
I’m even bothered by the idea federal level Team Blue types are advocates of “cultural issues.” Advances were made at the state level, through independent operations or through the courts. Obama had to be embarrassed into the DADT repeal by a court order against his administration.
Now the ilk of Spanberger are throwing tantrums that even basic human decency meant they were late for brunch.
Broken healthcare system
Rampant systemic racism and inequity
Underfunded Federal programs
Not enough to fight climate change
Continuation of neoliberalism
Holding pack progressive policies and real change
BRUNCH never closes.
I had a disturbing thought reading “will the Democrats ever learn”… I seem to lately keep finding things that are just boilerplate to the thrust of an article, but mean a lot more than the author seems to think:
The wishlist included climate legislation that would have put the United States on a path to decarbonization within the rapidly shortening timeframe the scientific community has told us we have to prevent the climate crisis from fully upending stable civilization.
Is this backwards and thus inevitable? Did “stable civilization” come to a complete end in 2008 or even earlier and we just didn’t notice it… and the climate crisis is already here as a result of this “upending”, not the eventual cause?
Uh oh.
Fun tweet from a guy named Sean P. McCarthy providing data on the popularity of issues like health care and jobs programs in the US and which shows an electoral map from another time when politicians actually ran on issues people care about:
https://postimg.cc/XrHRNJzf
It’s probably not a good time to cite polls “as evidence” about anything. It appears we start with the answers we want and work backwards to get a confirmation of whatever we want to prove. .
A great point.
in my ongoing hypercynicism crisis, i immediately thought:”well…there’s the reason that “polls are bad” is trending”…i mean, this sort of poll was on faux newts the other day…about how we’re really a-ok with a new new deal.
on the philosophiocal flip side, since we cannot determine with anything approaching accuracy what “americans” think anymore….about anything at all…does this mean that the ontological crises i’ve been worried about all these years is finally complete?
“We’ll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false” — William Casey Director of the C.I.A
“We’ll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false” — William Casey Director of the C.I.A
And they’ll keep on with it anyway, because by that time they won’t believe it’s complete.
Plato’s Republic fell when somebody blundered, and one of the Philosopher Kings got the Schmo education. It was all over after that.
Ya, though one of the very first posts I’ve seen along this line was “well, if polls are BS, then how can we believe the majority of Americans want M4A and public education,” and I can see this becoming the new rave fave kind of line for anything that is pegged as ‘populist’ ever again.
We are clearly moving into maximum ultra trash future here, and like cattle in an abattoir, we’re going to move right through it, with the added horror that unlike the cow, we will all know exactly what’s coming no matter where we are in line.
In this case I think it’s valid. The 72% number for healthcare came from a FOX News poll; hardly what they were sampling for.
The “problem” with the polls is that they have an answer so they structure their questions accordingly. This is only a “problem” if you believe the polls are there for the public good, and not narrative control.
Why Capitalism Was Destined to Come Out on Top in the 2020 Election CounterPunch.
No matter who “won” the U.S. election, what will not change is the capitalist organization of the country’s economy.
The great majority of enterprises will continue to be owned and operated by a small minority of Americans. They will continue to use their positions atop the capitalist system to expand their wealth, “economize their labor costs,” and thereby deepen the United States’ inequalities of wealth and income.
The employer class will continue to use its wealth to buy, control, and shape the nation’s politics to prevent the employee class from challenging their ownership and operation of the economic system. Indeed, for a very long time, they have made sure that (1) only two political parties dominate the government and (2) both enthusiastically commit to preserving and supporting the capitalist system.
Bingo! No fundamental change can happen until Americans seriously address the pillars of the current economy. I don’t see a remote chance of this happening. Although more and more Americans know there is something seriously wrong with how the system works and recognise their disappearing life chances, I don’t think there is anything near a majority that would question the legitimacy of the market economy, the legal rights of owners to “benefit from the fruits of their labours,”their “right to choose” and the view the state as the problem and not the solution etc. This stuff constitutes the “common sense” of Americans. The past 50 years has been an endless drumbeat of these platitudes and that has left such a deep sediment of drivel it will take decades of organising to over turn it.
A scientist might try something called “root cause analysis”. What is the root cause of American worker wage stagnation over the least few decades?
World economic growth is +/- 2% per year. Around about the year 2000 America embarked on a set of policies designed to elevate the standard of living of the working class in China. They worked. An estimated 400 million people in China went from sleeping next to the pig on a mud floor in the village to owning an apartment, a TV, and a car.
One candidate was the architect and loud champion of these policies. The other tried to promote a program of “economic nationalism” and highlight the fact that Chinese economic growth is not a goal of the United States, and the country should align to oppose the growth of China since it has so severely impacted workers in the U.S.
https://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.scdigest.com%2Fimages%2FChina_Cumulative_2015a.gif&imgrefurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.scdigest.com%2Fontarget%2F16-02-15-1.php%3Fcid%3D10277&tbnid=aZDZziBaetDr1M&vet=12ahUKEwi2-6GegPLsAhWjwnMBHVZ7AskQMygyegQIARAq..i&docid=JCS6SBZ1NJq9gM&w=600&h=303&q=china%20versus%20US%20trade%20year%202000&ved=2ahUKEwi2-6GegPLsAhWjwnMBHVZ7AskQMygyegQIARAq
No, that is not the root cause. The root cause is the greed and immense enrichment of the high stakes class warriors in the USA, who have benefitted far more than the 400 million human beings you speak of. Begrudging human beings an apartment, tv and car but no problem with these homegrown grifters out here in the cradle of capitalism, pervading society from corrupt NGO bootlickers to strip club aficionado private equity knaves. Truly shameful.
Oh but Civility has won the day.
America is a turkey with two right wings
Japanese coin hoard:
You can buy 1,800 year old Roman bronze coins with all details legible and easily distinguishable as far as age & ruler goes, for around $5 to $10, how many thousands would you like?
Coins are by far the commonest historical artifact because nobody ever throws away money, simply stated.
The advent of metal detectors played a huge role, here’s a very similar hoard to the Nipponese find-but found in the UK a decade ago, with a similar clay pot in which the 52,000+ coins were sequestered.
All of the coins date from the era (253-305 AD) when the Roman empire silver-washed bronze coins to give them the look of being the genuine article struck from around 200 BC to 200 AD. This hoard was bought by the English government for the princely sum of £6 per coin to give you an idea of value, not much.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frome_Hoard
Very cool, thx
Maybe people like “buried treasure” stories.
Archaelogy World puts the number of coins at 260,000, based on the words on a wood tablet found next to the stone lid of the jar so the “commonest historical artifact” just became even commoner. Plus, this story appears to be close to a year old—from 12 December 2019—so it’s not clear to me why it’s surfacing now.
Not unlike maths where some are uninformed of the symbology it represents and accept the narrative gifted – regardless.
The symbolism varies, oftentimes the money was buried in a hurry lest invaders end up with it, other instances such as this one, they seemed to have had ample time to hide their wealth.
Sometimes the hoards are chock full of fabulous rarities, other times they’re full of nothing to write home about.
This instance is ho hum, the equivalent of somebody burying 260,000 current Lincoln Cents to be found 500 years from now, all corroded from exposure to the elements.
The samurai angle is the most interesting part of the tale…
Had no idea this was a thing: copper penny floors.
https://nextluxury.com/home-design/best-penny-floor-design-ideas/
Why can high schools have drug dogs and 8 months into the pandemic the government hasn’t built an infrastructure to train covid dogs? I’ve been reading since April how dogs are so good at sniffing out covid but I haven’t heard anything about creating a large scale covid dog sniffer program. Every dog trainer in America should be working on this. We got a dog pound in Memphis putting down thousands of dogs a year. It’s not like we don’t have any dogs around.
Then we could all line up while various animals sniff us at every intersection. It has all the benefits of a Canine TSA with only twice the inconvenience.
OTOH – what have we got to lose?
https://www.sciencetimes.com/articles/27182/20200905/positive-covid-19-test-results-accurate.htm
Should we ever need squirrel spotting dogs, I’ve got one.
Exactly–right now yesterday–but:
Show me the Profit in that(monetary, that is)
Like Vitamin D, Zinc and long used antibiotics and antivirals… YOU CAN’T PATENT THAT!?!?
It’s almost like our government institutions work for the industries they’re meant to referee. The best part of this is the fact that this “incompetence” is weaponized as proof that “government doesn’t work” to further undermine the public good, creative commons, We The People, etc.
And… here we are in our moment of history. Buckle up!
With all the legalization going on, I think it would be a good idea to alter the drug sniffing dog infrastructure to produce COVID sniffing dogs instead, I’m just at loss for what to do if there is an after, cancer sniffing?
“Why can high schools have drug dogs and 8 months into the pandemic the government hasn’t built an infrastructure to train covid dogs?”
Because they don’t have accurate tests to sort out a group of people they can use to train the dogs? Just thinkin’.
And if in sniffing COVID, the dogs get infected and lose their sense of smell?
