By Lambert Strether of Corrente.
Bird Song of the Day
Tropical Mockingbird (Mayan), Casa en Cuxtitali, San Cristóbal de las Casas, Chiapas, Mexico. “Some of the bird species that I think this individual might have been mimicking in this cut are: Great-tailed Grackle (00:25), parakeet sp. (02:51).” Lots of great ambient sounds too!
In Case You Might Miss…
- Friday’s charts: RCP averages (good week for Trump); Covid (XEC has entered the chat).
- What, again, was Kamala thinking?
- boeing“>Boeing files unfair labor practice charge with NLRB against machinists (wowsers).
“Two Cases in Complicity” [New York University Law Review]. “The controlling purpose of this piece is to identify and correct a snag in the way courts distinguish discrete modes of criminality: helping, doing, and trying…. [H]elping gestures are by definition outside the elements of the crime being helped; anyone who fulfills an element of the crime is committing the crime, not helping it…. My proposed fix is to elevate the function of elemental analysis in complicity, in part by reviving an esoteric English doctrine, “joint principality,” which holds that in some instances of group criminality, there is no helping; there is only doing (or trying to do). To absorb this teaching is to better understand not just the relationship between language and the world, but the stakes in mistaking attempted murder for murder. Precisely because in no jurisdiction is attempted murder punished as severely as murder, differentiating between helping, doing, and trying involves making moral—not just semantical—judgments both about what has been done and what to do about it.” • Hmm.
My email address is down by the plant; please send examples of there (“Helpers” in the subject line). In our increasingly desperate and fragile neoliberal society, everyday normal incidents and stories of “the communism of everyday life” are what I am looking for (and not, say, the Red Cross in Hawaii, or even the UNWRA in Gaza).
Politics
“So many of the social reactions that strike us as psychological are in fact a rational management of symbolic capital.” –Pierre Bourdieu, Classification Struggles
2024
Less than thirty days to go!
Friday’s RCP Poll Averages:
If you ignore the entire concept of margin of error and go with the narrative, another good week for Trump, especially in MI and PA, tbough not, oddly, in the two hurricane swing states, GA and NC. Of course, we on the outside might as well be examining the entrails of birds when we try to predict what will happen to a subset of voters (undecided; irregular) in a subset of states (swing), and the irregulars especially might as well be quantum foam, but presumably the campaign professionals have better data, and have the situation as under control as it can be MR SUBLIMINAL Fooled ya. Kidding!.
* * * Kamala (D): “Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer feeds Doritos to left-wing influencer in deeply bizarre ‘communion’ video” [New York Post]. “In the short clip, posted on podcaster Liz Plank’s Instagram account, the lefty influencer was seen on her knees opening her mouth for Whitmer to place Doritos on her tongue.” • Here it is:
NEW: Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer feeds a chip to a begging liberal podcaster on her knees in an effort to get more votes for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz.
Whitmer joined Canadian feminist Liz Plank for an abortion podcast episode.
The pair released the following video as a… pic.twitter.com/yiSH5hypud
— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) October 10, 2024
Leaving the question of why a Canadian podcaster asideMR SUBLIMINAL Sacre tabarnak!, what on earth was Kamala’s campaign thinking? IM Doc posted on this in comments this morning, reading the video as a Communion parody. So much for the Latino vote! Being an Episcopalian — the priest would place the wafer in my hand — that wasn’t my first reading; I saw the video as some sort of bizarre domination/submission ritual* (and so much for those young men, along with every suburban household without a dungeon in the basement). Apparently the subMR SUBLIMINAL snickertext of the video was — please sit down — industrial policy, specifically the CHIPS act because — follow me closely here — Doritos are chips (and go long Doritos, I suppose). If I were Julie Chávez Rodriguez (campaign manager), Jen O’Malley Dillon (campaign chairwoman), Jeffrey Katzenberg (campaign co-chair), Mitch Landrieu (campaign co-chair), or Cedric Richmond (campaign co-chair), I would be getting Whitmer — also a campaign co-chair (!) — on the phone, to have a full and frank exchange of views. Of course it’s too late, but one might as well vent. NOTE * Pr0nographic in character, with Big Gretch looking into the camera.
Kamala (D): “Whitmer, Shapiro, Evers to launch battleground bus tour promoting Harris” [The Hill]. • Great idea. Will Whitman fit in one seat along with the flaming wreckage of her career? Or will they need two?
Kamala (D): Can’t anyone here play this game?
I told y’all where this was headed. Obama coming out to chastise Black men is a disgusting display of racist paternalism, and it’s unacceptable. None of us should tolerate it. Democrats want to blame everyone but themselves and people who voted FOR Trump. https://t.co/KF6cv7FHI7 https://t.co/N6Cxv4dNPs pic.twitter.com/u7Dpi20bdG
— AshleyStevens (@The_Acumen) October 11, 2024
Kamala (D): “‘60 Minutes’ under fire for editing Kamala Harris answers: ‘Giant fake news scam,’ Trump says” [Associated Press]. “Whitaker interviewed Harris on Saturday afternoon, Oct. 5, in Washington for the special broadcast that aired Monday, two days later. But ’60 Minutes’ offered a portion of that interview to colleagues at ‘Face the Nation,’ both to give the Sunday morning show some fresh news and to ‘tease’ the longer interview. At one point, Whitaker observed that it appeared Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, did not appear to be listening to the administration’s suggestions. ‘Well, Bill, the work that we have done has resulted in a number of movements in that region by Israel that were very much prompted by or a result of many things, including our advocacy for what needs to happen in the region,’ the vice president said in response, on the ‘Face the Nation’ clip. On ’60 Minutes,’ after Whitaker said the same thing, Harris answered: ‘We’re not going to stop pursuing what is necessary for the United States to be clear about where we stand on the need for this war to end.’… So what did Harris actually say to Whitaker? Well, both things, according to CBS. Her full answer to the question was the two sentences put together — the first sentence used on ‘Face the Nation’ and the second sentence on ’60 Minutes.’ CBS said the need to make the ’60 Minutes’ interview segment concise prompted the editing. The full interview with Harris took 45 minutes, and it was fit into a 20-minute slot on the broadcast. Yet the editing made it appear that the answer shown on ’60 Minutes’ was the first thing Harris said in response to the question. Having ‘Face the Nation’ show Whitaker asking the question — instead of having someone paraphrase it — added to the confusion and made CBS vulnerable to criticism.” • I have quoted different bits from the same source plenty of times, so I understand the logic from a production standpoint. OTOH, I’m not a national television network presenting a candidate interview to millions of voters. I would think that “no inconsistency” would be the watchword there, editorially. Furthermore, the Face the Nation quote was word salad, so the cutting and splicing did in fact benefit Harris, so CBS did leave its motives open to question. Finally, CBS also damaged Whitaker’s work, and Whitaker, it seems to me, did a good job.
Kamala (D): “Vice President Kamala Harris on Her Race to the Finish” [Vogue]. Worth reading in full for the atmosphere. I remember, from the movie Shakespeare in Love, a tracking shot that followed Queen Elizabeth: as she processed along, she was always surrounded by a swirl of courtiers doffing their hats and bowing; that must have been all she saw; this article describes a similar milieu. This caught my eye: “I ask what her first call would be on reaching the Oval Office. ‘One of my first calls—outside of family—will be to the team that is working with me on our plan to lower costs for the American people,’ she says. ‘It’s not just about publishing something in a respected journal. It’s not about a speech. It’s literally about, How does this hit the streets? How do people actually feel the work [what work?] in a way that benefits them?’ She says she plans to meet with ‘those who can help us put back in place the freedoms that have been taken away with the Dobbs decision’—the ruling that overturned Roe v. Wade—to get Congress to pass a law. ‘That’s going to take some work,’ she says.” • This doesn’t mean anything. There’s nothing here. It comes to pieces in your hand. Anyhow, Vogue? Reaching out to those working class readers, then?
Kamala (D): “Inside the Harris campaign’s ground game” [WaPo]. “Six questions for … Dan Kanninen: We talked with Vice President Kamala Harris’s battleground states director about the campaign’s ground game as early in-person voting starts in the states expected to decide the election.” Kanninen: “We built teams in those battleground states since the beginning of the year, [starting with] serious operatives who’ve won tough races statewide in those states as leaders, and then layering in dozens of senior staff and then hundreds of organizers — now into the thousands. Across the battleground states we currently have 2,500 staff, more than 350 offices. They’ve been engaging hundreds of thousands of volunteers, tens of thousands in each of those battleground states. Last week [they] knocked on a million doors in the battleground states and [we] have continued to ramp [up] our voter contact efforts.” • Pushing a string?
* * * Trump (R): “Trump’s small-dollar donor fundraising is beset by confusion and fatigue” [Associated Press]. “Republicans also engaged in a hyperaggressive — often combative — style of digital fundraising that is alienating voters, the operatives said. Campaigns and committees often share or rent lists of donors to each other, leading to voters being flooded with similar solicitations that can be confusing. ‘Republican vendors have so mistreated our donors that many grassroots donors don’t want to give to us anymore,’ said John Hall, a Republican fundraising consultant and partner at Apex Strategies. ‘If you make a donation to almost any Republican candidate today, within three weeks you are going to start getting 30-50 text messages from other candidates you have never heard of before.’ Hall’s firm sent surveys to Republican donors earlier this year and found that a majority of those who responded said they continued to receive text message solicitations after they had requested to be removed from a list. ‘Donors feel like they are never thanked, they feel abused, and they don’t know how to get off lists,’ Hall said. ‘This has a chilling effect on everyone’s fundraising.’ Small-dollar donors echoed Hall’s concerns. They told the AP they stopped giving to Trump’s campaign because they were tired of being barraged with solicitations for donations from other Republicans, who presumably got the donor information from the Trump campaign. Others said they were being more careful about their political giving due to financial struggles. ‘I am sick of them asking for money,’ said Susan Brito, 51, of Florida, who gave dozens of small donations totaling $69 in 2022 and 2023 but hasn’t contributed this year. ‘I am disabled, you are sending me text, after text, after text.'” • Sounds like Republicans have ten or a hundred Mothership Strategies. Sloppy!
