207 thoughts on “Open Mic for the week of 7/22/2024”

  1. Should we be talking about nationalizing Twitter? I’m not endorsing it, but there’s something phenomenal about the leader of the greatest country announcing this in a tweet.Report

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    1. I just thought “Hey, I wonder how much Twitter’s stock price has jumped given Biden’s announcement” and, of course, Twitter has been delisted.

      But, yeah… its stock has gone WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY up.Report

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            1. I’ll go to ChatGPT:

              Me: Hey, could you explain a colloquialism to me? Someone said that “Bob’s stock has gone up” and Bob is not a corporation.

              What does that mean?

              ChatGPT: The phrase “Bob’s stock has gone up” is a colloquial way of saying that Bob’s reputation, popularity, or perceived value has increased. It’s a metaphor borrowed from the world of finance, where the value of a company’s stock going up indicates that the company is doing well and is more highly regarded. In the context of a person, it means that Bob is being viewed more favorably or is more esteemed than before.Report

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      1. I think we should have a serious in depth conversation about the fitness of old men who can barely utter a coherent sentence.

        I m convinced now that this is a serious problem, don’t you?

        I mean, Trump has refused to make public the results of his CT scan; That strikes me as a liability.Report

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        1. Is there any proof that Trump is hale and healthy? I heard he got shot.

          Wait. No. I’m hearing that he didn’t get shot but some debris hit him.

          We might need to wait and see.

          Anyway, one problem that the dems currently have is the whole “How did Biden do at the debate?” problem. Remember this chart?

          Which of these people do you think will be providing the best insights when giving an assessment of how good/bad Trump is doing? Which of these people do you think will provide the best takes on how Harris is doing?

          For my part, I am not sure that the people who were crowing the loudest about the quality of the emperor’s outfit last Friday will be the best spokespeople for fashion… whether it be Harris or Trump’s fashion they’re endorsing.

          That said, Trump’s assassination is now 100% old news and they’re going to have to come up with a new and fresh offensive and defensive gameplan.

          And if Trump is too old, he won’t be able to come up with one.Report

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    2. I’ve seen a number of Republicans arguing that it’s not fair that Biden dropped out.

      Come on, guys! You’ve been spending the last three months saying that he’s unfit to serve as president because he’s old and senile! Now you’re upset that he dropped out?

      Say what you will about Trump, but he didn’t call for Biden to drop out. He knew that Biden was the one he wanted to run against.Report

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  10. One thing we’re going to learn during the next three months is how many people think it is disqualifying that a woman might have given blow jobs to a much older man whom she dated when she was younger, while also thinking that it is PERFECTLY FINE that a man coerced a much younger woman into giving him a blow job while his third wife was recovering from the birth of their child.Report

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    1. Men have historically had the opportunity to use power to get sex, whereas women have historically had the opportunity to use sex to get power. Neither is perfectly fine. I don’t think this is a good framing for your side, though.Report

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      1. Your counterpoint gave me something to think about, and I appreciate you taking the time to write it.

        Political framing I leave to the professionals. I just see a double standard there that is worth pointing out.Report

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      1. Kamala Harris is in a lot of ways the same as Donald Trump, in that she recognizes that her supporters already support her and all she really needs to do is cheerlead.Report

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  13. Confirming the theory that one of the primary gateways to reactionary politics is the personal loss of power by white men:

    Musk says estranged child’s gender-affirming care sparked fight against ‘woke mind virus’

    In an interview with psychologist and conservative commentator Dr. Jordan Peterson, the X owner called gender-reassignment surgery “child mutilation and sterilization.” He then discussed his 20-year-old child Vivian Jenna Wilson, who he said underwent the procedures during the pandemic.

    “I was essentially tricked into signing documents for one of my older boys,” Musk told Peterson in a Daily Wire interview during which he referred to his child by their deadname. “This was really before I had any understanding of what was going on, and we had COVID going on, so there was a lot of confusion and I was told (Musk’s child) might commit suicide.”

    https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2024/07/22/elon-musk-jordan-peterson-interview/74506785007/

    Rather than accepting his child for who she is, Musk reacted with wounded pride at losing control and has continued to act out of spite and resentment.Report

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  15. Speaking of the New York Times, yesterday the opinion section ran a piece called: How These 10 Democrats Would Fare Against Trump, Rated by Our Columnists and Writers

    These guys rated (deep breath) Kamala Harris, Gavin Newsome, Chris Murphy, JB Pritzker, Wes Moore, Raphael Warnock, Gretchen Whitmer, Andy Beshear, Mark Kelly, and Josh Shapiro.