“Is America Becoming a Failed State?”
So I was reading this and what it said was kinda off so I went back to see who wrote it. Paul Krugman – because of course he did. He complains that the Senate is ‘wildly unrepresentative of the American people’ which it may or may not be true. His beef is that the Senate should be more Democratic than Republican which you think could be resolved through voter registration but apparently not. And he complains that Wyoming has just as many votes as California. Sigh!
So I am guessing that the John F. Kennedy High School in Bellmore, NY where he went to offered a high school civics class but it may be that Paul took the day off when they got around to discussing the concept of “checks & balances”. Reading this article again, I think that Krugman is trying to make nice with the incoming Democrats and wants them to know that he is on their side and is willing to do his part.
I’m not a fan of Krugman’s, but how democratic is it that Wyoming (or Vermont) has as many Senate seats as California?
The US has a primordial fear and distrust of cities – take a look where the overwhelming majority of state capitols are, as well as the origins of DC – and their democratic “mobs,” and is built to keep power away from them.
The US has a federal govt system. House seats are apportioned based on population — my state has lost 1 House seat since 1970. House seats represent people. Senate seats are equal because they represent states’ govts — 2 seats per state. Both House and Senate are needed to pass legislation. Several states either gain or lose House seats after a census if there are changes in population densities. And may also lose or gain Electoral votes in the pres. contest. (One of the reasons getting everyone counted in a cencus is important, and one reason why their are political fights over who to count.)
So, for example, Vermont is apportioned 1 House seat, and California is apportioned 53 House seats to represent their voters’ issues. Both states have 2 Senate seats to represent their states’ issues. Vermont has 3 Electoral College votes and California has 55 Electoral College votes.
Yeah. And the people’s house has nothing whatsoever to say about Supreme Court appointments. How (small-d) democratic is that?
Let’s make it kind of a contest and apportion seats based on actual votes in a general election. So if there are 165 million votes and a state casts 14 million they would send (14/165*435) reps to the house (37).
Nay. Look at the levels of voter suppression we still have. Yet all citizens, even those “discouraged” from voting need roads, school funding, Post Offices, Veterans Hospitals, federal revenue sharing for same, etc.
the house is population based. It’s only when one views the senate in isolation that it seems undemocratic, not that we have democracy, we’re a republic, and in that light each state is a small country and each one gets 2 seats…not so weird really. Large states like cali could split up and get more senate seats, but then they’d lose their monolithic house presence because if they split up it wouldn’t net out any more reps, and in so splitting up would also lose their 55 electoral votes which would be divided up between the new states. Those who want more senate seats are simply grabbing for more. power to dictate their terms and impose them on others,threatening the republic.
>Those who want more senate seats are simply grabbing for more. power to dictate their terms and impose them on others,threatening the republic.
??? Uh, let me introduce you to a little thing called politics…
What exactly do you expect? Me, I think the Senate should be just short of an ideal -sigh, another subject – judiciary, where they toss out the most wack things (like California gets to eat young Montana children) but otherwise just “hey is this too awful or should we let them give it a try”.
Instead, they’ve completely taken over the legislative process, with the filibuster basically making them the boss. The House does “homework”, and the Senate grades it according to their very rich lights and there is no recourse.
Why do so many Dems think that changing the rules is the answer instead of learning the rules and playing them hard? sigh….
example: hills didn’t win most of the caucus contests in 2016 so, hey presto , eliminate caucuses and demand primaries going forward! Sure! That’s the ticket! (Ignore what voters were signaling in the caucuses.) sigh….
“Since 1789, when the Federal Government began operating under the Constitution, the number of citizens per congressional district has risen from an average of 33,000 in 1790 to over 700,000 as of 2018.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_congressional_apportionment
Representation is a joke.
ok yes, but the imbalance isn’t in the senate, the house should be a lot bigger if anything, and they should be able to yell at each other like in the uk
I think bringing back drinking and dueling would work well, but I’ve had head injuries in the past.
I think there’s a good argument to be made for increasing House seats in proportion to increased population in entire the country. I’d love to see a Frank Gehry designed addition to the House side of the Capitol building. (Architectural heresy, I know. )
If or when the democrats absorb the idea that polls and money collected from a relative few obscenely wealthy donors do not equal support for their candidates, they might add to their numbers in the Senate, but that is never going to happen until they take a hard look at what the real issues are for us “little people”. John Yang may have worded his views in such a way that some found it easy to dismiss the substance. I have thought of democratic support as coastal archipelagoes flanking a galaxy of islands large and small and yes, that translates into urban-rural. What typifies and urban rural split? I think it is attitude first and environment second. The term “fly-over country” epitomizes the attitude and a measure of ignorance about one another the environment. Each of those is a crude measure, but each is a starting point for a deeper analysis. Before interstate highways you had to experience the places between your starting point and your destination; the interstates are corridors largely removed from the country through which they pass. You look but do not touch. Air travel removes even the sight of what is below. You have to get off the interstate to really know where you are. In like measure, you have to campaign among the people to know what they think and what they value.
on your point:
i have been using the AP Election Tracker Map, and it is a sobering sight.
Wisconsin went Blue, right? ie –Click on the Wisconsin State and look at the dispersion of Blue-v-Red counties, and the disconnect is right there.
Urban-v-Rural divide is a lifestyle(work/play/worship) divide. imo, work especially. Yang knows this.
Look deeper and you’ll see an income gap, rural hospitals closing, k-12 schools short of funds, deteriorating roads, and “benign” neglect by state and fed govt.
adding: George Goehl on Rising this week laid out the way the Dem party is ignoring rural communities as issues.
https://thehill.com/hilltv/rising/524626-director-of-peoples-action-george-goehl-says-democrats-need-to-embrace-populism
Here’s a longer in-depth Rising interview with Goehl. From Oct. 31.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ckodF1_tygM
This is, indeed, a sobering exercise. I’ve been doing the same thing. Take the “deep blue” state of New York. Look at the majority of “upstate” counties (that is, most of the state north of NYC). They’re “red.” Many are *very* red based on the Presidential count: 60 percent for Trump, 65%, 70%, etc. I can understand why some of these people might not trust a media that depicts Trump as criminal and implies that his supporters must be ignorant deplorables.
The majority of these upstaters probably aren’t wild about Schumer being their senior Senator, either. But “land doesn’t vote, people do,” say the defenders of blue outcomes (see the Core77 ‘Better Data Visualization’ article above). Ok. But do they really think Schumer best represents the interests of most of those blue voters in NYC (and a few other urban areas) that keep him in office? If not, why does he keep getting elected?
Very simple, pjay: senators represent the entire state, and they’re elected by popular vote. NYC alone accounts for nearly 43 percent of the state’s total population of 19.4 million. If you add in the four cities with over 100k population (Buffalo, Rochester, Yonkers, Syracuse), that’s nearly half. Predictably, those are the little pockets of blue in the expanse of red.
By contrast, there actually are counties in the state (two or three, I forget) in which cows outnumber people. Mine isn’t one of them, but it’s not far off. The population of the county seat is probably equivalent to half a block in mid-town Manhattan. I don’t think we even qualify as “flyover.”
One of the Populist wins of the early 1900’s was making state Senators elected by popular vote instead of appointed by the state legislatures. That was a significant win. It put distance between Senators and the existing money interests in the state legislatures. It was an early attempt to break monopoly control of govt. (A bit of trivia.)
https://www.archives.gov/legislative/features/17th-amendment
Um… thanks, but I think you misunderstood my (mostly rhetorical) question. I understand why a Democrat would be elected Senator in NY state. My real question is why a Democrat who does not really represent the interests of most of those “blue” voters in urban areas would keep getting elected by them.
It was a kind of smart-a** question, but a real one.
You could ask the same question about Senators who represent mostly rural, mostly white States.
The answer is because most Senators represent the interests of the billionaire class not their constituents.
Sorry, pjay, didn’t realize you were being a smart-@ss. So the smart-@ss answer is, “TINA.”
“Coronavirus live news: 200 people in Denmark infected with mink-related Covid since June”
Dare I say it? When Coronavirus made its presence felt, heaps of people refused to buy Corona beer because of the name which made no sense at all. With this headline, does that mean that people will be now afraid to order a Danish pastry?
I’ve oft wondered how the Danes do it, baking those delicious butter cookies and then placing them into metal tins, in order to extract a measly 3 bucks out of us after shipping them halfway around the world, knowing a good many of us will never throw the receptacle away, causing us to become small-time hoarders of junk after the goodies have been eaten.
Sorry but those cookie tins aren’t “junk”. at all. They are useful for years and years for many, many things. Not certain but I think Huntley & Palmers of Reading, Berkshire was the first concern to pack its biscuits etc in tin boxes. The company was founded in 1822. The tins were gorgeous and useful. No better way to store pencils, pens, small change, paper money and all sort of small items as well as refilling with freshly baked cookies/biscuits. Certainly not “junk”. The Quakers are no fools.