Trump (R): “Fact check: Univision debunks false right-wing claim that Harris used a teleprompter at town hall” [CNN]. “Univision has debunked a viral false claim that Vice President Kamala Harris used a teleprompter during her town hall with the Spanish-language network on Thursday. The false claim generated millions of views on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter. It was made by several right-wing commentators with significant followings, including Benny Johnson, Charlie Kirk, Greg Price and Fox News host Sean Hannity. Both the moderator of the town hall, Enrique Acevedo, and the president of Univision News, Daniel Coronell, refuted the claim in their own X posts – noting that the teleprompter that was seen on the broadcast had text in Spanish, not English, and that it was material for Acevedo, not Harris. Acevedo, responding to Johnson’s claim that ‘Univision accidentally broadcast proof that Kamala used a teleprompter at her town hall,’ wrote: ‘The prompter displayed my introduction (in Spanish) and then it switched to a timer. Any claim to the contrary is simply untrue.’ Coronell, responding to Price’s claim that ‘Kamala is using a teleprompter during her ‘town hall’ with Univision,’ wrote: ‘That’s not true. The teleprompter that displays a text written in Spanish was a support element for the town hall moderator. I can tell you this with first-hand knowledge because I was in charge of the television program.'” • I almost ran Benny Johnson’s clip before I checked the text on the Teleprompter screen and couldn’t read it. And presumably Johnson et al. would have enlarged the text had it supported his talking point. So there you are. Of course, the Democrat’s propagated the false story about Vance having congress with a couch, but when the source (both editions of Vance’s book) was checked, the story was debunked. Distributing a real clip with a false implication seems more insidious to me.
Democrats en Déshabillé
“I’m Running Out of Ways to Explain How Bad This Is” [The Atlantic]. Lead sentence: “The truth is, it’s getting harder to describe the extent to which a meaningful percentage of Americans have dissociated from reality.” And: “The world feels dark; for many people, it’s tempting to meet that with a retreat into the delusion that they’ve got everything figured out, that the powers that be have conspired against them directly. But in turning away, they exacerbate a crisis that has characterized the Trump era, one that will reverberate to Election Day and beyond. Americans are divided not just by political beliefs but by whether they believe in a shared reality—or desire one at all.” • This is especially rich, since the editor the The Atlantic is one David Frum, of the Bush Administration that propagated the WMDs narrative on the way to the Iraq War debacle, the misinformation campaign that I came to political consciousness with. The Atlantic — the house of ill-fame in which the unholy marriage of liberal Democrats and Bush Republicans was consummated — was also assiduous in propagating RussiaGate. And yet these people prate about “shared reality”!
Syndemics
“I am in earnest — I will not equivocate — I will not excuse — I will not retreat a single inch — AND I WILL BE HEARD.” –William Lloyd Garrison
Covid Resources, United States (National): Transmission (CDC); Wastewater (CDC, Biobot; includes many counties; Wastewater Scan, includes drilldown by zip); Variants (CDC; Walgreens); “Iowa COVID-19 Tracker” (in IA, but national data). “Infection Control, Emergency Management, Safety, and General Thoughts” (especially on hospitalization by city).
Lambert here: Readers, thanks for the collective effort. To update any entry, do feel free to contact me at the address given with the plants. Please put “COVID” in the subject line. Thank you!
Resources, United States (Local): AK (dashboard); AL (dashboard); AR (dashboard); AZ (dashboard); CA (dashboard; Marin, dashboard; Stanford, wastewater; Oakland, wastewater); CO (dashboard; wastewater); CT (dashboard); DE (dashboard); FL (wastewater); GA (wastewater); HI (dashboard); IA (wastewater reports); ID (dashboard, Boise; dashboard, wastewater, Central Idaho; wastewater, Coeur d’Alene; dashboard, Spokane County); IL (wastewater); IN (dashboard); KS (dashboard; wastewater, Lawrence); KY (dashboard, Louisville); LA (dashboard); MA (wastewater); MD (dashboard); ME (dashboard); MI (wastewater; wastewater); MN (dashboard); MO (wastewater); MS (dashboard); MT (dashboard); NC (dashboard); ND (dashboard; wastewater); NE (dashboard); NH (wastewater); NJ (dashboard); NM (dashboard); NV (dashboard; wastewater, Southern NV); NY (dashboard); OH (dashboard); OK (dashboard); OR (dashboard); PA (dashboard); RI (dashboard); SC (dashboard); SD (dashboard); TN (dashboard); TX (dashboard); UT (wastewater); VA (wastewater); VT (dashboard); WA (dashboard; dashboard); WI (wastewater); WV (wastewater); WY (wastewater).
Resources, Canada (National): Wastewater (Government of Canada).
Resources, Canada (Provincial): ON (wastewater); QC (les eaux usées); BC (wastewater); BC, Vancouver (wastewater).
Hat tips to helpful readers: Alexis, anon (2), Art_DogCT, B24S, CanCyn, ChiGal, Chuck L, Festoonic, FM, FreeMarketApologist (4), Gumbo, hop2it, JB, JEHR, JF, JL Joe, John, JM (10), JustAnotherVolunteer, JW, KatieBird, KF, KidDoc, LL, Michael King, KF, LaRuse, mrsyk, MT, MT_Wild, otisyves, Petal (6), RK (2), RL, RM, Rod, square coats (11), tennesseewaltzer, Tom B., Utah, Bob White (3).
Stay safe out there!
You do you:
Six people in California now either confirmed or suspected to have bird flu.
So the california department of public health are telling you to *protect yourself*.
But they don't tell you how.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯ pic.twitter.com/GPwD7AjBJf— tern (@1goodtern) October 11, 2024
Vaccines: Covid
Infection: H5N1
Bird flu also rolling along quite nicely:
6 weeks ago yesterday California reported its first 3 #H5N1 #birdflu infected dairy herds. Today @USDA confirmed CA's 100th infected herd.
1 out of every 11 dairy herds in CA is infected with H5 now. Staggering speed of spread.
How did this happen?https://t.co/2BioBG0wUw pic.twitter.com/VXzs4i2sjy— Helen Branswell 🇨🇦 (@HelenBranswell) October 11, 2024
Sequelae: Covid
“Vascular Pathogenesis in Acute and Long COVID: Current Insights and Therapeutic Outlook” [Thieme]. From the Abstract: “Long coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19)… manifests with a broad spectrum of relapsing and remitting or persistent symptoms as well as varied levels of organ damage, which may be asymptomatic or present as acute events such as heart attacks or strokes and recurrent infections, hinting at complex underlying pathogenic mechanisms. Central to these symptoms is vascular dysfunction rooted in thrombotic endothelialitis. We review the scientific evidence that widespread endothelial dysfunction (ED) leads to chronic symptomatology. We briefly examine the molecular pathways contributing to endothelial pathology and provide a detailed analysis of how these cellular processes underpin the clinical picture…. Overall, we emphasize the critical role of cellular health in managing Long COVID and highlight the need for early intervention to prevent long-term vascular and cellular dysfunction.” • Since I didn’t know the source, I double-checked it with KLG, and he gave it the thumbs-up: “Figure 1 is a work of art.” So here it is:
Social Norming
As usual with Tern, 10 = 50:
1
"I'm done with Covid now"
=
"I have a short attention span / compassion span"I reply:
"Covid isn't done with you.
It's going to keep infecting you repeatedly until you die."— tern (@1goodtern) October 10, 2024
#49 – #50:
50
"We're going to put a wall of protection around the vulnerable"
=
"I'm going to chuck billions of pounds of easy money to my friends and other random rich people"I reply:
"You belong in jail."— tern (@1goodtern) October 10, 2024
Lambert here: XEC moving along smartly in the national variant chart, but doesn’t appear at all in the traveler’s variant chart. Odd!
| Wastewater | |
| This week[1] CDC October 5 | Last Week[2] CDC (until next week): |
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| Variants★ [3] CDC October 12 | ★ Emergency Room Visits[4] CDC October 5 |
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| Hospitalization | |
| ★ New York[5] New York State, data October 10: | ★ National [6] CDC September 21: |
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| Positivity | |
| National[7] Walgreens October 7: | Ohio[8] Cleveland Clinic October 5: |
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| Travelers Data | |
| ★ Positivity[9] CDC September 16: | Variants[10] ★CDC September 16: |
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| Deaths | |
| Weekly Deaths vs. % Positivity [11]CDC September 28: | Weekly Deaths vs. ED Visits [12]CDC September 28: |
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LEGEND
1) ★ for charts new today; all others are not updated.
2) For a full-size/full-resolution image, Command-click (MacOS) or right-click (Windows) on the chart thumbnail and “open image in new tab.”
NOTES
[1] (CDC) Still some hot spots, but I can’t draw circles around entire regions this week. Good news!
[2] (CDC) Last week’s wastewater map.
[3] (CDC Variants) KP.* very popular. XEC has entered the chat.
[4] (ED) Down, but worth noting that Emergency Department use is now on a par with the first wave, in 2020.
[5] (Hospitalization: NY) Definitely down.
[6] (Hospitalization: CDC). I see the “everything in greenish pastels” crowd has gotten to this chart.
[7] (Walgreens) Big drop continues!
[8] (Cleveland) Dropping.
[9] (Travelers: Positivity) Up, though lagged.
