185 thoughts on “Open Mic for the week of 3/18/2024”

    1. If you have been losing this lawsuit for years, then you should sell a building or two to prepare.

      Seems that didn’t happen, which raises a bunch of ugly questions, like maybe he’s so leveraged that he couldn’t.Report

          1. Toxic doesn’t matter.

            What matters is he’s probably over leveraged and under water. There are insurance companies that will take real estate as collateral but they’re not willing to deal with Trump… or maybe just they’re not willing to take buildings that have a negative value after the existing leverage is paid off.

            Trump could have Billions in assets but also have a negative net worth. That wouldn’t matter in normal situation in this field. What should be way more important is cash flow. If he had a good enough cash flow then he could pay his creditors and just wait for the market to recover.

            Of course if he had a really good cash flow then it wouldn’t be worth his time to have a TV show.

            Now he might be able to cash in his media company and fix all of these problems if he delays long enough.Report

            1. No, delaying sure as hell doesn’t help.

              Because delaying requires him paying $450 million bond, whereas the actual fine is only $355 million. Why the difference? Because the bond has a built-in ‘This is what we calculate the interest is going to add to this penalty if you lose’ bonus.

              Trump lives in a universe where he can always stall the clock out and end up winning in court, and he’s completely unable to understand his new reality where every minute he doesn’t pay racks up interest.

              But the even funnier thing is: I’m actually pretty sure that Trump literally cannot solve this problem, because there are…uh…’unstated encumbrances’ on his properties. And his wealth in general.

              Or, not to mince word, if he does this, he will make a lot of incredibly wealthy and dangerous Russian money launderers very angry.Report

              1. Delaying can help a lot if you’re expecting a massive lump sum and Trump either is or hopes he is.

                Trump finally merges his media company. He gets a huge amount of stock, more than enough to pay his fines, he asks the board to approve him ignoring the lock out and they vote he can.

                He sells massive amounts of his stock and gets the cash he needs. (Side note: This hits the radar as shady. A twitter clone created a few years ago which was having scale issues is worth Billions of dollars? Really? This is either pump and dump or someone channeling money to him.)

                And he preserves his empire.

                If he can’t delay then he’s looking at a fire sale on underwater assets. So most or even all of his empire is dismantled.

                https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_World_Acquisition_CorpReport

  2. Okay. I have mentioned my favorite crockpot cookbook multiple times. It’s this one: Better Homes & Gardens Biggest Book of Slow Cooker Recipes. It’s got a bunch of *SIMPLE* recipes. Like, dump the ingredients, stir it maybe, then go to work. Come home, stir it again, serve it up. At worst you’ll have to grate some ginger.

    Well, I saw this thread on the twitters and it warns about a crockpot cookbook that, apparently, was entirely written by AI. And the reviews? Looks like the 5 star ones were also written by AI. The 1 star ones were written by, apparently, humans (complaining about AI).

    Be warned: There’s a *LOT* of content out there.Report

    1. Pretty soon you front-pagers will just generate your posts and all the comments with AI, and the rest of us will be superfluous.

      Actually, reading some of the comments here, i wonder if you’re doing a staged release of this already.Report

  3. Dude simply cannot avoid beclowning himself as Bigot in Chief:

    Former President Donald Trump said in an interview aired Monday that any Jewish person who votes for Democrats “hates their religion” and hates “everything about Israel,” again playing into an antisemitic trope that Jewish Americans have dual loyalties to the US and to Israel.

    Trump was asked on a podcast hosted by his former White House aide Sebastian Gorka about criticism from the Biden administration and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

    “I actually think they hate Israel,” Trump said. “I don’t think they hate him, I think they hate Israel. And the Democrat Party hates Israel.”

    “Any Jewish person that votes for Democrats hates their religion,” Trump said. “They hate everything about Israel, and they should be ashamed of themselves because Israel will be destroyed.”

    https://www.cnn.com/2024/03/18/politics/trump-antisemitic-jewish-people-israel-support-netanyahu/index.htmlReport

            1. Yes. I’m not a sociopath, I can understand how another person might feel. The logic of his statement isn’t bigoted. It’s exaggerated but not in a bigoted way. It doesn’t make any assumptions about any traits of a Jew. It exaggerates the difference in thinking between two perspectives. If Trump said “if you have a problem figuring out whether you’re for me or Biden, then you’re not Jewish”, that would be bigoted. It assigns a specific way of thinking to a group.Report

              1. “Any Jewish person that votes for Democrats hates their religion,” Trump said. “They hate everything about Israel, and they should be ashamed of themselves because Israel will be destroyed.”

                That makes a LOT of assumptions about traits about Jews.Report

              2. Not about Jews collectively, but about Jews based on their beliefs and actions. You would say that any Christian person who votes for Republicans hates their religion, right?

                ETA: last sentence, maybe not religion, but principles or GodReport

              4. “Lima beans give me the burps” is not a statement about all beans. It identifies a category of beans and presents a fact about them. You can’t call me a bean-hater if I say that lima beans give me the burps. You can’s say anything about my views on beans in general, only on a subset of beans. I’m not making assumptions about the traits of beans.Report

              5. He’s saying that Jews, as a group, support Israel.

                That’s not an especially unreasonable claim.

                He’s also claiming that he’ll support Israel in it’s current war more than Biden will (or has).

                Not sure if this crosses the “bigoted” line. If we say then it’s bigoted to just talk to Jews as a class then maybe (picture him doing it to Whites) but it’s more crass than anything.

                Now he also has multiple family members who are Jewish so there’s that.Report

              6. “He’s saying that Jews, as a group, support Israel.”

                Not in the quoted passage, at least not universally, so I don’t know the benefit of using the word “group” there.Report

              7. UM no. Trump is quite clearly saying that some subset of Jews hates Israel and their own religion because they vote for Democrats. Meaning that those Jews are not expressing their loyalty to either the US or Israel because they support Democrats. Its a very old anti-Semitic trope that implies Jews can’t be trusted because their loyalty is divided.Report

              8. Trope: Jews are loyal to the US and to Israel (divided loyalties), or to Israel but not the US (disloyalty to US)

                Trump: this group of Jews are not loyal to Israel, with no comment about this group’s loyalty to the USReport

              9. Parts of Team Blue are trying to have America force Israel to have a cease fire and wait for the next 10/7. We might actually see Biden try to do that.

