April 11, 2025

503 thoughts on “Open Mic for the week of 8/12/2024”

    1. The problem with Trump is that is history of perpetual lying or playing with facts is also catching up with rapid cognitive decline/dementia. How do you tell with the Brown-Brown mixup was a lie or a dementia induced hallucination?Report

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              1. Because I see the *NATIONAL* crime numbers going down as operating independently of any one prosecutor’s office.

                I see it, instead, as a regression to the mean following a local maxima that came from a stupid period where supposedly serious people were publishing books in defense of looting and calling for defunding the police while, at the same time, accusing opponents of being dishonest of accusing them of wanting to defund the police.

                This, by comparison, is a single and very specific district attorney’s office that is taking some very specific protestors and charging them with very specific charges following a very specific protest.

                And, note: I’m not thinking that the DA’s office has demonstrated competence yet. I’m seeing the charges as the first step in doing so. Competence will be demonstrated with something that results in sentencing (or, at least, a non-“slap on the wrist” plea bargain).Report

              2. That link lists the cities it surveys. San Francisco is one of the cities listed. It’s trends are down.

                Note too that a DA issuing indictments doesn’t mean there will be sentencing – that’s usually up to judges or juries depending on how the charges are tried. And lack of conviction doesn’t actually mean the DA is failing to do their job.

                I’d also remind that the First Amendment protections of free speech and peaceable assembly (meaning protest) are not about things being convenient or polite. So charging people for these sort of things is not going to stand constitutional muster. And I would think that if anything violated demonstrations of competence, it would be charging people unconstitutionally.Report

              3. Phil, *ALL* the trends are down. The whole country regressed to the mean.

                And lack of conviction doesn’t actually mean the DA is failing to do their job.

                But once charges have been filed, failure to get a conviction implies a lack of competence.

                I’d also remind that the First Amendment protections of free speech and peaceable assembly (meaning protest) are not about things being convenient or polite. So charging people for these sort of things is not going to stand constitutional muster. And I would think that if anything violated demonstrations of competence, it would be charging people unconstitutionally.

                If people are being held against their will, the “peaceful” is no longer operative. As for “free speech”, I’m pretty sure that “freedom to not listen” is also covered with “peaceful assembly”.

                It’s the right to leave the speech.

                Which these protestors violated.Report

              4. Well if that’s how you measure it, TFG violates my free speech rights hourly. Yet here we are.

                But once charges have been filed, failure to get a conviction implies a lack of competence.

                When did you last serve on a criminal trial jury?Report

              5. Also too, your personal metric of what constitutes “competence” (punishment of protesters) may not necessarily scale to what the public at large thinks.Report

              6. No, my definition of “competence” can be limited to the whole “prosecutor” thing.

                Does the prosecutor get a prosecution?

                Then competence has been demonstrated.

                It’s not a whole lot more complicated than that.Report

              7. “Competence will be demonstrated with something that results in sentencing (or, at least, a non-“slap on the wrist” plea bargain”

                Which is a definition that may not scale to the SF public at large.
                Because a resident of San Francisco may not be as obsessed with protesters as a conservative internet commenter from Colorado.
                They may have other metrics by which they judge competence.

                Like, “are the streets safer now?”Report

              8. You’re thinking that this prosecution is not performative.

                I happen to think that it is. A political message is being sent by it.

                I could be wrong! But they’re including some really interesting specific charges.Report

              9. The charges look pretty standard to me, though I’d defer to Em’s superior expertise if she weighs in.
                In Dubuque, no one would think this was performative or political. Election year or not.Report

              10. I haven’t been arrested, but been to several sit-in street blockage protests like these occurred resulting in arrests.

                The most common outcome is some misdemeanor trespass or disturbing the peace charge followed by suspended sentence or probation and time served.

                Maybe they can spin a few of these into something larger I don’t know.

                Either way, it’s barely appearing on the SF newspaper or TV coverage, which again is typical for this sort of thing.Report

              11. Yes, but we’re not in Dubuque.

                We’re in a city where the DA used to be the Democratic Nominee for President (the first female DA of San Francisco, if I recall correctly).

                A message needs to be sent.

                Not to the protestors… but to the country.Report

              12. Sez who?

                “Ms. Jenkins, we need to send a message to the country- an internet commenter in Colorado demands it!”

                “My God. Put on some coffee and round up Sam Mcoy-We’re going to work this all night”
                *Dun DUN!*Report

              13. Well, I admit, I haven’t been speaking to Axelrod but I do know that the whole “Harris supported the riots” talking point has shown up and crime problems in San Francisco have been discussed on a national level (remember when I would post stuff about businesses closing in San Francisco? The hotel closing? That stuff? Remember that at all?) and it strikes me that some of this could be addressed (in a locking the barn door after the horse ran away sense of the term) by doing a big deal about this particular protest.

                Or maybe it’s a smaller message to protestors hoping to make a splash at the convention. You remember Harris getting heckled by pro-Palestinian protestors recently, right?Report

              14. You could be right.
                Maybe this time, fetch will happen.

                Or maybe the “Kamala is a cop and also soft on crime” line will be blown off the national stage by pictures of JD Vance wearing a dress and wig.Report

              15. There’s a bit of a divide among the Democrats right now on the issue of crime.

                Have you noticed that? At all?

                Like, “Kamala is a cop” came out during the 15 minutes when that was the worst thing you could possibly call a Democrat, right?Report

              16. Sorry, I missed that. Must have been distracted by the tens of thousands of cheering Harris supporters.

                But hey, Walz is appearing at a rally with union members tomorrow at the LA convention center so maybe I’ll mosey down there to ask about the divide.Report

              19. Fair enough. That part is mostly only happening in the silliest cities and everybody else is taking a “what are you talking about? You’re making stuff up” attitude about it. “No, nobody ever took a knee in the capitol building.”

                The current divide is over the issue of what is to be done in the Middle East.Report

              20. I wouldn’t even say that’s a divide. The Democrats are as united as I’ve ever seen them. Not about the issues or whatever, but the other thing.Report

              24. Well, for one thing, they very recently had a somewhat embarrassing DA recall election that resulted in the DA being removed.

                For another, the current DA’s office wants to do two things:

                1. Communicate that the Democratic Presidential Nominee who was the first Female DA to hold that office is part of a grand tradition of Not Being Stupid About DA Stuff

                2. Send a smaller message to potential anti-genocide protestors that they should tone it down to reasonable time, place, and manner kinda Free Speech Exercises during the Convention.Report

              27. And you know this based on some sources of information unavailable to the rest of us? Or you just don’t like San Francisco? A DA’s office doing standard DA stuff is proof that they’re only doing standard DA stuff for nefarious reasons?Report

              28. Nope. This is based on the information that’s out there for anybody to look at.

                Or you just don’t like San Francisco?

                I love San Francisco. I have wonderful memories of hanging out with Lisa in the 90s in San Francisco. Brushing my teeth listening to The Jim Carroll Band and buying weed from a chick named Phoenix and drinking lavender tea.

                A DA’s office doing standard DA stuff is proof that they’re only doing standard DA stuff for nefarious reasons?

                Nefarious? Who used the word “nefarious”?Report

              29. Apparently no one.
                What you’ve managed to do here is convince everyone that the SF DA office is handling routine stuff in a routine manner, and the only person who seems to think any of it it noteworthy or of political impact is you.

                So…good on Brooke Jenkins I guess?Report

              31. I’ll amend to use your original formulation.

                You’re thinking that this prosecution is not performative.

                I happen to think that it is. A political message is being sent by it.

                If you don’t think that’s nefarious, then I stand corrected. I will accept performative and political.Report

              32. Yeah, they’re doing standard DA stuff because, very very very recently, they were doing non-standard “progressive” DA stuff.

                I can link to, among other things, the threads where we discussed how even San Francisco was upset with how the DA was behaving.

                Do you recall us having these conversations or would you prefer that I link to them?Report

              33. I remember those conversations and have no desire to hear them again. So what it amounts to is that the prosecutions, which are utterly standard for any DA’s office, anywhere, must be performative and political in this case because Jewish Space DA’s.
                Got it. And I managed to cover a square on the Jaybird Bingo Card, so a good time was had by all.Report

              34. So what it amounts to is that the prosecutions, which are utterly standard for any DA’s office, anywhere, must be performative and political in this case because Jewish Space DA’s.

                The point is that, very recently, they were not utterly standard in San Francisco.

                As for the “Jewish Space DA’s”, I was under the impression that Brooke Jenkins was LatinX.Report

              35. A DA’s office can walk and chew gum at the same time. It can pursue certain non-standard policies — Soros DA or Jewish Space DA stuff — while the bulk of the office’s work is the same old same old. Murder gets prosecuted vigorously, shoplifting not so much, for example. If there is or was some policy or practice in the San Francisco DA’s office that would have precluded a prosecution like this, if the situation had come up, I have yet to hear of it from you or anyone else. All you seem to have is Forget it, Jake. It’s San Francisco.Report

              36. This particular DA’s office is now in the process of demonstrating that it can walk and chew gum at the same time, yes.

                This is one of the things that a government office generally tries to do after a particularly embarrassing flameout following a DA that could do neither and, instead, gave speeches about cultural assumptions of gum chewing and ableism speeches about walking.

                Murder gets prosecuted vigorously, shoplifting not so much, for example.

                This particular prosecution involves protestors protesting protestingly.

                If there is or was some policy or practice in the San Francisco DA’s office that would have precluded a prosecution like this, if the situation had come up, I have yet to hear of it from you or anyone else.

                In the previous one, I imagine that we would have heard speeches about the importance of the Freedom of Speech and the difficulty of prosecuting people who happen to be wearing masks.

                You know, like we saw in New York with the Columbia protestors a couple of months ago.

                I’m not *COMPLAINING* that the DA’s office is charging these folks.

                I’m using it as an example of them pointing out that they’re no longer like those other DAs.

                Indeed.

                I’m saying that it’s an example of San Francisco demonstrating competence after a period where they were demonstrating something else.Report

              37. I imagine that we would have heard speeches about the importance of the Freedom of Speech and the difficulty of prosecuting people who happen to be wearing masks.

                But it was just my imagination, running away with me…..

                Can’t beat classic Motown.Report

            1. I believe what we are seeing is better understood as the stupider cousin of civil disobedience, which of course involves allowing oneself to be arrested in protest of an injust law. The power of that is real, and it’s been used effectively at various points in history. However that’s tended to involve some discipline to make sure the people being arrested really are sympathetic, and are thus able to illustrate the justness of their cause. On the other hand getting yourself arrested for bothering random motorists doesn’t garner much sympathy or illustrate much of anything with respect to whatever particular cause. I don’t think it’s difficult to understand why that is.Report

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              3. People engaging in civil disobedience realized that they were going to get arrested. It is unclear to me if the current protestors realize that they are going to face any consequences for anything they do. There really seems to be no strategy for convincing others. Part of this is because the Palestinian advocates seem to be satisfied with nothing but the complete destruction of Israel and even all the Jews being made to leave.Report

    2. I really do not understand the strategic thinking of the Pro-Palestinian protestors. It seems designed to not convince anybody who isn’t already convinced about the righteousness of the Palestinian cause. In fact, it seems designed to piss off a lot of people but they believe that by blocking bridges, commuters and other drivers will say that “but for the existence of the Jewish State, this would never happen and we must now destroy Israel.” This is really nuts logic. They also seem to believe that the best way to get Diaspora Jews on their side is by directly targeting them. Most of it seems more about making a scene and hurting Israel than actually helping the Palestinians.Report

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        1. Something with clearly articulable and achievable goals for one thing. Another thing is one that doesn’t use obviously anti-Semitic imagery and rhetoric, links were provided in the past, or think that harassing Diaspora Jews and doing things like calling for Hillel to be barred from campus. Finally one that doesn’t act like everybody already agrees with them and just doesn’t know it. The Pro-Palestinian antics are just bizarre. I have no idea what they want or how they attend to achieve that.Report

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            1. Philip: Palestinians thriving with the same level of security and self determination as Israelis.

              Might be time to offer them a country again if they’re willing to give up the right to return. We have to do that once or twice a generation just to showcase that it really is the Palestinians who are insisting the conflict needs to continue.Report

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            2. The Palestinians were offered more or less everything they were supposed to want by Barak and an even more generous offer by Olmert. They rejected said offer twice without comment. I do not know want outside of some broad generalities because their leadership can never speak in specifics unless it is the most hardline among them. Like if you give Palestinians a bunch of materials and tell them to come up with some proposals themselves, I’m not really sure what they would come up with.

              The Palestinians have to agree to something. They don’t have a reputation as the people that can’t say yes without reason.Report

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  3. And your regular reminder of how we deal with anyone stealing classified documents not named Trump:

    From May until as recently as August 7, Turkey-born electrical engineer Gokhan Gun printed over 250 documents at work, a few of which were labeled “top secret,” FBI officials allege. Because of his employment with the Defense Department, Gun possesses a top-secret clearance, but he was not authorized to take the documents home, according to an 11-page complaint filed in a Virginia federal court.

    Gun was scheduled to depart the US for Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, on Thursday morning, before federal agents executing a search warrant caught him leaving his home ahead of the flight, according to the complaint. In their initial search of his backpack, agents found a document marked “top secret.”

    https://www.cnn.com/2024/08/10/politics/defense-department-contractor-charged/index.htmlReport

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      1. Yea I struggle to exactly celebrate this. Whether the American university is destroyed due to race to the bottom consumerism or loss of control to the most moronic forms of activism, or more likely some combination of the two, the end result will be a much poorer society.Report

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      2. “The university said it’s suspending 42 degree programs and 50 minors, alongside eliminating 54 full-time faculty (13%), 42 staff (8%) and four (13%) administrative positions. The College of Education and Learning Design program offerings are being cut by nearly 52% followed by the College of Liberal Arts at nearly 43%. The College of Science and Engineering was impacted the least with a roughly 10% cut. Impacted programs include environmental engineering, economics, criminal justice, gender studies and physical education.”

        https://www.sctimes.com/story/news/education/2024/06/11/st-cloud-state-university-axes-100-jobs/74059455007/Report

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  5. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/08/nyregion/brandon-miller-suicide-debt.html

    An interesting look at the mirage of the very rich mired in unsustainable debt.

    Mr. and Ms. Miller lived a seemingly charmed life but his commercial real estate business was in shambles and they were spending more than they could afford. He eventually committed suicide while his wife and children were on holiday so they could get his life insurance policies.*

    What is interesting here is that this couple grew up in the same part of the world that I did and my upbringing was very privileged in all ways compared to most of humanity but the Millers might have well occupied a different world. She apparently did not know much about his business dealings and doesn’t seem to have been taught about or expected to ever have a career on her own. She “ran” an instagram account and some variants of consulting on her fabulous life for other society women and/or their aspirants but never seemed to moneitize it well or at all. Meanwhile, he seems to have thought she would have left him if he said we need to scale back our lifestyle and/or he thought scaling back their lifestyle would ruin his chances for a comeback and/or he did not want it himself.Report

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    1. Fake it till you make it is a governing ethos of a lot of people. Most people don’t make it though and faking it can have some deadly consequences. When I read stories like this, I often wonder if the ultra-austere types who hate even the most minor luxury might have a point.Report

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  6. “he seems to have thought she would have left him if he said we need to scale back our lifestyle” she probably would have left him, especially if she married him after his had his wealth.Report

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  7. Life under Republican rule, another in a continuing series:
    Dozens of pregnant women, some bleeding or in labor, are turned away from ERs despite federal law

    WASHINGTON (AP) — Bleeding and in pain, Kyleigh Thurman didn’t know her doomed pregnancy could kill her.

    Emergency room doctors at Ascension Seton Williamson in Texas handed her a pamphlet on miscarriage and told her to “let nature take its course” before discharging her without treatment for her ectopic pregnancy.

    When the 25-year-old returned three days later, still bleeding, doctors finally agreed to give her an injection to end the pregnancy. It was too late. The fertilized egg growing on Thurman’s fallopian tube ruptured it, destroying part of her reproductive system

    https://apnews.com/article/pregnant-women-emergency-room-ectopic-er-edd66276d2f6c412c988051b618fb8f9Report

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    1. And conservatives everywhere – including the usual cabal here – will no doubt chime in that Doctors are just being silly, that the laws as passed are not designed to create the outcomes, and Democrats caused this. Since only Democrats have agency.

      I mean I’d love for Pinky or Koz or even Kristin – actually especially Kristin – to weigh in and tell us if this was what they wanted, and if not how they intend to fix it since its happening in red states. I suspect I’d sooner see TFG admit he’s suffering a mental breakdown.Report

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      1. Turns out forced pregnancy laws force pregnancy even when pregnancy could kill or cause permanent harm. Who could have foreseen this, other than anyone who’d looked at what life was like for women before they and their physicians were able to make decisions about when they stayed pregnant and when they did not? It’s almost as if the pro-forced pregnancy folks passed these laws knowing this would happen, but not caring.Report

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        1. I would think that “best practices” would entail trusting doctors and women to handle the situation as they see best, without the prospect of a district attorney deciding some time later that he disagrees and then filing a murder charge.

          But Republicans specifically blocked that because they were afraid a doctor and woman might make a decision the Republicans disagreed with.Report

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          1. Chip: I would think that “best practices” would entail trusting doctors and women to handle the situation as they see best,

            We’re past the point of pretending that the gov isn’t going to be heavily involved in health care.

            Chip: without the prospect of a district attorney deciding some time later that he disagrees and then filing a murder charge.

            I checked to see if this has happened anywhere and as far as I can tell, the only DA who has tried anything like it is himself being sued.

            https://abcnews.go.com/US/woman-abortion-pill-charged-murder-now-suing-prosecutors/story?id=112300737Report

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  9. As a nation, we learned NOTHING from the pandemic:

    Return-to-office policies are getting stricter, upending the lives of those who had gotten used to working from home.