[10] (Travelers: Variants).
[11] Deaths low, positivity down.
[12] Deaths low, ED down.
Stats Watch
Inflation: “United States Producer Prices” [Trading Economics]. “Producer Prices in the United States increased to 145.17 points in September from 145.10 points in August of 2024. Producer Prices in the United States averaged 117.54 points from 2009 until 2024, reaching an all time high of 145.17 points in September of 2024.”
Manufacturing: “Boeing files unfair labor practice charge against striking union” [Reuters]. “Boeing said late on Thursday it had filed an unfair labor practice charge with the National Labor Relations Board against the union representing its striking U.S. West Coast factory workers, accusing the leaders of not bargaining in good faith…. Boeing said on Tuesday it had withdrawn its latest pay offer to the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers after two days of talks with federal mediators, citing the union’s refusal to seriously consider its proposals. In a filing with the NLRB, Boeing also accused the union’s leaders of misrepresenting the terms of Boeing’s offer to its members and of not bringing negotiators to the table with authority to make a deal. Boeing said the union had engaged in a ‘pattern of bad faith bargaining’ and its ‘public narrative is misleading and making it difficult to find a solution for our employees.'” Stuck pig squeals. More: “The union said on Tuesday that Boeing was ‘hell-bent’ about sticking to its ‘best and final’ proposal of a 30% wage increase over four years that it offered last month after the strike began. The union had declined to put the proposal to its members for a vote and said this week it planned a new survey of members. Boeing noted the union later acknowledged the planemaker had improved its offer, with IAM 751 president and lead negotiator Jon Holden telling Reuters on Wednesday that the proposed changes were ‘meager.'” • Boeing’s offer didn’t address defined-benefit pensions, requested by workers. And it’s a little rich for Boeing management to whinge about a public narrative when they issued their revised proposal through the press, and not at the negotiating table. Nice guy, that Ortberg fella.
Manufacturing: “Tensions are rising in the Boeing strike after the planemaker filed a complaint against the union” [Business Insider]. “Reinstating the pension plan remains a key issue for many on the picket line — but Boeing’s chief negotiator, Mike Fitzsimmons, told The Seattle Times there is ‘no scenario’ where this will happen. In a statement shared with BI, Boeing said it remains committed to reaching a compromise. ‘The union’s public narrative is misleading and making it difficult to find a solution for our employees,’ it added.”• So what’s wrong with the union’s “public narrative”? They weren’t Fitzsimmons’ stenographers? And their not “your” employees, buddy. Sheesh.
Manufacturing: “FAA’s ‘failing system’ of monitoring Boeing blasted by federal watchdog” [Seattle Times]. “The FAA hasn’t moved to proactively identify risk or demonstrated how it will resolve allegations of undue pressure within Boeing manufacturing, the [the Transportation Department’s inspector general] found. Among the other findings: The FAA doesn’t have an effective system overseeing individual Boeing factories, hasn’t ensured the company has effectively resolved its supplier issues, and hasn’t assessed the effectiveness of Boeing’s safety management system, which focuses on product and workplace safety. ‘By improving its oversight model to better address risk, FAA can help to improve a failing system and restore public trust in the safety of Boeing aircraft,’ the report said. In response, the FAA agreed with the recommendations and pointed to its addition of more safety inspectors in Boeing and Spirit AeroSystems facilities. The agency said it plans to fully implement the inspector general’s recommendations between 2025 and 2028.” • Do I really have to give credit to Buttigeig?
Manufacturing: “Boeing and Airbus have a major headache in common” [Quartz]. “Christian Scherer, head of the commercial airliner division at Airbus, told a gathering of French aerospace journalists that Spirit’s rate of manufacture is ‘not exactly where we would like.’ Airbus is facing pressure to massively increase its airplane deliveries in order to hit its year-end guidance, which it has already had to cut once this year amid supply chain difficulties. When the door plug fell off a Boeing 737 Max 9 in January and triggered a Federal Aviation Administration-imposed throttling of production to address quality control issues, Airbus told investors that it didn’t expect to hit any of its own plane-building roadblocks. But it has — to its customers’ frustration. (Besides the Spirit speed issue, Scherer told the French gaggle that it was also running into delays with engine supplier CFM International… It is especially ironic for Airbus because the window of opportunity that Boeing’s misfortunes opened was due to a fuselage constructed by Spirit, which Boeing spun out in 2005. In order to cut down on so-called ‘traveled work,’ a manufacturing process where plane parts are assembled out-of-order in order to speed completion, Boeing reabsorbed the non-Airbus parts of Spirit in July for $8.3 billion.”
Today’s Fear & Greed Index: 74 Greed (previous close: 70 Greed) [CNN]. One week ago: 73 (Greed). (0 is Extreme Fear; 100 is Extreme Greed). Last updated Oct 11 at 1:44:36 PM ET.
“Calvin’s Dad Explains the Pre-Color World” [Daring Fireball]. • Please click through, but what a pleasure. Calvin’s Dad was the best bullshit artist ever.
Social Media Watch
“Inside the funhouse mirror factory: How social media distorts perceptions of norms” [Current Opinion in Psychology]. “These online dynamics are amplified by the design features and recommendation algorithms on various platforms. For instance, a recent analysis of the algorithm on Twitter/X found that it prioritizes evocative content. This incentivizes users to create this type of content which can help them build a large following while warping public perceptions of norms. Indeed, people who are focused on gaining social status are the most hostile online. These strivers may further distort norms as they rise in status This is compounded due to the fact that there is often little motivation for someone to post a nuanced or moderate opinion on social media. Moreover, nuanced or moderate posts often risk hostility from more extreme ingroup and outgroup members, especially since such hostility has little cost for the aggressor due to the social distance the online environment affords. Indeed, people who are politically moderate were more likely to report being harassed online, even though they were also less likely to post. People who hold less extreme beliefs have less investment into arguing, and when attacked by people who have more strongly held beliefs, perceive it as more hostile. The fact that people who ‘troll’ other people typically have higher dark triad characteristics also does not encourage nuanced debate.” • Hmm.
“Sex bomb: The collateral damage of OnlyFans’ explosive success” [Reuters]. “OnlyFans and its supporters portray the platform as a safe and empowering outlet for lucrative, socially acceptable sex work. Nurses, teachers, police officers and Olympic athletes have posted racy content in pursuit of extra cash. As OnlyFans takes porn into the mainstream, however, the platform also has generated ripple effects that have upended lives in unexpected and sometimes traumatizing ways. Reuters reported some of the most direct harms in investigations that exposed child sexual abuse material and nonconsensual or “revenge porn” posted on the site. Those findings were drawn from police complaints obtained from more than 250 of the largest U.S. law enforcement agencies. But the files also reveal collateral harms: families torn apart, reputations threatened, finances ruined.” • And that’s before, as is the way with all platforms, enshittification kicks in.
“Here’s everyone caught in the web of the Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs allegations so far” [NPR]. • Disappointing. The closest to an A-lister is Jimmy Iovine.
“Cincinnati’s Gold Rush Coins, Steeped In Mystery, Are Worth A Fortune Today” [Handeax]. “We know the Cincinnati company headed westward hauling a machine for striking coins because the diary of one of Doctor Alexander Butler Nixon is preserved at the California State Library in Sacramento. According to that diary, the Cincinnati company ironically realized, once they were on the dusty trail, that they were too well equipped. John Phillip Reid, in a 1976 article for the Hastings Law Journal, described the dilemma: ‘Before reaching Fort Kearney in Nebraska the members of the Cincinnati company had discovered that their wealth was not a source of strength. It was instead a source of disharmony, dissension, and division.'” • Hmm. I’m picturing a survivalist with a machine for striking coins in their basement…
“A language of beautiful impurity” [Wrong Side of History]. “What [English] would look like if Harold II had not died at the famous (breme) battle (gouth) of Hastings – and English had not undergone Frenchification following the Norman Conquest: In this world, lamentation is sorrowword, unanimous becomes sameheart and acceptable is replaced with thankworthy. The US Declaration of Independence would be the ‘Forthspell of Selfdom’ while Alcoholics Anonymous renamed as The Unnamed Overdrinkers.• I rather like “The Unnamed Overdrinkers” (even if anonymous means I don’t choose to give me name, not that I don’t have one). Doubtless examples could be multiplied.
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142 comments
Comments are closed.
Thanx for covering the Dorito thing for those of us who don’t Tweet. Will Dorito now be boycotted? (I like Doritos).
And there’s a little hurricane news in that at least one contractor has been engaged, says they are hiring and that the cleanup expected to take 3 to 6 months. That’s in my town and sounds like the needed time. I’m sure NC will take much longer.
NC needs to be cleaned up? What is this? A pronunciamento of the Department of Rightthink? I hadn’t heard about NC being put on the Toxic Narrative Site Cleanup list.
Props, (or not,) to the Demiparnom (Democrat Party Nomenklatura) who initiated this Sanity Drive.
Do not stay safe. Stay compliant. Maintain your status.
North Carolina not Naked Capitalism (I assume)
Ah, but that’s the ‘power’ of acronyms, they can be interpreted in so many ways. The perfect “plausible deniability” mechanism.
Also, just what sort of “clean up” is meant here? Shipping all of those pesky “Carolina Deplorables” off to the refurbished Nippon American “settlement shelter camps” in the California desert?
The financial elites still remember the Harlan County War, and want revenge.
I think that clip speaks for itself. I know I can’t come up with an interpretation that doesn’t come across as massively disrespectful to mainstream voters. Office holders do not do that kind of stuff, not ever. The “talent” doesn’t have that many responsibilities but not doing obviously stupid stuff is an important part of getting reelected.
They’ve successfully divorced their lives from mainstream society and it shows.