    Electability was, in order, as above. From least to most.

    Maybe the New York Times opinion folks are wrong, of course. I know that a lot of people consider them to be wrong all the time.Report

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          1. Ah, now that’s a criticism with teeth. Back in January 2020, we discussed the NYT Dual Endorsement of Warren and Klobuchar and concluded that the NYT was out of it.

            We could certainly use this story as more evidence that the NYT is even more out of it than they were in January 2020!

            Man, January 2020? That was a lot earlier in the cycle than where we are now… Ah, well. Probably nothing.

            Seems to indicate that Shapiro is the NYT’s choice for VP.Report

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    2. This was a fun primer on the ‘Democratic Bench’ … given the consolidation around Harris,* wonder if the bench changes much for VP? Most of the responders addressed many as potential VP targets… are there others sleepers.

      *I’m sure the Electability Chart will be scrubbed in the near future.Report

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    3. Well, the one person in that list whose opinions on politics I respect rated Kamala highly.

      Coaston’s a decent writer, but she’d admit really isn’t a political prognosticator.Report

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        1. No, Bouie’s opinion’s on politics I rate highly. I enjoy Coaston, but she’s not a horse race type and really, if you notice, basically of her ratings were basically 4 to 6, which I’m not surprised from her.Report

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    4. When I used to subscribe to the Sunday New York Times, the first thing I would do with a freshly delivered issue was pull out the Opinion section and put it directly in the recycling.

      That said, I do respect Jane Coaston and Jamelle Bouie.Report

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  16. Speaking of politicians stepping down, SS director Cheatle has stepped down.

    Good. The attempted assassination of Donald Trump was the most significant operational failure at the Secret Service in decades.Report

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    1. It wasn’t that shouts rang out from nowhere… it was that shots rang out from that guy, the guy on the roof people were pointing out, the guy with the rangefinder… on the roof that was both sloped and hot.Report

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    2. His love of the Becker-Posner blog is probably the most telling. I disliked that blog intensely, but they both spent pretty much the whole latter half of the Aughts decrying the direction that conservatism was taking; arguing, in fact, that at least for Posner, that conservatism as he knew it was, by the end of the first Bush administration, either dead or in its death throes. That Vance would think of that as the best blog on the internet suggests an affinity for their views, which makes his embrace of Trumpism and the worst impulses of the American right seem like a much bigger change in world view than it would have otherwise, at least to me.

      Don’t get me wrong, I think a lot of more moderate, business conservatives made this transition, starting in January ’09, and continuing into the Trump years. And besides, pretty much all of us change as we age. So I’m not suggesting that the change is somehow disingenuous, just that it is in fact a big change from loving a blog that’s pretty old school conservatism, with one of the writers literally one of the dudes who laid the intellectual foundation for neoliberalism, an ideology he also worked hard to popularize over decades.Report

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      1. I’m not the biggest fan of No Country for Old Men… I think that the movie would have benefitted from an old-school Wolverine vs. Sabretooth fight at the end of the film instead of a monologue from Tommy Lee Jones about a dream he had of his father.

        I’m told that I didn’t understand the point of the movie and I argue that no, I did… but, anyway.

        I digress. I bring the movie up because there is an exceptionally good question asked by the bad guy in the Woody Harrelson scene: “If the rule you followed brought you to this, of what use was the rule?”

        It’s a rough question.