    Employers are stepping up the number of days their employees need to show up in person, arguing it promotes stronger social connections, better collaboration and fairness in the workplace. A survey last year by the professional services firm KPMG found two-thirds of CEOs predicting a full return to office by 2026.

    In the city of Philadelphia, it’s already happening.

    This summer, the city’s new mayor Cherelle Parker made good on her promise to give residents a government they could “see, touch and feel,” ordering all municipal employees back to the office five days a week.

    https://www.npr.org/2024/08/09/nx-s1-5046225/work-from-home-philadelphia-orderReport

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    1. We’ve got a return-to-office at my office and, reading between the lines, the big problem seems to be with new hires and the employee retention thereof.

      The established teams are fine, these guys have been working together for years, they share meals, they sometimes hang out after work, they’ve got inside jokes, and they’re a good team.

      Hire a new guy? There’s no way for him to become part of that. To become part of that, you pretty much have to be stacked on top of each other for months at a time. So we hire a new guy, dump work on him, and he doesn’t become part of the team because he has conversations solely on Teams (Classic). He gets a job offer for his salary +$1, and he’s out the door.

      When you add just the regular attrition due to regular corporate friction and the various dysfunction that exists anyway, well…

      Management has a meeting and asks “why aren’t things working?” and they can’t offer more money, they can’t offer time off, they can’t have less-dumb management… hey. Maybe “work from home” changed things.

      We should change back.Report

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      1. Yeah well . . . modern office culture was built by extroverts for extroverts. Us introverts chaffed under it for decades, and we mourn the loss that comes with returning to it.

        Plus if you have a nationally distributed workforce (as my slim slice of NOAA does) you had to figure out the integration aspect long ago.

        Its unnecessary to go back to physical offices, but doing so means the commercial real estate sector doesn’t have to contend with its excesses, And bad managers get to hide behind literal doors again.Report

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      2. And they’re not wrong. I genuinely don’t feel connected to the rest of the employees here at work, and it’s pretty lonely, and a big reason for that is that right at the time when it was supposed to be “get used to seeing each other in the lunchroom” COVID hit and that was basically the end of it for the next year and change, and now it’s turned back to “the guys who all hung out together still hang out together and nobody else hangs out together”.Report

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        1. There’s a weird space between a new MBA hire who comes in and says “tribal knowledge shouldn’t exist!” in his introduction speech and the space where the guy who got hired 5 years ago is called “the new guy”.

          But I don’t know that I’ve seen it in practice.Report

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      3. Our new hire works in India.

        Management tried to force us back to the office then we had another wave of Covid and they realized they’d hired more people than would fit in our new building. I suspect remote is cheaper just because they don’t need another building.Report

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        1. The big problem is that there are jobs where you need a body and there are jobs that could be done by a Brain In A Jar.

          If the BIAJ jobs are allowed to WFH, we’re going to see a bit of a class divide.

          I’m sure it’ll be overlookable, given the voting patterns.Report

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          1. Technology changes things. And anyway I’m not sure the plight of those whose jobs by their nature require going on site somewhere are top of mind for those pushing for full return. Pre pandemic I don’t remember hearing a lot of calls to get rid of climate control in office buildings because construction workers don’t get air conditioning and therefore no one should, or for requiring everyone to stand at their desks because the person behind the deli counter has to.Report

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            1. In the past, we’ve argued over stuff like “drug testing” and who it should apply to and *MY* example was something like:

              1. The guys on the floor who operate on and around the machine press should be tested. Life and limb is at stake.

              2. The guy in the accounting office can have testing waived.

              And… well, the attitude was that that was not a good look.Report

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              1. I’ve certainly heard arguments like that. And I’m not totally unsympathetic in some contexts. But at a certain point different things are just different. That can be uncomfortable at times but to me it’s a strange mindset that would abandon all reason over it.Report

              3. Maybe I’m misreading, but do you think concerns about a class divide are really what’s driving these decisions?

                I don’t want to be overly dismissive but if the folks in the corner offices on the top floor are really tore up over fairness to the people that clean the toilets well… suffice to say I can think of any number of issues of greater importance than this and yet it never seems to come up.Report

          2. JB: If the BIAJ jobs are allowed to WFH, we’re going to see a bit of a class divide.

            True. We can put it on the long list of other class divides.

            Now the really good news is if expensive high wage workers start working from other states, then maybe housing prices come down and expensive cities get their acts together and compete on price.Report

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            1. There’s all kinds of upsides, from fewer cars on the road, to being able to tap talent wherever it is instead of just in a single metro area.

              I think the whole thing is about 5-10% legit but solvable collaboration issues another 10-15% neuroticism in management and 75% struggling with expensive office space on long term leases that can’t be knocked off the books.Report

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          3. “The big problem is that there are jobs where you need a body and there are jobs that could be done by a Brain In A Jar.”

            I think a big question underlying this is who gets to decide which job is which.

            The arguments will be that, well, certain jobs just obviously can be WFH with little-to-no value loss while others just obviously can’t be.

            But… not everyone will agree on which are which. Who has the power to decide will matter more than which jobs actually make sense.

            Will it be surprising if higher paying jobs just so happen to skew very heavily towards being work-from-homeable?

            Maybe that’s all on the up-and-up. And maybe its about who is in position to make demands and who isn’t.

            Note: If you’re seeing similarities to who was determined to be an “essential worker” and who wasn’t… well, yea. The funny thing is… as essential at those folks were… we didn’t really start paying or treating them like they were particularly essential.Report

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            1. Essential doesn’t mean unreplaceable. The market considers replacement cost.

              And I think most of us would agree on whether most jobs require in-person presence, like at least 90% on 90%.Report

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            2. I can (and do) WFH about 4 days of the week. In reality it’s more like 4 weeks out of 5 but whatever. If I have to go in it’s about a ten minute drive.

              I get to decide for myself whether any specific task needs me in the office. That might be a Senior Staff level thing but I have much more junior coworkers that do the same thing.Report

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    2. The three big problems I’ve seen with telework are the potential for laziness flying under the radar, tech problems, and incomplete training for new employees. Every company that can have telework will likely retain some, but they’re all going to have to find some answers to those potential problems.Report

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      1. I think there’s a need for some kind of office hub for training, and regular occurring in person check ins. The laziness thing I think goes both ways. On the one hand, if you’re on a huge team, being remote makes flying under the radar easier in certain ways. Out of sight out of mind.

        On the other my experience in corporate offices is that there’s plenty of laziness right out in the open, including those who seem to run around all day and at a glance look busy but get f- all done when it comes down to measurable results. Work remote can actually be illuminating at times in that regard.Report

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        1. I could be imagining things, but I’ve seen a lot of low-productivity days-in-office, where everyone mills about catching up with each other. More than they would have over a normal week? I don’t know. But that’s a different subject than the one you raised.Report

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          1. There are absolutely low key days, especially if it’s a business that revolves heavily around some sort of sales cycle.

            On the larger topic I land on some form of flexibility. Being a family man nothing drives me crazier than the ‘be there just to be there’ mentality.’ Especially now that laptops and smart phones have us accessible at all days and hours anyway. You have these employers who want to have it both ways, where you’re losing time commuting, solely to sit in a building all day to massage some old man’s sensibilities, and they also still expect to see emails being answered at 8 or 9 at night.

            Caveat of course is I’m an in house lawyer and when I went into this I understood that the job involves a lot of being on call. That’s fine and what I signed up for. What I expect in turn is a little trust, and a little reciprocation. If someone feels I haven’t earned it they can just fire me.

            All that said I appreciate that what goes for my particular job may not work for all jobs.Report

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  10. Maybe, just maybe, things are changing:

    A police officer in a suburb of Columbus, Ohio, was indicted by a grand jury on murder charges Tuesday in last year’s killing of a pregnant woman who was suspected of shoplifting, according to the Montgomery County prosecutor’s office.

    Ta’Kiya Young, 21, was fatally shot inside her vehicle by an officer in the parking lot of a Kroger grocery store in Blendon Township on August 24, 2023. Her unborn child did not survive.

    Blendon Township Police Officer Connor Grubb faces four counts of murder, four counts of felonious assault and two counts of involuntary manslaughter as a result of a grand jury indictment, according to a statement from the office of Prosecuting Attorney Mat Heck Jr.

    https://www.cnn.com/2024/08/13/us/ohio-officer-murder-pregnant-takiya-young/index.htmlReport

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    1. Shortly after the shooting, police described the two officers as victims of assault and so withheld their identities and blurred their faces on the video. In a video posted to Facebook on Tuesday, Blendon Township Police Chief John Belford said the department is now required by law to take disciplinary steps against Grubb.

      “I want to be very clear: We’re not passing any judgement on whether Officer Grubb acted properly. We haven’t seen the evidence,” he said. “However, since people who have been indicted may not legally possess a firearm, the indictment against him leaves us with no choice but to legally begin the disciplinary process.”

      They haven’t seen the evidence.

      Kinda busy there, at the precinct, I guess.Report

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    2. How do we get four counts of murder from one bullet? Even if we count the fetus, that’s two.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Ta'Kiya_Young

      Hmm… seems cop that shot put himself right in front of the car and then she was trying to push him off with the car so she could drive off. Doesn’t seem like a good move on his part, either in his positioning or him shooting as opposed to moving so he wouldn’t get run over.

      Seems she was guilty of shoplifting if that matters. 21 years old, pregnant with her 3rd, due in a couple of months and stealing alcohol.Report

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        1. More an indication of what society is dealing with. This was not a misunderstanding between the cop and the woman. The choice came down to shooting her or letting her force her way past him and drive off.

          He made some bad calls and the legal system needs to deal with him. However it’s also true that we can’t assume good intentions from her.Report

          Reply

  11. Update from Los Angeles:

    Thousands are housed as L.A. County makes progress on Skid Row

    Mike Juma sat at the end of the bed in his ninth-floor one-bedroom apartment in downtown Los Angeles, staring at the mountains visible from his window.

    “I don’t like high-rises,” he said. “But look at that gorgeous view. That’s what they call a million-dollar view.”

    A year ago, Juma, 64, was in a vastly different place in life. He was living in a tent on Skid Row, selling cigarettes to make money and sleeping with a samurai-style sword by his side for protection.
    At the time of the project’s launch, 4,402 people were experiencing homelessness on Skid Row, with more than half living in a tent or makeshift shelter, many of them Black or Latino, according to the 2022 Greater Los Angeles Homeless Count. Today, the population stands at 3,791, a decrease of nearly 14%. The number of people living outdoors also decreased by 22% over the last two years from 2,695 to 2,112.

    “We got very focused with this,” said Elizabeth Boyce, deputy director for Housing for Health. “We stuck with the main components of solving homelessness and things we know we can deliver on.”

    The progress comes as counties and cities are facing pressure from Gov. Gavin Newsom to clear out homeless encampments in the wake of a Supreme Court ruling that said cities may enforce laws restricting homeless encampments on sidewalks and other public property. Adding to the pressure is the upcoming 2028 Olympics.
    https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2024-08-13/l-a-county-makes-significant-gains-in-housing-skid-row-residents

    There is a lot in the article, but the main points are that a combination of funding sources and aggressive intervention and commitment and political leadership is making progress.Report

    Reply

    2. I get very nervous when politicians talk about the “progress” made on a tiny sliver of a much larger problem.

      For perspective: LA as a whole had 75,518 homeless (on one night in Jan ’23)
      https://apnews.com/article/los-angeles-county-homeless-f6c43a705d244d60f20236ce8fed804c

      That decrease from 4,402 to 3,791 is a drop of about 600 people, or less than one percent of the overall problem. That drop is a good thing… unless the politicians fudged the numbers by having the cops move 600 people from skid row and now they’re homeless somewhere else.

      If we assume the numbers are real, then we have a program which can help a homeless person at a cost of $100k per person.Report

      Reply

  12. The Algerian Olympic team has decided to blame (((Zionists))) on what happened to Imane Khelif. I am just utterly sick with the amount of anti-Semitism that comes from the Muslim world and how it is permitted. All agency and pressure in approving relationships between Jews and Muslims are placed solely in the hands of Jews while nobody has any idea how to reduce the sheer amount of anti-Semitism among Muslims beyond Israel and Jews must do everything first and hope for the best. There seems to be no point where Muslims or really any anti-Semites are being told to stop and that they that you are being ridiculous while everybody gets lectures on Islamophobia. Muslims who aren’t anti-Semitic or believe maybe we should try to live with Israel seem to be unwilling to do any direct confrontations with the Muslim hardliners.

    https://www.thejc.com/news/world/algerian-olympic-team-blames-zionist-conspiracy-for-trans-boxer-row-oib9f6hnReport

    Reply

      2. I think that sucks as well. It isn’t the (((Zionists))) that are behind this, especially since Algerians like other athletes from Muslim majority countries refuse to play against Israeli athletes.Report

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    2. The comments were made by one person — the director of Algeria’s Olympic Committee, Yassine Arab. They are indeed hateful, shameful, anti-Semitic, and should be criticized. However, we should not smear the entire Algerian Olympic delegation and all their athletes because of his hateful idiocy.

      There seems to be little reporting on his comments, though what I am seeing does label it as anti-Semitic and criticizes him and his comments.

      It is hard to know if it got lost in the wash (especially in America) where this got wedged into disgusting culture war being waged against trans folks and others in the LGBTQ+ community. It could also be because most anyone in the know immediately identified the Russia-connected governing body that initially suspended the two fighters because they defeated Russian opponents in an earlier tournament.

      You’re justified in being upset at the comments themselves and the apparent lack of response to them. I just advise you be specific in who you are targeting (Yassine Arab, not the entire Algerian Olympic Team) even if he was woefully hateful and misguided with his own.Report

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  13. how it is permitted

    How does one “permit” what one has no power to forbid? It is certainly true that nobody has any idea how to reduce the sheer amount of anti-Semitism among Muslims beyond Israel. Telling them to “stop” or that they are “being ridiculous” doesn’t seem likely to be effective.Report

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    2. Liberals in the West seem to have no problem telling everybody else including Buddhists in Burma and Hindus in India to stop being Islamophobic despite a similar lack of power to forbid. A lot of this is about wanting simple recognition of the issue rather than the code of silence and the entirety of the burden placed on the Jews.Report

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        1. Permit might be a bit strong of a word but we certainly have a big gigantic code of silence about it. Pointing out all the pathologies that exist in Muslim world is just something that is not done.Report

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          2. Not true. The lack of rights for women is routinely pointed out, as is the lack of real democracy. And on and on. One pathology not being discussed as widely as you want – ot it needs – doesn’t mean they are all ignored.Report

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            1. Lee is upset that Israel is getting a lot of sh*t about its military conduct on the front pages while the latest barbarism committed against well meaning Euro types by some medieval Muhammadan trash they foolishly imported goes either unremarked upon, or is only mentioned in passing as the prompt for some frowned upon speech or protest by the populist right.Report

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              1. I am upset that anti-Semitism is treated as something as permitted hatred as long as it is expressed in the correct way by the correct groups. As long as the Activist can squint their eyes and call it “anti-Zionism” or it comes across like Resistance and anti-capitalism than it is acceptable.

                The struggles of the Jewish people are not seen as the struggles of other oppressed groups by the Intersectionalists. Jews are not seen as a minority group that tried to preserve our own culture and identity against the odds but as wypipo doing wypipo things. We are just too prosperous and unromantic to be part of their club but they still want us to support them because of our history.Report

              2. If you are referring to the riots following the stabbing in the UK, you might do well to remember the riots followed an attack by a 17 year old who was born there. Which means its not really the same thing . . .Report

              7. It may shock you to find this out but Europe is bigger than the UK, and the subject is much larger than the specific flare up that I agree does not seem to be about Islam.Report

              8. It may shock you to find this out that when someone writes an overly broad, detail free “example” of something, people will usually interpret it through the lens o f the most current event they can. The British Far Right explicitly tied their rampages to the stabbing, which they continue to lie about regarding the perpetrator.Report

              11. No one is being jailed for debating property – they are being jailed for organizing and carrying out riots based on lies. Kind of like how the actual arsonists and looters from 2020 were arrested and prosecuted for arson and looting, while everyone else was allowed to continue to protest.Report

            2. Yeah, well maybe Jews don’t find the fact that hundreds of millions of people world wide believe that “the Demon Jew is out to get you” to be a good thing even if most of those people will never meet a Jew. Likewise, we might find it grating that people keep appealing to us for help because of our history but also want us to hold our nose at hundreds of millions of people who believe that “the Demon Jew is out to get you” and that lots of countries that kicked out their Jews think it was the best thing ever still.Report

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              1. Yeah, well maybe Jews don’t find the fact that hundreds of millions of people world wide believe that “the Demon Jew is out to get you” to be a good thing even if most of those people will never meet a Jew.

                I agree this is bad, but after decades of denouncing behavior by a minority of Muslims has resulted in precisely no Muslim leaders altering course and adding to denunciations, I suspect the shark has been jumped.

                By way of illustration – do you remember after 9/11 how man American and foreign Muslim clerics denounced the terrorists, and then how many of them were told directly by Americans that they weren’t doing enough? And how OBL and his mujahadeen turned ISIS cared not one wit?

                The extremists – on all sides – simply will not be cowed by repeated denunciations. That has zero to do with whether the denouncers and their allies condone the actions being denounced.Report

              2. I do not see any evidence of serious commitment on the other side to battle their extremists. I don’t think it exists at all. There are only 15 million Jews in the world and it is trivially easy to find a wide range of opinions on Israel from total justification to self-flagellation on how evil Jews were for engaging in settler-colonialism. I see Jews confront other Jews on this and Diaspora Jews willing to abandon half the world’s Jewish population because they think it is the right thing to do.

                I do not see this on the Muslim side. I see no willingness to openly confront the extremists and definitely not on the Jews. Some Muslims might go to ecumencial events but among them selves they either conform to the majority opinion out of fear or because they agree with them. Maybe the confrontations do happen but the world’s two billion Muslims are very good at keeping their dirty laundry hidden from non-Muslims. Things will only change if the alleged non-extremists on the other side are more willing to engage in direct confrontation with their extremists.Report

              3. Maybe the confrontations do happen but the world’s two billion Muslims are very good at keeping their dirty laundry hidden from non-Muslims. Things will only change if the alleged non-extremists on the other side are more willing to engage in direct confrontation with their extremists.