Crappy metal tins are for sale in cheap import shops but the real quality “tins” you have to look for at “junk shops” such as Salvation Army, Caritas etc.
I think Wuk meant that we put junk *in* the tins, at least thats how I read it.
>The tins were gorgeous
Yes and so much that I don’t even care about the also “useful” part, true as it is.
A Great Example of Better Data Visualization: This Voting Map GIF Core77 (resilc)
It looks like a landslide–because visually, it is. However, this is a wildly inaccurate representation of proportionality vis-à-vis the population, because all of those little shapes representing counties have vastly different amounts of people living within them. As some might put it, “Land doesn’t vote. People do.”
====================================================
And yet, we get individuals elected who were not elected by people, but by land (i.e., position on the land) which accounts for representatives not elected by the majority of voters, as sometimes happens, but by the vagaries of which voters voted where.
Now, if I were to say that one’s position in a company, or one’s position in net worth, should determine how heavily weighted your vote was, I think most people could grasp that that is pretty non representative. One could even posit that people positioned higher on the intelligence testing scale should have a vote more heavily weighted. And we have already done how heavily your vote is weighted (none!!!) by position on a scale of amount of melanin, or an excess of x chromosome.
We say we believe in one citizen (over 18) one vote, regardless of race, creed, sex, or orientation. Yet somehow we cling to a wholly contrived and illogical scheme.
Resilc: “I spent hours once in Dublin trying to explain to an Irish CPA why we have shit healthcare. He could not understand why we had no national system.”
Maybe, just maybe, if one insists on tradition, despite better, faster, efficient, and effective ways with regard to voting, the same kind of thinking will justify paying more and getting less for healthcare…
>f I were to say that one’s position in a company
Hmm, ok here I go off-tangent again.
We put people into an authoritarian workplace, which we all strong agree *should* be authoritarian, for the 40 best hours of the week minimum. This workplace controls where we live, how we get heathcare. Pretty big.
And even I don’t really question it. No wonder we are authoritarians compared to European societies.
I don’t know, but from my perspective we do have a system where one’s net worth determines how heavily weighted Is their vote.
Before eliminating mechanisms that allow for some equality of interest importance between rural and urban voters, let’s try eliminating the legal corruption that makes the interests of the corporate and monied class pretty much the only thing that concern our elected officials. I think if that happened you might find that a lot of the differences between regions are manageable.
Interesting op-ed piece from a Arizona Yankee ex-pat in Kings X Court…
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
If you’ve heard of Arizona, it’s because of the Grand Canyon. In American political terms, however, it’s the quintessential sun belt, conservative state. Its greatest political icon was Barry Goldwater – the famously radical conservative senator and one-time presidential candidate. Arizona is an honorary member of the deep south and gets similarly low marks in education and other social metrics.
Like virtually all the non-Hispanic people in Arizona, my parents were arrivals from elsewhere. They came from the Midwest and New England in the early 1950s, back when the state was mostly undeveloped desert, and the city of Phoenix was tiny. They’d left the snow, what they viewed as dismal urban infrastructure, and what we now call people of colour but were called other things back then. My father was originally an engineer but ended up as a handyman; my mother didn’t exactly call herself clairvoyant, but she was psychic adjacent, and she and her friends avidly dabbled in palmistry and the like.
Both shared the inexplicable tribal beliefs of the day. In my father’s case, it was flamboyantly removing the seat belts from his new pickup – a byword of government overregulation at the time – and railing against the progressive income tax, no matter that it was deliberately constructed to ease the tax burden on people like him. I never saw my father do anything mean or intolerant to anyone, but can’t deny that he subscribed to anti-Semitic magazines, took it as a given that Jews wielded power through banks and the media, and had a respectful interest in the John Birch Society, which considered Dwight Eisenhower a dangerous Communist sympathiser.
The election results in Arizona, as of this writing, is a delicious irony. Phoenix is now the fifth-largest city in the country; by some odd chance, that coalition of invigorated Democrats and disgusted moderate suburbanites that pollsters told us was going to sweep Trump out of office seems to have manifested itself only in Arizona. The state has been called for Biden by some news outlets, though there are still some votes outstanding. My parents would be unhappy were they still alive.
All the Hispanic people were arrivals from elsewhere too. Go back far enough, so were all the “native” or “indigenous” people. All humans in Arizona are arrivals from elsewhere. All humans in the Americas are arrivals from elsewhere.
So how many million years must one tribe inhabit a certain area to be called indigenous in your world?
If I was born there, and spent most of my time there, why would I not be of there?
I mean… I’m all for visiting the sins of the father upon his progeny and all… But I’ve always given more credence to culturalism than to racism to explain most (but certainly not all) of our ills.
I was being crustily pedantic and looking to find offense where none was offered. Sorry.
I realized later you probably meant first-generation.
Yeah I remember growing up in the Southwest where the families of some I knew had been there for a couple of centuries before any of my ancestors got there and some others whose ancestors had been for hundreds of years by the time that supposedly early group got there.
The descendants of the Europeans who came west in the 1700s or later really need to get over ourselves.
The Resistance is getting pretty cocky for a team that would have lost had the election been a week later. So now that Orange Man has been defeated, it’s OK to go after his supporters? This is dumb. Really, really dumb. If 60,000 votes had switched, we’d be counting how many people showed up on the Mall for Trump’s second inaugural.
Funny how nary a word from the GOP is being heaped upon Jo J and the Libertarians for costing Trump his victory in so many states. The Libertarians are constantly outpolling the Greens by a factor of what, 5? yet they never laid guilt trips by the Repubs ala the Dems.
Haven’t seen any info on what the election would look like if (say) the Greens were lumped with Biden and the Libertarians with Trump. Would any electoral votes change (all that matters for pres election)?
Just looked at Wisconsin’s numbers since Trump beat Clinton here in 2016.
If all voters voted for the Duolopy:
If Libertarians (38,415) had voted Trump (1,610,030) and
If The Constitutional Party (5,206) and ASP (5,253) had voted Biden (1,630,570),
Trump would’ve won by about 7,400 votes.
The Greens were knocked off the ballot prior to election day via Wisconsin Supreme Court. And West was disqualified via court for filing late.
ETA: https://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/wireStory/wisconsin-supreme-court-rejects-green-bid-ballot-access-73009880
Here in Hawaii Biden got almost 64% of the vote, and since all 3rd parties combined only got a little over 2% it wouldn’t have mattered how they split. Libertarians got 1%, Greens 0.7%.
There was a “Constitution Party” on the ballot, described on Wikipedia as “far right” so presumably took votes from Trump. Don’t know if it’s the same as “The Constitutional Party” in Wisconsin though…
You’re probably right about the Constitutional Party. I simply split the big number 3rd party from the 2 smaller ones. Figured that not everyone would vote the “expected” way for whatever reason.
If numbers are anything to go by: Trump may have “lost” Wisconsin, but Republican side of the political spectrum won.
I’d have to do dig to see how the state legislature panned out.
How many close presidential elections have the GOP lost recently? The closest was probably this one and 2012 and in both the Dems won the popular vote by ~4% and the EV with 300+. Maybe we do start getting the GOP blaming the Libertarians after this one.
FWIW plenty of the GOP blamed Ross Perot for Bush I’s loss to Clinton.
“Glum U.S. House Democrats lament 2020 election losses”
‘Some U.S. House of Representatives Democrats on Thursday blamed Tuesday’s election losses on colleagues who embraced defunding police departments and “socialist” policies.’
This is actually quite ominous this. Back in 2016 Hillary found herself humiliated by a game show host so she and the DNC decided to blame the Russians for her loss which has served to severely undermine America’s position in the world since then. They created a ‘legend’ and made all of America believe it and used it to undermine and attack Trump without a postage stamp of proof but the main stream media went right along with it.
So this sounds like yet another ‘legend’ is being created by the Democrats. And this legend says that it was because of the progressive ‘socialists’ that caused their losses in the House and perhaps stopped them sweeping the Senate too. The consequences? Well, it could be used to justify the Democrats going more further to the right with their policies, seeking to primary and eliminate any progressive/socialist before the 2024 elections and perhaps to adopt pro-police policies to demonstrate their loyalty to them.
yup.
doesn’t bode well.
but…save for the large portion of demvoters who only voted Against trump, how big is Team blue’s constituency?
where i live, total pop of 4400, or so…900 vote reliably gop, and 200 vote reliably demparty…but of that 200, only maybe 20-30 are actually Team Blue/PMC…or PMC wannabe.
the rest vote dem out of long habit, not noticing that the party abandoned them long ago…as well as AGAINST the rabid right.
there’s opportunity…especially after the catfood commission gets up and running…to evangelise for the greens(i know, i know)…or whatever People’s Party we can cobble together.
maybe this time,lol….maybe this time the dem’s perfidy and betrayal will finally be clear.
barring that….a sandersesque hail mary, fer sure…then we’re doomed to continuing imperial decline and austerity, and an eventual smart and crafty version of orange badman.
yeah, the democrats suffered another dismal election performance, because of things “the democratic leadership” was completely against.