There are many of my PMC friends who would love to be that girl on her knees. They truly worship Whitmer (big Gretch they call her) and the democrats (but some hate the progressives). They can do NOTHING wrong, nothing. Their life consists of loving and praising the dems, while hating Trump, the GOP, and just about anyone else who isn’t them.
It is truly amazing. I don’t get it.
There’s some sort of connection between “girl on her knees” and that “Onlyfans” article, if only I could put my . . . digit on it.
Incidentally, Doritoes are very good as firelighters.
I don’t get it either. I’ve encountered it an awful lot lately.
It seems amazing to me that when St. Hillary proposed a faithless electors scheme, that was to save democracy. But when the Donald talked about it, it’s a coup? And when the Intelligence Community and left leaning billionaires get a pocket veto on elected officials and proposals that voters want, that’s democratic. But if right leaning billionaires act to support their preferred candidates using the tools at their disposal, that’s anti-democratic.
I think the a good way to sum it up is the Democrats insist that you take them literally, which gives them an opportunity to equivocate endlessly, like people who argue over the rules for a boardgames so much its not fun anymore. But the Democrats also ask you to not take them seriously. As in, “we don’t really mean defund the police”, c’mon man… whereas the Republicans and especially Trump insist that you take them seriously but not literally. “Yeah, I know what Trump said about cats and dogs but what he meant was…”
I also think the ridiculous rumors around hurricanes as a weapon capture the feeling right now perfectly. Because the electorate perfectly understands that the people who told them to code, and then eliminated low level coding jobs with AI; the same people who called them deplorables; the same people who blame low information voters for not being smart enough to vote correctly; the same people who place no value on home or family; the same people who instituted lock down rules that privileged WFH for the laptop class while asking “essential workers” to suffer; the same people who are always “fighting for”, but are never interested in winning; the same people who care about the border in Ukraine and Israel more than the southern US border; those people who claim the mantle of democracy while hating the demos… if they could be as angry gods and use a hurricane to erase the people of this country in places they didn’t like, they absolutely would do that.
Judging by the response when the Marshall Fire made the national news out here, a whole host of construction companies are pulling up stakes and moving east to capitalize on the opportunity to rebuild. And good on them, it’s hard work getting all the debris out (they are still busy demolishing the foundations of houses that were lost, two years on).
Just another anecdotal data point since this AM.
In my office is a 25 year old young Latino male employee. He has talked about on numerous occasions that the entire family is very observant with mass etc. I just asked him today what he felt of the entire Dorito situation.
“I did not even know about this until this AM. You already know about me, Doc, I am voting for Trump. (I am kind of a father figure to so many in my office. This young man has discussed this with me in private for months – he has been almost asking me for permission to vote his conscience instead of the Democratic party of his young life. He and so many young Latino men I know are completely put off by what has happened to the military, the wide-open borders and – especially those with kids – the drag queen story hour phenomenon and the “porn books” in the 1st grade library. The feeling is overwhelming for many of them.) Someone put this video in my parent’s and grandparent’s meeting at the church yesterday evening. My mom told me there were audible gasps. My parents were not even registered to vote. They and many of their friends were so upset about this that someone’s grandson will bring his van and they are all headed down to the county office today to get registered. They were not going to vote, but now they are all voting Trump. They are very sad and upset. My grandma just shakes her head. My granddad just talks about Satan and blasphemy.”
As I stated, those who think this is no big deal are just not living in reality. Those who think that only social media mavens will be seeing this are also incorrect. This is being played all over the USA today and I would suspect into the Sunday services. Those who are so culturally illiterate as to not realize this would be a problem really have absolutely no business in government leadership.
Beyond my meme-grade….but I think part of Doritos-gate is attributable to Kamala’s love of Doritos going viral in an incredible small corner of social media—and the rest of us are not in on the joke. (not that that excuses anything)
In one interview, the under-35 interviewer was trying to get a “boxers or briefs” moment by asking Kamala about her guilty pleasures (or something along those lines)….and Kamala went into a long-winded diatribe about Doritos, cuz the 2024 electorate really wants to know who they want to drink a beer and have snacks with?
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=harris+doritos
here is patient zero for Doritos-gate (from a pro-RFK account, I can’t find the original source—as the search function is lousy)
https://x.com/AV24org/status/1844808227533574567
[I can’t find the original source]
It’s the “Vice President Kamala Harris Interview | All the Smoke Special Edition with Matt Barnes & Stephen Jackson” episode, posted to yt Sept. 30.
“On a very special edition of ALL THE SMOKE, Matt and Stak sit down for an exclusive interview with current Vice President and Democratic nominee for the 2024 presidential election, Kamala Harris.
Vice President Harris shares her plan to boost the economy and her perspective on America’s progress on social justice. Plus, she discusses her Bay Area roots, how she deals with personal character attacks, cannabis legislation and more.
This interview was recorded on Tuesday, September 24th at the Vice President’s Residence in Washington DC.”
(sports pod, big audience)
P.S. Can’t watch it at all. Loads of commentary in response to it out there, though.
The voices of both of the candidates are, shall we say, unmelodious. Painfully unpleasant within seconds. I’m not looking forward to years of having to listen to either of them.
> Beyond my meme-grade….but I think part of Doritos-gate is attributable to Kamala’s love of Doritos going viral in an incredible small corner of social media—and the rest of us are not in on the joke.
Disqualifying in itself.
Did they really think through the optics of a young girl on her knees with her mouth open and her tongue out? (shakes head)
I thought it was funny and weird and I kind of like that Canuck with the bangs. I had no idea it was a Kamala promo. My weird experience with Doritos was in a French grocery store where I had a bag of them in my basket and a girl pointed at them and said “il ne faut pas acheter ça, non c’est pas bon du tout, ça va vous rendre malade” erm, “don’t buy those, they’re awful and will make you ill”
Shook me up and to this day I hesitate when even thinking about buying them lol.
So, what’s the deal with doritos?
In her “interview” with howard stern (yesterday???), stern says he read that when harris found out that she was elected senator from california, she ate a whole bag of doritos. She laughed, of course, and told him it was true, and the bag was “family size.”
Here’s Jimmy Dore’s take. (first 54 seconds)
I’ll ask again–what’s the deal with doritos???
As for the catholicism/communion aspect, I wonder if this is an attempt to revive the once (still??) fashionable feminista shibboleth of referring to “god” as “she.”
PS. According to the stern “interview,” her favorite cereals are Raisin Bran and…wait for it…Special K.
>I’ll ask again–what’s the deal with doritos???
Kamala probably felt the hungries after inhaling a few because you know, celebrating her victory. Doritos it was.
Peanut butter and Doritos were the go-to foods when the day drinkers came back to the office after “lunch”
Because of their pungency, they were believed to mask the smell of alcohol. The smell, somewhat; the effects, however, were mostly still apparent.
I went to college a decade or so before Harris, but I must admit that Doritos were my vending machine late night go to. The snack atrocity that still exists in my life is Cheetos. I cannot imagine eating a large bag of Doritos for any reason, but especially not when there would are better and tastier alternatives. Hell real tortilla chips and salsa would beat out the Cheetos, something I still get cravings for, much less Doritos. And chips and salsa is I am sure in ample supply in San Francisco, for one.
There is no way Harris celebrated a victory with Doritos, it was yet another misguided attempt to pretend to be one of the people.
The fried, crunchy Cheetos are illegal in the EU for some reason. I think it’s to do with an oil in them. I bring those back from the US sometimes, just to pig out on lol. Also love me some Grape Nuts, unavailable here but I think that’s just due to the fact that Europeans won’t eat breakfast cereal that tastes like crushed rocks flavored with raw molasses. I make muffins from it.
> she ate a whole bag of doritos. She laughed, of course, and told him it was true, and the bag was “family size.”
She must have been thirsty….
Best part in my opinion is Doritos are not even a food, ultra processed junk. So in mimicking the Rite of Communion they are reducing the Body of Christ to an ultra processed junk snack that is bad for your health.
Fun fact – Doritos are so full of seed oil that they make great fire starters ….
Just watched that Dorito clip.
Well, well, well … who are the weird ones now?
Anglish is doubleplusgood.
I taught senior high school English for the better part of a decade (25 years ago) and one of the concepts I enjoyed teaching most was the evolution of the language from Old English (viz. Beowulf) through Middle English (Chaucer) and Elizabethan English (Shakespeare) to the subtler changes in the 18th and 19th century right up to modern and contemporary English. Also the associated changes in target audiences and the shift from an oral to written culture with all of the implications of both.
When I worked in SF in the late 70’s and early 80’s I saw what there was to see and that Dorito video is straight up D/S.
You could insert it into a Lesbian Kink film and it would fit in seamlessly.
Harris is out of the SF political scene and this type of action is very mild compared to what you see at some SF political events.
aye. when i first saw it, late, due to IMDoc…my first thought was “well…i wish they’d come over…”
as yard art, at least…perhaps bartendress.
but im a snaggletoothed widower on a dead end dirt road and a lonely old drunk, to boot.
ill send it to my very catholic MIL/Suegra in the morning…see what she says.
she keeps coping on Kamel(head ringwraith)…trying to get validation from me on it(being one of 2 geniuses in the familia)…and i aint havin any of it, since ive never lied to her.
(hard part, is where to begin,lol…the entire counternarrative framework i go by is frelling huge….one reason i dont mind taking her to san antone for doctor things)
What’s D/S?
Dominance and Submission.
think leather clad dominant woman with a strap on, and a cowering guy in a chastity cage(around his johnson).
its Kink.
and may or may not involve rope.
its pretty derned diverse.
not cotton to short declarative statements.
humans are strange…but so universally strange, that it really aint strange.
number one pron search in india, fer instance, is lactation.
go figger.