                I don’t think it’s unreasonable to suggest that American Jews, as a group, should vote on that issue.

                Nor do I think this suggests “divided loyalty”. Jews are allowed to vote on Israel just like Poles are allowed to vote on the Russia/Ukraine war.

                RE: Trump is quite clearly saying that some subset of Jews hates Israel and their own religion because they vote for Democrats

                Replace “Democrats” with “Hamas supporters” and that looks like a reasonable claim.

                I don’t think it’s fair to try to label all of Team Blue (nor Biden) as Hamas supporters. However I do think that Hamas supporters in America are largely with Team Blue.Report

              10. “However I do think that Hamas supporters in America are largely with Team Blue.”
                And you’d be wildly, nakedly, wrong. Hamas supporters are quite opposed to the Dems and Biden as they quite clearly are aware that Biden and his party have been stalwart supporters of Israel. Look at their activity in Michigan for fish’s sake.Report

              12. Palestinian (and Arab) Americans are almost entirely a creature of the Left which puts them in Team Blue’s camp.

                Similarly opposition to Israel is almost entirely a Left thing, which again puts them in Team Blue’s camp.

                The protesters out there chanting “from the river to the sea”? They’re Lefties.Report

              13. The Pro-Palestinian activists tend to come from the parts of the American Left that doesn’t like the Democratic Party that much. People calling Joe Biden, Genocide Joe were never going to vote Democratic. There is a certain division in the rank and file of the Democratic Party over Israel/Palestine but it is very localized.Report

              14. This is not true. Virtually the entirety of the progressive wing of the Democratic Party is pro-Palestinian. They may not be saying “Genocide Joe” (though not a lot of people on the far left are either), but they’ve been pro-Palestine going back decades.

                Granted, there’s a lot of overlap between the progressive wing of the Democratic Party and the “identitarian left” (in fact, the Venn diagram of the two groups is almost one circle), but pro-Palestine has long been the dominant position among progressives and the left wing of the Democratic Party.Report

              15. I think there’s two sub groups here. You have the college educated left wing activists that are, at best, an unreliable faction of the Democratic party. Their association is loose and incidental to the Democratic party being the left of the big two.

                You also have Muslims who are mostly conservative but are in the Democratic coalition only by virtue of the Democrats traditionally being the ethnic minority party.Report

              16. By this reasoning team Red is also the anti-Israeli and anti-semite party since their coalition includes the Jewish Space Laser and “The Jews will not replace us” contingent far more explicitly than team Blue includes the Anti-colonialist left.Report

              17. To be clear, there’s a difference between pro-Palestinian liberation and being pro-Hamas. That’s not to say that there are no people who support, to some extent, Hamas as a resistance group, on the left, but being pro-Palestinian liberation predates Hamas by decades .Report

              18. Agreed, and likewise there’s a difference between being Pro-Israel as, for instance, I am and being Pro-likud which the right wingers are. Right behind Hamas, after all, responsibility for Oct. 7th rests heavily with the Israeli right generally, Likud more specifically and Bibi very explicitly. This is not only because they let it happen because they were focused on their extracurricular activities in the West Bank pre Oct 7th but also because the Israeli right have been early and reliable boosters/supporters of Hamas in order to keep the Palestinian movement fractured. The Israeli public knows this, which is why Bibi’s name is utter mud in Israel right now. But the right likes to avoid the subject by letting Netanyahu wrap himself in the Israeli flag.Biden and Schumer and Dems in general are not remotely anti-Israeli but they are rapidly becoming anti-Likud.Report

              19. The Pro-Palestinian activists are doing a really bad job of articulating this difference. From what I can tell, many are entering the Simchat Torah massacre truther/denialist phase and are suggesting it was a false flag by the IDF, etc. Judith Butler at least came out and said openly Pro-Hamas things. Most others are trying to pretend that Hamas doesn’t exist and they didn’t do anything on October 7, 2023.Report

              20. And you’d be wildly, nakedly, wrong. Hamas supporters are quite opposed to the Dems and Biden as they quite clearly are aware that Biden and his party have been stalwart supporters of Israel.

                No no. No way, no how, not on your life.

                Hamas supporters are absolutely Team Blue. I also suspect the loudest bitchers will turn around to support Biden in November but that’s just a gut feel.

                In any event, besides being wrong in the abstract, it’s also pretty clear that Biden is trying to appease the lib-Left terror simps. So to some extent the terror simps are having some measure of success.Report

  4. Over Saint Patrick’s Day weekend, somebody put a banner that read “Save Ireland from the Jews” over a freeway for all to see:

    https://www.citybeat.com/news/what-we-know-about-the-antisemitic-save-ireland-from-the-jews-sign-that-hung-over-i-75-in-cincinnati-17084974

    For the past several years, anti-Semites of all stripes have been allowing their anti-Semitic freak flags to fly. This has gotten worse since the Simchat Torah massacre with Left anti-Semitism getting just as vocal as Right anti-Semitism. So far most people who aren’t Jews are still not taking it entirely seriously and are attempting to keep saying “it is only a few badly educated malcontents” rather than maybe something deeply felt by tens or hundreds of millions of people.Report

          2. There is a YouTube channel called Useful Charts. The person who started that channel was born into a British Israelite family, he refers to it as a cult, but converted to normal Judaism as an adult.Report

      2. The IRA types do see the Palestinians as being the native Irish Catholics while the Israeli Jews are the English as the Ulster Protestants. Like many such internalizations of the I/P conflict, it causes a lot more problems than it solves.Report

  5. The Washington Post is not being helpful: Democratic cities that welcomed migrants are starting to roll back aid

    From the article:

    When a wave of migrants began arriving in Democratic-run cities far from the Southern border two years ago, officials welcomed them with open arms. Now they’re limiting aid to new arrivals as their instinct for compassion confronts hard budgetary realities.

    In recent days, New York and Chicago — two of the nation’s largest cities — have instituted substantial changes to their shelter policies. In Chicago, the city began evicting migrants who had overstayed a new 60-day time limit, saying it did not have the resources to meet the need.

    In New York, migrants had benefited from the city’s unique right to shelter, which guarantees emergency housing for as long as anyone needs it.