The people who support the democratic party need to look in the mirror at the pathetic party leadership they support.
The democrats didn’t want to embrace ANY meaningful change in our status quo, and guess what. The people weren’t too enthusiastic in voting for you… and these democratic leadership morons, get the bright idea…. if only we can be more like the republican party….hmmm
Maybe they can embrace austerity…
maybe they can fund corrupt police depts, enable despicable police unions ,
they can fill the “blue seats” with ex- military/fascists and prosecutors and others in policing/ social control
Beef up the “for-profit” medical industry.
Boy , throw in some think tank hacks and others unfit for the offices…
Maybe that will work…
DCCC send me the check… I just gave you a “plan”
p.s.
maybe change your acronym again… dnc ,dccc,?
Dem estab tried to primary AOC out this year.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/23/politics/aoc-ny-primary-14th-district/index.html
Wonder if that scared her into this supine posture about hunting down T admin employees and “holding them accountable” for doing their standard admin jobs?
Have you looked at her actual voting record as well as her often ambiguous rhetoric?
It’s a lot like O’s, I know. But, I didn’t think she was dumb enough to support a “punish political opponents in their private lives” banana republic move unless the estab pushed her. Guess I was wrong. The intel agencies must love her and all who have little to no principles.
Did you page Pete Buttigieg?
say what?
>Well, it could be used to justify the Democrats going more further to the right
Yeah but if it doesn’t work they will find two more reasons.
Meanwhile the AOC hatred in this comment thread is amazing. All she has as far as power is the ability to get news hits, which is a plus or minus depending on which news outlet is showing you her tweets. Nancy Pelosi runs things, but wow hating her has gotten old so let’s turn to one of the youngest, newest members of Congress and blame her for all our current and coming ills! She’ll be around for a long time so we won’t have to come up with a new bogeyman for quite a while, yea!
Thank you, I can find no relation between AOC and the Trump Accountability Project except they replied to the question in her tweet that they were archiving communications.
The Trump administration has handed out hundreds of billions of dollars to corporations over just the last few months in Operation Warp Speed and to be concerned of possible improper activities from Trump appointees that might be hidden does not seem outrageous.
AOC never said anything about punishing political opponents in their private lives. This connection between AOC and the Trump Accountability Project comes from the Daily Caller. The speed of the comments in this thread in following right wing talking points is truly amazing.
it seems to have really accelerated in recent months hereabouts too.
The modus operandi seems to be pretend to be progressive or populist but work hard to undermine folks like Sanders who are actually trying to move the conversation left.
I’ve seen this too, pardon me if I’ve mis read the intent of some of your comments
“ The speed of the comments in this thread in following right wing talking points is truly amazing.”
I’ve been wondering about that myself. The front page criticizes both Trump and the PMC. Some in the comments have a knee jerk tendency to attack only the PMC and defend Trump and all his supporters— not just blue collar workers, but the apparatchiks in his Administration.
I’ve monitored this blog for nearly 10 years, and I can hardly fathom that it leans to any direction that is R or right leaning. More center leaning. My humble opinion.
Come on folks. Exchange Trump handing out money to corporations to Obama handing free passes to the aholes on Wall Street. What exactly is the defining distinction?
The class of elites in this country are reaping dissent. And their war chest grows.
PK-Thank you for putting her tweet in perspective. I’ve been coming to NC since I discovered it in the links of Calculated Risk some ten+ years ago. I’ve always valued the commentary and insight here. AOC is not suggesting we put their “heads on a pike”, as Steve Bannon would do. All she said is lets not forget what folks have said in the last 4 years. In the words of someone I respect tremendously ” the threads above have been very clarifying”.
right on! AOC does her homework, knows how congress works, and is learning how to get legislation passed — one of the brighter stars on the left. and she’s merely suggesting consequences for those who kidnapped children and put them in cages. i couldn’t agree with her more.
+1
So Obama’s going to be blackballed too?
God doesn’t love me enough.
+100
This will sound strange, but the Democratic party needs it’s own version of Trump. In 2015 Trump ran thru the Republican leadership like a hot knife thru butter. He said the things that everybody knew but nobody could say. America suffered it’s worst attack under W so W failed the American people, and invading Iraq was the worst decision ever. This enraged the party leadership thus creating the never Trumpers, but completely endeared him to the average Republican. It was a necessary cleansing of the party.
So look what happens, the Democratic leadership extends a welcoming hand to the never Trumpers. And why not? They are all “in the club” that runs America. They “redeem” Bush, and all the idiots that created the “war on terror”, and all the crooks that de-regulated Wall St. End result, we see the exact same people that have been running the country into the ground for forty years on TV discussing how the guy they worked so hard to create (Trump), and the country they worked so hard to make is now all messed up and in terrible world ending trouble.
So the Democratic party desperately needs a no holds barred truth teller. Obama was not good for 90% of the country. He bailed out the crooks on Wall St and enabled the looting of average Americans that accelerated when CV hit. He got us in more wars, he deported more people. And Obamacare is just propping up a failed healthcare insurance industry with our tax dollars – it has fundamentally failed to improve healthcare other than get more people on Medicaid.
So I’m not saying Trump is a good president or doing a good job or any of that, but he was able to take over the Republican party by getting rid of some of it’s sacred cows, and the party will be better for that. Ultimately, I think he failed because he was surrounded by Republicans that ran the country too much like any other Republican president, and he had to deal with CV. Biden never would have won except for CV.
So the Democrats are going to completely overlook 2016, and the narrow win in 2020, and pretend it’s 2008, and they can run another Obama presidency. Boy are they in for a rude surprise. They are ALL going to get voted out if they try that. Some Republicans are going to go populist, and hand the Democrats their a$$es in a sack.
>So I’m not saying Trump is a good president or doing a good job
And it’s annoying that you even need to say that, he won the Presidency in 2016 and almost won again, and the Dems have to be idiots* (hint: they are) to not study every thing he did down to the most minor tweet.
*I think I mentioned it here once, I use “idiot” to refer to smart people that do stupid things, I use “dumb” for people that just aren’t that well gifted. They (the dumb ones) can’t help coming up a little short like I just can’t dunk a basketball, I don’t have a problem with them. But idiots…
Why would the Dems need to study anything Trump did or said? They have 100% of the MSM on their side. They have the awesome censorship power of social media 100% in their camp. They have
their own private secret police forcethe FBI when the ballot box doesn’t go the way they’d like, both in 2016 and again in 2020 when they sat on the laptop for 9 months. Good times! If you like totalitarian rule, that is. I’ve always been for pluralism and freedom of speech myself, but that’s just me.I am haunted by this post on evictions
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2020/10/residential-evictions-bearing-down-on-many-tenants.html
I think McConnell thinks he can bring about 2010 all over again by making the economy scream, but it would seem to me that there is a real possibility of 1789 all over again. They are playing with fire. Is there no one with the power to explain the idea of enlightened self interest to Wall Street? Can no one explain why a country of homeless people might come back to bite them?
Today on the TV Dems put out Rahm Emanuel to ease the concerns of those struggling right now: “Learn to code” he said.
https://twitter.com/tezlynfigaro/status/1325087728216797184?s=21
He’s earnest, Rahm.
“we’ll pay for it!”
…..sure you will…
This is the first shot in the subsidize silicon valley biden presidency.
The oligarchs have never seen a labor force that couldn’t be “improved” by inserting lots of low paid competition to those currently doing the job. The question is why does rahm hate h1-b’s? Is he a racist?
“code”: Term used in hospitals to describe an emergency requiring situation-trained members of the staff, such as a cardiopulmonary resuscitation team, or the signal to summon such a team.
I think he just Rule 2‘ed us.
I don’t think that’s the kind of code he meant — though what do I know?
But if he did mean that kind, he might still want to watch his language — lest someone turn it back on him. “Ask not for whom the EKG tolls. . . .”
How about we get training to be a high paid, low information [family blog]head on TV?
Much easier than being a coder. Rahm couldn’t code his way out of a wet paper sack.
I think McConnell is fine with a 1789 situation, or worse. The well mobilized right wing propaganda machine will kick into high gear to blame economic despair and a depression on social issues and the gop will emerge more facist than before, this time with real power and no opposition. That’s the real dream. There was a comment yesterday about how dangerous it is when there is no socialist opposition to capitalism, and the opposition is withering as the moderate dems are being painted as communists, tightening the window of acceptable debate.
The post you link to has stuck with me too and includes the following (originally from the WSJ):
This is a very grave prospect. The months ahead are going to be a real test for both the Ds and the Rs. If the federal government doesn’t come through with a lot more aid, hardship will be widespread and social unrest very possible.