Boy, don’t I feel stupid….
Oh dear heart, don’t feel bad. There are some things that one stumbles upon by accident, or through a perverse yearning for “experience,” and later wishes one had avoided.
Besides, the initial demoralization is but the first step in establishing the Dom/Sub bond. Like Drill Instructors at basic training, the experienced Dominant first degrades and destroys one’s sense of self and self-respect so as to create a living tabula rasa upon which to build the perfect submissive personality. (The same happens in many families.)
Stay strong and never doubt your essential worth.
I didn’t get d/s either Katniss. S&M is how I have heard such shenanigans called. As for the video, as did Lambert, I saw mild S&M not a Catholic Church parody. I worked in a Catholic high school library for a few years back in the day. I am Protestant (atheist really) but in Ontario, the catholic school board gets public funds thus is not allowed to discriminate by religion and hire or educate only Catholics. Any communion ceremonies I witnessed, wafers were always placed in the hand with communicant standing, not kneeling. I was told it was so as not to pass along germs/illness – imagine priest inadvertently touching one tongue, then another.
So tone deaf of the Dems to participate in such an in-joke – patronizing and insulting. And clearly many others are finding it offensive, so really what was the point??
Down here in the somewhat older style Roman Catholic Church region, the video is definitely viewed as an insult to the Church, and by association, those who are communicants to the Church.
It is within living memory here in the North American Deep South that Roman Catholics had crosses burned on their lawns by the Klan, simply for being Catholics. That level of fear is easily rekindled by such egregious examples of class arrogance and superiority.
I’ll speculate that this was pitched as a “clever” example of virtue signaling. “All the cool kids will get it and marvel at our level of Super Cool.” Thus, an example of the pitfalls of short sightedness. It speaks of the Democrat Party not having sufficiently independent “editors” and “image consultants.”
I think you’re right, that catholics will see this as an insult to the church. But as one who was raised catholic, in a very old-school, heavily ethnic, blue-collar area, I remain insulted every single day by a catholic church, both clergy and laity, who seem too inconvenienced, and too indifferent, to the god-damned genocide going on day after day in the Middle East, and to the awful carnage in ukraine, to raise their voices up to heaven and plead to god for his relief and justice. A genocide and carnage that their catholic president is up to his eyeballs in. And I haven’t even mentioned nuclear war as a perfunctory political talking point. That’s hardly on their catholic radar; better to be PO’d at some inane video, than the murder of some Muslims they don’t know, and could care less about. Same old catholic chutzpah I turned my back on, long ago.
I wasn’t going to watch it, but everybody else was watching it and — Good Heavens!
I’ve been speculating for a few election cycles about what must go in in Democrat campaign media strategy meetings:
“What do you think of this propaganda?”
“Well myself, I see right away that it’s propaganda. Lucky we don’t have to convince me. It’ll hit the rubes like a hammer.”
This conviction that they are totally above it all would be the thing that makes them so tin-eared.
That video plays right into their ideas about being absolutely in control. Of course they love it.
not at all, hon.
shall i quote Miranda,lol?
its cool that you’re not “cool” to these sorts of things.
you have the commentariat to keep you informed.
but know that, when you scratch a human…youll likely find some wierd-ass fetish or kink.
the problem i have, is when such kinksters try to legislate against kink.
ie: hypocrisy.
ie:”wide stance”, or “dennis hastart”,lol.
fuckers.
they make everything more difficult for us honest and honorable sexfiends.
(who are, whether you know it or not, your kids teacher, the librarian, the deputy, the mayor, your best friend,lol)
> Harris is out of the SF political scene and this type of action is very mild compared to what you see at some SF political events.
Yes, but Big Gretch?
she’s obviously done this sort of thing before.
ergo, this was tame, to her.
ive watched it 5 times.
wouldnt be surprised if shes a dom, or at least into it at some level.
wheres the oppo?
lol
theres always frelling video….thats why(well, one of the reasons) i never even tried to run for office…too wild a life.
Depends on whether or not you think entrapment is a kink.
Considering Kamala’s attitude towards Truant Moms, “Lock ’em up!” I would not find that “entrapment” (enstrapment?) was too outre for this crowd.
Pro tip: You know you are in the wrong place when the masseuse asks you if you would like a “Happy Double Ending.”
There is definitely a light kink vibe there.
From the video we might also infer some intentions about access journalism and grant policies under her administration.
When I discovered that “accepting the chip” was a way of having the Mark of the Beast graven upon one, I never imagined that this kind of “chip” was meant. Just goes to show ya, don’t it.
> “accepting the chip” was a way of having the Mark of the Beast graven upon one
Really? That exact phrase?
Yes – that is VERY COMMON phraseology in the discussions on the other side of the family that are nigh onto snake handlers –
Any kind of inserted computer chip that is meant to be permanent – is often yelled from the pulpit as “accepting the chip” or “accepting the Mark”.
This is a huge reason why anyone familiar with that entire culture covering vast swaths of the USA knows that something like the “no cash plans” or CBDC is DOA. If you think the COVID vaccine was bad – just wait. The entire CBDC framework is yet more evidence that our elite are entirely detached from the regular people.
i agree, totally, IMDoc…i live among them.
vax is one thing…pre-covid, at least….but chips under the skin/in the blood is a whole other rodeo.
the entire hinterlands would rise up.
trust must be earned, after all, and “our betters” have done the exact opposite.
theyll barter, instead, if it comes o it.
im sure of this(hence all that black pepper and bic lighters and 22 shells in my larder)
There is a large and active “End Times” movement in America. One favourite ‘theory’ is that the Globalists will mandate that all people will have to accept having an Identity Chip implant in order to be permitted to take part in the World Digital Currency. No chip, aka the Mark of the Beast, no access to everything one needs a medium of exchange to have access to, such as food, utilities, banking, Government services, etc. etc.
I am not certain about the use of “graven” as a descriptor for the function. It doesn’t ‘fit’ very well, I agree. As you have remarked before, “Code is law.” Code is basically a collection of words and numbers. So, words do matter. And what could be any closer to ‘Code’ than the “Number of the Beast.” Said Number being the Kabbalistic manipulation of the transposition of letters and numbers. Kabbalism is then, arguably, an early form of algorithm.
In defense of my torturous language, one notes that ‘graven’ refers primarily to carving, as on an inanimate object. Carrying over the conceit, that would make the class of ‘untermenschen’ who will be so graven a class of objects, things to be carved upon. The perfect ‘Master Slave’ relationship is therefore established between those who carve and those who are carven upon. Neo-liberalism in all of its gaudy finery.
That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.
the chips, themselves, are graven…by a laser or something.
thats the connection.
and as such will be universally rejected out here where i am.
hell or high water.
they just wont do it.
methodist, lutheran, catholic, coc, baptist, and all the rest of them.
it just aint gonna happen.
they’ll secede as a county, first.(amfotas seedthought sprouting,lol)
they may pay with thir fones…a little bit…now…
but no cash,chips undr skin etc is exactly what theyve been warned about.
aint gonna happen.
want a hobbsean civil war?
try to do all that.
so…lol…the frelling Mark of the Beast is accepting a dorito as communion?
what a world theyve made!
again, wheres the oppo research?
such things take at least 2 people…and often involve filming.
its out there.
same thing i said about lindseyG and texas’ own radio preacher/lite gov…where are the rent boys?
come forth!
let us be rid of these people.
Hah! It’s obvious now that Kamala has been to the Nimrod School of Communication.
https://x.com/OlgaBazova/status/1842980653874512312
Yeah that. I’ve made furtive attempts to locate a CHIPS Act/Doritos Meme to no avail. Did this ‘viral’ meme include this level of squick?
May be it´s ok to quote this excerpt from the latest interview between “Useful Idiots” and Noman Finkelstein on Gaza. Found it touching:
“(…)
Norm points out that this is not, as Western and Israeli media claims, an “Israel-Hamas war.” This is not war. This is genocide. And Israel is not targeting Hamas; they are killing civilians, destroying civilian infrastructure, and picking off journalists, health workers, and children.
“I read this letter,” he tells us, “from sixty-five physicians from around the world who gave testimony as to what they observed. And every one of the physicians testified that the children who were coming into the hospital had bullet wounds to the skull or to the chest. No shrapnel. It wasn’t bombs and shrapnel. It was targeted bullet wounds to the skull and to the chest of children. What does that have to do with war?”
“There were fifty-four disabled children who used the school in the convent complex. They fired two shells at it. What does that have to do with war?”
Norman also recalls meeting Hezbollah members, and shares what he got wrong about the organization. “Israel, he says, “is willing to kill for material benefit, and Hezbollah and Hamas are willing to die for survival” He also recounts his time meeting Hamas leaders, and explains Israel’s unfair advantage:
“Israel is the entrenched, concentrated manifestation of Western imperialism. It’s got deep roots. It’s got the whole Western system behind it, that Western system which won’t let go. It will nuke China before it lets go of its global dominance. And in order to defeat it, it requires a very long-term struggle and intense calculation.”
Subscribe for the full interview where Norman explains this despair, and the generational hopelessness which lacks historical precedent.
“Our generation,” he laments, “has, for good reason, lost the belief, the conviction that we have the force of history behind us. That we have the force of justice behind us. Our generation believes there’s a good chance we’ll be defeated. There’s a good chance we’re not going to win.”
But that doesn’t mean we should give up.
“The only thing I can say as a conclusion is you never know. You can only know one thing for certain: If you do nothing, it can only get worse.”
It’s that certainty that he says keeps him going. “If you resist, there are moments where it looks very grim. And then there’s that folk song, it’s always darkest before the dawn. It’s this hope that keeps me carrying on. It’s always darkest before the dawn.”
