There’s a phenomenon where someone writes an essay about this or that but someone else wants to discuss something that has not yet made it to the front page.
This is unfair to everybody involved. It’s unfair to the guy who wrote the original essay because, presumably, he wants to talk about his original essay. It’s unfair to the guy who wants to talk about his link because it looks like he’s trying to change the subject. It’s unfair to the people who go to the comments to read up on the thoughts of the commentariat for the original essay and now we’re talking about some other guy’s links.
So!
The intention is to have a new one of these every week. If you want to talk about a link, post it here! Or, heck, use it as an open thread.
And, if it rolls off, we’ll make a new one. With a preamble just like this one.
How do you know when a politicians doesn’t want to actually campaign? They switch districts to avoid loosing.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/lauren-boebert-switch-congressional-districts-run-safer-gop-territoryReport
I would bet against Boebert winning the primary against the (currently) crowded field.Report
Well maybe if she got creative — eg a special campaign event where she invites all the male voters in the district to join her for a night at the theater.Report
Most of those male voters have a significant other who won’t take kindly to that…Report
Jane Coaston has a good interview with Tim Alberta in the NYT about the role of evangelicals in the rise of Trump.
They cover a lot of ground but one part jumped out at me, about the desire for revolution and an apocalyptic clash of cultures.
Coaston: Something that struck me in your book was a theme of impending doom and, moreover, desire for that doom. One interviewee told you, ‘I always thought we’d have a major event in my lifetime — an uprising, a revolution.’ He doesn’t sound afraid of such an occasion. It sounds like many of the other people you spoke with want one. Where do you think that sentiment came from?
Alberta: I think when you spend so much time swimming in these waters of ‘The end is near, they’re coming for us, brace yourself for this collision between the forces of good and evil,’ you actually start to not only anticipate it, but you start to look forward to it. That’s why, Jane, I think Covid was such an extraordinary moment, not just in American life but specifically in evangelical life. People had been stewing in that prophetic talk for decades, for generations — that one day they’re going to come for you, one day the church is going to find itself in the cross hairs of the government, and you’d better be ready to stand on your beliefs and stand for your convictions. And when Gavin Newsom says, Hey, we’re shutting down houses of worship as a public health measure for a few weeks here, suddenly it was, I think for so many of these people, it was like the prophecy was being fulfilled. Like, OK, here we go.
What was most surprising to me in that period, to the point of your question, is that a lot of these people weren’t reluctantly entering the fray. They were charging into the fray. They felt like they’d spent a lifetime preparing for just this very clash with the culture, and here it was, and it was very binary. You’re either going to stand up for God and for your faith and fight or you’re going to be a coward and you’re going to be a collaborator and you’re going to give in.Report
This is what happens when you have editors that deliberately choose words to nudge opinion without, you know, knowing what words actually mean: “‘Screams Without Words’: How Hamas Weaponized Sexual Violence on Oct. 7“.
It’s not enough to say “they committed sexual violence”. They had to “WEAPONIZE” it.
Like the bad thing was the weaponization.Report
I suppose I should mention this too: I Am Gaza City’s Mayor. Our Lives and Culture Are in Rubble.
That’s an opinion piece from one of the Hamas-affiliated mayors in the Gaza Strip.
The kerfuffle was over whether it was worse to print that than Senator Cotton’s opinion piece. Like, should there have been a huge fight in the slack over whether an editor ought to have been fired over daring to print this?
Opinions, of course, differed.Report
I confess that I haven’t read the article, but on the face of it this doesn’t seem unreasonable – if Hamas actually planned out the rapes as a war/terror tactic to help achieve their aims, that’s different than individuals just committing the acts on their own because they felt like it, and the verb is warranted.Report
It’s a war crime! We have this term already! “Hamas committed war crimes on October 7th” is something we can get away with saying!Report
That’s too soft. Hamas commits war crimes all the time. Mass rape isn’t normally one of them.Report
So we have to use the term that we normally reserve for how Republicans treated the accusations against Al Franken?Report
I’ve seen all those times it’s been used inappropriately, but this seems like a valid use case — we don’t need to throw the word out entirely just because it’s sometimes been weaponized by partisans.Report
Sexual violence from both sides has not been part of the Israeli-Arab or Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Hamas using rape as a weapon is something that hasn’t happened in the conflict before.Report
Maine’s Secretary of State has now determined that TFG is not eligible for inclusion in the state primary based on a plain reading of the 14th Amendment. That’s two against the three others where claims have been dismissed. A similar suite was filed in Louisiana last week as well.