        But if you don’t ask it at all, you find yourself in a place where you’re reading NYT Op-Eds asking “Hey, you know how the Democrats might win this, the most important election of our lifetimes? They could nominate Mitt Romney!”Report

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        1. The Aaron Sorkin op-ed (which he’s retracted, lol) is interesting in this context, because he is in some ways the 2024 equivalent of Posner in the mid-Aughts, though instead of lamenting the death of a breed of (intellectual) conservatism, Sorkin is lamenting the death of the weird fantasy version of liberal politics he had, perhaps not created (it was a thing going back as long as I can remember; I think of it almost as the Tom Brokaw version of how politics is done), but popularized with his TV show(s). That myth has little to do with the content of the politics — it would, in fact, be weird to call it a political ideology — than an idea about how politics should be done, and who should be doing it. As political myths go, it has to be one of the most annoying, and at least in terms of the way it made liberals view Obama, e.g., I think that myth has been generally harmful to liberal politics.Report

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          1. That foundational mythological set of assumptions proved to be wrong or insufficient or orthogonal or whatever word you want to use.

            It’s rough when you see that happen. You’re pretty much stuck with a choice between abandoning your assumptions or denying that you’ve seen what you’ve seen.

            It sucks.

            I wonder if Sorkin changed his mind or merely retracted. I suppose that they amount to the same thing, in the short term.Report

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      1. I saw a good post today on the twitters. Twitter didn’t wreck journalism because it competed with journalism.

        It wrecked journalism because it exposed what journalists are actually like.Report

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  20. Inside the two-year fight to bring charges against school librarians in Granbury, Texas

    The law enforcement officer spent months methodically gathering evidence. He leafed through thousands of pages and highlighted key passages amid reams and reams of paper. He wore his body camera to record his interactions with witnesses and suspects. And he photographed what he saw as instruments of the alleged crime:

    Books.

    The targets of the investigation? Three school librarians in Granbury, Texas. The allegation? They had allowed children to access literature — such as “The Bluest Eye,” by Toni Morrison — that the officer, Scott London, a chief deputy constable, had deemed obscene.

    https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/school-librarians-banned-books-investigation-texas-rcna161444

    Bari Weiss could not be reached for comment.Report

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  21. More headlines:
    It’s time to talk about Donald Trump’s age

    https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/4788816-donald-trump-age-problem/

    The media and Republican political leaders should treat concerns about Trump’s advanced age every bit as seriously as they did in Biden’s case. Trump can put those concerns to rest by making good on his promise to take a public cognitive test. Is he still willing to “do it for the good of the country,” as he said back on July 12? Report

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  22. Okay. This sort of thing irritates the ever-living crap out of me. Axios put out an article discussing the confusion surrounding whether Kamala was the Border Czar under Biden: “Harris border confusion haunts her new campaign“.

    Here’s an excerpt from the above article: “In the past few days, the Trump campaign and Republicans have tagged Harris repeatedly with the “border czar” title — which she never actually had.”

    Here’s an article from 2021: Harris to visit Mexico and Guatemala to address “root causes” of border crossings. Here’s an excerpt:

    Why it matters: The number of unaccompanied minors crossing the border has reached crisis levels. Harris, appointed by Biden as border czar, said she would be looking at the “root causes” that drive migration.

    If you scroll down to the bottom of the article that came out just today, you’ll see this editor’s note:
    Editor’s note: This article has been updated and clarified to note that Axios was among the news outlets that incorrectly labeled Harris a “border czar” in 2021.

    Stuff like that is irritating as heck.Report

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      2. Axios wrote a story centered on a criticism of the Republicans for misidentifying Harris as “border czar”. If the term was so natural and easy to confuse with whatever her official title was, there shouldn’t have been a story.Report

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    1. Now here’s some actual data:
      Young voter registration spikes to record numbers in 48 hours after Harris takes helm
      https://www.rawstory.com/voter-registration/

      The nonpartisan Vote.org website saw its highest level of new voter registrations of the 2024 election cycle in the first two days after Biden dropped out and endorsed vice president Kamala Harris, with 38,500 people signing up – a 700 percent spike, reported Politico Playbook.

      That’s even higher than when Taylor Swift made an Instagram post urging her fans to register, Playbook noted, and most of the new registrations came from voters who are 34 years old or younger.Report

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  24. There is an organized cultural assault on libraries in America, and the casualties are piling up. Fueled by “parents’ rights” groups like Moms for Liberty, public libraries saw the number of titles targeted for censorship surge 65 percent from 2022 to 2023, according to the American Library Association. Many school librarians have quit, exhausted by harassment and even death threats; during the 2021-2022 school year, 35 percent of districts nationwide had no librarian at all. At one library in Idaho, the situation became so dire that it announced it no longer permits minors on the premises without an adult (or a signed waiver), fearing prosecution under a new state law that levies fines for books deemed unacceptable for children.