                Yes and? Outside of the US, most Muslims live in Honor code based cultures and societies where the public airing of cultural dirty laundry is a greater sin then the possession of dirty laundry. Add to that the fact that most of them are in repressive, anti-democratic regimes exacerbates the problem, as doe the American unwillingness to reward the folks who do stand up publicly (again, see 9/11).

                Frankly, the expectation that this would be overcome in your lifetime is as much folly as the neoconservative fantasy that simply deposing Sadam Hussein would bring democracy to Iraq. There are ways tog et to your end point, but they will not be easy or quick – and they will involve Israel doing things like revoking settlements that it doesn’t want to do.Report

      2. I think Lee’s general point is correct here, in that American liberalism has a difficult time disciplining its own coalition members and forcing them to play nice together.

        Examples would be misogyny or homophobia within the black community, or the inability of poor whites to accept poor blacks as equal members, or the difficulty of separating out cultural differences from bigotry.

        Some of the difficulty is strategic- not wanting to fray an already unruly coalition.

        But some of it is the blindness of seeing people as caricatures instead of three dimensional people.
        JD Vance and the hillbilly porn novel shows how dangerous this tendency is, where we set different rules for poor rural people that we would never accept if they were applied universally.
        And worse, people insist that the worst stereotypes are emblems of authenticity rather than pathology.

        The biggest danger is demonstrated by the reactionaries who have learned to trot out their own tokens who flaunt their bigotry as authentic expressions, and declare that any criticism is taboo.Report

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        1. There are certainly elements of tolerated or deliberately ignored anti-Semitism in America like with the Women’s March or over looking some of the more outrageous statements of the protestors. This is a global issue though. It just seems that Jews are seen and treated as fair targets as long as you express this to be against (((Zionists))) even when that doesn’t make sense.Report

          Reply

          1. It may not make sense to you, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t to others.

            And the reason a lot of folks couch such criticisms in the label of “Zionism” is precisely because they are trying to levy legitimate criticism without being tarred as Anti-Semitic. Not that its working mind you.Report

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            1. What fishing legitimate criticism? These freaking people blame Jews for the freaking Atlantic Slave Trade and other things. Stop defending these utterly awful and evil people because you find their rebellion romantically attractive and it fits the Spirit of Resistance (TM) narrative. They demand complete respect from us to them but they go about peeing on us and telling us how awful we are.Report

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              1. The Israeli government – as a secular nation – is permitting, protecting and encouraging illegal land grabs masquerading as settlements in areas outside its recognized borders. That same government spent a decade funding Hamas in Gaza as the closest thing to a legitimate government – apparently in the vein hope they cold control it. The Israeli government restricts the freedom of movement of its own Arab citizens. I could go on.

                And yet I have been called an anti-Semite (thankfully not here yet) for saying those exact thing. They are legitimate criticisms of Israel that have zero to do with it’s Jewish status.

                Your approach – much the approach of some of those you seek to vilify – lacks nuance and the willingness to hold true that Israel has a right to exist AND an obligation to not fish up other people in the region.Report

              2. Phil: The Israeli government – as a secular nation – is permitting, protecting and encouraging illegal land grabs masquerading as settlements in areas outside its recognized borders.

                Israel does not have “recognized borders” (with the Palestinians). After a war on the scale of 1967 its pretty normal for borders to shift. Instead of a peace agreement setting borders we had “the three noes”.

                In theory Israel could, and maybe should, announce to the world what it thinks it’s borders are and then try to enforce that. Doing that without a peace agreement instantly results in people on all sides trying to move the border and the gov will look stupid.

                That’s a lot of political pain without any gain.Report

              4. I’d be quite content – as I suspect a lot of Palestinians would be – with hard borders so long as they include land returned to Palestinians that was taken unilaterally. The fact that Israel refuses to set hard borders with the Palestinians is one reason they get called colonizers and accused of apartheid style oppression.Report

              5. Phil: hard borders so long as they include land returned to Palestinians that was taken unilaterally.

                By Palestinian standards all of Israel “was taken unilaterally”.

                If the Palestinians aren’t going to cooperate with setting the borders then, by definition, they don’t get a say in those borders.

                That means Israel would be keeping everything that is sensitive, holy, or disputed.

                This is a very ugly solution and the Palestinians will be deeply enraged by it. At this point it’s hard to see how borders could be set without another population exchange because of on the ground fragmentation.Report

              6. We know – because the press has documented it – where settlements of ultra orthodox Jews have been allowed and protected by the government over the last – what – 30 years inside the West Bank and Gaza. Those areas should absolutely be returned to the Palestinians who owned that land. This isn’t hard.Report

              7. Phil: This isn’t hard.

                There are certainly examples of a few dozen or score people living in compounds protected by the army.

                However, depending on definitions, Israel has more than 700k people who have been there for decades, even generations.

                Israel moving more than 10% of it’s population around is unrealistic even before we tack on that they also won’t get peace. This is why peace proposals need to include land swaps.

                If Israel does a unilateral cram down, then the Palestinians lose all that land and get nothing for it. The only thing that prevents Israel from taking everything is it doesn’t want all the people.

                https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_settlement#DemographicsReport

              8. Phil, if this isn’t hard than how come Palestinian leadership twice rejected offers of pretty much what they were supposed to want from two previous Israeli governments? The reality is that the hardline faction of Palestinians won’t be satisfied with anything that doesn’t include a right of return into Israel proper or even all Jews going away.Report

              9. I seriously don’t understand the reality that a lot of Pro-Palestinian people in the West are working from. There reading of the historical record is just bizarre. Rather than being activists who were trying to help a minority under siege, the Zionists because European settler-colonialists despite not having the backing of any European government. The entire read of what happened in 1948 or 1967 and the PLO’s No Jews ideology is just really different than what happens. They think that Israel was only created because of the Shoah but ignore the entire history of the Zionist movement before that or that there were already hundreds of thousands of Jews in Israel/Palestine by the end of World War II.Report

              10. The simplest way to describe the problem is that area has two indigenous populations who have opposite visions on what the state should be.

                Having done that, there’s no obvious solution.

                If you describe the problem as colonial then the ethics and solution all become easy. One side is bad and they should leave. In order to do that, you need to deny that Jews are an indigenous population to that area.Report

              11. I mean that it is an easy to describe solution but even you assume ipso facto that Zionism was an illegitimate political movement and Israel should never have been created, that doesn’t change the fact that there are 7.2 million Jews and around 500,000 non-Jewish family members of them living in Israel/Palestine today, are well organized, and aren’t going away without a lot of brute force.

                I wonder if the more extreme anti-Zionists realize this. Many times it doesn’t seem like they have a firm grasp on the demographics and see it as an overwhelming Palestinian majority with a Jewish minority rather than more or less 50/50 parity if you include Israel-Palestinians.Report

            3. There was a freaking prominent social justice doctor on UCSF who blamed “Zionist” doctors for leading to poor health outcomes or worse in patients of color. What is a Zionist doctor? She was looking for an all to clever way to say Jew and make a blood libel. These anti-Semites of color and activism have no legitimate criticisms. People just don’t want to call them out as anti-Semites of color.Report

              Reply

  14. But Shirley, not all Republicans are Trumpists!
    Republican who voted to convict Trump says he’ll support him in November

    https://spectrumlocalnews.com/nc/triangle-sandhills/news/2024/08/13/richard-burr-trump-impeachment

    Yes. They are, every single last one of them.

    They are all Trumpists. It doesn’t matter what pleasant mouth noises they make or what purring platitudes they spout or how much they furrow their brow, at the end of the day, they all bend the knee to the One Ring of Power.

    Because if he doesn’t his constituents will throw him out in favor of one who will.Report

    Reply

  15. Okay. Snow White and the… um… I guess it’s just “Snow White”.

    Anyway. They released the teaser trailer for Snow White. Here it is:

    Good costumes, a little heavy on the CGI, but the dwarves look… the costumes are good.

    Anyway, back in July of last year, some pictures of body doubles working on the movie got leaked and it caused a stink. Only one of the seven of Snow White’s hosts was a little person and the rest of the artisans looked like a parody of “you just know that the seven artisans will do their best to be a Burger King Kids Club of diversity” and, to everyone’s relief, Disney denied that the pictures were of the production.

    THEN IT CAME OUT THAT THE SPOKESPERSON WAS *LYING*. Holy cow! The spokesperson lied about whether the shot of the body doubles was really a shot of the production!

    The main thing that I thought about the sitch was that if the spokespeople are lying about what people are seeing on the set, the spokesperson knows that the movie ain’t gonna draw and this is an attempt to salvage the opening weekend.

    Well, on top of that, Rachel Ziegler did a red carpet interview where she trashed the story of Snow White. The prince shouldn’t be in the movie, the story is outdated, and so on. Fans of the original knitted their brows.

    Now, *I* am someone who enjoyed the original Snow White and the Seven Dwarves. We had a local old-timey theater back in the 80’s where they’d have old timey movies once a month and we did stuff like see Rear Window and Fiddler on the Roof and The Ten Commandment and Three Coins in the Fountain and, yes, Snow White and the Seven Dwarves.

    I liked the movie a lot. I’ve got fond memories.

    But I saw the various controversies around the film and I thought “yeah, there ain’t no way I’m going to catch this in the theater”.

    So then they release the teaser trailer. It looks like they got rid of the artisans and went with the whole Dwarves thing (which is, if you ask me, to its benefit).

    And so, yesterday, Rachel Ziegler tweeted out “i love you all so much! thank you for the love and for 120m views on our trailer in just 24 hours! what a whirlwind.

    i am in the thick of rehearsals for romeo + juliet so i’m gonna get outta here. bye for now. ❤️🍎🕊️”

    All well and good, right? Well, in a followup, she tweets: “and always remember, free palestine.”

    Now, I don’t know how *YOU* interpret that, but I’m seeing that as a comment to Gal Gadot.

    Of course, it might just be a simple little “free palestine” thrown out there… but she’s doing her best to advertise the movie to… I don’t know who she’s advertising it to.Report

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    1. The only thing more weird than an actress trying to inject the I/P conflict into a children’s fairytale movie is a childless adult male defiantly declaring he won’t go to see the children’s fairytale movie.

      Seriously. This movie isn’t aimed at you. Disney doesn’t care if you like it, and all the moms taking their daughters to see it probably are relived that some angry childless adult man isn’t going to be seated next to them muttering to himself through the movie about the dwarves who aren’t really dwarves and the Burger King Kids Club of diversity.Report

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      1. Really? I was under the impression that Disney aspired to be “for the whole family”.

        I mean, let’s go back to the 90’s.

        Beauty and the Beast. Aladdin. The Nightmare Before Christmas. The Lion King. Toy Story. Pocahontas. The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Hercules. A Bug’s Life. Mulan. Toy Story 2. Tarzan.

        I’ve seen *ALL* of those. Were they “aimed” at me? Only insofar as they were aimed at *EVERYBODY*. These were movies for everyone. They weren’t for boys or girls or kids or grownups. I mean, they were animated but they were movies for kids that the adults would want to see too. These movies were for people who wanted to be enchanted.

        Like the original Snow White was when it came out in 1937.

        Now, if there has been changes at HQ and if Disney has shifted in its ideas of who its movies are for, then I believe that we’ve found part of why it seems to have suffered flops fairly recently.

        “Sorry, this is a movie for moms and daughters.”

        In that case, I understand why people might wait for streaming. Maybe Dad can take little Johnny to that Novocaine movie. Nathan Caine, who has congenital insensitivity to pain (CIP), must rescue his girlfriend from a bank robbery.

        Now *THAT* is a movie that dads can take their sons to while mom takes the girls to Snow White.Report

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        1. Go to a playground where moms and kids hang out.

          Ask a couple of the moms what makes them angry- Pregnant women being forced to bleed out in a parking lot, or a fairytale movie where the dwarves aren’t really dwarves and the COMPANY WAS LYING ABOUT IT GODDAMIT and they just cast a Burger King Kids Club of diversity!!

          Come back with your survey results. Unless you have a restraining order.Report

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            1. Being at least in proximity to these kinds of conversations by virtue of having little kids, to the extent politics comes up, my anecdotal experience is that Chip is right about issue #1. It is issue #1 by significant leaps and bounds, to the point that if I overhear anything it is almost certainly going to be about that. And that’s even in my social circles with lots and lots of at least nominally practicing Catholics.

              However what I also hear (anecdotally of course) is a lot of dissent on treating men who to some degree pretend to be women as if they actually were under all circumstances, no matter how sensitive, or rules and messaging from varying public institutions to that effect.

              I have not heard anything (yet] about Disney casting and production choices, though it’s influence as peak childhood programming seems to have waned considerably from where it was as recently as 5 or 6 years ago.Report

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              1. However what I also hear (anecdotally of course) is a lot of dissent on treating men who to some degree pretend to be women as if they actually were under all circumstances, no matter how sensitive, or rules and messaging from varying public institutions to that effect.

                Heaven (!) forbid we should extend Christ’s commandment to love our neighbors as ourselves to Transwomen by fully accepting them.Report

              2. It all depends on how one wants to define full acceptance. If it involves abandoning the very specific, sex based language necessary to talk about something like bleeding out from an untreated ectopic pregnancy, merely to protect a man’s feelings, well… good luck making the case that they need to do it anyway due to some ill defined tension between that and the teachings of Jesus. Go wild.Report

              3. Perhaps I’m misinterpreting what you’re saying here, but the use of gender inclusive language for pregnancy-related issues is not to protect trans women’s feelings, but to include trans men, who can in fact bleed out from an ectopic pregnancy.Report

              4. Granted my sample size is really small, but the transwomen I know are some of the fiercest supporters of female reproductive right, including frank discussions of all the aftermath of Dobbs – which you are referencing. So I’m not seeing the issue . . .Report

              6. Where in someone’s daily life does such a thing even come up?

                Like, every women of childbearing age has a very real prospect of facing a life threatening medical issue.

                But when does “abandoning the very specific, sex based language” happen to real people in real situations?

                It seems like a very strained and contrived comparison.

                In the very rare occasion anyone ever encounters a trans person, all the trans people ever really want is to be treated with kindness and respect.Report

              7. I would humbly suggest that maybe the contrived concern is the one that says we need to rework precise language about biology and sex to accommodate highly hypothetical and abstract concepts of inclusivity.Report

              8. If its a contrived concern, then why bother engaging it?

                That aside, I think we can have both inclusivity, and specific detailed discussions of why forcing women with ectopic pregnancies to wait for them to rupture is a bad idea.Report

              9. Yes, if there’s one place that we don’t need to make sure wording is precise, it’s laws protecting people’s rights.

                ?!?!

                Please make some sort of reasonable argument that a law protecting the rights of women to get an abortion is better than a law protecting the rights of people to get an abortion. Because you can’t, the only difference would be that first of those laws allows you to exclude some people from those rights.

                That’s literally it, the only reason you would be trying to make that argument, except just sort of general transphobia and not actually thinking about things.Report

              10. I think this comment is referencing the fact that doctors can’t ask if you’re male or female anymore, and the diagnostic implications of that rule, rather than any position on abortion.Report

              15. Well, if they start talking about something that makes you uncomfortable, just ask them “well, what about abortion?” and maybe you’ll be able to get them to change the subject.Report

              16. Honestly? From a purely partisan perspective? I think liberal leaning folks of who I am one are lucky as hell that conservatives have such a complete and total death grip on the third rail of womens’ political issues.Report

        2. JB, you are a grown man who is over the age of 50. You have access to the original Snow White. You aren’t going to be marched at Bayonet point to watch this Snow White. I haven’t watched a Disney movie in decades except for the Marvel movies. You aren’t going to be forced to march from a movie theatre showing this Snow White to a seminar room where you will be required to listen to an oral reciting of the complete works of Judith Butler.

          This movie can exist without it causing you a tizzy.Report

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          1. It wasn’t so long ago that Disney made movies that everybody wanted to go see and, if they were on the fence, had a friend (or a spouse!) that wanted to go see it.

            The fact that they’re in a different place now is a bad indicator on their part. Do you want me to link to the five-year stock price of Disney? Would you click it if I did?

            As for my “tizzy”, I’m not complaining about not wanting to see it, Saul. I think it’s more funny that I don’t want to see it. Now, I *WAS* interested in it in a vague “trainwreck” sense when there was all of the drama about the Seven Artisans and how Disney denied and then admitted that they were shots from the shoot.

            Then I was interested in how they went back to post-production and spent a lot of time turning the Seven Artisans into Seven Dwarves.

            This happened during a year when Disney was experiencing flop after flop, mind… and I saw the pivot from Artisans to Dwarves as a sign of health, believe it or not. Management was able to say “We are *NOT* going to have another freaking flop, people!” and actually change something.

            But here’s the wacky thing: Now it seems like there’s a deliberate attempt on the part of one of the starlets to get “spell my name right” heat on behalf of the flick.

            And that is really interesting.

            As for whether I’m going to see it? Eh. Probably not unless I get dragged to it by Maribou (but I am willing to be dragged to it). I’m curious as to whether I will be shown “YOU’VE GOTTA SEE THIS SCENE!” scenes from the movie on Twitter.

            There are two reasons that scenes from movies trend on Twitter and I’m wondering if I’ll see scenes for either one of those reasons.Report

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            1. You know what Disney owned property does look good and that I am absolutely going to go see in iMAX? Alien: Romulus. The initial reactions have been generally positive and the politics of the films are already so cynical and outrageous that they don’t even need to mess with them. Of course if I want to me a jerk about it I can always assume they just let 20th Century Fox make a horror movie in the spirit of previous entries in the series without interference.Report

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              1. Well, you missed out on some really good movies.