“There’s another reality. There’s something in the human constitution that simply can’t do nothing. In the face of such death and devastation, you just can’t.”
(…)”
To that I´d answer with Dough Henwood´s interview with Aurélie Daher on Hezbollah (which I already posted yesterday or so). There is not an ounce of surrender implied. “That´s the spirit” I assume.
2nd half
https://shout.lbo-talk.org/lbo/RadioArchive/2024/24_10_03.mp3
Echoes of the Gramsci quote from Links this morning
I had to scratch the itch and read that law review article but I stopped after the introductory sections because too many of the footnotes were to the author as the source of his own quotations (and he seems to have been pushing this thesus like a crank). Some lawyers write beautifully but although this one likes the sound of his own voice, his phrasing, which superficially like Lord Denning or Oliver Wendell Holmes, smells of the lamp….
The itch was because he referred the “esoteric” English law doctrine of joint principality. First, it is not esoteric, merely uncommonly charged. It is a core tenet of criminal culpability however – and a profoundly controversial one because it reaches so far. Second, nobody in England calls it joint principality. Try for yourself on Google! It is called “joint enterprise”.
Joint enterprise has seen gang members or merely people who join a crowd on the day convicted of murder when they never physically touched or sometimes even saw the victim. It is implicated in several causes célèbres that are potential miscarriages of justice desperately needs reform in the UK. It covers far more than where the fatal blow cannot be assigned among multiple attackers.
One of the points the author tries to stand up in the introduction is that helping a crime is by definition providing an irrelevant element to committing it and thus not committing it or otherwise it would simply be committing it. This is rubbish. Say I put you on my shoulders so you can shoot a man through the window? My help is essential but I didn’t kill anybody, particularly if I did not know what you intended.
Yard signs…
We’ve lived in our house for over 30 years and as far as I can remember, the guy across the street has lived there just as long. Today I noticed a yard sign in his front yard. In thirty years, I can never remember him putting out a yard sign for any election. Yet, today there it was…a yard sign that said, “Things were better” on the top, “TRUMP” on the bottom.
“street’ not “streets”. I could have sworn I changed it.
NW Ohio here. I have noticed more signs recently. Mostly Trump.
nw texas hill country, just south of the geograpcal center of texas.
only yard signs ive seen are for trump and ted cruz…and those only in the yards…and on the businesses…of the hard core gop people(the ones who attend the meetings of the local party apparatus).
nobody else seems to care.
and the dems, as usual, are in invisible mode.
blending in to the background, like certain lizards, when they arent hiding in their hillforts.
and…weirdly, i think…a handful of those businesses…as well as several of the more ostentatious gates all out in the wilderness…have maintained near shrines to trump since 2015….flags…often with ground spotlights pointed at them…large banners…and all of this apparently maintained(by poor brown folks, of course) and replaced when needed.
notably, perhaps, none of these cult like displays have included vance in any of the hagiography.
the ordinary yard signs of the party members, do.
Just drove through a swath of rural New Hampshire today. I saw a good number of signs for both Trump and Harris, but more for Trump – maybe 55-60% for Trump and 40-45% for Harris. Not surprisingly, the Trump displays tended to be much bigger – one yard had a larger than life reproduction of the iconic post-assassination attempt fist pump. There were far more signs for state elections than for either presidential candidate though.
Kamala did a town hall on Univision, the massive Spanish Language network. Answered questions from the audience.
Then some careless person in the control room cut to a camera behind her sweeping the room.
For a couple of seconds one could see the floor level and eye level teleprompters feeding her what to say.
As the pan continued, they quickly turned off the teleprompters, but too late!
This fake story is already debunked in the body of the post, which you clearly did not read. I hope you find the happiness you seek. Elsewhere.
It’s stuck in my X timeline because you can’t undo a retweet once it’s settled in. All I can do now is RT it as false, but that just draws more atttention to the false claim.
I trust Julie Kelly but I need to learn not to trust her social media retweets.
While that teleprompter claim may have been “debunked,” here’s Glenn Greenwald interviewing Michael Tracey, who attended the “event.”
Tracey attempted to interview some of the questioners but was told they would not be made “available.” Apparently the “undecided voters” who were chosen to question the candidate in Vegas were flown in from parts unknown. The others in the audience were sourced from a seat filler company. Yes, I guess there is such a thing.
So, while the debate rages over the teleprompter, the actual audience and their “questions” and their status as “undecided” may be the real story.
Sure. Tracey’s been doing great work.
But let’s deal with the story before us (and avoid, if I may say it) goalpost-shifting. I mean, the teleprompter was the “real story” until it wasn’t.
How can the teleprompter be for the moderator when he’s sitting behind it, facing Harris?
>Calvin’s Dad Explains the Pre-Color World
Reminds me of how I had my kids pronouncing the burger place “Five Guys” as “Five Gees“, after convincing them that it was a chain from Montreal started by five friends named Guy (e.g., Guy LaFleur, Guy Carbonneau, etc.).
Worked for years until one of them went there with a friend. I think she’ll eventually trust me again.
hellyeah.
my eldest, now almost 23(!!), has been bringing his girlfriend on sundays to hang out with dear old dad at the wilderness bar.
so we’ve had occasion to revisit many of the deadpan-serious bullshit i visited upon him over the years.
mostly for his own good, it turns out.
usually manipulating him into thinking for himself.
worked.
worked with youngest, too.(almost 19(!!!))
both are only now coming to appreciate such efforts.
> a chain from Montreal started by five friends named Guy (e.g., Guy LaFleur, Guy Carbonneau, etc.).
My hat is off, sir.
My mom used to tell the stroy of how once when she was a substitute teacher for a 1st grade class in small town North Carolina (near Davidson, another small town, where my father had his first faculty position at the famous College there). She was doing an attendance roll call and went through the lsit when she called out the name “Guy Smith” and when no student answered she marked him as absent, But after finishing the roll call she realized that one young boy had not responded to any of the called names and that the number of students present was the same as the roll call. She asked the boy “didn’t I call your name?” and he responded “no” so she asked “well then, what is your name?”
The kid responded “Gooey.”
Could be apocrophal, but it was funny.
Saw that cartoon first a coupla years ago and immediately grabbed a copy for my files. It’s pure genius so thanks for the reminder.
You just reminded me of my first pseudonym that I hadn’t thought of in years – my pen name for my high school French class “newspaper” was Guy de Mot Puissant.
And for some reason I have a sudden craving for Indian clarified butter…
I added orts and scraps. Kamala didn’t have a great week.
As Kamala the Cheetah says: “It’s not easy being sleazy.”
Micro North American Deep South Zeitgeist Report.
Driving along the main drag yesterday, coming home, I was passing the spot, adjacent to the State University campus where the Mickey Ds is situated. Across the street from the “food” dispersal site is an empty lot of about a half acre in size. Sitting on a broken segment of old front wall, there having been a large house many years ago on that site, I spied a grungily thirty-something sitting with a twelve pack of beer drinking his afternoon away. Several empties were neatly ranked next to the gentleman. No one was paying the man any attention whatsoever. This boozing venue is next to the public sidewalk, situated in a shady spot. I found the spectacle both amusing and depressing in equal measure.
Much to our surprise, our mail began appearing in the mailbox early in the day. We had become used to waiting till late afternoon for our mail delivery. I buttonholed the carrier and asked the whys and wherebyes. It seems that the local Post Office, in it’s infinite wisdom, has eliminated one of the local mail routes, even though mail volume is increasing locally, and redesigned the remaining routes. Thus, we are now at the beginning of a route, rather than at the end. If this is a National trend, expect your mail carriers to become even more short tempered and distracted than usual. Someone, (um, we all know, but shall not say, [who wants to accidentally conjure up a Demon?]) has decided to tighten the screws upon the last big unprivatized segment of the American business ecology. The end game is obvious to we cynically inclined persons. I have noticed that packages are now arriving a day later than they usually did a year ago.
To paraphrase the patron saint of the American mails, when asked by a lady outside the hall in Philadelphia, “Dr. Franklin, what do we have?” “Madame,” he replied, “we have a Public Post Office, if we can keep it.”
Perhaps that was De Joy of which Kamala spoke recently.
A surprising increase in visibly homeless people “on the street” lately. The “Help. Need sustenance.” signs have reappeared on strategic street corners. I counted three in a three or four minute drive home from the close by Bigg Boxx Store last weekend. I hesitate to speculate on the social conditions to come if we get a cold winter.
Late breaking news, of a strictly local nature.
I noticed an SUV with two ‘Emo’ women park in my neighbour’s driveway around noon. I played “Nosey Neighbour” and observed. This is out of the usual run of events here. They kept the motor running, and one of the two, a younger, middle sized female with lime green hair streaks, got out of the vehicle and walked around the neighbour’s house, taking pictures on their cell phone. He was at work at the time. After ten minutes or so, the two drove off.
When the neighbour came home from work just now, he works very early hours, he denied any knowledge of the two females. Checking the house, he found that someone had attempted to push in the front door. The lock was jammed and he had to kick the door back out a bit to loosen the lock. He is out of town this weekend and I now have a legitimate reason to play “nosey neighbour.’ Oh joy, (there’s that campaign slogan again,) brazen property crime rears it’s ugly, particoloured haired head.
Stay safe. Keep an eye out for friends and neighbours.
I have four security cameras that cover all corners of my property. I highly recommend them. I did it myself not hard, not expensive.
I had someone try to get in my vehicle last year. I got it all. Gave the pictures and video to the cops. Easy as could be. Of course they never caught him.
I wrote a comment that went into the ozone.