    Last Friday, those rules were significantly altered for migrants without children, the culmination of a months-long struggle by the city to curtail its legal obligations to new arrivals as their number surpassed 180,000 and the cost of shelter soared.

    Why are they running this story *NOW*? It’s an election year!Report

      1. Where I would say the WaPo has gone astray in its reporting, it’s in failing to grapple with the costs of sanctuary cities as a policy, not in a political sense, so much as a dollar and cents way. That is certainly not the same as the kind of totally misleading propaganda that flies on Fox News but it does leave its readers poorly served.Report

        1. “Now they’re limiting aid to new arrivals as their instinct for compassion confronts hard budgetary realities.”

          Isn’t that exactly what this sentence does?Report

          1. Better late than never, and that may well be the biggest difference between them and a Fox News type outlet. However it isn’t like the ‘sanctuary city’ thing hasn’t been going on for years, and that the logic underpinning it taken to its natural conclusion wouldn’t lead to these types of problems. Maybe I am wrong but I browse the WaPo a bit every day, and up until very recently, the coverage has always been sympathetic, without serious discussion of the trade offs.Report

            1. Leaving aside what any particular media outlet is saying (I don’t read any with any regularity), I don’t necessarily see aid to migrants as the natural conclusion to sanctuary cities. I do see how a general world view (e.g., supporting immigrants regardless of their status or how they arrived) underpins both, but I think a city could be a sanctuary city without running into financial trouble by offering aid and social services to migrants.Report

              1. On paper I think you’re right, that one doesn’t logically have to lead to the other. In practice though? I think once you invite people in it’s inevitable.Report

              2. I have a different, arguably more cynical take?

                Remember most of these migrants weren’t necessary “invited” in. Obviously, the cities had policies that are more welcoming to immigrants, but many of these folks arrived on busses from red states and cities. That was a political PR move… basically saying, “Hey, if you think they should be here, you take ’em!”

                These cities responded by saying, “Happily!” and, for a while, seemed to be winning the PR battle. But the model isn’t sustainable, especially when put together somewhat hastily.

                I think the folks behind these programs thought this would be a relatively short-lived phenomenon and they’d come out looking great while their opponents looked bad. And they were right… for a while. Now? Not so much.Report

              3. Given that immigrants generally need less aid than native born people and usually find work more quickly, I’m also struggling to see these “tradeoffs”.

                I mean, what we’re hearing almost a literal version of the old “Immigrants are lazy and loaf on welfare, and also take all our jobs!”Report

      1. Liberals should raise taxes so they can keep providing aid. Look at the numbers! Undocumented visitors add more to the tax rolls than they take out. They provide more benefits to the community than they take. This is an opportunity that the so-called “Liberals” are missing by not providing more aid!Report

  6. https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/trans-rights-biological-sex-gender-judith-butler.html

    I think it is another major sign that whatever little substantive threat the identarian left presented (and I think said threat was largely exaggerated by bored media and desperate right wingers) is receding that people like Butler and Chu feel compelled to come out and state more overtly what their agenda is rather than communicating it indirectly or concealing it behind obscure allusions and language.

    I mean, if you have to embrace Chu’s principles to avoid being labelled a TERF a TARL or a right winger then that’d put the population at something like 99.99999% defined by those categories (though I prefer Chaits own simpler connotation of “Liberal”). Heck, you probably could find more libertarians than Trans ideologists like Chu.Report

      2. I think the problem that people have with Chu’s argument is that he thinks this right should be unlimited for people below eighteen and people above eighteen. Its the let the kids get medical treatment thing that freaks people out.Report

        1. I could be biased, but I think the idea that teenagers being allowed to experiment with wearing gendered clothing or makeup isn’t a big deal to most normal folks.

          I can see surgical changes being limited but again, is anyone “just waking up one morning” to decide to castrate themselves?Report

          1. The Left-Liberal side in American politics seems to want to embark on an interesting experiment of both maximum self-expression and maximum community cohesion/care. I am not sure if it is entirely possible. Like I noted previously, the American liberals gushing over how the East Asian developed democracies handled COVID as a society without much of a fuss or protestation are probably not going to like some aspects of their society that come along with this.Report

      3. None that I see and that’s not where most of the heat of the debate lies. But Chu’s premise that children should universally be applied puberty blockers and then choose their gender/sex when they come of age is pretty radical.Report

        1. I didn’t see that part, and wouldn’t support it either.

          ETA: I think an awful lot of the discussion about trans minors takes place in a very small circle of very loud people about a very tiny subset of minors but the discussion pretends that this is somehow commonplace, just happening everywhere all the time.Report

          1. Absolutely, like, from the discourse you’d think that 99% of adult trans issues were settled and kids were the whole kit and kaboodle of the disagreement. But, of course, in red states the laws are taking aim at trans adults even more than kids.Report

            1. Its reason # 1,687,324 why conservatives can never be taken at face value because they lie incessantly.

              They screamed about “groomers” only to pivot to ban pride flags; Screamed about pornography when they really meant “a picture of two men holding hands”, and so on.Report

              2. An opening for who, exactly?

                The Moms For Liberty types who are raping their sex partners in a kinky three way that went bad?

                The fundamentalists grooming their 13 year old child brides?

                The secular conservatives cruising strip clubs and topless bars looking for drunken hookups?

                The Trumpists cheering on a convicted rapist and adulterer?

                Seriously, I’m done getting moral lectures from these people.

                I heard this same argument word for word when it was about gay men and bathhouses, when it was black men and crime, when it was any marginalized group- Its the shanda fur die goyim argument and it never made any sense.Report

              3. An opening for all those people you listed to get into power because, for example, some idealistic teachers happily boast to their social circles about how they’ll sneak around behind parents backs to encourage kids to explore being trans. Or some exuberant trans activists chant “we’re here, we’re queer, we’re coming for your children.” and when the bad faith conservatives signal boost these things our side responds with tin eared stuff like “Well those teachers really should sneak around behind the parents backs”; or “Parents shouldn’t have a say in their children’s educational curriculum” and similar stuff. Because, yeah, if we are stupid about it and let the normies and low info voters get scared because we want to posture on twitter they will put those fishing nuts that you listed in charge of everything.Report

              4. First, lets stop talking about “normies” like they are children who need to be shielded from reality.

                Yes, some gay men have wild hedonistic sex.
                And some Catholic priests molest children.

