Open Mic for the week of 10/28/2024
On this day in 1965, the Saint Louis Gateway Arch was completed.
There’s a phenomenon where someone writes an essay about this or that but someone else wants to discuss something that has not yet made it to the front page.
This is unfair to everybody involved. It’s unfair to the guy who wrote the original essay because, presumably, he wants to talk about his original essay. It’s unfair to the guy who wants to talk about his link because it looks like he’s trying to change the subject. It’s unfair to the people who go to the comments to read up on the thoughts of the commentariat for the original essay and now we’re talking about some other guy’s links.
So!
The intention is to have a new one of these every week. If you want to talk about a link, post it here! Or, heck, use it as an open thread.
And, if it rolls off, we’ll make a new one. With a preamble just like this one.
(Featured image is”Mississippi River Saint Louis Arch ‘St. Louis’ Missouri” by bsabarnowl and is licensed under CC BY 2.0 
..)
According to Rifts, the biggest nexus point of ley lines in the world happens to be right smack dab in the middle of the Saint Louis arch.
I’ve heard that another major nexus point is just a few miles away, in Manitou, but it’s hard to find a good source for such things.Report
The early cyberpunk fiction work “Hardwired”, by Walter Jon Williams, has a bit where a hovercraft-riding smuggler zips past the city and describes this as “the rusting metal arch commemorating the Marais des Cygnes Massacre”.Report
He really believes we are stupid:
https://www.politico.com/live-updates/2024/10/27/2024-elections-live-coverage-updates-analysis/gone-to-hell-when-00185767Report
There was a time when loosing 8% of your subscribers in 48 hours got you canned.
https://www.npr.org/2024/10/28/nx-s1-5168416/washington-post-bezos-endorsement-president-cancellations-resignationsReport
I was just going to post this.Report
https://www.semafor.com/article/10/28/2024/more-editorial-board-members-resign-at-washington-postReport
Ballot box arson in Vancouver, Washington: https://www.katu.com/news/local/vancouver-ballot-box-seen-smoking-same-morning-as-portland-ballot-box-arsonReport
Jinx.Report
Stochastic political terrorism is now turning to disgusting, immoral, anti-democratic kinetic political terrorism:
https://www.npr.org/2024/10/28/nx-s1-5168404/oregon-washington-arizona-ballots-drop-boxes-firesReport
We’ll find out this was a random lunatic.Report
Any theories on what would have given a random lunatic the idea to do this specific kind of previously unusual crime?Report
Random lunatics either attack people at random or because they’re famous, i.e. in the news. We’ve had a lot of press and hysteria over this recently.
So it could be a Trump supporter because he’s got them spun up, an anti-Trump person because he’s got them spun up, or someone who basically has no politics because they’re not functional enough but has joined the chaos because of the voices in their head.
Judging from history, the way to bet is that third group.Report
“Judging from history”? What history are you judging from?
Also, the police are saying that this isn’t a case of some yutz just throwing a lit match into a ballot holder. They’re saying the method of attack required planning and experience with doing metalwork.Report
RE: What history are you judging from?
With the exception of the guy who shot Lincoln, the various Presidential assassins have been “random lunatics” rather than serious players. The same holds true for most one-person political attacks.
If this one really did have “planning, experience, and metalwork” then maybe he is high enough functioning to not fit that pattern, but it is a pattern.Report
Sometimes you find an article and realize that other people are having the same thoughts that you are. One of the things that I’ve noticed in the I/P debate is that a lot of anti-Israel Palestinians and other Muslims make the argument that their Jews were happy living as second class citizens under Islam until the Zionist agitators showed up and that these arguments sound like White Southerners arguing about how Blacks were happy under Jim Crow until outside (((agitators))) showed up. For some reason, you have a lot of well meaning people in the West that would call bloody murder when dealing with White Southerners talking about African-Americans but fall for the same illogical argument hook, line and sinker when Muslims take about “their Jews.” This article says the same thing but more elaborately:
https://www.meforum.org/middle-east-quarterly/uncle-tom-and-the-happy-dhimmiReport
https://goodauthority.org/news/election-poll-vote2024-data-pollster-choices-weighting/
An interesting look at how weighing voters changes things.