It is no time for political gridlock and I think McConnell and Pelosi get that – up to a point. One wonders though, given the inaction on more aid in recent months.
https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/11/a-successful-presidency-a-maddening-president/
I think McCarthy is a pretty dispassionate observer of Trump. I agree with, and think McCarthy’s view of Russiagate was spot on. I don’t think Trump’s policies amount to much, and he was basically, despite the incessant yammering, pretty much a defacto standard republican (tax cuts, anti abortion court appointments). I
Trump was elected by a fluke. His own personality prevented him from being able to take advantage of that opportunity. But at some point, Americans have to stop bitching about our presidents, and start bitching about our nominees. Bush, Obama, Clinton, Trump, Biden. Sad.
The #McResistance did very well on Tuesday: Permanent Government D’s get patronage opportunities from Uncle Joe, but the presence of all those mean Republicans in the Senate gives Biden the perfect excuse to keep his campaign promise to do nothing.
I’m sure that the Republicans will give him a pass when he runs in 2024. Jill Biden should be arrested for elder abuse for putting her husband into this situation.
That was the plan.
Can’t “reach across the isle” to cut SS and MC if you have both sides of the isle. ;)
Swords into plowshares dept:
One leftover Trump flag could be rendered into as many as a few dozen masks, and when the pandemic is over, think of the fun participants can have in putting said jigsaw puzzle back together for a potential 2024 run.
What makes you think they are coming down? Those flags are called “Get Out of Jail Free cards” in Red America.
Another potential use is to repurpose them into NATO flags.
I tried on several occasions to make a post today, which was not particularly lengthy, but was eaten without acknowledgement by the Intertubes Monster. I also tried posting it in bits: no luck. I say this not to complain, since I doubt anyone is hanging on my words, but in case anyone else has had similar problems. I’ll try again later today, or tomorrow.
It’s the Saturday Gremlin. He stops over and eats posts on the weekends for some reason. I just make up some stuff and add a link. No one ever checks and it looks like I know what I am talking about.
I had one of those, and had to add a can of oil every couple weeks, and contrary to any other make and model, the damned thing rusted out in California as if it had spent it’s entire life on salt encrusted roads back east.
Duh – Salt air. Did you try parking it facing the mountains instead?
Wasn’t much salt air in the San Gabriel Valley…
patience. Even the comments that don’t come back up with the edit function (sometimes one doesn’t get that also) will eventually pop out, very rarely more than an hour or so. Re writing only makes the algo more suspicious so you wind up modded more often
> comments that don’t come back up with the edit function
I have noticed that sometimes my comments are immediately posted, but without the “edit” option within the standard 5 minute window; very frustrating when I suddenly notice a howler editing error.
But sometimes re-loading the page will result in the edit function appearing. This might be a problem local to my system. I’m using Edge browser on a Win10 machine, with Kaspersky Internet Security suite.
WordPress takes several seconds to update a page with comments. If the page is in the process of being regenerated when your comment arrives, perhaps due to someone else posting a comment a split second before you or a brief network disturbance between CloudFlare and NC, CloudFlare serves you the old page instead, rather than forcing you to queue and wait. When you reload a moment later, the version of the page including your comment has eventually been built and delivered to CloudFlare, in turn duly delivered to your browser.
In computer engineering we call that a read-after-write hazard.
Thanks!
As others have noted, the NC commentariat is the best.
AP this morning at ~ 12:00 noon EST called the pres race for Biden.My guess: the inter-tubes are overloaded right now. This election is a near reverse image of 2016: a predicted blowout becomes a very tight race, the losing candidate promises legal challenges for recounts, etc. (Or, since you’re in the EU (?), maybe the skynets think you’re a dastardly ras-putin agent. /ha )
https://apnews.com/article/joe-biden-wins-white-house-ap-fd58df73aa677acb74fce2a69adb71f9
President Biden’s resume: Led opposition to busing, primary architect of mass incarceration policies, strong supporter of ‘ending welfare as we know it”, primary architect of neoliberalism (Nafta, WTO, Favored Nation, repeal Glass Stegal, making credit card bankruptcy onerous & difficult, Student Loan bankruptcy prohibition…), primary architect of first & 2nd Gulf wars, leading opponent of single payer, lifelong foreign policy hawk, principal leader of bank bailouts, life long promoter of austerity policies (cut SS & medicare & other human needs programs), major supporter of Wall Street, fracking supporter, opponent of a real green new deal, escalated the demonization of Russia & China…
Vice President Harris’ resume: relied primarily on patronage her entire career, made her reputation by implementing draconian penalties for non-violent crimes (targeting parents of truant children for criminal prosecution, targeted small scale non violent drug law violators…), refused to prosecute pedophile Catholic priests, fought to uphold unlawful prosecutions, was a strong advocate of capital punishment refused to prosecute predatory mortgage lenders, and argued in court against releasing nonviolent offenders because California would lose money generated by prison slave labor. In the senate she has faithfully represented her corporate supporters.
Although I voted for Biden-Harris, it is not apparently self-evident that they represent an improvement over Trump.
Well everybody hated busing as the wrong solution to underfunding black schools and…and.. ok I got nothing else
>Although I voted for Biden-Harris, it is not apparently self-evident that they represent an improvement over Trump.
I’d be happy to get the Tongrass protections back. Otherwise yeah.
I agree but any outcome that gets Pompeo, DeVos and Acosta off the public payrolls is always a good thing.
So here’s something I ran across today about the nature of conservative media by a former conservative activist and journalist. I thought his observations were rather obvious and no revelation to anyone who reads this blog, but apparently not to most who don’t.
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1324908316548493313.html?utm_source=fark&utm_medium=website&utm_content=link&ICID=ref_fark
I have a friend who writes for one of those publications. Based on what he’s written about china, it seems the strategy has gone a step further than Sheffield suggests. Not only is it anything that makes the left looks bad, but going on the offensive with bogus claims that are peddled so much they become truth, like free markets. With china and the middle east it is that Trump and Pompeo’s work was the best and brought about peace in the middle east (or is leading to it) and China is on a bad path because of our trade policy. Both are wrong but seem right enough on the surface to pass as truth. A more subtle type of lie.
Unfortunately, much of what he has to say about conservative media applies to what is supposed to be the trustworthy, interested-in-the-truth mainstream media today.
There is no conservative media or liberal media, it’s all just the billionaires’ media and the purpose of it is to keep one 1/2 of the working class fighting the other.
FWIW, CNN (live streaming, https://www.livenewsnow.com/american/cnn-news-usa.html) seems to have called it for Biden. But their accolades to Biden are so insufferable -sounds like the second comming- I had to cut it off after about 20 seconds (5 more than is healthy for the average human) so no details.
And Slim’s rolling the eyes in Tucson. Just got back from shopping at the Food Co-op on 4th Avenue. If you’re not familiar with Tucson, think Telegraph Avenue in 1960s Berkeley and you have the idea.
Any-hoo, a lot of whoopin’ and hollerin’ for Biden
Moi? I was warning the whoopers and holler-ers that they’re going to be awfully disappointed in Joe, and that his honeymoon won’t last as long as Obama’s 2009 swoon-fest.
No one seemed very interested in what I was saying.
Yup. I’ve seen a lot of the same in my small social circle, especially wrt Kamala. I’m just keeping my quiet. At some point these same folks will notice nothing has changed and wonder why. I’ll be happy to tell them.
I feel similarly, but I’m less optimistic about any recognition of the ultimate similarity of result.
Our team won! It’s all good! I know this because CNN, etc. tell me so. For example, look at how all of Bushes evil wars became just after O’s election.
Oops. The above is a reply to the Sheffield story above
Unfortunately team D will probably have to manage legislating laws that allow inflicting some of the same damage that has been inflicted on the non-professional class on the professional managerial class before that happens. I’m thinking a whole bunch suddenly find they are independentl contractors, lose their retirement prospects, etc.
It isn’t as if the top rentiers are going to stop needing ill gotten gains now that the lower 30 to 40 percent have nothing left. Time to move up the class ladder for their wholesale theft. When the banks get their next needed bail out, and new estimates are indicating the coming crash will swamp 2008, a whole lot more people are going to notice they get to lose while Jamie Damon gets a raise they are expected to pay for.
They’ve spent four year selling out any journalistic integrity they had in the name of getting a Dem elected. Of course they’re happy. All that suppression of reporters asking questions and news stories was worth it! /s
This guy also claims Facebook is not biased against conservatives. This didn’t age well.
https://www.salon.com/2018/04/12/rights-ludicrous-facebook-obsession-snowflakes-claim-bias-against-conservatives/
He’s Fired.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/07/us/politics/biden-election.html
Time for the newest game in the Senate – 2 yrs of Huntergate.
Drudge Report ( !!) has a nice pic on that theme !
https://www.drudgereport.com/
I look forward to watching this narcisstic t*rd’s personality shatter. Nope, I don’t think much of Biden but trump was beyond the pale. Has anybody done a Downfall like “Hitler reacts to Trump’s defeat” yet ? Nope I don’t think Trump was a Hitler either.
Watching Drudge’s slow pivot to Team Blue has been startling to say the least. I wonder how his numbers are doing.
Not bad. His numbers are down only 40%. The Dem Party is the kiss of death.
https://www.thewrap.com/trump-drudge-report-audience-down/
In Somerville, I’m hearing the rare blaring horn or scream of – I assume — relief.