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/07/24/libraries-end-culture-wars-book-bans/Report

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    1. Lets hear it for all the reactionary centrists who told us that Glenn Youngkin’s campaign adoption of “Parent’s Rights’ , and the Moms For Liberty who showed up at school board meetings screaming about teachers grooming children for sex was a grassroots effort by sensible parents to simply trim back the excessive DEI silliness.Report

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    2. You’ve got to admit it’d be kind of funny if the author of this editorial was a liberal cliche, maybe a self-identifying “they” who writes sci-fi about time-travelling feminists having abortions.Report

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          2. Conservatives just assume that all reasonable people would recoil in shame and embarrassment from a gender fluid person who writes science fiction about a time traveling feminist who has an abortion.Report

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      2. You have to admit it would be kind of rare if a conservative engaged on the substance of an issue as written about rather then trying to distract by throwing out all sorts of non-sequiturs about the author.Report

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        1. We’ve engaged on this issue at least two dozen times. We’ve talked about it in terms of philosophy, politics, and law. We’ve talked about the role of government versus parents’ rights. We’ve discussed individual cases, and shared at least a dozen articles. I’ve quoted from some of the books in question. You’ve explained your philosophy, and I don’t agree with it. I’ve explained my philosophy, and you don’t agree with it. Whatever our differences, the one thing that neither of us can rightly claim is that we’ve never talked about it.Report

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              1. I suspect Pinky googled it and found their Wikipedia page. That they are listed in the masthead of the article as “Annalee Newitz is the author of “Stories Are Weapons: Psychological Warfare and the American Mind” and six other books of science fiction and nonfiction.” makes it pretty easy to find out who they are – and deflect accordingly by mocking them.Report

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            2. Because we’ve talked the topic to death. Also, because I don’t take one-off posted articles on the Open Mic thread that seriously (even if I post them), and I take editorials even less seriously. But the idea that the author is interested in ending culture wars in anything but a rout seemed absurd enough to comment on.Report

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    1. We have no way of knowing if Trump actually said this.

      Buy if any of us were forced to wager a very and painful sum on its truthfulness, which way would you bet?

      Be honest, now.Report

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    1. The protesters, as usual, beclown themselves. Of course I don’t understand why we give the honor of addressing Congress to some middle eastern strongman. At least not as an equal. Maybe if he’d come with a cup in his hand and an offer to squeegee windshields I’d see the point.Report

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      1. I was using today as a bit of a finger in the wind for Chicago next month.

        I figured that if diddly squat happened today (or if there was muted footage of what did happen), then we could look forward to a muted response to the convention.

        As such, I’m looking with interest to the convention next month. It might be interesting!Report

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              2. Would it be reasonable for an onlooker to watch the Republican’s applause and enthusiasm for Netanyahu and conclude they very much want America to take an active role in Israel’s defense?Report

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              4. I’m not complaining about anything.

                I’m just pointing out that the Republican Party is in no way isolationist, except for when a dictator they love is raping a smaller country.Report

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              5. I agree that the Republican party is not particularly isolationist.

                Is “isolationist” agreed to be a good thing that is worth aspiring to?

                We should see if we can get more liberal-left isolationists showing up at the rallies like the ones the Pro-Palestinians held yesterday.

                “From the River to the Sea, we should live Isolatedly!”Report

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              6. So isolationism isn’t a reason people can vote for Trump.

                So I’ll revisit my previous statement:

                No one is willing to put forward any reason to vote for Trump.

                I mean, we all know what the reasons are, but few are willing to admit them.Report

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              7. Oh, I think that there are plenty of reasons to vote for Trump.

                For one, there are the aesthetics of the enthusiastic interventionists.

                A “whatabout the other guys?” argument that doesn’t mention Trump at all, but only the opposition. “Whatabout this?” “Whatabout that?” “Whatabout this other thing?”

                Never mentioning Trump at all.Report

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              9. “I can’t align myself with the protestors who are burning the American flag in Washington DC as part of their antisemitic protest.”

                You can attempt to reframe this as grievance and resentment, but I suspect that you’ll fail.