“There is no end of scrutiny of the 2024 election polls – who is ahead, who is behind, how much the polls will miss the election outcome, etc., etc. These questions have become even more pressing because the presidential race seems to be a toss-up. Every percentage point for Kamala Harris or Donald Trump matters.
But here’s the big problem that no one talks about very much: Simple and defensible decisions by pollsters can drastically change the reported margin between Harris and Trump. I’ll show that the margin can change by as much as eight points. Reasonable decisions produce a margin that ranges from Harris +0.9% to Harris +8%.
This reality highlights that we ask far too much of polls. Ultimately, it’s hard to know how much poll numbers reflect the decisions of voters – or the decisions of pollsters.
The 4 key questions for pollsters
After poll data are collected, pollsters must assess whether they need to adjust or “weight” the data to address the very real possibility that the people who took the poll differ from those who did not. This involves answering four questions:
1. Do respondents match the electorate demographically in terms of sex, age, education, race, etc.? (This was a problem in 2016.)
2. Do respondents match the electorate politically after the sample is adjusted by demographic factors? (This was the problem in 2020.)
3. Which respondents will vote?
4. Should the pollster trust the data?
To show how the answers to these questions can affect poll results, I use a national survey conducted from October 7 – 14, 2024. The sample included 1,924 self-reported registered voters drawn from an online, high-quality panel commonly used in academic and commercial work.”
After dropping the respondents who said they were not sure who they would vote for (3.2%) and those with missing demographics, the unweighted data give Harris a 6 percentage point lead – 51.6 % to 45.5% – among the remaining 1,718 respondents.Report
They did a paper on whether the term “Latinx” has contributed to Latinx people changing their votes to Republicans.
As it turns out, Latinx people don’t like the term “Latinx”.Report
I kind of wonder how many of these words will still be floating around in, say 2030. Like… do gay people really appreciate being referred to as ‘queer’ in mainstream publications and the like? That ain’t my battle to fight but I know I’d never call someone that. I also can’t imagine referring to a group of human beings as ‘BIPOCs’ or something similar without it being received as strange and disrespectful.Report
As far as I can tell, latinx is pretty much completely gone already.Report
So it didn’t catch on. That’s language for you. Tempest, meet teapot. Unless all the screeches who got their panties in a twist about it want to claim credit.Report
So it didn’t catch on. That’s language for you. Tempest, meet teapot. Unless all the screechers who got their panties in a twist about it want to claim credit.Report
I believe that the conclusion of the paper was more than “it didn’t catch on”.
Like, the conclusion of the paper was that there was a measurable amount of Latinx persons who still have their panties in a twist about it.Report
The reactions of the people to whom the term would apply if it caught on obviously figure heavily into whether it will catch on. If they don’t like it, it probably won’t. And that’s fine.
I’m sure we’ll all be equally attentive to how people want to be referred to the next time a dust-up happens.Report
And if you want to see us argue about the “Latinx” thing in real time back in 2020 during the 15 minutes when we were entertaining the suggestion that we use the term “snickerdoodles” to refer to a mixed group of people rather than “guys”, you can do so here.Report
Why would any sane person want to do that?Report
So we can see what was “normal” just a few short years ago and compare it to what we might be tempted to wave away as strawpeople today.Report
If I were interested in refreshing my recollection of what was “normal,” I wouldn’t be looking there.Report
It’s not likely to confirm your priors, I’ll tell you that much.Report
I looked, out of perverse curiosity, and, in fact, it does.Report
MSNBC is apparently discussing do not obey in advance and Matthew Dowd wants consultants and others to give WaPo reporters and others a Roman back: “the other thing besides canceling subscriptions to washington post and la times we can do as analysts/pundits/political pros is to not help reporters or columnists at either newspaper. don’t cooperate with them or tell them until Bezos corrects things, don’t call me.”Report
Bezos shoots himself in the foot: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/10/28/jeff-bezos-washington-post-trust/Report
The subject of his post was on point though.Report
“True, he killed his parents, but his point about showing mercy to orphans is valid.”Report
Abandoning ship: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-election/live-blog/trump-harris-obama-springsteen-election-live-updates-rcna177527#rcrd61406
“A joint appearance by Trump and former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley before Election Day appears increasingly unlikely, according to a senior Trump adviser who asked for anonymity to describe sensitive internal conversations.