Brunch is back!
Yup, same in this blue ghetto in a red state. Celebrating the replacement of diet Pepsi with diet coke (hello Hunter)
First priority is a national strategy for COVID.
…which of course includes economic help/support for lower income workers having to choose between health food and rent.
Don’t hold your breath.
He didn’t present one during the campaign.
Yves, I am not defending Biden or even attacking Trump, I am merely pointing out that addressing COVID and its socioeconomic repercussions should be the priority
Break out the bucina.
Mark Meadows, Trump’s Chief of Staff, Has Contracted Covid-19 Wall Street Journal
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Maybe the creepiest of all in the tea party, and based upon his bonafides, he greatly exceeded expectations.
As a proponent of letting Covid run it’s course, I suggest that he let mother nature do her thing.
you may want to check out his replacement before the superlative on creepiness
My first thought when I saw the headline was that maybe he doesn’t really have Covid-19 but thought it was a good cover for hiding out for a couple of weeks.
Excellent new post by Glenn Greenwald, particularly relevant now that the new president was and is a supporter of everything done by both the Bush Cheney and Obama Biden administrations. Be prepared for a continuation of the same with the inclusion of a heavy dose of austerity for those of us who are not wealthy.
No Matter the Liberal Metric Chosen, the Bush/Cheney Administration Was Far Worse Than Trump.
https://greenwald.substack.com/p/no-matter-the-liberal-metric-chosen?token=eyJ1c2VyX2lkIjoyNzY1ODUwLCJwb3N0X2lkIjoxODA4NTE4NCwiXyI6Im9TTTRYIiwiaWF0IjoxNjA0NzY4NzM2LCJleHAiOjE2MDQ3NzIzMzYsImlzcyI6InB1Yi0xMjg2NjIiLCJzdWIiOiJwb3N0LXJlYWN0aW9uIn0.fDrKGdDOStHLctKrIs_DQQiQBqBKLf7LfhYKhsF9zkw
Thanks. The “Trump Accountability Project” acronym spells TAP — as in donors. /heh
“Looters will be prosecuted – this counts for everyone in the departing Administration”
That’s all Biden would have to say to significantly tamp down on what’s going to be happening for the next three months.
But he won’t say it. Because that’s precisely his own party and his family, too.
Work in lefty politics in SF, Buttar is a total grifter, he didn’t run any field operations after the summer, just spent money paying himself 8.3k a month and on absurd software his pals or other grifters got him on. Drives around on top of a van rapping, just had absolutely no shot, I hate pelsoi wish someone serious had gotten that kind of attention.
says you. ;)
I am a San Diego resident and former Sanders supporter who voted third-party/protest. Minutes ago (~12:22 PM PST) I tuned to ABC to catch a college football game and found it preempted by news coverage declaring victory for Biden. Shortly thereafter, there was a ruckus of hooting, hollering, and honking in my neighborhood. A couple of minutes later, a sharp wind blew in, and it began to rain. That about sums it up.
LOL. Thanks for that, I feel slightly better now. The noise is far less pervasive here, but on occasion enough that I made the connection with the election finally.
One evening in early 1973 I was at an LA Kings game with my dad when the contest was stopped, and the announcement made over the p.a. that a peace treaty had been signed and the Vietnam War was over as far as the USA was concerned.
I want to say that the boisterous clapping went on for a few minutes until the game finally resumed.
We didn’t go to war again for a decade after that night~
That would have been fun. For some reason I don’t remember where I was at the time.
Maybe a year before when I was all of 10 years old, my mom found out that if you sent the POW/MIA organization a letter asking them for goodies (bumper stickers, buttons, bracelets, posters, etc) to distribute at your school, they’d send you some…
A couple weeks after writing them, a large package with about 500 bumper stickers, an equal amount of buttons, and not as many bracelets & posters, showed up at our house and I gave out every last item to the student body…
Same thing here in Manhattan. Cars go by honking and restaurants and pedestrians start cheering.
They can go back to brunch tomorrow, hurrah!
They never stopped, patriotic duty and all…
Oops, meant to say 12:22 PM EST. Time for more coffee…
In Texas. No honking / cheering is evident, though I haven’t been out.
The surf was poor this morning at Scripps and too big for me so I had a chance to hang for awhile and BS with others from the morning crew. Seems they were mostly glum about the election and convinced we are now heading towards communist Russia. I tried to cheer them up by saying Russia is no longer communist and Biden is to the right of Trump. Quickly, the subject changed from politics to what the forecast is for tomorrow’s surf conditions.
The Democrats spent a billion dollars to evict one person from his temporary residence. If you do the cost/benefit analysis, that’s not a lot of bang for the buck, is it?
Or looking at it a different way, the donkey show spent a billion in order to secure a job that pays the occupant a crummy $1.6 million over 4 years.
But there’s a hell of a benefits package: fringe, unofficial and otherwise.
It is not about
it about sending money to dnc favorite consulates so their children can stay in very private schools and parents in very private clubs. Us serf aren’t in the club;-)
“cost/benefit analysis”
Another way to look at it is how much waste as these political hacks play out their games. Trillions at least. Circle the drain.
And there are 2400 Trump Clone Billionaires, 10% of whom are psychopaths. Just think of the damage they can do just like Trump. Trump is luckily just into politics. Just think of a psychopathic billionaire being into AI, biotech, space, or some other dangerous scientific project. Oh, there already is one or two…..
Meanwhile, there is no analysis of the above by our Best and Brightest or, some would say, our Worst and Dumbest. The science folk are too busy working for corrupt corporations.
Thomas Frank column in the graun
Covid bungling doesn’t feel right.
Paused? How so? The goalposts are so far to the corporate side of that field that The People don’t even know where they (goalposts) are. Hint: They moved the field, we’re not even playing a real team on our field. Although the action & competition are real.
Hopie and changey Frank’s style. I hope Frank is finally right about the possibility being there. He has more faith in the Democrats than I do.
Brutal!
Scrolling the front page of the nytimes beyond the triumphalist Biden Beats Trump headline, I stumble across this story. On the front page!
“For Millions Deep in Student Loan Debt, Bankruptcy Is No Easy Fix”
“It’s an extremely difficult debt to discharge, and only a few hundred people a year even try. Here are the stories of some who succeeded — mostly.”
There’s a single brief mention of Biden that completely obscures his role while putting the blame squarely on the current administration:
“Election Day did little to change the fraught nature of student debt in Washington, where the Trump administration has explored shortcomings in the bankruptcy law but his Education Department has strongly opposed relief for indebted students — even if their schools defrauded them — and Joseph R. Biden Jr. once voted to make private loans harder to discharge, though he has vowed to try to reverse the rule.”
I shouldn’t be surprised but still, could they be any more shameless?
Trump lost by fewer voters than could fit in Yankee Stadium.
If he had given people health care during a pandemic – he would have won!
If he had told his Secretary of Education to cancel out some student debts, he would have won millennials by 2-1 and been re-elected.
If he had just swallowed hard, ignored Kudlow and passed around another $1200 stimulus check, he would have won.
Donald, you shouldn’t have been attacking the non-existent socialists in the Dem Party, you should have leap-frogged over them. The 2016 Donald Trump would have.
Well maybe Biden will reverse the rule.
Noisy jubilation here in Boston. Lots of shouting and tooting car horns.
The donor class has won a good configuration of government for nothing to fundamentally change. So, this being a PMC neighborhood, it probably makes sense since many of the celebrators are lackeys for the donors.
Once again, I am celebrating the election of a Democratic President who doesn’t support anything that matters to me. And actually supports a number of things I hate. So YAY!
But at least my siblings will stop whining for a while.
(I didn’t vote for Trump)
I’m really annoyed. Because once again us Brits will hold the prize for “looniest leader in the first World”.
Not only the looniest with hair furor out of the way, but each and every of the 365 parts of a year is a bad hair day.
Disheveled ready job!
Terry, it depends how one defines “loony”.
Hehe
Looniest goes to North Korea, not “first world” but truly the looniest.
“Bojo”, Eton/Balliol/Classics educated, is not loony: infinitely privileged, ‘insouciant’ naughty boy poseur, oh yeah but loony no. Anyone else seen this? I fell off my perch laughing; perhaps the Covid isolation has taken an immense toll on my overall sanity but I found Bojo’s comments hilariously encouraging coming from “a head of state” (state of what is another question).
Here it is: “Look For The Hero Inside Yourself”. Go Bojo go !!! “My friends, I was too fat”:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6P8An8s674
Not the discourse of a loony. It still reduces me to tears of laughter. Oh what a world, what a world.
Build Back Better! Build Back Better. Build Back Better!
26 pounds of sugar plus Green energy to power our kettles and the whole multiple manifestos thingie.
Build Back Better! Build Back Better. Build Back Better!
See it’s not just that Republicans can fit under the Dems tent, international players are welcome as well.
We should all be very very scared. Yep, on a “very” kick today.