                I mean, if you don’t like movies in general, sure. You’re not going to get a whole lot out of Beauty and the Beast but if you don’t mind a well-crafted flick, you should make a movie night with the wife. Make her some food, give her some popcorn, and zone out for a couple of hours. It’ll be a good date night on the cheap.Report

            3. It wasn’t so long ago that Disney made movies that everybody wanted to go see and, if they were on the fence, had a friend (or a spouse!) that wanted to go see it.

              It sure is amazing how everything was constantly different in the past and no one ever complained about Disney movies.

              It has become startlingly clear that, to a lot of people, we are living in comic book time, where attitudes all changed 5 years ago, this is a very definite fact, and no one has noticed that they’ve been saying that for about 20 years at this point.

              There is essentially no difference in the movies that Disney makes now and the movies that Disney made in, for example, 2017. The difference in ticket sales is (as is incredibly obvious) covid and the fact that people stopped going to movies during that, and never really came backp because they realize that movie theaters are actually kind of stupid and it’s much easier to watch at home.Report

              Reply

              2. Yes, Jaybird, you shouldn’t see it because you have decided it’s the sort of movie you don’t want to see due to political reasons, whereas perhaps you didn’t think that in 2017.

                Actually, I really suspect you did think that back in 2017, and my point is that in fact you’re sort of living in a perpetual present where a bunch of huge changes happened recently Destroying Movies Forever (TM) due to wokeness, instead of that literally being how movies have been since the 80s.Report

              3. It’s thatUmberto Eco quote come to life, about how fascism doesn’t promise peace and happiness but eternal struggle.

                Like, just recently, all of a sudden, gender roles are being questioned and you can’t tell the boys from girls anymore.

                The fact that since before I was born in 1960 this has been the case, and that reactionary have been fretting over gender roles forever is conveniently memoryholed.

                Conservatives are literally saying things verbatim that were said by their grandparents, but pretending they are just now happening.Report

              4. Also, just FYI, the dwarves were always going to be dwarfs in this movie, that was not a thing that changed.

                Do you know how I know that? Because, and I quote, ‘Disney consulted with members of the dwarfism community to try to make the dwarfs less stereotypical’.

                Because that is the actual level of wokeness that Disney has, they are vaguely willing to say ‘some members of a community have a problem with their depiction in a story, and we’ll try to flash that out a little’, which frankly the dwarves needed anyway, having exactly one personality trait each in the original. They might actually be real characters in this one… Although as they are fully cgi, who knows.

                I don’t want to have to be the person who points out what’s left over of the complaints. But it sure is weird how it keeps being common thread.Report

              5. Hey, the only evidence that I have against this is the pictures of the artisans’ body doubles that were denied to be pictures taken from the movie’s production and later admitted to have been pictures taken of the actors’ body doubles.

                Do your sources mention when the consultation took place? Like, before or after the pictures were leaked last June?Report

              6. Uh, yeah, it took place back in 2022:

                https://thehill.com/changing-america/enrichment/arts-culture/591439-disney-says-its-consulting-with-dwarfism-community/

                Disney got criticism for remaking the movie at all, one of the things that they decided to do was rename the movie to put less emphasis on the character’s dwarfism, and they then renamed the movie back.

                There wasn’t any indication they weren’t going to be dwarves, just that the term and the emphasis on them being dwarfs was going to be reduced due to criticism, and then they decided to rename it back due to other criticism, I guess, cause they’re idiots.

                I think some of this is internal dwarfism politics, about whether or not their condition is a disability or not. I don’t think any of us belong to that community or know anything about that, but they do sort of have a point, it would actually be kind of weird to identify characters solely by their disability in the title of a movie. Like you wouldn’t name a Spider-Man / Daredevil team up movie “The Web Slinger and the Blind Guy”Report

              7. Well, I remember the drama over what Peter Dinklage said and how the dwarfism community responded to it (some variant of “NOT EVERYBODY HAS THEIR PHONE RINGING OFF THE HOOK, PETE!”).

                As for “disability”, when I was a kid, I associated the “dwarves” with, like, the type that you find in Tolkien and not, like, the type that you find at the mall.Report

              8. You may have missed the comments. I can link to them and point out the excerpts, if you’d like.

                I don’t mind.

                I don’t think that they benefit from being misquoted, you see. I’ll assume you didn’t read them. You should.

                They might even confuse you.Report

          2. Since Jaybird can write obscurely at times, I am not sure what the new Snow White allegedly changed that he is complaining about beyond that Snow White is played by a Latina actress who made some complaints about the traditional story and they are doing something with the Seven Dwarves to make it more diverse and palpable by 21st century American liberal standards.

            Like I mentioned to Chip, there does seem some parts of the light liberalism in mainstream entertainment that come off as kind of doctrinaire at times. This is especially true in kid’s entertainment but Western kid’s entertainment was always doctrinaire to an extent.Report

            Reply

              2. Compared to what? 2021?

                Inside Out 2 did pretty well, that’s true… but 2023 (just last year!) had movies that detractors call bombs and even the defenders admit that the box office was disappointing but the global box office was better than the detractors predicted so take that.

                Do you think that Snow White will do well when it’s released?

                I still don’t know. I will say that, if I were Disney, I’d drag Gal Gadot to every single event promoting the thing and I’d have Ziegler put together a couple dozen pre-recorded statements to be shown (and show the right two or three, sprinkled throughout the event, as appropriate).Report

              3. Which part of Disney is doing well, the Marvel franchise? Star Wars? I hear that the last Indiana Jones movie broke some records, but not the good kind. Theme park attendance is struggling, they’ve had layoffs, and their stock price is down. They’ve got a large payment due to Hulu and they don’t have the cash to cover it. Their leadership just fought off a takeover.Report

            2. This is what I was talking about, that American conservatives are wedded to the idea that their cultural preferences are the majority.

              So naturally, they think, a Latina princess and not-dwarves will be as off-putting to general audiences as it is to them.

              The idea that they themselves may be a minority is impossible for them to accept.Report

              Reply

              2. Right, a 60 something dude is going to buy a ticket and sit with a bunch of parents and daughters to watch a fairytale flick.

                “Oh sir, are you waiting for your granddaughter?”

                “No, just me.”

                *edges away*Report

              4. You buy tickets without talking to people these days. You use the app. You can even order your popcorn and drinks using the app and avoid the line. No conversations with *ANYBODY*.

                (I’ve actually never had a conversation with a stranger at a theater, now that I think about it.)Report

              5. You’re trying very hard to make your minority viewpoint universal.

                This may be a good movie or bad, it may be a hit or bomb, but none of those outcomes will have anything to do with your concerns.Report

              6. I honestly think that the more people out there that look at the movie and say “this isn’t for me” instead of “yeah, I could see watching this movie”, the more likely it is to not do well.

                So you, too, look at it and say “this ain’t for me?”Report

              7. Have you considered just telling yourself, “Well, maybe a Latina princess and not-dwarves isn’t my thing but that’s OK”.?

                Instead of “GRRR, me hates this tricksy Disney with their Latina princess and not-dwarves- I hope the movie bombs and they all go broke!”Report

              8. Chip, you shouldn’t alternate between “you shouldn’t want to see this movie” and “you obviously hate this movie because you’re racist” quite so quickly.

                I mean, we just finished talking about how it’d be weird if I wanted to see the movie by myself.

                Now it’s evidence of me hating Disney if I wanted to see it?

                Which is it? What’s the argument?

                Should I want to see it? Or should I *NOT* want to see it?

                And, again, do *YOU* look at the movie and say “Meh, not for me?”

                You still haven’t answered.Report

              9. I look at this movie and say “Well, Disney princess movies are not for me, and that’s OK”.

                I don’t go around telling everybody how overjoyed I am at Disney movies bombing because they aren’t my cuppa.

                That’s just…weird.Report

              10. Okay, so you look at the movie and you say “not for me”.

                That’s fine. Not everything has to be for you.

                The question then becomes about stuff like the various movies called “bombs” that came out last year. Why didn’t the dogs eat the dog food?

                And as someone who kinda likes Disney, the fact that we see stuff like “Disney changing the formula mid-canning process” strikes me as a *GOOD* thing.

                It shows that they care about what the dogs think, if only just a little.

                And if you want to know why I care whether the dogs eat the dog food, well… because I, too, am a dog. And I like the *GOOD* dog food.

                But thanks for telling me that you don’t find this brand of dog food appealing.

                For what it’s worth, I understand looking at it and thinking that.Report

              12. At this point, I’m trying to convince you that those other movies failed because people didn’t want to see them.

                And I’m trying to get you to say that maybe the fact that you, Chip Daniels, don’t want to see them is a tip of an iceberg.Report

              15. And that would be just as true if a theater ran the original Snow White. Unless it was a TCM event for old movie nerds. (I see the ambiguity there, but “old” probably correctly modifies both “movie” and “nerds.”)Report

              16. At 70, I am inclined more towards Jenny Joseph’s “When I am an old woman I shall wear purple” attitude. I don’t care if they edge away. I have earned the right to sit and admire Disney’s new animation w/o explaining it to anyone.Report

              17. I’m honestly taken aback by how many of these guys have strangers come up to them and ask what they’re doing there.

                I mean, when I go to the theater, I’m ignored.

                I *DO* have strangers come up to me in the supermarket but they want to talk about what it’s like to be Santa Claus in the off season and they aren’t asking me “what are you doing in the frozen aisle?”Report

              18. I’m trying to get caught up here.

                Is the concern that people who might otherwise see the film will decide not to because…

                1a.) of how the dwarves look?
                1b.) how the dwarves were originally planned to look?
                2.) because Gal Gadot — an Israeli actress who was formerly in the IDF and who supports Israel’s actions post 10/7 — is in it?
                3.) because Snow White is being played by a Latina?
                4.) because the actress playing Snow White said “Free Palestine”?

                Some combination? All of the above?

                I can tell you this: My stepdaughter was just talking the other day about how the live action Snow White was cancelled will be very enthused to learn that it was only delayed. And she will likely not know and/or not care about any of the points 1-4 and even if she did, it would not impact her enthusiasm to see it. Nor will it impact our willingness to take her to see it.Report

              19. Well, my original concern, last year, was that pictures of body doubles were taken on the set and leaked and Disney denied that they were pictures from the production of the film.

                At the time, I thought that Disney was telling the truth and I thought it was funny that some trolls out there would deliberately try to do some trolling of Disney with the pictures they chose to say were evidence of the film’s vision.

                *THEN* it came out that the spokesperson was *LYING* at which point it became downright hilarious.

                Well, the movie went back into post- and they CGI’ed the dwarves to look like CGI versions of the originals, I guess. (I can’t really tell who is who from the brief seconds we see them, except for Dopey, of course, in the brief silhouette.)

                So *NOW* the question is about whether people will shrug and not see the movie due to the Dwarves and I have said, above, that I think moving to CGI dwarves is to the movie’s benefit and indicates good judgment on the part of management.

                So I think that the dwarves look better now.

                I don’t think that anybody will decide to not see the movie based on the leaked, denied, then acknowledged photos.

                Well, maybe a handful of wacky progressive types who actively wanted a Snow White and the Seven Artisans movie but now had their dream movie ripped from them and are stuck with cis-het white male dwarves.

                This group probably overlaps somewhat with the people who will refuse to see the movie due to a Zionist Occupier playing the bad guy.

                I don’t think that anybody will refuse to see the movie because Snow White is played by a Latina… that said, I’ve seen a handful of jokes asking about the whole “fairest of them all” thing and pointing out that the queen doesn’t have anything to worry about.

                Now beauty is subjective and we shouldn’t say whether one person is more attractive than another and the very idea of a magic mirror being able to tell who is and who is not better looking than another person is silly… but I can totally see how someone might prefer to look at Gal Gadot when given the choice between Gal Gadot and Rachel Ziegler.

                “So you’re saying that Rachel Ziegler is *UGLY*?!?”
                “No, I’m not saying that. They’re both good looking.”
                “So you agree that Rachel Ziegler is better looking but you just don’t think so because you’re racist against Latinx Actresses!”
                “No, I don’t… erm… I’m not sure when we got allowed to say that one woman is better looking than another but I am saying that I understand how someone might think that Gal Gadot is better looking, in the trailer, than Rachel Ziegler is.”
                “So you’re saying that Rachel Ziegler is hideous.”
                “No.”

                And so on.

                Now, the actress who said Snow White said “Free Palestine” and this *MIGHT* move some tickets one way or another. But I don’t know whether it’ll all end up being a wash because surely there’s someone out there who wasn’t going to go because of the Zionist but “Free Palestine” pushed them over and who knows whether there are more or fewer of these people than those who will refuse to see the movie because of it.

                And it’s not really a “concern”.

                I mean, let’s say the movie does really well… why will it have done really well?

                I have speculated below about why it’ll have done well, if it does, and it’d be because of the Whistle While You Work scene, the dancing scene, the Hi Ho scene, the evil queen transforming scene, the Magic Mirror scene, and the scary forest scene.

                And, quite honestly, I’d probably argue that the upgraded dwarves were part of that.

                But if it does poorly, we could also write an essay about that… “There were production problems from Day One.”

                I’ll be interested in reading the post-mortem this time next year when someone talks to Variety under a cloak of anonymity and says what *REALLY* happened.

                But my “concerns” are mostly of the form “oh, jeez, what’s going to happen next? Where’s the popcorn?”Report

              20. “But my “concerns” are mostly of the form “oh, jeez, what’s going to happen next? Where’s the popcorn?””

                Here and elsewhere… that is an AWFUL lot of ink to spill over something you’re only looking at for LOLZ.

                But, hey, you do you.

                We’ll undoubtedly watch it whenever the step-daughter decides to.

                A fun metric to follow will be Halloween costumes: how many kiddos are dressed characters from the film? Disney Princess costumes are perennially popular among the kiddo-set, though the last 5-10 years have been dominated by the Frozen sisters, followed by Cinderella, Belle, and the one from “Tangled” (Rapunezel, I guess?). Not sure I’ve seen a Dwarf costume in my adult life. If that changes this October… interesting!Report

              21. Allow me to rephrase what you said to make it accurate:

                “Here and elsewhere… that is an AWFUL lot of ink to spill over something you’re only looking at because you find it interesting.”

                Yeah. That’s what having opinions is like, sometimes.Report

              22. Well, maybe I’m the silly one because I consider the entire ordeal — pretty much every part of the movie’s existence to date — wholly UNinteresting. And yet here I am… spilling ink of my own!

                Actually… that’s not true: two things are of interest to me…
                1.) The actress playing Snow White was born in the town next to where I grew up. SMALL WORLD!
                2.) The stepdaughter will be thrilled to learn the movie is coming out and I’m excited to share the news with her.Report

              23. It’s all part of an organic whole.

                Back when it was Snow White and the Seven Artisans, I was fairly certain that this would be another bomb (or, at least, another “the international box office was more successful than detractors claimed!”).

                Now that they’ve switched back to a more traditional dwarven cast, I’m actually curious as to whether this will turn a profit as well.

                For what it’s worth, yours is the first household that I’ve encountered wanting to see this which makes your buy-in to hoping the movie won’t suck more interesting than that of those who explain to me that they’re not going to see it and I shouldn’t want to see it and, on top of all that, *I* am the weird one for thinking that it won’t turn a profit.Report

              24. I hope it doesn’t suck so the kiddo has fun. I don’t give two squats about its profitability.

                If you’re looking for households with people who are excited for the film, maybe check those with teen/tween girls. Are you familiar with Disney Descendants? Fans of that are gonna eat this up… just like they ate up the racially-blind (or whatever its called) casting of that franchise.Report

              25. I’ve seen the direct-to-DVD films in the rack at the grocery store. Mostly thought “I’ve never even heard of this and there’s a Descendants 3?”

                I got excited about the idea… Oooh! Maybe it’s a show about how the young plucky kids take on the old establishment and then, in Descendants 2, the young plucky kids *ARE* the old establishment and with each new addition to the franchise, the old “good guys” that we were rooting for last movie are now the new “bad guys” that we’re hoping to see overthrown by the kids!

                And, as it turns out, that’s not the storyline.

                Alas.Report

              26. Descendants is aimed at teens and tweens. Those kids identify strongly with characters and would not be happy if the character they see as themselves makes a heel turn.

                I’m sorry Descendants — a WILDLY popular franchise for kids — does not seem to meet your expectations for storytelling.Report

              27. Well, who am I to say that Disney should make art that challenges instead of art that appeals to its audience?

                There is no higher praise than “I’ll buy the sequel” whether or not the sequel is something that Ebert would enjoy.Report

              28. “Well, who am I to say that Disney should make art that challenges instead of art that appeals to its audience?”

                Say what you want. Who’s stopping you?Report

              29. I tend to! But then you’ve got weirdos come into replies and start telling me that I shouldn’t want to see movies like this or that I sure type a lot about stuff I find interesting.Report

              30. I’d say you’re barking up the wrong tree if you want the G/PG Disney movies to have complex heal turns.

                My 11-year-old is mad that Deadpool/Wolverine isn’t appropriate for him. He can shake his fist all he wants… but if he wants to see Wolverine, he’s got to watch the cartoons. Dems da breaks.Report

              33. You should see Frozen. It’s good.

                I would bet $100 that the kiddo has it somewhere in her collection and she would be *THRILLED* to share it with you.

                The second one is pretty good and it has some good scenes but none of the songs are half the barn-burner that “Let It Go” was.

                (I was babysitting my bud’s 6 year old girl for a few hours and we spent the time singing Disney tunes on the youtube. Let It Go got *TWO* “let’s sing it again!”s.)Report

              36. Random and only barely related question- are your kids super into these different shows and fads? IIRC you also have boys and the profound ‘meh’ attitude we have towards any of it in my household has been interesting and unexpected to me, especially since me and my brothers were into pretty much every little boy fad there was (GI Joe, Ghostbusters, Ninja Turtles, you name it).