The source said that getting the two former rivals’ schedules to mesh has been difficult and that time is running short.”Report
Trump is only up by 5 points in Kansas. He won it be 15 points in 2020.
https://kansasreflector.com/2024/10/28/survey-reveals-potential-tapering-of-kansas-gap-between-gop-democratic-presidential-candidates/Report
With the Electoral College system in place, close but no cigar can be interesting for the future — there might be a way to get, say, Kansas or Texas in a few cycles — but doesn’t mean much now.Report
USA Today has said that it won’t endorse a Presidential Candidate.
The Tampa Bay Times said similar but it’s Tampa Bay so who cares.Report
They are obeying in advance.Report
Why do they keep reporting polls that show Kamala ahead?!?Report
Wikipedia says that USA Today has had a longstanding policy of not endorsing candidates, with 2020 being the only recent exception.
Good for them!Report
I was today years old when I learned that there is a historical fantasy streaming series/YA novel about Lady Jane Grey that ends more happily with her and replaces the entire Protestant-Catholic conflict with a conflict about shapeshifters, as an analogy to LGBT people more below, and humans. I can understand why this would be a lot more interesting to secular 21st century people but at the same time these sorts of presentism in historical dramas brings out my inner curmudgeon.
There is something about this sort of approach to historical drama that seems really self-indulgent. Like somebody saying “I don’t want to deal with reality, I want my fantasy and not having to do any hard grappling with the facts.” The fact that the shapeshifters are supposed to be an LGBT analog but the main male shapeshifter is the love interest of Lady Jane Grey shows the problems.Report
There are screenshots of the new Dragon Age video game where one of the Qunari people explain to the main character how they are non-binary. If you remember how the Qunari were explored in the first two games, you will enjoy how the Qunari culture is being critiqued in the current year.
The game releases on Halloween. You can pre-order it here.Report
I still haven’t forgiven them for the second game.Report
Jon Stewart has a take on the Tony Hinchcliffe thing and he’s not being helpful.
There are a *LOT* of weird dynamics swirling around here. It’s hard to read the tea leaves but they seem to indicate that they think that Trump has got this in the bag.Report
Brianna Wu, of all people, has an interesting take on where we are (I trust her about as far as I can throw her but she may be useful as a weathervane even if not particularly trustworthy as meteorologist):
Maybe she’s just older.
That’s something that can happen too.Report
Congratulations to the editors on the dueling columns today about Donald Trump. Getting those columns scheduled and run opposite each other is skillful management of the site, a powerful catalyst to discussion, and a demonstration of the site’s ongoing commitment to providing multiple diverging points of view in long-form essays. The internet was at its intellectual best when that sort of thing was all over the place, and Ordinary Times is keeping that fire lit.
Props to the editors.
As for the immediate issue: my opinion of Trump has always been worn prominently on my sleeve and no one in this community needs to be reminded of it. Have fun today, y’all, and try to keep it civil.Report
Yeah amazing that a guy who thought the counter-protesters at Charlottesville were violating the free speech of the N@zis there would endorse the guy who insisted that there were very fine people on both sides.
I’m sure I’m really missing out on not reading that argument and am just enforcing my epistemic bubble by doing so.Report
I issued a strongly worded dissent on the Trump essay. I know he is going to get more votes than he should get. We don’t need to promote his hate and the people that support it.Report
FWIW my problem is less with the essay and more with the essayist. I accept the editors want to have some representation of Trumpist and anti-anti-Trumpist points of view, and would surely have read a Trump endorsement written by, e.g., Pinky with considerable interest and then argued about it for dozens and dozens of comments.Report
Gas prices projected to drop below $3 a gallon. Take what the election gods giveth.