                Kamala has one hell of a Sista Soulja moment available to her…

                Eh, it’s probably just easier to hope for more grievance and resentment against Trump and his ilk than Trump and his ilk can generate against Kamala and hers.Report

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              10. Once again, you’re confirming my comments just using different words.

                “I don’t like X, so therefore Trump” is about the only possible reason to vote for the guy.Report

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              11. No one is willing to put forward any reason to vote for Trump.

                Becomes

                “I don’t like X, so therefore Trump” is about the only possible reason to vote for the guy.

                My goal was to get you to move from Zero to One.

                From there, the question becomes “do I want to link to the answers given the last time he asked for reasons to vote for Trump?” and the answer to that question is “no… maybe… if they’re easily found and from maybe two days ago…”.

                But it’s always fun to play the “There isn’t any X!” game and watch how it evolves into the “Okay, maybe there’s *ONE* X!”

                That’s a briar patch I am always going to be willing to be thrown into despite any surface protests to the contrary.Report

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              12. Oh, these answers:
                1. Business
                2. Immigration;
                3. DEI

                The last two are just thinly veiled grievance and the first is so mockworthy that I defy anyone to present it with a straight face.

                I notice that you weren’t even willing to put your own name to it, and had to resort to sockpuppetry using some imaginary person’s words.Report

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              14. No, wete forcing you to list reasons why someone might vote Trump.

                And since these are the very best that anyone can conjure up, I’m satisfied that my original point stands, i.e., that Trump support can only be resentment and grievance, with some halfhearted flimsy drapery of “economy” to try and make it appear respectable.Report

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              15. If you want reasons that I, Jaybird, support Trump, you’re going to be frustrated because I do not support Trump.

                I merely find him differently offensive than you do.

                But when you ask for “any” reason to support Trump, I can easily come up with a couple that will get even you to say “but you’re making my point for me by listing those reasons, that exist”.Report

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              16. “I’m just pointing out that the Republican Party is in no way isolationist, except for when a dictator they love is raping a smaller country.”

                Still not Isolationism…

                … and nobody really cares if you throw the “I” word around.

                None of this is useful framing for what should be best policy vis-a-vis Ukraine/Russia.Report

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              20. I’m always open to discussion of straightforward, well written ideas. I just don’t recall you ever writing that the optics of any particular protest struck you as good – or whatever the opposite of Whack would be.Report

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              21. “Whack” is a verb. “Wack” is an adjective.

                Believe it or not, I have not only discussed good optics as part of a protest, I’ve praised the optics of *PALESTINIAN* protests! Back in 2018, the embassy moved from hither to yon and there were protests and coverage of the protests was absolutely execrable but I talked about the good optics of the Palestinian protestors.Report

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          2. I know you’re trying to be snarky here, but the serious answer is that Trump has never promoted ‘isolationism’… isolationism is usually trotted out by the Blob to misrepresent any position they don’t like. So, No, I wouldn’t consider Trump an isolationist. And no, I doubt he’d put boots on the ground in Israel (to answer your question below). Mostly he seems to have an aversion of the bad press of dead American bodies for no particular tangible gain.

            Now, could you maybe interest him in invading Bimini or Turks & Caicos for a low cost territorial expansion of prime Resort real-estate? I’d say, let’s not give him ideas.Report

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        1. Why is this the thing that marks the fall of Snopes?

          Is it that they’re addressing the question at all? Seems to me the sort of thing Snopes was created to address. I agree with @CJColucci below: whether a bullet or shrapnel caused the wounds on the candidate’s ear is not particularly important. Perhaps the essay failing to point out “But this doesn’t really matter, does it?” is your complaint?

          If it’s “Snopes is debasing itself by even addressing this question,” no I don’t agree with that. This seems to me to be exactly what Snopes does.

          Was it the reasoning they used? I think they’re right that if the teleprompters were intact after the shot, that means the teleprompters didn’t take an errant shot and generate shrapnel, is a pretty reasonable one. Glass shards would have to come from somewhere. There doesn’t seem to have been any other glass around to create these purported shards. In the absence of such phantom shards of glass, the bullet itself seems to be the most likely object to have caused the wounds. Is there some part of this logic I’m missing?