                Everyone knows how people behave. Queer folk behave just exactly as cishet folk, meaning some portion of them go off the rails and do ugly things.

                The so-called “normies” understand this already, they already get it and take it in stride and don’t go screaming own the street with their hair on fire.

                We’ve already seen the pushback against the Moms For Liberty folks who lost a bunch of school board elections.Report

              5. Yes they lost a bunch of school board elections- after they first got in.

                And I have no interest in talking about normies like they’re children, I’m talking about them like they’re adult voters. Which means you need to address them with a certain degree of political intelligence. And that means our idealistic identarian left which is so weak in actual voter support but is so strong in intuitional, NGO, staffer and journalistic heft, needs to have the wits to give our politicians latitude to maneuver against these entirely predictable attacks.Report

          3. I didn’t see that part, and wouldn’t support it either.

            This is a very interesting response.

            Primarily because I imagine that it’s not particularly unique. Like, it’d be downright common.

            And so stuff like this actively results in *EVEN CHIP* saying stuff like “I wouldn’t support that.”

            The more stuff out there that gets printed that gets even Chip to say “I don’t support that sort of thing” is not to Team Good’s Benefit.Report

              1. I don’t understand. What would the straw position have been?

                The one in the actual article writen and published?

                The one that is not supported by evil people but also by Team Good members?

                There was never a strawperson.

                Perhaps what we have is my disappointment that the article is merely nutpicking.

                Oh, they got a crazy person to publish. It got them lots of clicks. Good for them.

                Anybody can engage in nutpicking.

                Even New York Magazine.Report

              2. The default position of Team Good is more aligned with Chip than Chu.

                And the default American is more aligned with Chip than either Chu or Butler.

                Most people are just not freaked out about trans youth and the desperate sweaty efforts to get them freaked aren’t working any more.Report

              3. So how did your answer deprive me of a strawman?

                If anything, it showed my answer about how common your intuition about Chu’s article actually is as accurate.

                You know the whole “NOBODY IS ARGUING FOR X!” argument that usually works really well?

                Unfortunately, using it in response to me about the article arguing for X is, at least, inaccurate.Report

              4. I’d say that the more stuff out there that gets printed that gets even Chip to say “I don’t support that sort of thing” is actually very much to Team Good’s Benefit.Report

              6. There are no Sistah Soulja opportunities anymore. But I think the widespread understanding that the article was written by a very sick man with very sick ideas, combined with the lack of twitter to create the false impression of some pseudo-consensus moves us a little closer to getting passed this fad. Just instead of anyone doing an official pivot everyone will suddenly start to forget all the weird things they said, same as has been happening with so many of the other strange cause celebrés.Report

              7. I guess my only remaining question is whether the editors at New York Magazine thought they were providing a POV from a very sick person with very sick ideas or whether they were bravely putting out an article that would challenge their readers. Or something else.Report

        2. ..where on earth are you seeing that as a premise?

          Chu is pretty clearly saying that the idea that children are too young to consent to puberty blockers is nonsense, considering the other option (puberty) is way more permanent and if they cannot consent to blockers, they logically cannot consent to puberty either.

          This is using hyperbole to prove a point, as Chu _doesn’t_ think children are unable to consent to puberty blockers.

          She is clearly saying ‘Every child gets the choice to opt out of puberty’, not ‘Children are not allowed to have puberty’Report

          1. Heh, the comparison of capacity to consent to major, experimental medical interventions with lifelong ramifications and/or hardcore body modification to the normal development of the human body has so many problems it’s hard to know where to begin.

            But at the end no one really needs to. That’s because Chu is a dude who (apparently) sources his transition to pornography addiction and (again, apparently) cops to having the doctors lop his dick off despite knowing it would not improve his well-being. He is not someone we should be listening to on serious matters of child medicine. The only one who should be listening to him about any topic at all is a clinical psychiatrist.Report

    2. This came up on the other blog. Chu’s theory seems to be rather impractical to implement at a mass level. The current system in the more liberal areas might be imperfect but it works well enough.

      Butler also further disgraced herself in Jewish circles by saying that the Simchat Torah massacre was a legitimate act of resistance.Report

      1. She’s said a lot more than that.

        After the start of the 2023 Israel–Hamas war, Butler published an essay entitled “The Compass of Mourning”, in which they argued that Hamas’ attacks should be seen in the context of the “horrors of the last seventy years”

        “”I think it is more honest and historically correct to say that the uprising of October 7 was an act of armed resistance. It is not a terrorist attack and it is not an antisemitic attack. It was an attack against Israelis.”[117]

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judith_Butler#Comments_on_Hamas,_Hezbollah_and_the_Israel%E2%80%93Hamas_warReport

        1. She has been pretty up front about her views on gender since the late 80s/early 90s, and has probably written more words about identity than pretty much any living author. I go back and forth about how I feel about her work generally, but Gender Trouble is worth reading, and doesn’t leave much doubt about where she stands. Also, while it’s not on gender specifically, but identity more generally, Giving an Account of Oneself is a good book. I’ve always loved this passage:

          “My story arrives belatedly, missing some of the constitutive beginnings and the preconditions of the life it seeks to narrate. This means that my narrative begins in media res, when many things have already taken place to make me and my story possible in language.”

          Anyway, I don’t know Chu, but I don’t think it makes sense to say that Butler hasn’t been pretty clear for decades, and while she readily admits that she’s still learning about gender, she doesn’t seem to me at all interested in obfuscation or indirectness.

          Just to add: I worry that what is often here (and elsewhere) seen as indirectness or obscurity is just that we’re treading new ground, ethically, socially, culturally, politically, so there are a lot of questions that even those with strong views don’t yet know the answer to. The uncertainty means that many people act with a degree of certainty that is unwarranted, to be sure, but let’s not pretend that all, or in fact even most of the people who do so are on the side of the issues that Butler, and I take it Chu, find themselves.Report

            1. An old friend of mine has become obsessed with gender issues, so much so that not only is it like 90% of his online presence, but it’s cost him much of his former offline social circle, not so much because people stopped talking to him than because he couldn’t stop talking about this with people.