                The older one had a brief Disney phase, though he was so little I think he was more ‘enjoying the pattern’ of the movies than really understanding it. Now he will no joke sit and watch college football highlights on his mother’s old tablet before any show or movie or anything. The little one is too young for any pattern to emerge.

                Do they just consume this stuff differently these days or is this weird? Sometimes I worry it’s inability to pay attention to anything longer than 2 minutes but there’s also plenty to indicate some of it may just be personality.Report

              37. My stepdaughter is 17 but has some developmental differences/delays and neurodiversity so she interacts with media differently. She tends to get VERY into fantasy franchises… Harry Potter, Star Wars, and now Percy Jackson.

                The boys — ages 9 and 11 — are very into sports. She’s introduced them to Star Wars and Harry Potter which they find interesting but can generally take or leave.

                I started cutting back on their YouTube watching for various reasons.

                I’ll avoid my soapbox but it seems like the concept of anything resembling a mono-culture is more-or-less dead for these younger generations. Everything is so individualized and algorithm-ized that there are very few tentpole media experiences these days. They’ll get excited over certain movie releases (e.g., Despicable Me 4) but that’s about it. The only thing that remains are major sporting events… and even those the kids who aren’t sports-obsessed tend to consume through highlight clips on YouTube.Report

              38. That makes me feel better it isn’t just us. I’ve taken the older to 2 MLB games now and he’s excitedly sat through the entire things (pre pitch clock would have been harder but it worked). We currently don’t really regulate YouTube, etc beyond keeping it on the kids setting because so far he opts for playing with the neighborhood kids over screens without fail, plus insists on trying every sport he sees. We’re going with a don’t restrict unless you make us kind of approach and so far he hasn’t made us. Nevertheless, and while I won’t bore you with my own soap box either, the instant gratification algorithm is not something I love. Younger one is a toddler so we aren’t at this issue yet.

                Interesting the girl is still into the fantasy stuff. I get the sense maybe that sort of thing is marketer harder to them these days, or maybe you’re right and the monoculture is totally dead and they all just do what they do.Report

              39. Her focus on the fantasy stuff is seemingly post attributable to all the developmental stuff.

                There’s a few big YouTubers who seem to sometimes unite the kids (e.g., Mr Beast) but even there I bet his viewership/market share pales in comparison to things of yore.

                We have not really crossed the bridge into social media — boys too young, girl on a couple but not really “social” enough to do more than scroll — so I don’t know how that impacts things.

                I similarly restrict them to YT-Kids and limit it only cuz I recoil at 3 kids with 3 screens and 3 disparate experiences. I’d much rather they binge watch a show or movie and have some sort of shared experience, even if screen-based. So they use YT but just not endlessly.

                Paramount+ has all the old Nick shows… they love to watch “Are You Afraid of the Dark? together and I couldn’t be prouder.

                Maybe I’m a prude but “Can we watch TV?” is a much easier Yes than “Can we go on YouTube?”Report

              40. It’s funny I’m also a lot less wary about watching TV in a group. The family of one of the kids on the block we live on has a tv in the garage. I know the kids will periodically gather in there and have something on I probably wouldn’t agree to if it was in the family room (not porn or anything but action or horror stuff). Yet it doesn’t really bother me in that context. Me and my friends did the same when growing up and like you said it’s at least sort of social. The tablets and internet streaming can be so weird and solitary.Report

              41. To me the concern arises when it shifts from something solitary (everyone needs that, some more than others) to something isolating (very quickly harmful, IMO). Your kid dropping the YT/iPad to play with the neighbors means it may be a solo activity for him but doesn’t leave him isolated. Beautiful thing. Its when the kid (or adult) says, “No, I’d rather stay away from real life and the real world and continue down this algorithm for another few hours” that I get wary.Report

              42. I mean to be somewhat fair, Snow White is one of the few Fairy Tale characters where we know what she was supposed to look like according to the traditional tales. The entire very fair skin, hence the snow white, and black hair has been part of the fairy tale forever. From Wikipedia’s plot summary of the Brothers Grimm version.

                At the beginning of the story, a queen sits sewing at an open window during a winter snowfall when she pricks her finger with her needle, causing three drops of blood to drip onto the freshly fallen snow on the black window sill. Then she says to herself, “How I wish that I had a daughter who had skin as white as snow, lips as red as blood and hair as black as ebony.”

                That being said, a lot fairy tales need a desperate update to make sense to moderns. Their plots do not go well with the 21st century basically liberal worldview.Report

              43. Right, and the original fairytales were considerably altered by the publishers in the 19th century, then further and extremely altered by Walt Disney because they would have been incomprehensible to modern audiences in America, not to mention China, Egypt, Vietnam and Mexico which is the global audience Disney is targeting.Report

              44. The original Little Mermaid tale by Hans Christian Andersen was basically a Protestant morality tale where the Little Mermaid dies but her soul gets saved. This would be really unappealing for Americans living in the 1980s even though it was more religious and conservative place than America in the 2020s, so Disney turned it to a conventional princess and prince romance tale with a marriage ending.

                In fact, Disney’s movies would be a lot more liberal if they were only catering towards an American or at least developed democracy audience. Disney hemmed and hawed around the issues of homosexuality for years and still kind of does because of the global audience. They don’t want to lose precious money because the CCP is upset.Report

      2. Both of you are right. It is the actresses right to use her status to advance for causes and this movie is aimed at Jaybird. The weaponized contextless vanity of the Pro-Palestinian movement is off putting to me though. Like I pointed out to Phil, I have no idea what the Palestinians or their allies would want. Palestine is never defined with any degree of specificity except among the hardliners who really do mean the entire thing of the former British Mandate and without any Jews. The non-hardliners do not seem to be interested in clarifying and saying that they mean the West Bank and Gaza only. Either they are afraid of the hardliners or they don’t want to ruin the movement by exposing internal division.

        The Pro-Israel side for better or worse is bad at this external show of unity. The non-hardliners are willing to confront the hardliners. I had an argument with a friend who is more of a pro-Israel hardliner than me on the phone yesterday and we had a disagreement. You can easily find the internal disagreements within Pro-Israel groups in public. I can’t find any internal disagreements among Pro-Palestinian forces. The dominate message from them is that all of Israel needs to go. This doesn’t make me optimistic for any peace or satisfaction because I see no evidence the non-hardliners are ever going to confront the hardliners.Report

        Reply

        1. I don’t think it’s about Palestine. Or, at least, *ONLY* about Palestine.

          Gal Gadot, you may recall, did her stint in the Israeli Defense Forces when she was 20.

          I mean, sure. “Free Palestine!” is something that fashionable people just throw out there these days but Rachel Zeigler has had static with the Snow White fanbase out there and while Gal has supported Rachel lightly, it might be in “damning with faint praise” territory for levels of support.

          So why not throw that out there?

          If Gal Gadot gets enough bombs under her belt, she’ll be stuck playing in God’s Not Dead level movies with Gina Carano.Report

          Reply

          1. Meh, that’s old news. Obviously, the circle can be squared by letting refugees have a “right of return” only that right be to return to the territories of the new constituted Palestinian polity that would result from a final settlement. The Palestinians get their right to return and the Israeli’s get to not have the Palestinian right to return. Not difficult.Report

            Reply

            1. I don’t think anybody who is into the “right of return” is going to accept that whether they are Palestinian or not. They make it clear that the right of return must mean into the places in Israel proper. End of story. This is one big reason why an agreement can never be reached. It is an even more intractable problem than Jerusalem. No Israeli government is going to agree to the destruction of Israel proper or anything that could lead to an indirect one state solution. No Palestinian leader is strong enough to sell this to the Palestinians and overcome the hardliners.Report

              Reply

              1. Eh, it’s an easy enough problem to solve but, yes, it’d require the Palestinian negotiators to say “it’s this or nothing, deal.” That’s a challenge for the Palestinians just like dragging all their settler lunatics out of the territories is a challenge for the Israeli’s.Report

              2. We have at least on instance of Israel being willing to to drag it’s settlers kicking and screaming back into Israel, Sharon’s Gaza withdrawal. They weren’t even sent to the West Bank but to Greenline Israel. Now Netanyahu isn’t going to do this for the West Bank but I can see Benny Ganz being able to do this if he were Prime Minister and it was necessary.

                We do not have this from Palestinian leadership. In fact, we have two instances where they explicitly could not do it within living memory. This doesn’t fill me with much hope. Then there is always the issue, and nobody has an answer for this, is what if the Palestinian people say than “nothing.”Report

              3. Indeed we do! And Israel was richly rewarded by the international community for that wise decision, a reward that Bibi squandered over more than a decade.

                And we do have examples of the Palestinians, however imperfectly, hewing to the peace. If the West Bank Palestinians had attacked like Hamas did then Israel would be aflame from Nahariya to Eliat. They didn’t, and haven’t, and, indeed have cooperated with the Israeli security forces to a remarkable degree. The undemocratic and corrupt behavior of Abbas does not erase that fact and it bothers me no small amount that the Israeli’s keep trying to pretend it hasn’t happened. Bibi and his right-wing clowns pretending it- I understand. But the rest of the Israeli’s, I don’t.Report

              4. The Palestinian leadership in the West Bank might have finally been hit with clue stick enough. The combination of past mistakes and Hamas in Gaza hasn’t made Israelis in Israel proper that sympathetic to even a cold peace with them. October 7th, which targeted basically the most left-leaning communities in Israel, was the straw that broke the camal’s back.

                I’m a Disapora Jew and the Pro-Palestinian protests are pissing me off to know end because it is basically only Israel has agency. The Israeli government is not only required to care for it’s own citizens but the Palestinians as well because their leadership is either weak and made way too many mistakes or utterly psychotic.

                On a broader international level, there is pressure for Diaspora Jews to completely abandon half the world’s Jewish population from the protestors while an expectation that it is only natural that Muslims would rally around the Palestinians. Muslim solidarity good, Jewish solidarity bad. It is disgusting.Report

              5. Lee, I couldn’t help but notice that you seamlessly pivoted from reluctantly admitting that the PA has kept the peace to then blaming them for the Simchat Torah massacre. A massacre that was prosecuted not by the PA but by Hamas, the PA’s opponents and Likuds pet religious fanatics.

                I grant that the international pro-Palestinian protesters are obnoxious and very unbalanced. I would note that their strength, while not yet near dominant on the left, has steadily grown and grown as Israel has gone down Likuds’ primrose policy path regarding the Palestinians. Even in the face of the PA’s, as you have granted, sane and responsible behavior the Israeli’s haven’t changed course and, indeed, have doubled down on Likudnik behavior. Insanity is doing the same thing and expecting different results. How much of the same does Israel have left in it before she empowers those people who’s arguments you despise into grabbing some significant levers of power? How many years before you’re howling not about protestors or professors or twitter figures talking that way but Senators, Ministers or, God(ess) forfend, world leaders?Report

              6. I never blamed the PA for the Simchat Torah massacre or denied the need of Israel to leave the West Bank. What I’m disgusted at is the ability of Palestinians to make very bad decision again and again without penalty or blame. The entire burden of solving the I/P conflict in a productive manner is placed on Israel.

                The same also seems true with Jewish-Muslim relationships. Only Jews have agency and Jews must do the reach out. Sure Muslims might attend some ecumenical events but if they go to the bathroom on us behind our backs than we are supposed to ignore it. The entire internal battles between different factions of Jews are on display for the world while if Muslim fights exist over anti-Semitism within Islam, it is very hidden.

                I am also just disgusted with the treatment of the Intersectional movement and the Left towards the Jews. On one hand they demand our support because of our history. On the other hand, they raise their fist and say we really aren’t part of the Sacred Circle of Oppression (TM David Baddiel) and that we are mere wypipo doing wypipo things.

                Like I mentioned above the struggles of the Jewish people are not seen as the struggles of other Oppressed peoples. I am just old enough to remember the campaign to free Soviet Jewry. It was basically entirely Jewish. The groups we marched for did not show up. Jews might feel solidarity for other groups but this is never reciprocated.Report

              7. Do you feel that Jewish folks have any obligation to vote for Republicans or Evangelical politicians due to their support for Israel?

                If you immediately think “OF COURSE NOT!”, you may have a little more insight into the dynamics behind solidarity reciprocity.

                Did you see Trump’s statement on Jewish voters who vote for Harris?Report

              8. Reread your previous post. You acknowledged that the PA has been behaving relatively sanely and then immediately pivoted to talking about the actions of Hamas.

                As for punishment there’s not really much more that can be done -to- the Palestinians without going over the line (and many credibly argue Israel has been steadily doing anyhow) into illiberal state activity. They’re already occupied, dispossessed and are steadily having their land stolen and that’s just the Palestinians in the West bank who, again, have been behaving pretty well vis a vis Israel for the last decade or so. Let’s not even list what stupid prizes the Palestinians in Gaza have won for their stupid decision to not… what… violently overthrow Hamas?

                And, sure, most of the burden of action lies on Israel because Israel is the dominant actor who has freedom to act. The West Bank Palestinians (the majority of Palestinians in general) have already met the required level of action (or inaction) that they can realistically be expected to meet considering their status. There are no Palestinian settlements to withdraw. There are no Palestinian armies to disband.

                Israel is a modern liberal state and is accorded the vast benefits of being one. The cost of those vast benefits is, of course, being held to the standards of being a modern liberal state. The various Muslim states aren’t treated like modern liberal states- they’re generally viewed, rightfully I’d add, as undeveloped backwards hellholes. They’re infantalized by the left, despised by the right and treated instrumentally by the centrists. You do not want Israel or Jewish people to be treated that way, Lee. Outside of the fever dreams of the internet it’s a bad deal.Report

              9. I don’t think you do remember the campaign to free Soviet Jewry, if you’re saying it was just Jews. Maybe just Jews in the streets, or maybe just Jews from within your coalition, but a lot of other people were putting the pressure, passing the resolutions, and making charitable contributions.

                They do it because it’s right, not because of race. And if you keep ignoring them, they’ll still keep working for you because it’s right.Report

              10. Like many other Jews I was leaning towards this line of thought long before the Simchat Torah massacre and the Israel-Hamas War but one of my lessons from this conflict is that there is a giant and gaping Jew shaped hole in the Intersectional movement. The struggles and needs of the Jewish people are not seen as being same as the struggles and needs of other groups deemed oppressed. Jews are seen as too prosperous to count in their Sacred Circle of Oppression (TM David Baddiel). In fact they really don’t see the Jews as a people with collective needs at all but a mere religious group with no collective identity or needs despite all evidence to the contrary.

                You try and explain Jewish concerns with patience and they just raise their hands in defiance and say wypipo, wypipo and settler-colonialism, settler-colonialism. The idea of Jewish schools teaching Jewish history and literature they way one teaches any other history or literature excites them not. Nor does the revival of Hebrew or Jews building villages, towns, and cities. They see no value in us and are shocked that Jews actually see value in being Jewish.Report

              12. I live in an area where they are thick on the ground, so they get to me. They also might not be close to the levels of power but they have more indirect influence in mainstream liberal thought through internet osmosis than I’d like.Report

            2. North: Not difficult

              The closest we got to peace is Clinton’s efforts with Arafat. This is where the Palestinians were at.
              https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2000_Camp_David_Summit#Refugees_and_the_right_of_return

              The ROR would have Israel take 150k people per year forever. So instead of Israel being destroyed by not being Jewish in one year it would take a few decades.

              That’s serious people who are not hardliners making actual proposals and in the end the two sides were too far apart.

              What they’re “too far apart” on is whether or not the Jews actually get to keep their state.Report

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              1. To put it mildly a bit has changed in the last 24 years. Both sides have, oddly, come closer together- the Israeli’s in getting a bit crazier in a Palestinian manner and the (West Bank at least) Palestinians in being a bit saner in an Israeli manner.Report

              3. Of course they say that, and they’ll go on saying that right up to the moment one of their leaders walks out of a private negotiation with the Israeli’s with a deal. And even then they’ll be like “Victory my brothers, a right of return for all refugees (mumbled- to de jure Palestine) has been agreed to by the leaders of the Jewish entity!” You know how posturing and negotiation works as well as anyone.

                Nor do we see any evidence that the Israeli’s are willing to pull their settlers out of the territories or let the PA resume administration of Gaza or even put forth any vision at all of exactly what they intend to do about the millions of Palestinians who life under their de jur total control. And those problems, unlike the right of return, do not have any possible easy answers.Report

              4. North: And those problems, unlike the right of return, do not have any possible easy answers.

                The ROR is the core of the conflict. After you handwave that away the rest is easy.

                The settlers are either pulled out (like in Gaza), or the land is traded. Palestinians either become citizens in Israel or in the new Palestinian state.

                The part that I’m unclear about is whether the populations are currently so mixed that it requires more (forced?) relocations to make this happen.

                The new Palestinian state will brutally shut down terrorism because they don’t want to go to war with Israel (witness Gaza).

                The new Palestinian state will be a client of Israel and highly corrupt and unpopular. There aren’t enough resources to have two highly functional states so there will be one (Israel) and a rump state-in-name-only.Report

      1. Disney had a rough year in 2023 (and looking at the 5 year stock price, it had a rough 2022 and is having a rough 2024 after an absolutely bonkers 2021).

        Inside Out 2 did well. Maybe they’ve got the magic back. We’ll see how Snow White does.

        Though I understand that people like me aren’t supposed to see it. Maybe it’ll be popular enough that clips get shown on the twitters.Report

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          1. I guess they’re like the evangelicals. If it’s important enough art, it doesn’t matter if it loses money. The important thing is getting the message out.

            If the guy bankrolling agrees and has deep pockets, you can keep making art indefinitely.Report

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    3. Good for her.

      If I were a betting man, I’d wager than the largest groups likely to not see this film who might otherwise have done so are are:

      1) The racists who are upset that Ziegler isn’t lily-white.
      2) The BDS folks who boycott pretty much everything former IDF (and extremely pro-Israel, and more recently anti-ceasefire) Gal Godot has done for years, going back long before 10/7, though there may be new boycotters given the ongoing genocide and her seeming support of it.