In any case, the activist group of atomic-bomb survivors known as Nihon Hidankyo received the Nobel Peace Prize today.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iCm3CStSao8
I recommend watching the whole video.
wow.
thanks for that DJG
maybe the Nobel people…like apparently Monbiot, this morning with Chris Hedges…want to come in from the fawning neoliberal cold they’ve been in for so long.
i sure hope so.
i sent hedges and monbiot to my boys.
labeled “important”.
but i know it will be no new thing to them.
heard it their whole speaking lives.
but multiple sources…and different language than dad…is a good thing.
fills it out.
one mind at a time.
Monbiot is right about the wickedness of capitalism. Yet he acts as its propagandist Jonathan Cook
Capitalism is irredeemably destructive, warns George Monbiot. So why is he shilling for the Guardian, when its role is to create bipartisan support for crushing the anti-capitalist, anti-war left?
easy answer is he’s got a mortgage.
slightly less easy answer is that theres video.
“dead girl, or a live boy”,etc.
our governmnets, state and federal and local, are all but indistinguishable in this regard…and have been for all my life.
where does “the mob” end, and legitimate(sic) government, begin?from where i sit, theres no such distinction to be made.
the entire edifice is wholly corrupt.
My 2c is Monbiot has long been an example of managed (or acceptable if you prefer) opposition. Seemingly radical articles and positions but unwilling to actually risk excommunication from the mainstream.
The Guardian itself long played this role in the British media landscape. Post-Snowden it has morphed into something much uglier of course.
Dear Mr Obama, the anti-genocide candidate also happens to be a woman. No love for that kind of woman?
#TrumpSmallDonors
Thanks for the follow up! This provides some answers to the questions I asked yesterday (via NC)
So “financial struggle” over “lack of excitement” it seems to be. The wells only run so deep, and people who like Trump, and are willing to donate to him, aren’t keen on extending that financial support to all and sundry in the GOP.
I went to Catholic school for 12 years… receiving Communion on the tongue back then (80’s-90’s) was optional, and we all considered it a weird thing to do. Most of us had it placed in the hand.
once and a while, one of the class smartasses would open their mouth to receive it on the tongue when they knew people were watching and it would get a laugh.
i only go to the catholic church for funerals and weddings and baptisms and such that are important to me…and i prefer the graveside, etc part of the things…being all open, and with multiple avenues of escape and evasion.
that said…every time ive been in the last 30 years, they take it on the tongue from the priest.
ive seen zero exceptions in that time…and thats not only the church out here…but the one i took Tam to in san antone so she could pray the rosary before big medical deals(they had a lady chapel at that one…dont remember the name, but its on Wurtzbach, north of fredricksburg road…no po folks there, notably….looked at us askance, but were polite and welcoming after that.
My experience is similar to yours. I rarely see anyone take Communion on the tongue these days, and it is received standing up. When I made my First Communion in 1970 it was placed on the tongue, but even back then we were standing, not kneeling.
I made my First back in the late 50s. Host placed on tongue and kneeling at altar rail.
I have not been a practicing Catholic for over sixty years and I found the dorito thing very offensive and there are not too many things I haven’t seen or heard about.
I am still planning on writing in Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Stein pissed me off wasting money and Green credibility challenging tRump’s PA win back in ‘16.
And an incredibly stupid stunt.
In Quebec of the late 60s my First Communion was taken kneeling. I also remember attending Mass at a Parish where the priest had his back to us at the altar rather than facing the congregation, but never that I can recall an entirely Latin mass.
Since the election is now close, and it looks like Mz. Harris will drop back into obscurity like a certain Republican female politica did after her Vice Presidential campaign some time ago, I feel it incumbent upon me to broach the Proto Meme of the “Kamala Sutra.”
I’ll start things off with a gauche utterance:
The Kamala Sutra definition of a None Event; What if they gave an election and no one came?
Or, Why does Kamala always look up? [See the appropriate Mary Mcarthy quote about Elanore Roosevelt.]
The Kamala Sutra sections concerning “technique” are divided and organized by “size of the donation.”
Etc. etc.
Stay, something or other, always twirling, twirling, twirling towards freedom.
i checked X…hardly anything, yet..so very proto,lol.
im sure its coming.
i also checked the one porn aggregator still available in texas(because they banned porn, in their infinite wisdom and in pursuit of ultimate freedom and joy)…and didnt find much of note…some old parody stuff with women who didnt really look like her,lol.
it was much better during palintimes.
but pornhub is where you find those kinds of hot off the presses risque/pornographic parodies of contemporary events.
but that site was the first one texas gooberment went after.
(they all have VPNs, of course..there, in the big pink granite whorehouse in the big middle of austin(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y5EkcuhBwiU))
and,lol…i helped carry a sh&tfaced Marvin Zindler out of a bar off of bellaire one night….i was drinkin with college buddies who worked at the station, and they of course had a bar they all went to. he was a hoot, and really a very kind man.
Here in Mississippi, the State government legislated that, to protect the children and horses, all ‘links’ to P—Hub had to be identified with “Proper ID.” Needless to say, even the “outed” Blushing Brides of Jackson don’t want that information “out there.”
I can see a time in the not too far future where those with “histories” of p— use are sent to mandatory “Sensitivity Training” sessions out at the old County Prison Farm site. {And I do not mean a ‘Chicken Farm’ either.}
yeah. same thing in texas.
im just too lazy to figure out a VPN.
as the help, out here, i learned from my past experience in east texas…to take pictures…and snag documets, etc…and those are all on a flash drive way out there in the wind, with folks that i trust enough to have a google alert about my untimely demise(eaten by sharks, etc)
i got dirt on all sorts of locally powerful folks,lol.
and they know it.
i am shameless; they are not.
i learned a lot from the russians,lol.
furthered my assertion of my right, per Scalia, to be let alone.
Well, when life gives you lemons…
Cover of the Kamala Sutra sporting a two-panel manga (“This is fine” détourné):
Left panel: Kamala in the flaming room, looking up.
Right panel: Kamala looking up, now with her mouth open, receiving a Dorito from a donor hand extended down from above, hand has a suited but hairy wrist and Davos shiny cufflinks. (Hmm, maybe not kinky enough?)
There must be some whizzbang AI app that can generate this.
> Why does Kamala always look up?
She is short.
“Apple said to restrict workers Slack, social media usage”
https://archive.ph/iaOhK
Looks like an NLRB complaint was filed and they’re being investigated. I would like to know if it was the worker’s personal, or work slack account that they were using to push for workplace changes. It would probably matter because work accounts are the property of the employer and they can limit use as they see fit. At least, that is how I think it works.
If Apple is making employees delete social media posts that are not hosted on work servers, as in their personal social media, then that sounds like maybe something a good lawyer can make Apple pay for, in terms of violating labor laws, though I have no idea what the black letter law is so consider this just a guess.
Musical accompaniment:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_lt4O-EHNnw
I think “Unnamed Overdrinkers” is a great name for a bluegrass band.
In keeping with a theme, I played touch football for 20 years on a team called the “Slow Fat White Guys”
daily mail(!!) thing on Antonov:
so sad that its the yellow press that reports on this kinda thing…and vogue, of course…and whatever that young lady’s mag is that Lambert always references.
the russians continue to make sense, be reasonable, and fail to be the crazy bomb throwing commie caricatures our gov/media make them out to be.
again, i dont get out much…but i have heard nothing in the wild about russia having, essentially, thrown down a gauntlet.
drawn a line in the sand, as it were(something every native texan understands congenitally)
we’r literally sleepwalking into armageddon…”what rough beast…”, etc
libdems:everythings fine…russia is a basket case…israel uber alles…we are all still stuck in 1998!!!…forever!!!
oldgop: jesus is fikken to cum.
newgop:jesus is fikken to cum, but we really like small towns…and unions….we keep the weird shit off site, or in the basement.
I am not comforted by the fact that the Man who has his thumb on the big red button is a pissy old dry drunk with Dementia.
I hope that Dr Jill is using plenty of talcum powder…there’s no telling what he’d do if he gets a bad rash.
Don’t worry about Biden and the red button. A President can’t launch nuclear weapons. It takes a team effort. A president can be overridden by a number of people within the bureaucracy. Daniel Ellsberg made a point of describing the “football” as merely show.
Boeing death spiral?
Boeing Will Cut 17,000 Jobs in Bid to Slash Costs NYT archive
>A new chief executive is restructuring the aerospace manufacturer, which has been losing money for several years while struggling to improve production quality.
> Boeing Will Cut 17,000 Jobs
Hopefully all executives and managers.
🛎️🛎️🛎️
Great comment. But whenever I see (hear) those three bells, I always think of the old wheelchair-bound patriarch of the drug cartel family in Breaking Bad. Why? My wires aren’t all plugged in.
Ah yes. Hector Salamanca.
:) #TIL (today I learned)
I am broadly with the seeming consensus around here that our political elites are out of touch.
But lately I’ve been wondering whether the Democrats are deliberately trying to lose this election so they can blame the difficulties of the coming years on ‘the other guys.’
I’m not so certain that the Democrat Party “elite” are that competent. Some of the stunts the Democrat Party are pulling recently will take years to undo.
I’m waiting, patiently, for a “real” populist to arise in the Democrat party bench. If that doesn’t happen, I expect the Democrat Party to eventually Whig Out.
I blame tv, but the fandom of the Democratic Party has inured way too many people. Since 2008:the Democrats have held serve or been blasted more or less. They haven’t advanced anywhere. Clintonistas have been there every step of the way.
Going back to before 2008:
-Bill sank all Summer in 1992 from highs in the mid 60’s to falling over the finish line
-1994
-1996 required Newt Gingrich basically to take a dump on the Capitol steps everyday for two years and then Bill still didn’t break 50%. Centrism was clearly popular.
-2000 Yeesh.