              Anyway, I still follow him on Twitter and am friends with him on Facebook, and the level of certainty, crossing the line into zealotry, on the anti-trans side is like nothing I’ve ever seen from the “identitarian left.” It reminds me the most of the kidnapping and satanic panic. Lost amidst their conviction that something horrible is happening, and they are the only ones who see it, is all empathy for people actually struggling with these issues in their lives.

              Do the “identitarian” folks sometimes lack empathy for those who disagree with them? Sure, especially online, where empathy is in short supply already, but what comes from the anti-trans people is something else entirety, and unlike the “identitarian left,” there are state governments who are putting the anti-trans crowd’s lack of empathy into law, which makes it considerably more dangerous.Report

              1. “Lost amidst their conviction that something horrible is happening, and they are the only ones who see it”

                Which is exactly what we have seen, time and time again with these moral panics- That there is a secret cabal of Satanists, or that kids are having secret sex parties, or doing drugs, or whatever.

                And these people spend inordinate amounts of time fretting about other people’s behavior and trying to herd us into a blind panic.Report

              2. For sure, I’ve always thought the both sides line is ludicrous which only makes it more imperative that the pro-trans side has to be more savvy and clever because if those right wing nuts get into elected office or even school boards they’ll go for the whole enchilada.Report

              3. I sympathize about your friend though. I have a buddy I lift with on Sundays who seems to be genuinely threatening suicide* and one of his most prevalent complaints is that the “gummint” is taxing all his six figure salary. His primary complaints are job related and social issue related but the taxation is theft theme figures prominently there too.

                *I’m concerned bur cautious as it may simply be a gambit for more attention.Report

          2. I don’t think we’re treading new ground with the questions, or even the proposed answers.

            I think we’re treading new ground with the attitude that permitting other people to suggest a wrong answer is a moral error.Report

  7. I happen to live in one of the areas in the United States where Pro-Palestinian voices are at the most numerous and loudest. This is where some of the more infamous ceasefire resolutions from local city councils and teach-ins have occurred. It makes being on the other side of the conflict rather interesting. One thing that I’ve noticed is that the most process of the Pro-Palestinian activists is just really bizarre and not in any way that helps real actual Palestinians.

    You can see a rather large amount of Pro-Palestinian posters and signs walking around my part of California. The imagery is always of a generically brown young woman or girl with nothing to identify her as an Arab or Muslim, who could easily be Hispanic or Native American, and something about how Palestine will be free or such not. They basically reduce everything down to white equals oppressor and inauthentic while brown is noble and oppressed and what not and assign Israel the white role and Palestinians the brown role. They know nothing about real actual Jews or real actual Palestinians but create a psycho-drama in their heads that fits their cosmology. I’m pretty sure most of them would not believe you if you tell them that most Israeli Jews are Mizrahi including the man who killed Yizhak Rabin. So a big part of the increase in anti-Semitism is from real clueless idiots.Report

  8. Elon Musk’s X Is Suspending Accounts That Reveal a Neo-Nazi Cartoonist’s Alleged Identity
    A lengthy X thread posted by the antifascist research group Anonymous Comrades Collective last week claimed that Stonetoss is a man named Hans Kristian Graebener from Spring, Texas. Stonetoss cartoons, which feature simple and colorful imagery coupled with racist, homophobic, and antisemitic language, have become hugely popular among right-wing communities since they were first published at least seven years ago.

    Apparently a guy named Hans Kristian Graebener is stonetoss and Elon Musk very badly wants to prevent anyone from knowing that Hans Kristian Graebener is stonetoss.

    So we should all be very careful about amplifying the claim that Hans Kristian Graebener is stonetoss.Report

  9. Unpopular opinion in this libertine age but the state should probably really tighten the screws on gambling again and make it really illegal outside a few chosen places. People outside those few chosen places should have to track down a sketchy bookie. Unlike other prohibitions, the bag hard ban on gambling seemed to have worked.

    https://www.seattletimes.com/sports/shohei-ohtanis-attorneys-accuse-interpreter-of-massive-theft-tied-to-alleged-gambling/Report

    1. Dude… first sentence:

      “Representatives of Dodgers superstar Shohei Ohtani on Wednesday accused his interpreter of engaging in a “massive theft” of the ballplayer’s funds to place bets with an allegedly illegal bookmaker who is the target of a federal investigation.”

      How would a ban have impacted this?Report

  10. RE: Trump’s Bond and inability to pay.

    The more I think about this the more telling it is. The claim is he can’t pay because no one will make a $450M bond, their internal processes stop at $100m.

    In theory he has 5 different companies each do $100m and he backs it up with 5 buildings. For that matter you could try to talk the court into accepting those buildings.

    And in these legal filings he’s still claiming insane evaluations for cheery picked buildings, we’re not seeing filings going over adult conversations and adult opportunities.

    It’s almost like every one of his buildings is leveraged to the max.Report

    1. By the end of the day Monday it is possible that Trump will hold a couple billion dollars worth of listed stock in whatever shell company Truth Social is part of. He isn’t allowed to sell any of it for six months. My working assumption would be that if the State of New York seized the stock they wouldn’t be under the same restriction. I suspect that some group of investment banks and private capital funds might be willing to buy a big block of stock from the state for enough to cover the judgement because they believe they can “trickle” it out slowly enough to sell at a profit before that whole thing collapses.Report

      1. It’d be pretty risky though, if Trump said the wrong thing intentionally or unintentionally the whole balloon of those stocks would deflate almost instantly. Their only value is predicated on Trump supporting rubes buying them to begin with- it’s not like the underlying business has any significant value what so ever.Report

        1. Risky for whom? The state seizes, say, a quarter of Trump’s stake and starts disposing of it. Trump says the wrong thing and the stock promptly heads to zero. Trump’s remaining stake, which he can’t sell for six months, is wiped out. The state, having not realized the entire judgement amount, goes back for the real estate…Report

          2. Yeah I was thinking risky for the investment banks and private capital firms. Thing is Trump is both irrational, spiteful and has a proven track record of reneging on debts and fishing over his creditors. The Truth Social gambit is quite risky for any non-feds who go for it since their bonds would be using Truth Social stock as collateral but they wouldn’t be able to seize/sell it unless Trump lost his appeals or reneged on his bond terms. So that would give them a much longer time horizon of holding these stocks and potentially ending up in hock to the feds with a bag full of worthless stock as collateral.