      I figure just about everyone who is upset at one of the stars saying “Free Palestine” is in group (1), so I doubt the few who aren’t will add much to Disney’s lost revenue.Report

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      1. I tend to think that the racists who would be turned off by the Seven Artisans who are delighted that the Seven Dwarves are back will help pump up the opening weekend.

        But if they were hoping for a remake of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves (1937) and, instead, get Snow White (2025), we might find ourselves with another Cinderella (2021).Report

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        1. But stepping back and looking at this dispassionately…

          What are the big Snow White moments?

          Um… the teaser plays up “Whistle While You Work” which was a cute enough scene animated, using CGI animals to do it *COULD* work.

          The dance scene where the dwarves are playing instruments and Dopey stands on Sneezy’s shoulders to dance with Snow White? That could be remade as CGI shot-for-shot and it’d be a pretty big hit.

          Hi Ho could work as a CGI set piece. Get a good singer to play Doc.

          And if they’re girlbossing, they could drop “Someday My Prince Will Come” and, hell, only crazies would notice. Or they could give Snow White an arc and she could sing it at the beginning and then realize that she didn’t need no prince and she could stand up for herself and all that and they could still leave it in as part of the Snow White she left behind. Sure.

          Include the stuff like the scary scene in the forest where she’s running away and put Gal Gadot into some of the *GOOD* prosthetics and make the Mirror Mirror scene pretty high quality and… yeah, you could change the last 20 minutes and have Snow White fight the evil queen in the last scene. “It’s over, Grimhilde! I have the high ground! THE MORAL HIGH GROUND!”

          And then Grimhilde could see that Snow White is correct and change her mind and then they could team up and both of them could fight against Snow White’s overbearing father or something.

          If they handle the set pieces right, it could still work.Report

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      2. American conservatives now find themselves in the same position that radical leftists have long been in, that is, being a minority voice whose preferences are ignored by mainstream culture.

        Like the caricature of the campus leftist who furiously denounces Thomas The Tank Engine for the capitalist exploitation of Sir Topham Hat, conservatives are now scanning every Disney film striving to discover wokeness and overtones of gender crime.

        Back in 2010 when I was helping organize the Orange County Occupy, someone suggested picketing Disneyland because well, whtever it didn’t matter why because I shot the idea down hard on the grounds that turning our movement into “Those people who hate Disney” made us look like hateful lunatics.

        This is why “weird” sticks because it captures the humorlessness, the self absorbed grievance of people who are uncomfortable and alienated from the world they live in.Report

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        2. While leftists may be quick to boycott (always ineffectively, because there are so few), I will say that pretty much all the leftists I know fall into one of two categories: those who are deeply invested in pop culture (like 90% of leftists I know), and those who are, for lack of a better word, snobs, by which I mean the sort of people who wouldn’t be caught dead watching a Marvel movie even if it were one that was straight up socialist propaganda. The only people I know who reject pop culture for purely political reasons are the lifestyle anarchists, and they are a tiny, tiny group.Report

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          1. Most leftists with maturity (as opposed to very young people who just discovered structural injustice last semester) have made their peace with being the minority viewpoint.

            American conservatives haven’t.
            People like Vance really do see themselves as Real Americans which is why they are so befuddled that “Tampon Tim” didn’t take off.Report

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            1. To be fair, American conservatives were the majority view point during the 1980, 1990s, and even most of the 2000s. I mean it might not have been the full Evangelical package because most Republican voters still liked sex and violence in their entertainment but the previous forms of In This House liberalism was not fully present either. So now everything looks incredibly more doctrinaire than it did in the past for whatever reason.Report

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        3. Putting down the ideology of modern mainstream American entertainment is tough. Obviously it isn’t conservative or radical leftist but sometimes some of it can seem a bit doctrinaire in it’s light liberalism in a way that might appeal to college educated bougie people but I can see as a turn off to a lot of other people even if they aren’t conservative or radical leftist. So in some ways, I can see complaints that it is ahead of society as somewhat valid.Report

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    4. “free palestine” is like when everyone was kneeling for the national anthem.

      it’s no longer saying anything when you do it; now it’s saying something when you don’t do it.Report

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  17. There are things that may be true but saying them out loud is kinda bad. Michael McFaul tweeted this:

    The paramount objective for @KamalaHarris is to win this election. If a press conference helps her win, she should do it. If not, she shouldn’t do it. It’s just that simple. She has no “moral obligation” to talk to the press. Tone it down folks.

    Opening up the possibility that a press conference would not help Harris win is a bad thing to open up.

    It’d be better to play it off as “of course, she’d do great! She’s just too busy helping real Americans instead of being a talking head for the benefit of the weirdos who watch Sunday television” than “doing a press conference wouldn’t help her”.Report

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    1. Yes well, we saw the impact of a press conference by a major candidate last week – a candidate who seems interested in repeating his performance tomorrow.

      That aside it can be equally true that NOT doing a presser right now neither helps nor hurts either of them. Which is what your quoted Tweeter seems to be saying.Report

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      1. Not to mention that she got a late start and has been focusing on other priorities as the campaign ramps up. But I’m pretty sure she’ll do some kind of presser at some point and unless she sounds like, say, Donald Trump, no one will care once the box is checked.Report

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        1. Yeah, this. My own guestimate is Harris’ team is planning to run mostly press silent through the convention first to maximize their good vibes/honeymoon phase and then tackle unscripted press appearances after that. That’d also comport with Harris’ own statements that she’ll be doing pressers before the end of August.Report

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      3. I don’t know that there is a group of voters that disapproves of how Harris is handling the press.

        I do know that “a press conference might harm Harris’s chances” is one of those bad truths that makes how Harris is handling the press preferable to having a press conference.

        “Not talking to the press is a good thing” is a bad thing. Eventually a president will have to.

        And let me just point out: Biden talking in public in a vaguely hostile forum (Trump was there) resulted in Biden dropping out.Report

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        1. A press conference might harm -anyone’s- chances is an absolute truism. If any candidate fishes up in front of a bunch of reporters it hurts them to some degree. It even hurts Trump though his unique strategy is to provide an absolute deluge of bad press performances to overload the press’ ability to report on it and to trigger their instinctive impulse to put their fingers on the scale to equalize the two sides.

          But saying “A press conference might harm Harris’s chances” is a pretty much completely anodyne statement akin to saying “using a blow torch carries a risk of injury”.

          Talking to the press is certainly necessary but as a candidate Harris has a right, indeed an obligation, to do so on her time and in a manner that best advantages her electoral chances. She’ll talk to the press when she deems it advantageous to do so- current official line is she plans to do it before the end of August. She has no obligation to take instructions from the press as to how often or to whom she talks to regarding press appearances.Report

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          1. Of course it might. She might have a coughing fit and collapse. She could sneeze wrong and it creates a viral moment.

            The issue isn’t whether it might.

            It’s whether it’s likely enough that it is to her benefit that she avoids them.Report

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            1. The VP is far less likely to make a fool of herself to low information voters – her target audience – then TFG is. Heck, he couldn’t even speak clearly and distinctly on a friendly platform like Twitter. Like North I expect she will do pressers between now and the election.Report

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              2. The VP is far less likely to make a fool of herself to low information voters – her target audience

                You can say that again. She was just out pandering to people stupid enough to believe the “greedflation” narrative. Can you imagine? How do those people even dress themselves, let alone find their way into a voting booth?Report

              2. Neither did I. Neither did most people outside the right-o-sphere. Stopped clocks and all. But the facts changed so we changed our minds.

                Harris has said she’s going to do pressers and soon. There’s no reason to think she won’t. If she intended not to talk to the press then she assuredly wouldn’t promise to talk to them, especially not when talking to the press!Report

              4. What we knew about the facts changed. The righties were yelping everything from the mild “Biden can’t run for President and do the job too”, all the way to the wild “Biden is a senescent near (or actual) corpse propped up behind the resolute desk with a stick”. The righties have been yelling unsubstantiated deranged stuff for ages.

                Once Biden messed up in the debate and then subsequently failed to substantiate his claim that said mess up was a one off; what we, outside the right-o-sphere, knew about the facts changed and we changed our minds accordingly.

                And even now there’s a lot about the facts we don’t know, like when and to what degree Biden declined.Report

              6. What someone who paid attention to “the sane right-wing press” would have known was not the facts themselves, since the sane right-wing press didn’t report or substantiate any facts not obvious to all, but what the sane right-wing press said about those known facts. Those are two very different things.Report

              8. The ones I’ve been citing lately are National Review, the WSJ, and the Daily Wire, but there are others. The NY Post has some nutty editorials but has been covering the White House better than their competitors.

                And not to be a complete jerk here, but me. I’ve been talking about Biden’s decline, so if you ever follow through on my comments or even think about them, you would have known last month’s news a year and a half ago.Report

              9. 1) I followed your assessment’s of President Biden. I disagreed with them then and I still do now.

                As to the rest, your choice to cite them doesn’t make them sane. To Wit:

                2) I remain firm in my conclusion that Biden’s performance at the debate is a one off and he was run off the stage by a media apparatus that wanted a horse race. That Harris is now within the margin of error in swing states polling is great, but no indication she can or will win.

                3) The NY Post is – on a good day – a slightly more erudite National Enquirer. Their news desk has the deep analytical reporting ability of a dead snail, and frankly you cheapen your argument buy using them.

                4) the WSJ is just Fox News with better prose. They are as old line as the Grey Lady, and about a relevant to modern times.

                5) Once or twice a year National Review publishes an essay worth reading, but quoting them as a news outlet means we get to quote the New York Magazine thusly as well. And I suspect you wouldn’t go for that.

                5) The Daily Wire is equivalent tot he Daily Beast on the left -both require a great deal of additional fact checking before you quote them.Report

              10. You have never, once, been right on this topic. You’ve been wrong for a year and a half and I’ve known it, and now you’ve been absurdly wrong for a month and a half and everyone knows it.Report

              16. Also, here’s my paper. Grade it yourself. Where’s yours?

                Pinky January 31, 2024 at 10:44am

                Biden beats Trump, or Trump beats Biden’s replacement. That’d be Newsom if Biden drops out before June 1, Harris if he drops out afterwards.

                An explanation. I personally think neither Trump nor Biden should be running. But the Republicans don’t have anyone who could tell Trump to step away, and the Democrats have a lot of people to tell that to Biden. If things are going badly for him or in international affairs, they’ll tell Biden, but it’ll be too little too late. I’d put the odds of Biden dropping out at 3:1.

                The Senate, man, neither party is sending their best challengers. The safe bet is that VP Harris or Stefanik is the 51st vote.

                https://ordinary-times.com/2024/01/29/the-joy-of-opening-time-capsules-2024-election-edition/Report

              18. I’m not policing your tone. That’s what Colucci does. You and I have the decency of posting our data, analysis, and opinions. I may find you wrong, but you stand up for those errors.Report

              21. San Francisco is closer to Denver than New York City, for what that’s worth. It still isn’t Denver.

                That aside, pointing and laughing is a contribution when what you’re pointing at deserves to be laughed at.Report

              22. For my part, I thought that most of the right wing accusations pre debate were entirely baseless as they seemed to be based on nothing but brief video clips. Our empirical data points were Bidens capable prosecution of his administration and his perfectly acceptable State of the Union which included unscripted back and forth with hostile GOP members that Biden was generally viewed as having had the better of.

                Where I part ways with Philip is regarding the debate and aftermath of the debate. Biden, as I said at the time, had done terribly and if he wanted to continue to be the nominee he had to put himself out there a lot more and demonstrate the vigor and capability he’d failed to demonstrate at the debate. Biden did, to be fair, engage more but it was mainly scripted events and his performance was, while not disastrous, far from scintillating. That, coupled with what presumably was very unimpressive private performances led to a widespread revolt by his party which, coupled by Biden’s own moral fortitude resulted in Biden stepping down and Harris taking his place as candidate. The party was unconvinced that Biden was capable enough to campaign and win the Presidency again and so they asked and he accepted that he step down.

                As for the so called “sane” right wing media. They’ve been more moderate in claim and tone than their lunatic right-wing brethren but little more accurate. They’ve predicted a hundred of the past one incidences of inflation, a hundred of the past zero fiscal crises and always these threats have loomed only when Democrats occupied power. They predicted Bernie’s nomination in 2020 and they also endorsed Trump. That the mildest of their claims about Biden’s capabilities, that he’s too old and weary to both do the job of being President and also campaign for another term, seems to be correct is not a lot of countervailing evidence. And, again, they are endorsing Trump and Trumps party.

                My party, when given serious reason to be concerned about the capabilities of its candidate for President, took action and the result was a more vigorous candidate and what, so far, appears to be a better outcome for the party. What’s the rights’ excuse?Report

              23. To me the proof of all of this is in the pudding. Biden was losing. Harris as nominee is now polling at about ‘generic Democrat.’ That’s huge.Report

              24. I would agree that is a pretty point in favor of the “Biden is too old to successfully run for President again while being President” premise. Though a die hard Biden partisan, of whom there are thankfully very very few, would retort that this is simply a consequence of the media rewarding the Dems for knuckling under to the medias campaign against Biden.Report

              25. At the time he stepped down, the President was still polling inside the margin of error in every swing state. Currently the VP is polling inside the margin of error in every swing state. What exactly have we gained besides ANOTHER data point in the “Democrats don’t fight” dataset?Report

              26. I think the decision has proved so self evidently correct that I have no idea why anyone continues to debate it. Sometimes the way to fight in light of an exposed weakness is to make a change. I have a lot of respect for the Democratic leadership for having the guts to do it.Report

          2. Exactly.
            A good candidate knows how to play the press, instead of being played.

            Modern candidates have dozens of different avenues to get their message to the voters, and giving a sit down to the NYT is only one.Report

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            1. Frankly after the way the Time has carried on with Biden they probably deserve to get snubbed. It’s not like their paying audience isn’t already 99/1 in the bag for Harris already. And being snubbed might snap their pointy little heads around and be salutary for their growth.Report

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    3. “Opening up the possibility that a press conference would not help Harris win is a bad thing to open up.”

      I think that says more about press conferences and public appearances than it does about Harris.

      I mean, we’re in a world where you say “we have a great many styles of cars” and someone remixes it to “we have a…m…yle…of cars”, and this is reported as a false-advertising claim (because you said you had a mile of cars, right?)Report

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  19. Charges set to be dropped for protesters who blocked Sea-Tac Airport road:

    Prosecutors are poised to drop misdemeanor charges against dozens of people who were arrested for blocking rush hour traffic outside the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport during an April pro-Palestinian protest.

    Prosecutors with the city of SeaTac agreed on Tuesday to dismiss charges after a maximum of six months on the condition that each defendant attends court hearings as needed, has no crime violations and does not step on Sea-Tac Airport property except for travel purposes. They can file for immediate dismissal if they do 10 hours of community service, or after three months if they meet the conditions.

    Those charged were ready to take the deal during a Tuesday court appearance rather than take their cases to trial, said Hope Freije, a spokesperson for “The Sea-Tac 46” but not a defendant herself. Not everyone had yet signed the stipulated order of continuance Tuesday evening, SeaTac spokesperson Catherine Rogers wrote in an email.

    Rogers also confirmed prosecutors would not refile charges against protesters who already had their cases dismissed because they couldn’t get a public defender. Freije said nine people couldn’t get public defenders and had their cases tossed as a result.

    Report

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      2. I don’t see any good reason not to require considerably more community service than that. It’s not like Seattle has any shortage of trash and graffiti to clean up, and they need to pay their debt to society.

        I just looked it up, and apparently there were over 60,000 Jewish people in Seattle 10 years ago. I would not have guessed that there would be that many.Report

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  20. I’m in North Carolina this week and am getting an interesting view into the campaign ad blitz which appears to already be in full force every time I turn on the TV. This is always fascinating for me since Maryland hasn’t been competitive in a presidential election in decades, and while I see some interesting ads for house, senate, and sometimes state elections targeting the Virginia DC exurbs, it’s no longer a swing for the presidency.

    My take away so far is that there are way more Trump ads and that he is going hard negative. None of them say anything about what he plans to do, and the message is entirely bad stuff about Kamala (soft on crime SF liberal, in favor of letting the border be overrun, etc.). Harris’ ads are much more positive, though light on policy promises (I grew up middle class and know about your challenges) with side digs at Trump (he will cut taxes for billionaires).Report

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    1. Whose approach — as it exists currently — do you expect to do more to bolster their odds of winning the state? Not which do you prefer or which would you find more convincing… knowing what you do about NC politics and people and having seen the ads yourself, do you have a sense of which strategy seems more effective in the state?Report

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      1. No idea whatsoever. I’m just a very occasional visitor.

        I believe the most up to date horse race data is that it is only in play in the most technical sense. So maybe worth forcing Trump to spend money defending but unlikely to actually flip.Report

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  21. By the way, interesting fact: You know how everyone has been repeating as true that Florida law, with regard to whether or not felons can vote, follows the rules of the state that the felony was in?

    So, it turns out not only is that not true, that’s literally not a law in Florida, but the Florida Constitution would explicitly prohibit such a law. The Florida Constitution says everyone convicted of a felony gets their voting right suspended until restored.

    Everyone appears to have repeating the same source, the Florida Division of Elections, but, and this is incredibly odd, those people appear to be just lying. That is not the law, not even vaguely.

    No person convicted of a felony, or adjudicated in this or any other state to be mentally incompetent, shall be qualified to vote or hold office until restoration of civil rights or removal of disability. Except as provided in subsection (b) of this section, any disqualification from voting arising from a felony conviction shall terminate and voting rights shall be restored upon completion of all terms of sentence including parole or probation.

    It is not whether the original state wants him to vote or not, it is whether he has finished serving his sentence. Yes, those two sentences are sort of confusing, but they they operate independent of each other. The first sentences say can’t vote or hold office until your civil rights have been restored, and the second sentence says your civil rights are restored upon completion of your sentence… And unmentioned there is that the state government can also restore your rights. But they have not. (And before you ask if New York can restore those rights, New York isn’t going to take them away in the first place.)