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/falling-oil-prices-may-help-push-gas-below-3-a-gallon-for-the-first-time-since-2021-526b95cdReport
This is why we vote: https://www.tiktok.com/@gayheartgunsmoke/video/7429733010116758815?_r=1&_t=8qx0mwQxkrOReport
From Dante Atkins on Twitter:
1. Did a bit of analysis of Georgia’s early vote yesterday to see if there was measurable impact from the Trump campaign’s weekend racism orgy against Latinos, and…seems like there may have been?! Here are some interesting numbers.
2. Statewide, the share of the Latino vote prior to Monday stood at 2.69% of the vote. Yesterday, Latinos accounted for at least 3.9% of the vote share, with over 8,200 votes cast. That’s a 150% increase over the statewide average so far.
3. 3/x Of those 8,200: 41 percent did not cast a ballot in 2020. We don’t know if that means they’re infrequent voters, moved into the state, or first-time voters…but they didn’t vote in 2020 there. That’s a lot of new votes.
4. 4/4 Just goes to show that insulting tens of millions of people isn’t the best approach to a campaign. And credit goes to http://georgiavotes.com for making these numbers easy to find and track.Report
The Apartheid origins of Thiel/Musk/Sachs: https://www.ft.com/content/cfbfa1e8-d8f8-42b9-b74c-dae6cc6185a0Report
They’re just upset because they lost their ethnostate where they could treat “the other” like second-class citizens.Report
And they are working hard to recreate that here aren’t they?Report
They’re immigrants who are treating the US like an adopted country rather than an economic zone and that’s completely hypocritical.Report
If they were actually doing that – like say the millions of undocumented migrants who come here, work hard, stay out of criminal trouble and make their kids become Americans, then maybe you’d have a point. But that’s not what they are doing is it?Report
They’re acting like citizens.
Which is exceptionally hypocritical.Report
They are acting like spoiled billionaires who think they are worth more to society then they are.Report
Bezos weighs in on the Bezos situation:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/10/28/jeff-bezos-washington-post-trust/Report
Saul posted that yesterday but I forgot to give my take on it.
“Our profession is now the least trusted of all. Something we are doing is clearly not working.”
This strikes me as fairly obviously true.
I’m going to digress and talk about video games for a bit. There’s a current bit of drama involving video games that, instead of catering to a traditional audience, have pivoted to catering to a more modern audience.
A good number of these games have failed somewhat spectacularly (Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League is reported to have lost $200 million, Colin Moriarty reported that Concord lost $400 million, Star Wars Outlaws looks like it’s set to lose $200 Million) and, of course, the blame is put on the players for not buying it, not spending money on it.
It seems silly to blame the dog for not eating the dog food.
Anyway, journalism is now the least trusted of all.
As you watch what happens in the following months, see who blames the dog.Report
He raises a good point about the trustworthiness problem. Is he the right person to raise it, right now, in this moment? Suffice to say I understand the counter arguments. The proof I suppose will be in the pudding. My household hasn’t canceled our subscription (not yet anyway, my wife pays for it). I will be on the lookout for major improvements in quality and credibility.
But, you raised something else. I randomly heard about the Concord thing due to an offhand comment on a substack I don’t regularly read. What is your take on that? I googled to try to better understand it but all I found were official reports mentioning the shut down but talking around what went wrong and screeds on reddit, none of which were particularly illuminating.Report
Not Jaybird but my take is that I, a somewhat engaged gamer, had barely heard of Concord, didn’t even know what sort of game it was, and next thing I’m hearing that is that it had lost $400 million. Overall it seems like the game took forever to pull together (the long dev cycle is consistent with the very high cost) and ended up being a mediocre entry in a saturated sub-genre, and one where people would have to stop playing competitors to start spending time with it.
I mostly play single player games with finite campaigns, so while it may take me a while to finish a game, eventually I will finish it and move onto the next one. That isn’t really the way it works with online games that work on a subscription basis, which makes it even harder to break in with a new property.Report
Fair enough. I once, long ago, played games but found it became necessary for me to renounce them. My last real experience of online gaming is probably something like Quake, or maybe taking a few runs at Warcraft III. Suffice to say I have no idea what’s going on and haven’t for generations of advances.Report
Smack dab in the middle of the conflagration, I talked about Concord here.