            And if I was the NY AG I’d probably WANT to seize and liquidate the Trump real estate rather than fishing around with the Truth Social stock.Report

            1. I saw another opinion this morning that said they would be likely to start with real physical property in New York because they’re familiar with the procedures and know the statutes and case law well.Report

    2. I mean, the office space market has contracted historically and Trump was likely over leveraged to start with so it’s highly likely he’s under water on every property in NY he owns.Report

    3. A less cheerful take I’ve read is this: Trump will get bailed out but we shouldn’t expect to see it until the last minute; as in the weekend. The reasoning: the actors who are willing to bail Trump out will be squeezing to get every last drop of juice out the Trump orange. Every concession, promise and penny they can. Trump will, of course, be pushing back and any deal inked prior to Sunday or so would be leaving concessions from Trump on the table. So expect said actors to wring Trump for several more days and then expect a last minute payment right before the deadline. It seems depressingly plausible to me.Report

      1. Last time we saw this show, for all the last minute moves with the court and the protesting that he was poor and couldn’t make the payment…

        …he already had the payment in his pocket and was just lying to the court to try to argue it should be reduced.

        His court filing lists nothing as far as who he has asked or why they said no. So maybe they didn’t say no.Report

    1. So she was asked to do an illegal thing by a Republican state official (whose party affiliation is likely part of his brand), got caught, was tried and convicted. Meaning the existing system worked. Sounds like a win for democracy to me.Report

      1. It’s unclear to me whether she was actually asked by the state rep she did it for, or instead thought of herself as a whistleblower. I didn’t see anything in the writeups of the case over the last few months indicating that there was evidence the state rep asked her to do something like this, though I haven’t followed that closely.Report

        1. Even more pertinent:
          This, like all cases of actual voting fraud so far, demonstrates that actual fraud is difficult to pull off, unless you are much higher on the tree than she is.

          She sent, what, three fraudulent ballots?

          To flip even the most minor election one needs to flip thousands, and the fraudster needs to know in advance exactly which precincts to flip which is difficult.

          No one knows this better than Republicans, which is why they are focusing their efforts on replacing or coercing officials at the state level in their efforts to steal elections.Report

          1. I’m more interested in the vulnerabilities in the system and whether, once found, the vulnerabilities are addressed.

            Like, if we found out that voting machines had major vulnerabilities, I’d want those vulnerabilities addressed rather than to make sure that whatever officials abused the vulnerabilities were caught and went to jail.Report

            1. I think we all would.
              Like, if a political party were to have its members threaten and intimidate election officials, I would want to have them prosecuted and driven from power.Report

              1. You’d be surprised. I can find you a government worker who argued that we don’t have to worry about vulnerabilities until they are exploited.

                I suppose that that doesn’t matter.

                Good news! The unaffiliated government worker isn’t even allowed to vote in this coming election!Report

              4. They are also working on it, as in they are making concerted efforts in multiple states to allow the Legislature, state election official, or Governor (depending on which one they control) to just throw out the votes.Report

      3. Nobody but you is claiming that he asked her to do that. She says she was trying to show him how easy it was to get an absentee ballot under a fake name, and sent them to him specifically because he had been claiming that the election system was insecure in ways which she believed it was not.

        As it’s unclear how she got caught, it’s unclear whether this shows the system works. It does mention that she used her work laptop, which may have been a factor. There was a similar case a few months earlier where a man named Harry Wait had requested ballots under a state politician’s name, then got caught when he returned the ballot unopened and said, “Hey, look what I was able to do. You should fix this.”

        In neither case does there appear to have been any genuine attempt at election fraud. Sounds like the government’s just mad that flaws in their system were exposed.Report

          1. The *FIRST* thing you do when you do a pen test is GET A VP TO SIGN SOMETHING SAYING YOU CAN DO A PEN TEST.

            That said: Seems like a vulnerability was found and exploited.

            At this point failure to close the hole is dereliction of duty.Report

          2. The ballots were obtained illegally, of course, but in neither case does there appear to have been any attempt or intent to use the ballots to vote illegally. I’m not sure what happened with Zapata, but Wait didn’t get caught—he went to election officials’ offices, returned the ballot unused, and explained exactly what he did.

            There’s no evidence that any harm was done, intended, or attempted. The reasonable thing to do here would be to say, “Oh, that is a real problem. Thank you for bringing it to our attention,” and then try to fix it. Do they have a legal right to shoot the messenger because the messenger technically committed a crime? Sure, I guess. But just because they can doesn’t mean they should.Report

              1. I haven’t looked into it, don’t have an opinion on it, and have no idea what you think the connection to this is.

                You do understand that Zapata’s relationship with the Republican you mentioned was more adversarial than cooperative, right? I get the sense that you’re sticking to your guns here beyond the point of reason because you think there are partisan points to be scored, but I don’t think there are.Report

              2. Repulicans claim – without a scintilla of evidence – that the voting systems in the US are so horribly compromised that we need MORE laws and MORE restrictions to prevent voting fraud. Including the Republican politician cited in this reporting. And yet this person, who committed what Wisconsin apparently defines a voting fraud, was caught, tried, convicted and sentenced under current systems. Which means that there is still MROE evidence the system actually works and protects election integrity.

                There’s no evidence that any harm was done, intended, or attempted.

                This is Trump’s entire defense against the verdict in that case. You of all people can’t possibly be that dense.Report

              3. Its not even that.

                They claim that the voting systems are hopelessly compromised, and at the very same time, demand that they have the power to just cast out any ballots they don’t like.

                Exhibit number 8,654,492 of Republicans lying, about everything and all the time.Report

              7. Anti-Zionists: I can’t believe that Jews who suffered so much persecution and the Holocaust would be so brutal.

                Also anti-Zionists: Jews need to stop taking extremist eliminationist rhetoric against them so seriously, especially when it comes from groups we like.

                Anti-Zionists: It is terribly racist to be a non-Jew under a Jewish state.