So as much as John Robert’s may want to avoid it, SCOTUS is about to get drawn into determining the extent of Presidential limits. Part of me wants to pop the proverbial popcorn. Part wants to buy more ammunition.Report
These people do not deserve to lead. And everyone who aided and abetted them deserves to do time.
https://www.cnn.com/2023/12/28/politics/recordings-trump-team-fake-elector-ballots/index.htmlReport
My opinion of academic administrators has improved:
https://apnews.com/article/university-wisconsin-la-crosse-porn-fired-2bcaa8e751be50ebe83f8e1ed1a7cc32Report
do you mean the guy making porn on the side or the regents who fired him?Report
The porn star. The regents simply did what they would be expected to do, so their actions wouldn’t move the needle.Report
What do you know, America is a safer place then the media makes it seem.
https://abcnews.go.com/US/homicide-numbers-poised-hit-record-decline-nationwide-americans/story?id=105556400Report
Welp, The Harvard Crimson is now running op-eds calling for President Gay to be fired.
I read one exchange on the twitters that, paraphrased, went something like this:
“Why are you doing Chris Rufo’s dirty work for him?”
“Do you honestly think that Rufo wants Gay fired? He’s having a field day! Nothing would make him happier than for this to keep going for months!”
Not that you should pick policies based on what Rufo thinks, of course.Report
As a old college newspaper hack myself, I am (and was then) under no illusions about the importance of a student newspaper’s opinion. And this isn’t even the Crimson’s official position; it’s an op-ed from someone else that they ran because, after all, it’s an op-ed page.Report
Heck, this op-ed isn’t even nonymous!
That said, there seem to be a lot more anti-anti-Gay people than pro-Gay people.
If that’s an indicator, it’s not a good one.Report
We have dozens of examples of her plagiarism.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claudine_Gay#Plagiarism_allegations
I suspect (hope) if it weren’t for the holidays that she would have already been fired.Report
From what I understand:
The initial offer from the board was “Please Resign”.
Her counter offer was something like “Screw you.”
Their counter-counter-offer was something like “Please, Please Resign.”
Her counter-counter-counter-offer was to slide a piece of paper across the table and it had a number on it.
And here we are.
Soon it will be… Wednesday?
And we’ll find out how long and how hard the board has looked at that number.Report
She seems to be much better at social engineering and playing the political game than at academic brilliance.
The embarrassing part for Harvard is they enabled her.Report
Hat tip to Steve M over at No More Mister Nice Blog:
Na.zi gas station and fight club gets sold.
Did you know about this gas station in Tennessee that hosted a Na.zi fight club? Until now, I didn’t.
The Nashville gas station whose “actual literal Na.zi” owner hosted a far-right hand-to-hand combat facility upstairs will now join a local chain of convenience marts, The Tennessean reported.
The Lewis Country Store, the restaurant and fill-‘er-up where the Southern Poverty Law Center discovered a white supremacist fighting gym in June, will become part of Tennessee’s Tri Star Energy’s holdings. Tri Star told the local paper that the sale will likely go through the day after New Year’s, and the facility will be “company-owned and -operated” going forward.
Steve comments:
That was in June. Did you know about it?
I didn’t. But imagine if the situation were reversed. Imagine if a popular store that posted anti-Trump messages were found to be associated with a hate group that embraces a murderous racist ideology. It would be all over Fox News for weeks. There’d be dozens of stories. The owner would be famous.
This matters because identifying an endless series of low-level enemies is one of the key ways the right-wing media keeps viewers angry at liberals and Democrats, and thus loyal to the Republican Party.
https://nomoremister.blogspot.com/2023/12/if-this-is-first-time-youre-hearing.htmlReport
You mean something like this?
I honestly think that it wouldn’t get much play. It’s just, you know, part of the furniture by now.Report