          Not sure what’s going on here.Report

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          2. I think by “fallen,” JB simply means that Snopses’s take has “dropped.” It matches what I understand to be JB’s take on the matter, and the reasons for it. Of course, I’m taking some risk in trying to parse out what JB means, but that’s my best guess.Report

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          3. Snopes is not only failing to go along with the narrative that Trump wasn’t shot, it’s not even giving the people who are just asking questions wiggle room to say something like “hey, we still don’t know, there are still unanswered questions!”

            It’s acting like it’s 1996 instead of 2024.Report

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              1. Not anymore, apparently:

                WASHINGTON (AP) — Nearly two weeks after Donald Trump’s near assassination, the FBI confirmed Friday that it was indeed a bullet that struck the former president’s ear, moving to clear up conflicting accounts about what caused the former president’s injuries after a gunman opened fire at a Pennsylvania rally.

                “What struck former President Trump in the ear was a bullet, whether whole or fragmented into smaller pieces, fired from the deceased subject’s rifle,” the agency said in a statement.

                The one-sentence statement from the FBI marked the most definitive law enforcement account of Trump’s injuries and followed ambiguous comments earlier in the week from Director Christopher Wray that appeared to cast doubt on whether Trump had actually been hit by a bullet.

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    2. Yes, there is “some question.” But there doesn’t seem to be a great deal of interest in the answer given the unassailable fact that the guy shot at Trump and tried to kill him. Whether Trump was hit by a bullet or by shrapnel would be nice to know, but it wouldn’t tell us anything useful. I suppose if someone put a gun to my head and demanded that I plunk down $100, at even money, on one of the two possibilities, I know which I’d pick based on what we know so far. But what pick I’d make with a gun to my head doesn’t interest me, and I can’t imagine that it would or should interest anyone else. My guess is we’ll know one way or the other in the not-too-distant future. But maybe we won’t, and that will be fine too. Grown-ups can live with uncertainty.Report

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  28. More food for thought:

    The Trump decision thus manages to turn the essence of the Nuremberg trials — that “just following orders” is not a defense to a war crime — on its head: It provides absolute immunity for the president, unqualified authority to pardon in advance underlings who follow illegal orders and no legal accountability for obvious criminal activity.

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/07/25/supreme-court-immunity-ruling-cia/Report

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  29. Good news for Democrats! Kamala Harris has released a statement on yesterday’s protests:

    Yesterday, at Union Station in Washington, D.C. we saw despicable acts by unpatriotic protestors and dangerous hate-fueled rhetoric.

    I condemn any individuals associating with the brutal terrorist organization Hamas, which has vowed to annihilate the State of Israel and kill Jews. Pro-Hamas graffiti and rhetoric is abhorrent and we must not tolerate it in our nation.

    I condemn the burning of the American flag. That flag is a symbol of our highest ideals as a nation and represents the promise of America. It should never be desecrated in that way.

    I support the right to peacefully protest, but let’s be clear: Antisemitism, hate and violence of any kind have no place in our nation.

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        1. He may want to, but he can’t. The Supreme Court said so in Texas v. Johnson in 1989. Surprisingly, it was only 5-4 with a bizarre dissent by Justice Stevens, but it was really an easy case to anyone who was actually thinking rather than sputtering.Report

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      2. Let’s check the google… here’s Newsweek: Trump Says Israel Is Bad at PR in Wake of Capitol Pro-Palestine Protests

        Former President Donald Trump has called on Israel to bring a quick end to its war against Hamas and said the country is “not good” at public relations.

        Jeez, that article doesn’t mention whether he mentioned the protestors.

        Let’s click around some more…

        The Hill is running this: Trump calls for jail sentence for desecrating flag: ‘Stupid people’ will say it’s unconstitutional. Personally, I think it’s like burning a Pride flag. You can burn your own, no problem. You shouldn’t be able to take down someone else’s and burn it.

        But that’s on flag-burning, not the protests specifically, I don’t think.

        Golly. Has Trump really not said anything about yesterday’s protests yet?Report

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          1. To whom? As Abraham Lincoln said when asked for a blurb on a forthcoming book: People who like this sort of thing will find it to be exactly what they like.Report

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            1. I think Dems should seize each and every moment where Kamala bests him. Won’t impact his base but to whatever extent there are undecideds, show them how much better than him she is.Report

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      1. If I had a single criticism, it’d be that it was a press release and not a public statement. Clinton’s statement, for example, was made publicly rather than via text.