                Also anti-Zionists: Jews shouldn’t mind being citizens of an officially Muslim state that is part of an officially Muslim world that places the stamp of Islam on everything and has blasphemy and apostate laws.Report

              9. Anti-Zionists: Anti-Zionism isn’t anti-Semitism.

                Also anti-Zionists: We have the right to make the life miserable for any Diaspora Jew we want unless they agree with us.

                Anti-Zionists: We would find another reason not to vote Democratic even if Biden adopted the policy we want towards Israel.

                Also anti-Zionist: It is time for bold foreign policy departures that would turn off a reliable Democratic voting group.Report

              10. Part of the problem I think, is that there is no moderate position between the extremes. Of “Greater Israel” and “From The River To The Sea”.

                That is, if you want the ideal of Palestinians and Israelis living together in peace and harmony in a liberal democracy, there isn’t any organization or group that you can sign on to.

                Right now all we have to chose from is Jared Kuchner selling beachfront Gazan land or Palestinian fever dreams of a Jew-free Palestine.Report

              11. The closet we have to such an organization is J Street or various liberal Jewish congregations in the Diaspora that tell Israel that needs to be sensible and even honorable when dealing with the Palestinians. On the Pro-Palestinian side, you have decades of their Muslim and Western allies basically indulging them in their worst fantasies.

                I can’t find anybody who is basically pro-Palestinian who told them at least pragmatics require them to be sensible and that the Jews aren’t going away. You either have Muslims encouraging them on in the name of the Dar Al-Islam or Westerners telling them that the Zionists/Jews are settler-colonial pigs that can totally be sent back home for good. This repeated indulgence had to effect Palestinian leadership.Report

              12. Another part of the problem, that existed since the birth of Israel but is getting worse now, is that the Diversity Coalition basically decided that Jews aren’t really part of the Sacred Circle of Oppression (TM, David Baddiel). Like even in the direct aftermath of the Holocaust, Jews were basically privileged wypipo and the Israeli Jews settler-colonialists. As the Holocaust recedes into history, this group is getting even bigger and louder in the West.

                To a certain extent, they have a point in that while white supremacists most definitely don’t consider Jews white, a large percentage of the Diversity Coalition will call it quits if Jews are included.Report

              14. Yes, but I’m talking about the participants.

                I’m sure there are moderates on both sides, but they aren’t in any position of power or influence.

                Neither the Israeli nor Palestinian camps seem to have any rational or achievable goals but instead keep escalating their fury.Report

              15. The Israeli peace camp got discredited after the real or perceived failures of Oslo and Arafat’s outright rejection of Ehud Barak’s offer without even a counter offer. As to the Palestinian peace camp or moderates, I am not sure that exists at all. The different hardliners were always in control. Some were just more subtle about their ultimate goal until they had to make a decision that didn’t result in the ultimate destruction of Israel.

                The entire Pro-Palestinian side has always assumed that Israel is a illegitimate settler-colonialist ethnostate that must be destroyed for true justice to be achieved. That in a world of de jure or de factor ethnostates, Israel gets signaled out as the only one that must be destroyed for true justice to be achieved is rich but it is what it is.

                I am tired of all the indulgences that the Palestinians receive. They have been making demands that one would respect from somebody who won every war they fought rather than something more realistic since before I was born. Every time an Israeli government made a realistic offer, the Palestinians have rejected this because they know that the traditional solution to failed states can’t be done anymore. Their defenders have always come up with wild reasons why the Israeli offers were not true offers because Israel wouldn’t take steps that would guarantee national destruction like letting millions of Palestinian “refugees” come to Israel and get citizenship.Report

              16. From what I can see, this is true; While there are extremists on both sides, they aren’t symmetrical.

                There also isn’t a Palestinian equivalent to the Jewish diaspora. The relationship of the Palestinians in Palestine to Palestinians worldwide is entirely different than the relationship Israel has with worldwide Jewry.Report

              17. There is a Palestinian diaspora but it is new and hard to qualify. For instance do Palestinian Christians who migrated to Brazil before World War I with other Levantine Christians count the same as Palestinians who fled or were expelled as a result of the 1948 War. Wikipedia has the global number of Palestinians as 14.3 million and the number in West Bank/Gaza as 5.3 million but not all Diaspora Palestinians are descendants of people who lived in Mandate Palestine before 1948. Very complicated.

                But the basic inability of the Pro-Palestinian sympathizers to even condemn Hamas shows the lack of symmetry going on. Every attempt to introduce a resolution symbolically taking Hamas to task has been heavily resisted despite Hamas starting the current war. According to Haaretz, Israeli officials accept the current ceasefire resolution and the number of Hamas terrorists they have to release but Hamas refuses to budge on captives, or even coming clean on what happened, and China and Russia refuse to back a ceasefire resolution that places any burden on Hamas.Report

              18. I think part o fthe problem here is the framing – you see this as a new war; many of us see it a st he latest battle in a war that’s been slow rolled for decades, and one in which one side regularly does things like seize land and displace inhabitants in intentional violation of prior agreements and borders.Report

              19. I don’t see this as a new war but as part of the larger Israel/Palestine conflict. Even in the long view, it doesn’t mean that Hamas started this freaking battle or phase by committing a massacre and they refuse to take even the smallest bit of responsibility because they hate Jews.

                Like I said, in this weeks Open Mic, I find that the entire thought process of the Pro-Palestinian/Anti-Israel people simply bizarre and not really helpful. Many of them seem to really take a cosmic stance and treat Zionism and Israel as being all the evil done by white people to people of color rolled into one and the Palestinians are all the people of color combined. Israel is the MOST EVIL COUNTRY that ever existed.

                They honestly seem to want to hurt Israel and Israelis more than they want to help Palestinians.Report

              20. They honestly seem to want to hurt Israel and Israelis more than they want to help Palestinians.

                Yes, it seems Bibi and the Likud want to do this because it keeps them in power.Report

              21. And yet this person, who committed what Wisconsin apparently defines a voting fraud, was caught, tried, convicted and sentenced under current systems.