-2002 Yeesh
-2004 Yeesh
One thing that jumps out about 2006 and 2008 is several of the 2008 pickups are where Rahm Emmanuel backed candidates in 2006 lost Kerry/Edwards +5 districts while non-Rahm backed candidates won Cheney/Shrub +5 districts in 2006.
This election is strange, but this is the minds behind “Hillary is your abeula” without the usual two year process where a candidate like Hillary slowly starts to seem vaguely reasonable.
among the doomer types i still talk to, yes…thats the consensus…that kamel(ringwraith) and dems are deliberatly throwing the fight, so as to not be holding the bag when it falls apart fer reals.
given the glossolalia, and the numerous other stupid things they keep doing, it might not be all that crazytalk., after all.
they probably know a lot of stuff we do not.
anybody nearby, keep an eye on the rich airports..teeterborough…hooks, outside of houston, etc.
when the gulfstreams all fly away, it’s on.
If they wanted to throw the fight they could simply have gone with Biden, problem solved.
But where will the gulfstreams fly to? The planet is borked.
They don’t believe that; they will fly to Festung Idaho, New Zealand, or the island where they built their bunker, etc.
> teeterborough…hooks, outside of houston
That’s a good proxy; I’m drawing a blank of the aircraft-in-the air map, but I’m wondering if it covers commercial flights only
It just occurred to me that this is the fallout of a “short” election season. The usual idiotic stuff Team Clinton produces doesn’t get past focus groups or is spread out over longer stretches.
“She’s ready” was a godawful slogan. “Hillary is you abuela”. Running non-stop candidate personality ads on MSDNC was just throwing money into a fire. Flyers darkening Obama’s skin. Trying to cheat to win when you have the lead. Not knowing the rules about delegate allocation. Clearly not understanding how the electoral college works.
Its not that they are out of touch but are simply very stupid, and unfortunately since 1994, they have controlled every element of the Democratic Party or been joined by people who cut their teeth on being the kids of donors in very safe districts.
Isn’t the opposite possibility more concerning? What if this current iteration is the Democrats doing what they think they need to do to win?
From my own little corner of the world, where I have numerous family and friends telling me that the Republicans and conservatives in general will be a minority party after this election, I think this is Team Blue doing what it believes will win votes. I guess we’ll see. The best thing about elections is they provide data on how public and personal perception line up with reality.
RE:[3] (CDC Variants) KP.* very popular. XEC has entered the chat.
Mate at the gym was sick. Is it COVID? I said, “XEC is coming, but it isn’t here yet.” I was wrong. It’s here.
When XEC pops into the chat at 10%, that is significant. It going to be an XEC Christmas.
I added a link on the CBS 60 minutes imbroglio (I didn’t want to just run the clips. for reasons I assume are now obvious).
Taibbi and Kirn talked about this today.
https://www.racket.news/p/america-this-week-october-11-2024
“Here’s everyone caught in the web of the Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs allegations so far” [NPR]. • Disappointing. The closest to an A-lister is Jimmy Iovine.
These suits are in addition to the 120 suits (out of over 3,000 calls)Buzbee was talking about in his press conference. His alleged revelations are still to come.
‘AshleyStevens
@The_Acumen
I told y’all where this was headed. Obama coming out to chastise Black men is a disgusting display of racist paternalism, and it’s unacceptable. None of us should tolerate it. Democrats want to blame everyone but themselves and people who voted FOR Trump.’
Saw Obama when he was Prez do something like this when he finger-wagged black fathers not being there (perhaps because they were being thrown into prison for being black?) and I wondered where this guy would get off. can’t stand the sight of him these days knowing what he was all about.
Maybe Obama doesn’t realize that maybe the average black man sees right through Harris for the fraud she truly is. You know, for things like those that Tulsi Gabbard took her apart on in that infamous debate. They have a memory. They maybe know a few women like that in their lives. We all know some women AND men (Obama) like that who are nothing if not front running chameleons. I could go on but honestly why bother telling you more of what you already know.
And yes, Obama scolding people to vote one way or another doesn’t seem like a great way to go. Kind of highlights what a dick he is.
Never could stand the sight of him. Always a smarmy grifter. Figured when he gave 2004 convention key note address and the “leaked” divorce records of his US senate race opponent the fix was in for him running four years later. The whole thing stunk to high heaven and Obama still has a stench all these years later.
I can’t agree more. The Obama stench is overpowering.
Here is an amateur observer’s individual little observational anecdatum about a particular mainstream ultraprocessed food product.
It is titled ” What do they put in those things?” and here is the link.
https://www.reddit.com/r/NonPoliticalTwitter/comments/1g1e8ph/what_do_they_put_in_those_things/
Cartier Family is not amused by Obama’s condescension – “We ain’t your brother, brother.”
I really don’t know what counts as viral these days, but 600K views in half a day seems like a lot to me.
Yowsers, this campaign and is orders of magnitude worse than the Obama scolding black dudes thing. Very much in the same vein though.
A procession of (I presume) actors proclaiming their manliness via their love of meat and fixing carburettors, their respect for women, and thus why they will “man up” and vote for Harris.
Vibes like an ED drug advert.
https://x.com/JoshWalkos/status/1844560311358992580
[I believe nothing is genuine now, but Kirn has been tweeting about it so I guess it’s real]
As a palate cleanser here’s Muddy Waters performing Mannish Boy live
https://youtu.be/Ansi2ymINL0?si=Et0-Gdd2b1Z8D7DQ
As I understand it one of the “actors” says he eats carburetors for breakfast (couldn’t stomach watching the commercial). US cars have used fuel injection systems for decades and therefore don’t use carburetors . . .
Some “classic” cars (the stuff that real regular people can’t afford) still have carburetors. So these guys, or, the people that they are talking to, are really showing their cakes.
Sorry, but there’s plenty of 50s-80s vintage cars out there owned by all manner of folks. Meanwhile, I replaced the carb on the Briggs&Stratton lawnmower engine last week. $12 from Amazon (assume from China). At that price not worth my time opening up the old one to check it out.
Not like fiddling with dual Strombergs on the old Brit sports car (though I have triple Webers on mine).
This appears to be the creator of the ad.
I think this resonates with people because it’s a view of masculinity we see in our lives but is rarely reflected in the media — especially when some of the loudest voices on the subject are the most insecure and bombastic. Our friends, family, and neighbors are complex men. They can change a tire and enjoy a romcom; chug a beer and run to the store to get tampons for their wives and daughters — the strongest men are the most secure in their masculinity. With the rise of role models like Tim Walz and Doug Emhoff on the national stage, I think the left is finally finding its footing on how to talk about masculinity — I think we’re overdue for a redefinition of what it means to be a man in America and I hope this campaign can start to shape that conversation.
If I were Tim Walz I would be mightily offended being coupled with Doug Emhoff. Now mind you Matt Lauer was considered a regular decent guy…until he wasn’t,but the more we here about Emhoff, the more you could get the impression that his big takeaway from Lauer’s trouble was a better way to lock his office to keep victims in. And while I don’t think Walz is every thing he is being portrayed as in the media, he doesn’t strike me as someone who think this type of behavior was in any way acceptable.
Politics, and ambition, make for strange bedfellows.
The men in that commercial probably all eat quiche too.
May be NC will cover the (absurd) debate over “Should the US be the world´s policeman?” in which Taibbi / Fang participated.
See:
https://www.racket.news/p/should-america-be-the-worlds-policeman
I hope the entire debate content will be accessable to everyone.
The question itself betrays the organisers to share an intellectual level of children.
But I have realized that´s about what D.C. personnel is capable of:
See e.g. this, actually interesting, podcast with Doug Bandow, Stephen Bryen, and Ying Ma
https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/national-insecurity/episodes/U-S–should-enter-into-peace-negotiations-with-Russia-e2l46et/a-a58fgd.
The problem is that Ying Ma, albeit doing a decent job I think, is totally clueless on the Iraq War. And it is the two old horses who have to correct her. And Ma is no outsider, She has her own REPs think tank and according to her own words she used to have some security clearance. (OMG)
But on the other hand, if one follows the incredible bullshit the CIA outlet http://www.spytalk.co comes up with, nothing out of the ordinary I guess.
The entire podcast with Ma though, is worth the time I think.
I did post it back then. But the Iraq question is up again now obviously and for that see 2nd half of the podcast.
p.s. Khmer Rouge? Seriously? Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky went over this in 1977.
What is most annoying, I have had such arguments when I was literally in high school – on that idiotic “policeman” part. One woud think SOMETHING did improve since the end of the Cold War. But, no.
Paywalled, and if they don’t at least mention Team America Wold Police it must be TL DR.
A thought about the whole Karmmunion thing.
A hipster might do that ironically, saying to herself “I am so cool I can mock organised religion.” (Yeah, original, that.)
But this wasn’t really that, it was instead someone actually inviting someone to commit to the Party by taking the wafer; in other words, not actually mocking the Church so much as expropriating its position without compensation, and turning the Democratic Party into the Church of Karmala Incarnated.
Plus, of course, the original Communion is meant to commemorate the Last Supper before the Church’s founder was arrested and executed. Are they suggesting that Karmala is going to be crucified by the electorate?
Terrible things seem to be happening in Northern Gaza right now.
I won’t offer a link, as this impression is from the volume of tweets about it, rather than 1 specific source. Plenty of commentators I respect like Matt Kennard are talking about it as well as many Palestinian accounts I couldn’t vouch for either way.
It appears that the world’s focus on Lebanon and potential Iran/Israel escalation is allowing the Israelis to step up their barbarity in Gaza.
Search for “Jabalia” and you can judge for yourself. It looks like a straight up massacre.
I don’t have words to express how I feel about this.
The stain of these crimes will not be easy to wash away for the perpetrators or the excuses.