    (And if anyone has having trouble parsing that, be aware that the (b) that is referred to makes sure that they are not restored to certain classes of felonies, ones Trump did not commit, but it shows that that first sentence alone is not what restores them, or the second sentence detouring would make no sense.)

    Now DeSantis has promised to restore Trump’s voting rights, but apparently his rights haven’t officially been taken away, it happens every January 31st and July 31st.

    They should have been. Desantis, instead of letting that happen and then restoring Trump’s voting rights, has apparently meddled in the process to the point that Trump’s rights were never taken away, despite the fact that Florida law makes it extremely clear they already should have. (The removal of the rights is based off a felony conviction, not the sentencing, which has not happened yet)

    However, that is not as useful as it appears to be, because it is still illegal to vote even if the state has not formally taken away your rights. All it actually means is DeSantis can’t restore them yet because Florida hasn’t done the paperwork to formally remove them.Report

    Reply

  22. Aye caramba!
    Didn’t anyone vet this guy?

    J.D. Vance’s Weird Thoughts on Older Women Exposed in New Audio
    https://newrepublic.com/post/184888/jd-vance-weird-thoughts-older-women-postmenopausal-female-audio
    In 2020, long before he entered politics, Vance appeared on a podcast where the host said that having grandmothers help raise children is “the whole purpose of the postmenopausal female.”

    How can one guy be so spectacularly bad at this?Report

    Reply

    2. If it’s “long before he entered politics” then he’s talking scientifically and I’ve heard that theory before. It’s supposed to explain why women live so much longer than men do.Report

      Reply

        1. I’m sure it was due entirely to the poor liberal policies of San Francis- *Checks headlines*

          Oh…nevermind. I guess there is buttsex and liberal policies all across America.Report

          Reply

      1. What’s interesting is that here in downtown LA, the pandemic and emptying out of the office towers have killed a vast number of restaurants that fed off the daytime workers.
        But those workers still exist- they are just scattered across the city and they still want to grab food besides what they can cook.

        So I’ve seen a lot more food trucks parking in different places near residential neighborhoods and shopping venues to catch people who might not be in their old locations, or to catch people who show up at nightclubs.Report

        Reply

  24. The “greedflation” conspiracy theory debunked in two charts:

    Nominal personal consumption expenditures are up about 11% over the pre-pandemic trend line. You know what else is up 11% over the pre-pandemic trend line? The personal consumption expenditures price index.

    That is, people have about 11% more money to spend than they would have had if not for the excessive stimulus, and prices have, accordingly, risen about 11% more than they would have if inflation had stayed on its previous path.

    “Well, people are just spending more because of greedflation!”

    No. No matter how much prices increase, people can’t spend more if they don’t have more to spend. Under monopolistic pricing without excessive stimulus, what you would see is nominal consumption expenditures continuing along the pre-pandemic path while prices rose and real consumption spending fell. What we’re seeing here is nominal consumption expenditures rising above the pre-pandemic path while real expenditures follow the pre-pandemic path. This is not consistent with the greedflation story, and is perfectly consistent with the excessive stimulus story.Report

    Reply

  25. UCLA can’t allow protesters to block Jewish students from campus, judge rules

    What about freedom of speech? Freedom of assembly?

    From the story:

    UCLA spokesperson Mary Osako said the ruling “would improperly hamstring our ability to respond to events on the ground and to meet the needs of the Bruin community.”

    The university is also considering all available options moving forward, she said.

    “UCLA is committed to fostering a campus culture where everyone feels welcome and free from intimidation, discrimination, and harassment,” Osako said in a statement to The Associated Press.

    This ruling improperly hamstrings their ability to respond to events on the ground.Report

    Reply

    1. Here is a bloke quote from the New York Times about the case and the factual allegations made:

      “Judge Mark C. Scarsi’s preliminary injunction order came after three Jewish students sued the university over protests in the spring concerning Israel’s military campaign in Gaza. The demonstrations roiled the campus, and more than 200 people were arrested after pro-Palestinian protests and pro-Israel counterprotests turned violent.

      During those demonstrations, pro-Palestinian protesters set up an encampment with plywood and metal barricades in Royce Quad, a major thoroughfare. The judge said they had “established checkpoints and required passers-by to wear a specific wristband to cross them,” blocking “people who supported the existence of the state of Israel” from entering the encampment and other areas of the campus.

      Judge Scarsi said that constitutional protections for religious freedom prohibited the university from allowing such encampments to stand if they prevented the campus from being “fully and equally accessible to Jewish students.”

      ‘Jewish students were excluded from portions of the U.C.L.A. campus because they refused to denounce their faith,” Judge Scarsi wrote in the order. “This fact is so unimaginable and so abhorrent to our constitutional guarantee of religious freedom that it bears repeating.'”

      Putting up a blockade and basically requiring Jewish or Jewish looking students to denounce Israel to pass is kind of going beyond a mere protest.Report

      Reply

      1. The general principle is sound enough, but the devil is, as always, in the details. Acts that significantly impede the normal flow of campus traffic can and should be prevented, and the injunction clearly prohibits such things and clearly orders the school to take steps to prevent it. If Jewish students trying to get from Smith Hall to Jones Hall can’t do it without a long, inconvenient detour, while non-Jewish students can pass right through, that is wrong. But if they can pass by without much inconvenience, is that a problem? Must they have unimpeded access to every square inch of the quad? What if they insist on standing right in the middle of an encampment that takes up only some of the quad without greatly inconveniencing others, and trying to shout down the protesters from within the encampment? Can protesters have spots on which they are allowed to protest while counter-protesters have different spots? It’s not clear to me what the answers to these questions are from the terms of the injunction, and the most important aspect of any court order is that the parties know what they can and cannot do.Report

        Reply

        1. I am completely uninterested in defending the actions of Students/Faculty for Justice in Palestine. These are also the creeps that tried to get Hillel banned from campus on UC Santa Cruz and let their anti-Semitic freak flag fly highest.Report

          Reply

              1. No, it wasn’t. Read it again. You’re a lawyer and should be able to understand a discussion about technical problems with an injunction directed mainly at campus authorities rather than protesters.Report

              2. I’d think a lawyer would understand the shaky legal basis of a claim that Disparate Impact is acceptable if it’s only a small impact; a basis so shaky that it seems pointlessly unrealistic to insist that we must wait to see whether or not an actual judge makes that claim.Report

              3. It’s a big part of my day job to understand disparate impact. This isn’t a disparate impact case at all; the alleged discrimination by the protesters is intentional and to the extent that the claim is the administration is aiding and abetting it, that, too, is intentional. And in actual disparate impact cases, small disparate impacts get you thrown out of court all the time. And judges don’t make claims, they make rulings. Parties make claims.
                Other than that, good work.Report

              4. “judges don’t make claims, they make rulings.”

                then why did you even start talking about this, because the judge made a ruling that stated pretty clearly what needed to happen here

                “This isn’t a disparate impact case at all; the alleged discrimination by the protesters is intentional ”

                are you actually quoting Scalia at me here and saying that it’s not discrimination if they do it equally to everybodyReport

              5. Not that you’ll understand any of this, but I’ll give it a shot.

                1. Judges don’t make claims; they do make rulings. When someone talks about what a judge did or said, it is talk about a ruling, unless it’s talk about rhetoric or style. The judge in this case made a ruling. I said that it wasn’t as clear as it needed to be about what is or isn’t permitted under the terms of the ruling. This is a common failing when judges get carried away either from high dudgeon or high-flown rhetoric and sacrifice the necessary precision. You and Jaybird seem to think that it was clear enough. It was certainly clear about some things. The judge isn’t incompetent, after all. But I laid out a few areas where more clarity was needed. You may disagree, but I get paid to advise on just this sort of thing. You and Jaybird are free to set up shop and see who is willing to pay for your advice. I’ll accept the verdict of the market.

                2. Disparate Impact. You keep using that phrase. I do not think it means what you seem to think it means. Your response about something not being discrimination if they do it to everybody indicates that it is a phrase you picked up somewhere and don’t understand. Here is the quick and dirty explanation, without footnotes. There are two kinds of discrimination cases: intentional discrimination cases and disparate impact discrimination cases. Some statutes permit both, though, significantly, not Section 1983, which would be the basis for subjecting UCLA officials to an injunction and, perhaps later, holding them liable.
                Intentional discrimination is what it sounds like: No Irish need apply, no Jews on the quad, and so on. An act or rule that either explicitly discriminates against [fill in the blank] or can be proved to have been motivated by a desire to discriminate against [fill in the blank].
                Disparate impact discrimination cases are different. In those cases, the plaintiff challenges a rule or policy that, on the face of it, is non-discriminatory, for example, a job requirement that the applicant be fluent in Finnish. The theory is that the rule, though not discriminatory on the face of it, disadvantages applicants who are [fill in the blank]. Sometimes, such rules are a not-so-clever way to disguise intentional discrimination, but that is a bonus. You don’t need to prove that to win. But you don’t win just because there is a disparate impact. First, the impact has to be significant. If it isn’t, you lose — unless you have proof of the “bonus,” in which case it’s really an intentional discrimination case. Second, the employer can defend the requirement, despite the disparate impact, if it can show that the requirement is based on legitimate business concerns. (Just how rigorous the showing and how tightly related the requirement is to the concerns will be where the experts earn their money, but the concept is clear enough.) Obviously, since few black people know Finnish, this language requirement has a disparate impact, and a significant one, on black applicants. If you’re applying for a clerical job at the New York office of the Finnish National Oil Company, however, it might well be sufficiently related to the job to pass muster — though maybe not if you’re being hired as a security guard or janitor.
                The campus protest case simply does not involve disparate impact discrimination at all. The protesters, it is alleged, are intentionally discriminating, not setting up some facially neutral, non-discriminatory rule that they might justify on some non-discriminatory ground. The campus administration, it is alleged, is not hiding behind some neutral rule either, but intentionally turning a blind eye to intentional discrimination, or, perhaps, even indulging in it itself.
                Oh, and Scalia, the dead guy, has nothing to do with this. The judge is the very much alive Mark Scarsi, but I guess all these Italian names sound alike.Report

              6. Remember when you asked “Must they have unimpeded access to every square inch of the quad?”

                What’s weird is that the people who set up the barricade effectively said that they have jurisdiction over the various square inches of the quad.

                The judge said that the kids who set up the barricades did *NOT* have that jurisdiction and the school needed to not pretend that it did.

                So, like, when the judge said “quit it”, he wasn’t saying that the Jewish kids didn’t necessarily have some weird right to every square inch of the quad (simultaneously) but that the barricade kids didn’t have jurisdiction over every square inch of the quad and that, indeed, kids should be able to walk across it. Even if they were Jewish kids.

                And the only person asking questions like “Must they have unimpeded access to every square inch of the quad?” about the kids objecting to the barricade kids asserting jurisdiction over every square inch of the quad is you.

                And I still don’t understand where you’re seeing the grey area in the judge’s ruling.

                Like, do you think that there’s wiggle room to interpret his ruling as handing the barricades over to the Jewish kids to assert jurisdiction every square inch of the quad?Report

              8. The problem is that I am under the impression that I understand what the judge was saying and that I am also under the impression that your ignorance of the grey areas left by the judges ruling is feigned.

                My assumption is that you don’t want to make your questions for the judge’s ruling explicit, lest they be self-evidently absurd.

                Your assertions that they are not absurd are noted but…

                You’re the one who still claims to have problems with the judge’s rulings (for clarity, not content) but you also don’t want to say what you’re unclear on.

                Presumably because nobody is paying you to explain that you don’t understand some things. (Things, I might add, that others don’t seem to have a problem with understanding.)Report

              10. You misunderstand.

                It’s your problem that we’re hoping to solve.

                You’re the only one who is confused by what the judge didn’t hammer down flat when he told the college that they can’t allow barricades with guards that check students for Yiddishness.Report

              11. I understand that to be your position. I will put my understanding of the judge’s order and its limits up against yours in the advice marketplace and take my chances.Report

              13. I don’t represent anyone currently affected by the order, and don’t expect to. To the extent that any of my existing clients, looking ahead to the possibility of being subject to similar orders, may be seeking my advice, I must decline to respond.Report

              16. I’ll check in again at the end of the month and we can hammer down how many people have paid you to explain that you still don’t know what the limits are to what the judge said.

                Or do you think that the end of September will be a fairer measure?Report

              17. I would have to give you the same answer either at the end of the month or at the end of September. Ethics are a bitch.

                But has it occurred to you that your entire theory — that I am feigning a lack of understanding of the scope of the judge’s order in certain respects — makes no damn sense? Why would I feign such a lack of understanding? What would it get me? How would I profit from it? I think I understand why you think I am wrong about the clarity of the judge’s order, and we’ll just have to agree to disagree. But why would I make it up?Report

              20. Feigning a lack of understanding is the charitable reading of your questions following the judge’s ruling.

                Keep in mind:
                The students set up a barricade on the quad and checked for stuff like jewelry that had a Star of David on it and allowed sufficiently goyish students to pass and made sufficiently Jewish students take the long way.

                The judge ruled “quit it” and you said that you still had questions.

                Let’s look at each question, shall we?

                Ahem.

                “But if they can pass by without much inconvenience, is that a problem?”

                I’d be cheerful to say that “without much inconvenience” would definitely be a step up and I’d say that something like a tent city on the quad could well be okay. Dodging tents and drum circles is well-within acceptable tolerances.

                Being stopped and asked a question? At that point, we’ve moved past “without much inconvenience”.

                Can the student walk across the quad? Then we’re good.

                “Must they have unimpeded access to every square inch of the quad?”

                This question does a good job of ignoring the original problem.

                What did the barricade students do? They claimed jurisdiction over every square inch of the quad and they said “no Jews (unless they denounce Israel first)”.

                The Jewish students don’t need access to every single square inch of the quad simultaneously. They just need an individual student-sized space that’s a few inches around them when it’s crowded and a few feet around them when it’s not.

                “What if they insist on standing right in the middle of an encampment that takes up only some of the quad without greatly inconveniencing others, and trying to shout down the protesters from within the encampment?”

                It seems to me that they have about as much right to do this as the other students have to setting up an encampment.

                Maybe they can establish a Green Line or something and say “you guys have to stay on that side of the line” like it’s an episode of Laverne & Shirley.

                (Would students be able to walk through both encampments on both sides of the green line or would there be a wall of some sort?)

                “Can protesters have spots on which they are allowed to protest while counter-protesters have different spots?”

                I’m pretty sure that this question is a settled one and the more that I read it the more sure that I am that you are pretty sure that that question is a settled one as well.

                As for my speculations as to why you’d feign such a lack of understanding, my theory is that it’s a more charitable to your intelligence than to pretend that you don’t know the answers to those questions.

                What benefit do you get from feigning ignorance?

                I can only speculate.Report

              21. OK, so you have managed to re-read the original comment and address the actual issues you said weren’t raised. You have your own views on what the answers to those issues are. Those views may be right or wrong — for what it’s worth, I agree with some of them — but our views are just that, our own views. But does the judge agree with us? No clients will care what Jaybird of Colorado Springs thinks and they won’t be much more interested in what I think, even though they pay for my advice. They will want to know what I think the judge thinks, and what to do if it’s not clear. There are ways of finding that out. Pretending to know isn’t one of them.Report

              22. But the judge’s ruling has been given.

                Is that how it works? If they set up a Green Line and Laverne is caught on Shirley’s half of the apartment then we have a situation where the judge comes back?

                No. There has to be a new complaint and then there’s a new case and the old ruling is held up as something that requires clarification or not.

                The ruling has been handed down.

                The author is dead.

                And if your four questions are the best questions we have about the ruling, I have no idea why they’d be sufficient to complain about the original ruling unless I was hoping to squeeze some money out of some clients to get another few billable hours.

                Hey, wait a minute… that might be a reason to pretend it’s not settled…Report

              23. No, that’s not how it works. The lawsuit is ongoing. There is a preliminary injunction currently in force. It will continue in force as long as the underlying lawsuit continues, unless the judge rescinds or modifies or clarifies it. If violated, the violators are subject to punishment for contempt. That’s how it works. As I said before, if you want to play lawyer, don’t commit malpractice.
                As for your billable hours speculation, I don’t get paid that way. It is in my selfish interest for things to be clear so I don’t have to spend time on them.Report

              24. I can’t wait to see what happens with the underlying lawsuit, then.

                I wonder if counsel will ask the judge about “unimpeded access to every square inch of the quad”.

                (Personally, I think that they’ll just have the janitors disassemble the barricade and the administration will pretend that last year didn’t happen.)Report

              3. We’ve already established that it’s okay to cause a small amount of inconvenience.

                We’re just trying to establish if physiognomy checks are within the “small amount” that we’ve established we’re okay with.Report

              6. An excellent question, which is why I asked it. Since it is a question about what the judge’s order means, the only person who can answer it is the judge. And he won’t unless one of the parties seeks clarification. We’ll just have to wait and see.Report

              7. Personally, I see a difference between something like the Jains taking over the quad for Vegan Movie Night (Finding Nemo) and asking people not participating to walk around the quad versus just generally telling Jews that they have to take the long way but not if they denounce Israel first.

                The former is “trivial”. The latter is “discrimination”.

                Now if you want to give me a gish gallop of “whatabouts” and come up with a dozen or so tricky edge cases for me to say “this is okay” or “that’s not okay”, I’d be happy to pick which ones are which and, get this, I’d bet that 5 out of 6 of my answers would match the answers of any 4 or 5 random commenters on the board.Report

              8. That’s all very interesting — well, it’s not, but I’m trying to be polite — but whatever either of us personally thinks he sees, the question I raised is what the judge’s order means, which only the judge can answer. If you want to talk about something else, that’s your prerogative, and anyone interested in talking with you about whatever it is you do want to talk about can join in.Report

              9. Well, the thing that the judge said “quit it” to was not Jewish people demanding access to every inch of the quad.

                What does “fully and equally accessible” mean *IN PRACTICE*, you might ask?