                Which person? Wait? As I already told you, he didn’t get caught. He walked into the election officials’ office and told them exactly what he did and why he did it. Zapata? Here’s what the criminal complaint said about how she got caught:

                Woodall-Vogg stated that Zapata was employed by the City of Milwaukee as Deputy Director of the Election Commission. She stated that on Monday, October 31, 2022, she sent Zapata an article regarding an unknown individual fraudulently applying for military absentee ballots and having them sent to JB. Zapata denied knowing about that. Woodall-Vogg also sent Zapata another message, this time containing a statement that was put out by JB regarding how easy it was to receive military ballots. Zapata responded, “She has a point.” On the afternoon of November 1, 2022, Zapata approached Woodall-Vogg at work. At that time, Zapata admitted to Woodall-Vogg that she had created three fraudulent voters and used that fraudulent information to send three ballots to JB. Zapata told Woodall-Vogg that she made up the identifies of the voters and sent them to show how easy it is to commit fraud in this manner.

                The system may work, but neither of these cases are evidence of the system working. In both cases, the fraudulent ballot request was detected because it was fully intended to be detected by the person issuing the request. Neither case demonstrates a mechanism by which a person requesting invalid ballots in secret would have been caught.

                Again, I know very little about the Trump case. I think it had something to do with overstating the value of a building on a loan. When handed the loan papers, did he say, “Look how easy it was for me to overstate the value of my building! The system is flawed!” and then tear up the papers?

                No?

                Then it’s not really the same thing, is it?

                I’m not going to argue this with you further. I just don’t care that much, and at this point, either you get it or you don’t. Feel free to have the last word.Report

              22. You seem to want to waste a lot of pixels for someone who doesn’t care very much. And given the 24-4 coverage – even on Fox – of Trump’s legal issues, if you don’t know that much then you have fallen into the “low information voter” stance.

                Which in your case I find hilarious.Report

  12. Trailer for Alien: Romulus dropped today.

    https://www.polygon.com/24106851/alien-romulus-trailer-scary-wow-fantastic

    I have capital-D DESPISED everything that came after Alien 3. I used to hate that too until the 5 or 6 other movies after (counting the AvP films) made it seem halfway decent. Even Ridley Scott’s god awful Prometheus stuff has IMO been offensively bad. However the trailer appears to show some poor woman holding what looks like a pulse rifle and now I may actually have to see a second movie in theaters this year.Report

  13. I wouldn’t want to work here either:

    The Autauga-Prattville Library Board fired its director last week for releasing confidential information …

    No, wait!

    The Autauga-Prattville Library Board fired its director last week for some kind of crime …

    Hold on.

    I spent the last week trying to get a straight answer to what should have been a simple question: Why did the Autauga-Prattville Library Board fire its director, Andrew Foster?

    https://www.al.com/news/2024/03/whitmire-why-was-an-alabama-library-director-fired-read-between-the-lines.htmlReport

      1. I think that a librarian who is fired for seeking clarification from his public oversight board about a list of books to be moved should definitely seek work elsewhere, and possibly file a wrongful termination lawsuit. I would also say that local politicians often react the way the board chair did when they know they have done something wrong.

        I do find it interesting that nowhere in this article, or the emails text provided, or the linked reporting, does it say Mr. Foster intended to keep the book where it was. And yet you assumed he was trying to avoid following the board’s direction and teach children something, much less something you consider inappropriate (though from personal experience I know that act is often discussed in middle school).Report

          1. I’m opposed to such policies as well. Public libraries and their boards should not be in the business of determining what people read. In the case of kids, that’s the parents right. That aside, you don’t fire someone and allege criminal activity as a reason to avoid inconvenient HR issues.Report

              1. Mostly it is. The fact that the HR situation exists because the Board has an unethical sense of what rights they have to dictate reading opportunities to other people’s children is an added bonus.Report

  14. Clowns are gonna clown I guess:

    Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene has filed a motion to oust Mike Johnson from the speakership, according to sources familiar with the matter, amid anger about the government funding bill.

    The House would have to consider Greene’s motion within two legislative days after she is recognized. The chamber heads to recess for two weeks on Friday afternoon.

    Asked for a reaction by CNN, Johnson didn’t respond, dismissing the question with a wave.

    https://www.cnn.com/2024/03/22/politics/marjorie-taylor-greene-mike-johnson/index.htmlReport

    1. NBC News reports that the motion was not filed as a privileged motion, so the two-day limit doesn’t apply. Johnson can, in fact, dump it into a committee and let it die there. Gaetz has said he does not support the motion, because he believes at least three Republicans will vote for Jeffries if it comes to a vote.Report

        1. worth remembering that her first entry into public discourse was suggesting that we ought to doxx gamer nerds, and she was absolutely torched by the left over itReport

          1. I was never a fan of her. When Daily Wire does their Backstage shows with most/all of their talent, I’ll usually fast forward through any Michael Knowles section, but if Candace is on the show I’ll probably skip it entirely. She always struck me as not-bright person trying to be a trickster.Report

  17. Weird:
    From Minnesota to Maine, ice is already gone from many lakes, earlier than ever witnessed
    Lakes from Minnesota to Maine are usually still frozen over at this time of year, as signs of spring slowly emerge across the country’s northern tier.

    Instead, the ice is breaking up or is already gone on many lakes with more than a century of records. So-called ice-out — when waters become navigable for boats again — is happening earlier than ever witnessed.

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2024/03/22/lake-ice-out-midwest-northeast-climate/

    Huh. No one can explain this, its just inexplicable, a complete mystery, like why the tides rise and fall.

    Some philosophers say it is a sign of God’s wrath at so many people having buttsechs, while others blame wokeness and CRT.Report

      1. The Climate Crisis has been predicted by no less then the US Department of Defense to be a major driver of political instability – including mass migrations. They have published this prediction regularly since the Obama Administration. Not that the DoD couldn’t have become a bunch of woke liberals mind you, though voting patterns by those in uniform would seem to suggest that they remain fairly politically conservative.Report

  18. Life under Republicans:

    13-year-old rape victim has baby amid confusion over state’s abortion ban

    “You see this timid little girl — she’s literally a little girl — and she was like a deer in the headlights. She had no idea what was going on,” Balthrop said.

    “That was probably one of those days that will just stick in my head. Forever,” she said. “It’s sad … I think about a woman — a girl with no rights of her own, basically. She can’t make a decision about her own body.”
    https://abcnews.go.com/US/13-year-rape-victim-baby-amid-confusion-states/story?id=108351812Report

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