        But, as single criticisms go, it’s a paltry one.

        This is a good statement on her part and it sets her up to make a better one at the Convention.

        The road to the White House wanders through a forceful Sista Soulja statement.Report

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  30. Good news for property owners in California: Newsom issues executive order for removal of homeless encampments in California

    SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — California Gov. Gavin Newsom issued an executive order Thursday for the removal of homeless encampments in his state.

    Newsom’s order would direct state agencies on how to remove the thousands of tents and makeshift shelters across the state that line freeways, clutter shopping center parking lots and fill city parks. The order makes clear that the decision to remove the encampments remains in the hands of local authorities.

    The guidance comes after a decision by the U.S. Supreme Court earlier this summer allowing cities to enforce bans on sleeping outside in public spaces. The case was the most significant on the issue to come before the high court in decades and comes as cities across the country have wrestled with the politically complicated issue of how to deal with a rising number of people without a permanent place to live and public frustration over related health and safety issues.

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          1. Why would you think that? Just because factually things are pretty good and getting better doesn’t mean that large numbers of voters understand either the larger economy or their own situations. Vibes and all that.Report

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  32. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/25/us/politics/poll-kamala-harris-donald-trump.html

    “Vice President Kamala Harris begins a 103-day sprint for the presidency in a virtual tie with former President Donald J. Trump, according to the latest New York Times/Siena College poll, as her fresh candidacy was quickly reuniting a Democratic Party that had been deeply fractured over President Biden.

    Just days after the president abandoned his campaign under pressure from party leaders, the poll showed Democrats rallying behind Ms. Harris as the presumptive nominee, with only 14 percent saying they would prefer another option. An overwhelming 70 percent of Democratic voters said they wanted the party to speedily consolidate behind her rather than engage in a more competitive and drawn-out process.

    Her swift reassembling of the Democratic coalition appeared to help narrow Mr. Trump’s significant advantage over Mr. Biden of only a few weeks ago. Ms. Harris was receiving 93 percent support from Democrats, the same share that Mr. Trump was getting from Republicans.

    Overall, Mr. Trump leads Ms. Harris 48 percent to 47 percent among likely voters in a head-to-head match. That is a marked improvement for Democrats when compared to the Times/Siena poll in early July that showed Mr. Biden behind by six percentage points, in the aftermath of the poor debate performance that eventually drove him from the race.”Report

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    1. I’ve seen people on the right who called for Biden to step down, and are now complaining that Harris got the nomination undemocratically. I’ll tentatively assume that they’re trolling.Report

      Reply

      1. I don’t even know that they’re trolling. A million years ago, I played poker with a group of fellers and the old man in the group, who, at the time, wasn’t that much older than I am now, constantly made this joke when it was his turn to deal: “We’re gonna play a little game called ‘Me Win’.”

        Those guys who called for Biden to step down and are now complaining that Kamala is the presumptive nominee are dumb.

        Now, there *ARE* a handful of folks out there who wanted Biden to step down so that someone else could be the nominee and then they wanted a vigorous floor fight at the Convention so that the absolute *BEST* nominee could be picked. (The New York Post argues that Obama is among them.)

        You can generally tell who is trying to play “Me Win” and who is actually giving their opinions… generally. But you have to look at what they were saying two weeks ago.Report

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    2. 1. He wrote this before Biden resigned because he thought Harris would lose easily;

      2. He wrote this after it turns out Harris might give Trump a run for his money.Report

      Reply

    1. My local radio station talked about this yesterday…hilarious. Whether or not “czar” was used is irrelevant. She was given the assignment. Watching reporters try to whitewash it away has been hilarious.Report

      Reply

  36. As others have noted before, one of the weirder things about the Biden must go saga was that the Progressive Wing of the Party, people like Sanders and AOC, stood by Biden while more moderate Democrats were the ones pushing for him to drop out of the race were known more for being moderates in the Party, relatively speaking. Some progressives are still angry about this: https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/why-did-progressive-democrats-support-joe-biden?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=dhfacebook&utm_content=null

    The main beef in this essay appears to be Israel/Palestine which is weird to me because I don’t think Harris’ statements or actions on the issue have been substantially different from Biden’s:

    1. She strongly condemned the protest and graffiti yesterday in ways that echoed the Biden admin’s stance of “Peaceful Protest is great! This does not give you license to vandalism, harassment, or reiterating slander from the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.”