                Well, off the top of my head, I’d say “no discrimination”.

                “But you don’t know what the judge would say!”

                That’s true… but given the stuff that the judge said had to stop was particularly egregious, I’m feeling pretty good about my position and sneering at your weaponized skepticism.Report

              10. “Weaponized skepticism.” You use that phrase, but I do not think it means what you seem to think it means.
                When a judge issues an order, enforceable by the contempt power, it must be clear about what it permits and what it forbids. There are some predictable issues that could easily arise on which the judge’s order does not speak clearly. What comes off the top of your head is no substitute for clarity. There are ways to get it. If you want to play lawyer, don’t commit malpractice.Report

              11. Well, let’s look at what the judge said!

                The judge said they had “established checkpoints and required passers-by to wear a specific wristband to cross them,” blocking “people who supported the existence of the state of Israel” from entering the encampment and other areas of the campus.

                Judge Scarsi said that constitutional protections for religious freedom prohibited the university from allowing such encampments to stand if they prevented the campus from being “fully and equally accessible to Jewish students.”

                ‘Jewish students were excluded from portions of the U.C.L.A. campus because they refused to denounce their faith,” Judge Scarsi wrote in the order. “This fact is so unimaginable and so abhorrent to our constitutional guarantee of religious freedom that it bears repeating.’”

                I suppose that we could immediately say “he said to quit it but he didn’t say how we *COULD* discriminate against Jews” and so we’re stuck wondering “well, what could we get away with?”

                It seems to me that maybe students could get away with setting up an encampment with checkpoints but not refuse entry to other students to different parts of campus.

                Like, they can set up a tent city and any given tent can be the property of the person occupying it, but they can’t prevent someone walking through the tent city.

                Also, you probably don’t want to do stuff like say that Anglos are okay but Jews aren’t.

                And that’s the advice I’d give any group of students hoping to build a Les Misérables-style barricade on campus on behalf of Palestinians.Report

              12. Well, yes, there are certain things that the order is reasonably clear about, and which the campus administration could understand well enough to follow. Are you under the impression that anyone said anything else? If so, your argument is with them, and not with me.Report

              13. What are you still unclear about? What would you need the judge to clear up?

                I mean, if you don’t have a “well, could the students get away with *THIS*?” kind of example, what are you still wondering?Report

              14. You’re obviously spoiling for a fight with someone about what should or shouldn’t be permitted on the UCLA campus. You’ll have to have that fight with someone else. I’ve already highlighted the many unanswered questions about the scope of the order.Report

              15. No, you haven’t. You’ve just said that you still have questions when nobody else does.

                I kinda think that making a barricade is already in the red zone and so anything that happened after that, even if it allowed Jews to wander through to get to class unhindered, was bad.

                The fact that bad stuff followed what strikes me as already being in the red zone is unsurprising.

                So the judge saying “quit it” is pretty straightforward. As even you’ve admitted.Report

  27. To paraphrase Professor Henry Jones, maybe the tiki-torch carrying morons should try reading books instead of dumping them in a landfill:

    New College of Florida tosses hundreds of library books, empties gender diversity library
    Hundreds of New College of Florida library books, including many on LGBTQ+ topics and religious studies, are headed to a landfill.

    A dumpster in the parking lot of Jane Bancroft Cook Library on the campus of New College overflowed with books and collections from the now-defunct Gender and Diversity Center on Tuesday afternoon. Video captured in the afternoon showed a vehicle driving away with the books before students were notified. In the past, students were given an opportunity to purchase books that were leaving the college’s library collection.
    Some discarded books included “Nine and Counting: The Women of the Senate”, “The War of the Worlds” and “When I Knew,” which is a collection of stories from LGBTQ+ people recounting when they knew they were gay. Several books from the GDC were retrieved by local activists before they could be taken for disposal.

    https://www.heraldtribune.com/story/news/education/2024/08/15/new-college-of-florida-throws-away-hundreds-of-library-books-diversity-lgbtq/74814756007/Report

    Reply

    1. one of the parts of the story that … amuses me … is that existing Florida law requires New College to dispose of the books by essentially offering them to students and the community, and when asked about this by a student, the university said the exact opposite.

      I can’t wait for the howls when they get their accreditation pulled.Report

      Reply

      1. This is a college, not an elementary school, middle school, or high school. Whatever arguments might be made for protecting the delicate sensibilties of kids from material that their parents find offensive (kids, in my experience, aren’t all that delicate), purging college libraries of such material is just plain silly.Report

        Reply

      1. I think that the economy is much like Biden’s health.

        Some people look at it and think that it’s great and they can’t understand why anyone would disagree (other than obvious partisanship).

        Other people look at their grocery bills and complain about them and can’t comprehend why others are saying “inflation isn’t that bad” (other than obvious partisanship).Report

        Reply

              1. The fact that Trump is trying to tie Harris to Biden rather than, you know, it going unsaid or Harris’s spokespeople making the point.

                She should make that point. “This isn’t just Biden’s economy, it’s my economy too!”

                Or her spokespeople should.Report

              5. Continue what? I’m starting from the null hypothesis.

                It’s to Kamala’s benefit that she was pushed aside after the Border debacle and has nothing to do with what the economy did in the years that followed and that Trump is exaggerating when he says that Biden and Harris were a team.

                “No, they *DID* work on it!” is where you get to start providing evidence of how she deserves praise for the last three years of Bidenomics.Report

    2. “ What makes this dishonest is that Biden shuffled her off to the side after the border debacle and she hasn’t been doing much with or for the administration since.”

      Cite?Report

      Reply

        2. “Over the last four years, Harris has taken the lead on several critical issues while Biden focused his efforts elsewhere.”

          “Harris spent much of the 2022 midterms appealing to voters with promises to prioritize and protect reproductive rights. Since Roe fell, she has “been subtly making herself the voice with a megaphone no one can ignore,” said Philip Elliott at Time, adding that Harris has met with lawmakers from at least 18 states to discuss the issue.”

          “After withstanding the intense backlash of her perceived inaction, Harris is still attempting to address the root causes of the immigration problem. Her Central America Forward initiative has “yielded more than $4.2 billion in private sector commitments” to support creating local jobs and other measures to slow the flow of mass migration, CNN said last year. Some experts have lauded Harris’ ability to secure the investments “as her most visible action in the region to date but have cautioned about the durability of those investments over the long term,” CNN said.”

          “Harris was also at the forefront of the administration’s pursuit to codify voting rights protections. She pushed for Congress to pass the Freedom to Vote: John R. Lewis Act, which would have extended the protections of the 1965 Voting Rights Act and required federal approval for some local election law changes. The VP “dove into” the “chance to make her mark on a hugely important issue,” Eugene Daniels said in Politico. To further that goal, Harris “helped craft political coalitions with civil rights leaders, built outside pressure on Congress, and engaged privately with lawmakers.” Ultimately, her work “hit a brick wall” when Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and now-independent Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (Ariz.) rejected proposed changes to Senate procedures to stop a Republican filibuster.”

          From the article you shared. It seems pretty inaccurate to say she hasn’t done much with for for the administration since. Now, if we’re talking specifically about the economy, perhaps that is the case… the article does not address that one way or another. If we take that to mean she hasn’t been involved in economic matters lately, then such is the case. But that isn’t what you said.Report

          Reply

          1. I guess we’re divided on what “much” consists of.

            Talking about abortion, the immigration thing, and she pushed for a law that “hit a brick wall”.

            So… those three things. The last of which hit a brick wall.

            “That’s a lot!”, some say.
            “That ain’t much”, others say.Report

            Reply

              1. After the border debacle, there were two prominent goals.

                1. Abortion
                2. Voting Rights

                #2 “hit a brick wall”

                So our go-to example of a lead role on a prominent goal is abortion.

                Don’t get me wrong, it’s a GOTV issue… do we have any major accomplishments to point at?

                Because, if we don’t, I’m not sure how prominent these prominent goals were and the achievement of these goals is one main measure of how I tell the difference between doing an important and prominent task and having been sent on a fool’s errand.Report

              2. Stop. You’re lying.

                You said that Biden “shuffled her off to the side”. He didn’t. He gave her lead roles on prominent goals. That one of those goals failed says nothing of her role within the administration.

                The article you offered did not support your point. Maybe you misspoke in making it. Maybe you were only thinking about economic policy and work. But the fact is you said something that is not supported by evidence, even in the article you offered for precisely that point.

                There’s lots to criticize Harris about… both in terms of what she has and has not done. But claiming that she was shuffled off to the side by Biden is just wrong. Admit as much and move on.Report

              3. He gave her a job that she could not possibly fail at and a job that she could possibly fail at and she failed at the job that could possibly have been failed at.

                If you want to argue that her vice-presidency was marked with leadership victories and point to her abortion rights advocacy, then that’s great.

                I’m allowed to say “that ain’t much, it’s just barely above nothing at all”.

                The article I offered was an article written by someone making the strongest case possible for Harris’s vice-presidency and her own examples contain two prominent mess-ups.

                If you want evidence for how great Harris’s vice-presidency was, it’s now your turn to provide some.

                Because “the border”, “the voting rights bill that hit a brick wall”, and “abortion advocacy” is a set of three examples that contains two failures.Report

              6. I assume you are meaning success as in a changed condition from present. That could accomplished one of two ways – unilateral executive branch action or legislative change. Given who she works for and her own history, unilateral executive branch action would be a last resort, and wouldn’t impact abortion rights or the economy. Which then means one has to build legislative coalitions – which takes time.

                Your willingness to mark her work in that lane as failure tells me you wanted her (and Biden) to “Just Do It.” Hence my conclusion that you support the Unitary Executive Theory which is quite popular in conservative circles these days.Report

              7. “She failed to convince her comrades in the senate.”
                “So you’re saying you believe in the unitary executive! Interesting! Do you also believe we should have a king? That we should be more like England? Or do you think we should be more like Germany and have a Chancellor? LIKE HITLER?”
                “No, I was more giving her a grade on the task she was assigned.”Report

              8. Being VP is a mixed bag. Your primary function only happens when the President is dead. Other than that you are useful for sending to worthless high profile meetings when the President is too busy.

                If you have the ear of the President then you can advise him (Biden with Obama). If you have his full trust then you can be his voice… although Dick Cheney is the only one I can think of who did this.

                She managed to not cover herself with blame or glory. Her actual job is to let the President over shadow her so that means little.

                The real answer is we don’t know how much work she did within the Biden Whitehouse. Maybe she spent the entire time playing solitaire and maybe she’s been using that time to study how to be President.

                My impression leans a little towards the latter because she has occasionally said things that indicated that she was paying attention.Report

              9. Harris has cast 33 tie-breaking votes in the Senate (the most of any VP in US history), including the Inflation Reduction Act.

                If any VP gets to share the credit/blame of an administration’s track record, it’s Harris.Report

              11. I’m not sure why that matters. The VP is why the administration’s signature bill passed.

                And I don’t recall a more purposeful effort to brand an administration with the VP so prominently. “Biden-Harris” was there doing. Walking back from that now seems silly.Report

              12. If the argument is “Harris cast more votes in the Senate as VP therefore she is more accountable for the administration than the usual VP”, then it’s fair to point out that the number of votes is more a fluke of history than a declaration of her policies. If the other side’s argument is “Harris wasn’t president so can’t be held responsible for any of the last 3.5 years”, then it’s fair to point out that this administration’s policies track very closely to her stated policies, even moreso than they track to Biden’s 2020 campaign.Report

    1. Its grimly amusing how the very same people who tell us how multiculturalism can never work, are the very first to yelp for multicultural understanding when they are in the minority.Report

      Reply

  30. The next step in a LONG road:

    President Joe Biden will sign a proclamation Friday designating the site of a 1908 race massacre in Springfield, Illinois, a national monument.

    For two nights in August 1908, a White mob laid siege to Springfield, indiscriminately looting, burning and destroying Black-owned homes and businesses, in a race riot that would become known as the Springfield Massacre.

    Two Black men were lynched during the riot and their deaths fueled calls to start a national movement for political and racial justice that ultimately led to the creation of the oldest civil rights organization in the country: the NAACP.

    Now sure, if we actually taught this history it might make white people feel bad. So no kid in Florida will hear about this. Still worth doing however.

    https://www.cnn.com/2024/08/16/us/springfield-race-riots-national-monument/index.htmlReport

    Reply

    1. I believe that you’re referring to Florida HB 7 (2022), which made it illegal for a school to teach that “A person, by virtue of his or her race, color, sex, or national origin, bears personal responsibility for and must feel guilt, anguish, or other forms of psychological distress because of actions, in which the person played no part, committed in the past by other members of the same race, color, national origin, or sex.” Recognition of the Springfield Massacre not in itself break that law.Report

      Reply

  32. One of the biggest hinderances to bringing the I/P peace conference to a resolution is that Palestinians and really Muslims in general seem to hide themselves from mainstream Jewish opinions on Israel, whether by Israeli or Diaspora Jews. Thanks to YouTube, I can occasionally find their programs and whenever they have a Jewish guess it is always an anti-Zionist Jew, of the Left or Religious varieties, and pretty much some of the most extreme anti-Zionist Jews at that. The ones willing to sign up for Jewish second class citizenship status to sooth their consciousness. Meanwhile, Jews often stride to expose ourselves to the views of people who hate Israel even if we at least kind of like Israel if not love Israel or the ability to argue and debate at least. I am not sure how we can achieve peace if the other side and their allies insist on remaining closed to being exposed to anything pro-Israel. It certainly seems very asymetrical in who has to understand whose perspective. More Muslims could and should deal with being exposed to a basically pro-Israel history rather than whatever they are getting.Report

    Reply

  33. This man is not fit to be Commander-in-Chief.

    “We gave Miriam [Adelson] the Presidential Medal of Freedom. That’s the highest award you can get as a civilian, it’s the equivalent of the Congressional Medal of Honor, but civilian version. It’s actually much better, because everyone gets the Congressional Medal of Honor – that’s soldiers. They’re either in very bad shape because they’ve been hit so many times by bullets, or they’re dead. She gets it and she’s a healthy, beautiful woman, and they’re rated equal.”

    –Former President Donald TrumpReport

    Reply

    1. If you strip all the left-wingedness from that article, you’d have one point with some merit: that Trump has redneck appeal. (See Sowell’s Black Rednecks and White Liberals.) The big point that the article misses is that state party politics are always personal and brutal.Report

      Reply

      1. Old-line patrician Republicans in the 1980s often saw the Moral Majority influx into the party as being a collection of simpletons who would vote and do legwork, then be safely ignored at legislation time. Watching the progeny of those old-liners get pantsed on the regular for the last eight years should be a warning to us all about hubris.

        Your point about the left-wingedness of the article is well-taken, and I hesitated to share it because it’s filled with distracting partisan characterizations. BUT…because she hates those on both sides of the fissure, the article writer gives an invigoratingly frank picture of why those two sides _hate each other_, and understanding the nature of that divide is important to understanding what has been happening since Trump took that ride down the escalator.Report

        Reply

  35. Since Chris brought up JVP in the past, one reason why most mainstream Jews do not trust them is that one of their positions seems to be, video courtesy of Reddit, is that Jews should not pray in Hebrew because it upsets the Palestinians and is a colonial language despite being used at least liturgically for centuries and the Hebrew revival starting outside of Israel/Palestine:

    https://www.reddit.com/r/Jewish/comments/1eu08be/jvp_arabic_voice_for_violence/Report

    Reply

    1. I was thinking satire, hoax, nut-picking, or someone repeating something stupid… and then I remembered that we have the Temple Mount where Jews can’t pray because it will hurt people’s feelings.Report

      Reply

      1. On the other blog, another Jewish poster said this has to be real because “only Jews can blindly self-undermine so well.” This poster has a point because there are always some very Lefty or very religious Jews that are willing to provide cover for the different types of anti-Semites and appear at their events. Most Jews including many Jews who are critical or don’t like Israel know to stay away* but a very small but dangerous groups of Jews just can’t help themselves. They like to appear as the good Jews who go against all the bad Zionist Jews. I can’t believe that there are Jews willing to through half the world’s Jewish population under a bus to burnish their own credentials but here we are.

        *The Satmar Hasidim are anti-Zionist, although they have no problem living in Israel or flying back and forth between Israel and other places, but they don’t go to Iran and participate in basically Holocaust denying conferences like Narutei Karta did. They might not exactly like Israel but they don’t shit on Israel at anti-Israel protests either.Report

        Reply

      2. My response post seems to have gotten eaten. Sadly not a satire or a hoax. Jews like this aren’t a majority by a long shot but there are plenty of Jews willing to go into the lion’s den and say they are the good Jews that agree with the lions rather than all the bad Jews who like being Jews and don’t want to be second class citizens.Report

        Reply

          1. Hi, Gator90. I think they are putting their fellow Jews in either a position of weakness or direct harm in order to burnish whatever their self-image of what Jews should be in their headspace. They might be sincere in their beliefs but these tactics never worked in the entirety of Jewish history and at least for the I/P conflict, they are ignoring what the Palestinians say when not speaking to a Western audience about what they want. It isn’t multicultural rainbow Palestine.

            Some of them seem even willing to abandon half the world’s Jews to death to burnish up their self-image. They might be again very earnest and sincere but they seem willing to give everything up with no guarantees of protection for their fellow Jews.Report

            Reply

  36. The people who brought you Genocide Joe now bring you Harris the mass murderer. I do not get the tactical decisions made by the Pro-Palestinian movement in the United States. It seems utterly counter productive and even kind of racist against Palestinians themselves, I’m thinking of adopting a slice of watermelon as a symbol here. They seem to want to piss away Diaspora Jews who might be a great way to exert pressure on Israel through extreme anti-Semitism . They also seem more likely to go against politicians that might be sympathetic to them.

    A lot of it seems to be Further Leftists looking for a way to strut about and demonstrate their purity rather then do anything for the Palestinians.Report

    Reply

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