Terry Flynn
November 7, 2020 at 2:06 pm
Good grief, your not even giving Biden a chance – he’s not even sworn in yet.
And who knows what can happen between now and the inauguration…
My Biden Fantasy Cabinet Picks:
The Ideal and the || The Nightmare
______
Agriculture: Joel Salatin, Paul Stamets || Hugh Grant (Monsanto)
Attorney General Preet Bharara || Eric Holder, Dershowitz
CIA Chomsky || Gina Haspel, Peter Thiel
Commerce David Bronner, Evan Chouinard || Elon Musk, Penny Pritzker
Defense Tammy Duckworth, Tulsi Gabbard || Liberman, Feinstein
Education Jeff Andrade, Jeff Canada || Bill Honig (Mr. bilingual Ed)
Energy Albert Gore || Joe Manchin, Elon Musk, Robert I. Goldstein
E.P.A. Ralph Nader, Jeffrey Smith || Edward D. Breen Dupont CEO
HHS Sarah Cody, Andrew Weil, Fauci || Sacklers, David Wichmann, (United Health) Dr. Oz
HUD Jimmy Carter Julian Castro || Oprah Eli Broad
Interior Jay Inslee || Joe Manchin
Labor Sanders OAC || Bezos
O.M.B. Rand Paul Andrew Yang || Richard Blum, Pelosi
National Intelligence Edward (pardoned) Snowden || Peter Thiel Zuckerberg
S.B.A. Even Chounard, Steve Ellis (Chipotle) || Bezos Cheryl Sandberg
State Dept George Clooney || Victoria Newland Susan Rice Hillary
Transportation Ralph Nader || Travis Kalanick
Treasury Michal Hudson, Warren, Ellen Brown || Geithner, Rubin, Summers, Mnuchin
Trade David Bronner || Bezos
Vet Affairs Tammy Duckworth || Feinstein
Vice President Tulsi Gabbard || Kamala Harris
Chief of Staff Mary Ann Williams || Jack Dorsey
Preet as an ideal AG? The West Wing ruined a generation.
I think my box set of the West Wing is like a Big Mac. So satisfying. But so ultimately bad for you. I should probably sell it. Or bury it in a landfill. Giving it to charity feels like kicking them in the privates.
Swap it for all episodes of “The Avengers” starring the late great Diana Rigg as Mrs. Peel.
Or swap it for “The Wire”.
Or even for the original “Law and Order” of which I can say: “plus ça change plus c’est la meme chose” (sorry, the e is missing its accent circonflexe, for you purists).
The original “Law & Order” came with the original deceptive intro.
Not everything the police investigate is a crime — and not everything that is a crime is investigated.
And not everyone the “district attorneys” prosecute is an offender — and not all offenders are prosecuted.
And a focus on law & order takes our eyes away from justice.
Terry Flynn
November 7, 2020 at 3:08 pm
You should enjoy your entertainment – an imaginary recounting of the world meant to entertain the people of a certain political persuasion – kinda like the WP or NYT – none of them are meant to show actual reality…
I enjoy Rachel Maddow, but like Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny, I don’t think its real.
I will never forgive him for ignoring Cuomo’s corruption. Once the illusion is lifted you begin to recognize how big a tool he is, well I think of it as my Robert Mueller moment. ;)
If I’m Biden I’m asking Susan Collins and Pat Toomey if they would be interested in cabinet positions.
Toomey already said no to running in 2022. He might be willing to go for a price.
you had me until Al Gore.
I know people like to mock Elon Musk, and he’s an obnoxious jerk who’s easy to hate. But much of the mockery is style over substance. I don’t see anyone else making an electric transportation sector happen. Or global internet.
And realistic travel to Mars. Pay attention: this is realistic. Even if a colony fails, it will bring home the message of how precious and valuable every shovel of dirt on Earth is. And if a colony succeeds, which is not absurd, humanity will escape near-term extinction. Just having people on Earth and Mars looking back at each other will give us the kick in the butt we need to save our environment here on Earth.
Valid criticisms of Musk: no one should have that much money. Bosses should not treat workers that way. No one should lie about things like “self-driving” or “autopilot” until we actually learn how to do these things. Most importantly, people should not put up with other people taking remote control of things like their car’s key entry, or accept “over-the-air updates”, or “apps” backdoored into their home powerwall batteries.
So I won’t be buying any of his backdoored products. But given where the rest of our economy and sociey are, I’d rather that he were there doing these things, than that he were not.
It might be nice if Musk and the rest of the tech *s (Vonnegut fans will understand the shorthand) would ask somebody or anybody if they actually want to live in the future being hawking for great personal gain.
I know amateur astronomers for example are pretty damn livid with his plans for a global internet by cluttering up the sky with tens of thousands of pierces of junk.
This is jumping to conclusions though, is it not? What evidence is there to verify your proposition? Setting aside the imo hubristic delusion that human extinction is avoidable or, put another way, not inevitable (and this is not meant as an attack on you personally; it seems to be a widespread latent belief) – if those desirable conclusions about Earth aren’t axiomatic by now, with everything we already know about astronomy, ecology, etc., it’s not readily apparent to me how Musk’s dick-waving, even successful dick-waving, will make it so.
And even then, something tells me that Musk’s desire to ~save the human race~ is not motivated by beneficent humanism, as evinced by his shitty earthbound behaviour that you point out. Maybe that’s not ultimately very relevant, but I think it probably is.
@Alternate Delegate
November 7, 2020 at 5:29 pm
Musk: If you gave someone from NC community with the expertise the same type of subsidies and direct monies that Musk seems to get, do you think the NC community or Musk would do a better job of furthering the electric transport sector?
Assuming of course that furthering said sector is actually something that should be done.
You called it on state!
From Politico https://www.politico.com/news/2020/11/07/joe-biden-cabinet-picks-possible-choices-433431
State: Susan Rice
AG: Doug Jones
HHS: Michelle Lujan Grisham
Transport: Eric Garcetti
Commerce: Meg Whitman
Energy: Ernest Moniz
Interior: Tom Udall
Agriculture: Heidi Heitkamp
(PS List was pasted from a tweet, Politico has done some dumb stuff to their site that breaks it completely in my browser due to ad blocking. You might have picked even more, who knows.)
I’ll be rooting for Udall. He’d be better than his dad and is a part of the 30 by 30 plan. If he can have Biden’s ear on on that stuff, it’ll do a lot for the conservation movement. Too bad Tulsi isn’t in there for defense. She’s the people’s centrist, republicans love her for ripping into the war hawking dems so she might have a shot at confirmation, but a tiny tiny one.
Downright scary. But then I know more than the regular media coverage of many of those picks.
Stamets? That’s an inspired choice. I can’t see Paul taking the offer, but he’d get a big kick out of it.
I’d be happy to see Inslee in charge of the Interior or Energy.
A strange “counterfactual history” thought:
Should JB thank Sanders for this outcome?
If Sanders had not performed so strongly in the earliest primaries (or had not been competing at all), there would have been much less incentive for the D party establishment to “clear the field” early and coalesce around a single alternative to him.
In a counterfactual world without Sanders in the D Primary field, and the field remaining crowded for much longer, does JB have much of a shot at the nomination? I kind of doubt that he does.
Just thinking out loud.
Probably not but then who does the nom go to? Warren would be my guess.
Maybe Warren in a brokered convention, or a stranger outcome.
It’s an amusing meditation on the chances that led to JB as pres’
It’s mildly unsetting to think how contingent big things that affect us actually are.
He was nominated not because of “who he was”, but because of “who he wasn’t.”
And he was elected for the same reason.
It’s not auspicious for what will be accomplished during his time in office.
———–
It calls to mind a twist on a famous text from the Old Testament:
“I am not who I am not”
I don’t think it’d be a brokered convention Bernie was the only one facing that prospect. My guess Warren comes out on top on Super Tuesday, maybe whoever is in 2nd sticks around for a few months but the narrative is set and Warren starts getting 70% of the vote in the rest of the States.
What’s the over/under on how many campaign rallies Donald lame duck has between now and January 20th?
I think he say f@*k it, and spends the rest of his term in Florida.
Nah, he needs the redemption that only standing on a podium and pontificating in front of 10,000 of the faithful will bring.
When he utters ‘I was cheated and you all know it’, that’ll garner 9,854 boos…
…and so it goes
How about a “one last time” super rally where 250,000+ show up to the world’s greatest super spreader event.
same here
wondering who he’ll pardon and no he won’t go to jail. He could really get the dems by pardoning snowden and assange, but the intelligence community can get you 7 ways to sunday, or something like that…
yes, Presidential Pardons for Snowden, Assange and all members of the Black Panthers still languishing in US prisons. Go ahead The Donald, you can still do it.
As for The Donald playing (cheating) on the golf course today – well it is Saturday after all.
I just found out that a Caesar Salad at Mar-a-Lago costs $75.– oh dear.
Pardoning Assange and Snowden would be the most effective way to make Obama and Biden look like a chump and a traitor to the values he’s blabbing on about now.