    2. Her statement after meeting Netanyahu was basically what Biden has been saying for months now. Israel has a right to exist, has a right to defend itself, it can’t go stomping over Palestinians to do so.

    But people are twisting themselves into backflips to make it look like Harris’ stance is different and new.Report

    Reply

  38. I’m thinking the Republicans are getting buyer’s remorse over Vance.
    The only news of him is repeatedly having to explain how not-weird he is, which only raises more questions about how weird he is.Report

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  40. Donald Trump Gets No Black Votes vs. Kamala Harris in New Michigan Poll
    Among the Black voters surveyed, 82.1 percent supported Harris, 11.5 percent backed independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and none supported Trump.

    The poll surveyed 600 likely Michigan voters between July 22 and 24 and has a margin of error of 4 percentage points. It is unclear how many Black people were included in the sample, but it is likely to be fewer than 100 people given that Black residents make up 14 percent of Michigan’s population.

    Since there were zero black voters supporting trump, and the margin of error is 4%, by my math this suggests the true nature of Trump’s black support may be as high as 2%, or-2%.

    Meaning that there may in fact be imaginary black people who exist, and even they hate Trump.

    Quite the accomplishment!Report

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  42. If I had known Gojira was playing the opening ceremony for the Olympics I actually what have watched. Apparently it was wild and featured a singing headless Marie Antoinette.

    https://uproxx.com/indie/gojira-olympics-opening-ceremony-video/

    I am always happy when something heavy finds it’s way into a mainstream event. While I’ve long made my peace with the fact that hard music is not everyone’s bag the total loss of any edge whatsoever in mainstream music or even alt rock makes everything so much more boring. Hopefully a few people got turned on to something they never knew they were missing.Report

    Reply

    2. It was a pretty awesome performance, especially given how Opening Ceremonies typically go. I was not familiar with Gojira but immediately sat up when I heard the guitar start riffing. The entire effect was really fun to watch. We rewound to show the kids — 17 loves the history of the royals so she loved that aspect… 9 and 11 are knuckle head boys who liked the sound/fire/’blood’. Apparently the song they were singing was in part or whole an homage to a protest/battle cry from the French Revolution. I don’t speak French so can’t confirm. Even my wife thought it was awesome, though she typically describes anything heavier than Hootie as a fork-in-the-blender.Report

      Reply

      1. They wouldn’t make my top 10 or anything but they’re in rotation on XM Liquid Metal and I usually like what I hear. The songs Stranded (link below if interested) and Flying Whales occasionally pop up on the playlist when I am drinking and playing darts with my friends. The first is about as accessible as they get, and it’s still solid enough to have on while you drink and smash your face into a wall.

        https://youtu.be/fkkATK5JvtU?si=Fez1w_HkxdZWnLmBReport

        Reply

        1. I’m not the biggest straight metal fan. Late 90s high school for better or worse imprinted nu metal (among other things) on me. It was just so cool to see something that wasn’t a lame-ass layup.

          More importantly the kids are asking for “French metal” at tonight’s firepit. Screw you, Kids Bop.Report

          Reply

  45. The immediate change I see in the Harris campaign is a pugnaciousness, and willingness to be blunt and give immediate pushback to Trump.

    The Harris campaign is characterizing Trump’s comment that if Christians vote this one time they won’t have to do it anymore as a “vow to end democracy.”
    “When Vice President Harris says this election is about freedom she means it. Our democracy is under assault by criminal Donald Trump,” Harris for President Spokesperson James Singer said. “Donald Trump wants to take America backward, to a politics of hate, chaos, and fear – this November America will unite around Vice President Kamala Harris to stop him.”
    https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/harris-camp-responds-trump-telling-christians-dont-vote/story?id=112338473

    What makes this pushback so effective is that they are literally just quoting the man verbatim, leaving his camp scrambling to explain that he didn’t really mean what he meant because, well, you see, he’s old and suffering from dementia.Report

    Reply

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