Pat, you need to do a thumbnail explanation of what the platinum coin deposit in the treasury would accomplish. There are many recent arrivals here.
If I were him, along with the pardons, I would immediately order the minting of four or five trillion dollar titanium coins (with his image) to deposit in the Fed. And come flat out and say that he “wasn’t going to let Biden and Harris destroy the economy by installing austerity rather than provide needed support to the public because of the bull shit deficit. So I have eliminated the deficit.”
Final speaking of the forbidden truth.
(mind you I think he should try to do everything possible to help the public and secure a very different “legacy” if only to screw with both the narrative and give the incoming administration a situation where their real agenda either gets abandoned or the bait and switch becomes more obvious.)
Would that he were in this for anything other than aggrandizing his own ego.
a trillion dollar platinum coin with his proud bust on display, he could have then throw in some gold for the hair! How can you beat that! Bezos eat your heart out ya piker…bwahahahaha
I’ve mentioned my friend the historian here before, terminal case of TDS. I just got an email from him that literally said this:
Yay!!
Victory!!
This is the man who taught me to “look behind the veil” of things, to question official narratives, to distrust power. Now he is like the drunken clowns on the street who are screaming “Democracy!” at the top of the lungs, like they have the foggiest notion of what that might be. I hate to say this but I don’t know if I want to email him back. I don’t like the notion of ghosting but I’ve explained my position before and I’m not interested in a stream of unreflective blather coming from the man who taught me how to think critically.
Perhaps write back, kindly sympathizing with his subjective sense of relief, and gingerly inquire what he hopes to see accomplished in the suddenly brighter near future.
That might provide a baseline for peaceful future discussions about JB’s performance in office.
Yeah, I should, but I have before and I just hit a smiling, well intentioned wall. I’ll give it some time I guess. Bummer. Other than the gang here, and my GF who seems more willing to listen to my criticisms of BoBo Joe now that Dump is heading out (which is a big step for her politically) I ain’t gots nobody….
I try to strike a hopeful optimistic tone and ask which of the new presidents policies they are most excited about. Works like a charm.
I find railing against the billionaire class cuts across all political lines.
Silence in Saint Paul.
Maybe coincidental, but I appreciate the lack of NYT and WaPo links today. I can’t be the only one who thinks they’ve irrevocably destroyed whatever reputation they had, and don’t bother reading even the article titles anymore. Life is too short.
Not enough WaPo in your life? Try this one
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/joe-biden-elected-president/2020/11/07/53ec8726-1f0b-11eb-ba21-f2f001f0554b_story.html?utm_campaign=wp_main&utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social
> Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. was elected the nation’s 46th president Saturday in a repudiation of President Trump powered by legions of women and minority voters
Robinette was the 74,583rd choice of a middle name for yours truly, my mom related to me.
“powered by legions of women and minority voters”
49% of women and about 66% of minority voters. 1/3 Latinos and 1/3 Asians, 18% of black men and 8% of black women voted Trump.
The ranks of white people just increased substantially:
Biden: “If you don’t for me, you are not black.”
“Even though we called you names, insulted your ancestors’ achievements, and yours as white privilege, belittled you, excluded you from partcipating in the ticket based on your skin color, used technology against you, censored you, arrested you, now it’s time for ‘unity.”
Lots of luck with that.
Ha. The Rising talked about how Trump increased his voter share relative to 2016 from every demography except white males. Yet, The Narrative™ must come before facts.
Onward and wokeward, my friends!
A Puerto Rican protester apparently catapulted a roll of paper towels over the White House wall, ha ha!
A mutiny of the Bounty
Wukchumni
November 7, 2020 at 5:29 pm
Turns out the Trump re-election committee needed to use more Brawny…
Narratives and numbers.
So it’s fun here in Philly that the accidents of the counting process allow Pennsylvania to be the tipping point for Biden and Philly to look like the tipping point for Pennsylvania.
BUT
2016 final Philadelphia returns:
Clinton: 584,025
Trump: 108,748
2020 as of 17:30 hours Saturday:
Biden: 561,604
Trump: 126,678
Hard to see that as an improvement. And that’s against a guy who was as helpful as possible in playing the racism angle.
The flip in Pennsylvania actually comes from declining Trump margins in some of the red counties of Pennsyltucky. To take one example, Cumberland county, where my wife’s mom and sister live, looked like this in 2016
Trump: 69,076
Clinton: 47,085
2020
Trump: 76,149
Biden: 61,168
Still a hefty margin for Trump (and note that he turned it up a notch or to from 2016, Just that team Donkey turned it up even more) But a margin just under 15,000 is a significant drop from the previous one of nearly 22,000. And this was replicated in a good many other Pennsyltucky counties, leaving less to be overcome by the (also declining) Democratic margins of Philly and Pittsburgh.
Darthbobber
November 7, 2020 at 5:33 pm
Thanks for the facts – you make a good point with the margins – and dare I say it – most things happen at the margins. From those presented, it appears Trump wasn’t as reviled as some of his opponents claimed, nor was he as exalted as many of his supporters asserted.
Turns out the Trump wrecking ball many hoped and voted for was made of styrofoam…
@fresno dan
Let’s for the sake of argument say Trump really wanted to be a wrecking ball against The Machine. The first thing you must have are political teams or at the very least very knowledgeable loyal teams who know how to the leverage The Machine, where the political power lies, and who the important cogs are in this world.
That generally takes years to develop. Unless one taps into a network already developed. But then you’re not really a wrecking ball of your own accord, you’re someone else’s demolition tool.
As far as I could tell, Trump had no teams in place to tap.
Which, besides laziness, is why he largely went with boilerplate Republicanism and used the clout of his faction to ensure that he could ride the existing Republican network.
@Darthbobber
Agreed. Absolutely.
I would also add that the blobs on either side of the political coin already knew exactly who he was, his techniques and they were flat out ready for him.
4 years and counting of Russiagate shows us just one nugget of how that playlist can work.
So finally the saga of Old Uncle Joe, Jr., and Top Cop Kam begins in earnest. The ratings are fabulous, the country swoons in ecstasy, brunch wil be served 24/7 from now until the end.
And there’s Uncle Joe, he’s a movin’ kind of slow at the Junction.
Will the White House now be the Shady Rest?
And now this, especially for our US friends who are wondering how others view your electoral process:
https://youtu.be/4v8ZhN-djhI
Sublime.
Amazing. Just shared it with a friend whose late husband was a huge racing fan.
Thank you so much for that, Chris. I just watched The Victory Speech and needed a good laugh. Either that or a fifth of Tanq.
But wait for the context. Every year in Oz, we celebrate a national equine contest – the Melbourne Cup. It’s on the first Tuesday in November. It’s known as ‘The race that stops a nation’.
Though this was apropos considering events …
Of Size and Scale
Wafers-
While we’re waiting for Schmiden to win and Trumpi’s absurd lawsuits to crash and burn, I thought I might provide a bit of intellectual diversion. As follows:
Beyond right and wrong there is a field; I’ll meet you there. –Yalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Rūmī – snip
https://morrisberman.blogspot.com/
Interesting. I’ve become a Middle Way (golden mean) person myself. Yet, it’s often far easier to grasp an extreme than a middle. Though I think it goes a long way just to appreciate that it applies to human affairs, as it does in engineering. You eyeball things and try to get close, and, if your decision is based upon prior experiments, that is good enough. This decision then becomes a new experiment, which you and others will benefit from next time.
So I’m seriously considering giving up football Saturdays and cold beers. All this election racket just numbs the mind.
Ah, no way . I can deal with electioneeering a**holes being chosen first, then a few yrs later being opted to the dustbin of history. Just leave me to beer and football for my coping needs…
Yves, thanks for linking to the beautiful story on Robert Fisk.
Indeed. I hope “David” read it.
Trump Team Holds News Conference Outside Drab Landscaping Firm, Next to Adult Book Store
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/11/four-seasons-total-landscaping-trump-team-news-conference.html
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
You just know that a disgruntled White House staffer saw their chance to apply the middle finger figuratively by sending Rudy et al to the wrong Four Seasons, ha ha!
There have been multiple instances of sloppy advance work in recent weeks. Maybe all the competent subordinates have already been driven out.
A real-time controlled natural experiment in the preferential oppression of peaceful leftist demonstrations is occurring now In Salem, Oregon. Enjoy the video, then read up and down the entire tweetstream.
My favorite so far:
Had my first haircut & shave yesterday in a barbershop since February.
Formerly the busy place had 8 stations and it wasn’t uncommon to have a 10-20 minute wait for your turn, but that was before Covid.
There are now just 4 barbers, and what used to be a $15 to $20 gig (I could never figure out their pricing method-it varied) was $32, about double what I used to pay.
In my 30 minutes in the chair, only 2 other customers were there, one just finishing up and the other just starting, with nobody waiting.
A business you’d think was bulletproof from recessions et al, seemed battered, and this on a Saturday @ noon.