I suppose that my take on Concord is that gaming was better back when games were created by people with some combination of schizophrenia and autism who had a goal of bringing their gnostic fever dreams into a playable state who were ruthlessly managed by psychopaths who had a goal of making money hand over fist.
Changing that setup into one where games are created by people with degrees in gaming design and others with degrees in computer drafting being ruthlessly managed by people with degrees in business management will give you slop.
Concord is a game made by game designers managed by MBAs in order to provide a Hero Shooter Product that takes into account modern sensibilities toward race, gender, and sexuality and maybe can help teach players to be more open-minded about all of the above.Report
I’m also reminded of the discussion we had about “Rust” randomly assigning gender/genitalia/skin-tone to player models, and locking those assignments to the account so there was no way to change them. There was some controversy over the issue but ultimately sales of “Rust” met their targets, so it appeared that doing this was neither beneficial nor harmful to sales.Report
What the utter hell does that have to do with the claim it was aimed at ‘a modern audience’ instead of ‘a traditional audience’? How is your claim here even _vaguely_ possible to express in the sentence ‘There’s a current bit of drama involving video games that, instead of catering to a traditional audience, have pivoted to catering to a more modern audience.’
Your claim now is about who makes the games, not who they are targeted at. (And you also seem to think you have said something about who funds it, although I cannot tell the difference between ‘ ruthlessly managed by psychopaths who had a goal of making money hand over fist’ and ‘ ruthlessly managed by people with degrees in business management’, as I am fairly sure the second is merely a subset of the first.)Report
The traditional audience was the one who wanted to play the output of the fever dreams.
The modern audience is more interested in games as a medium to provide a didactic message that agrees with them.
I am fairly sure the second is merely a subset of the first
Maybe it was in the 80’s or early 90’s.
It’s not now. “Business Management” is just another good thing to get a degree in to make oneself hireable.Report
Hey, Jaybird, what was the biggest game of the year in the year Suicide Squad came out? To spare you having to remember, it was Baldur’s Gate 3.
Hey, Jaybird, what would be the more ‘traditional audience’? The looter-shooter Real Gamer(TM) crowd, or a fricking _turn-based_ D&D game, which admittedly is old school, but I’m sure is old school in the way it predates ‘traditional gamers’. In fact, Baldur’s Gate 3 was directly aimed at the ‘modern audience’ of the resurgence of D&D players under 5e…and old school RPG players that might have played BG1 or BG2, or NWN, and also are not really the ‘traditional audience’ of games.
Suicide Squad failed for the very obvious reason it a) wasn’t very good, and b) betrayed the series it was part of which means a lot of people were extremely disappointed and angry on top of that. It was aimed at exactly the ‘traditional audience’, it’s just the right audience said, seemingly correctly, ‘this sucks’.
And Concord is a game also _exactly_ aimed at a traditional audience, specifically, at Overwatch players, one of the most successful video game franchises of all time. What exactly do you think a ‘traditional’ gaming audience is? How is it not _Overwatch players_? Overwatch is one of the pillars of ‘Real Gamer’ games! (Honestly, it’s so big and successful it’s one of the pillars of the entire industry, period, and I say that as someone who has literally no interest in playing it and has never even watched a video of someone playing it, much less played it myself.)
Star Wars Outlaws shows why you should not spend huge amount of money on an absurdly-overpriced mediocre action-adventure game with a lot of stupid stuff like season passes and requiring an internet connection, and I am literally baffled as to what you think is going on with the ‘audience’ for this. It’s an action-adventure game! The audience is ‘people who play single-player action-adventure games’, a group I am fairly sure has existed quite some time and continues to exist.
The publisher, Ubisoft, basically ruined this one by adding all the crap that no one wants in single-player games, with everything locked behind paywalls for a game that starts very expensive. Also, it didn’t really do anything new at all that would justify even the original price.
What different audience do you think it is aimed at? ‘Stupid people with too much money?’
You very deliberately refuse to actually define any words you use whenever you talk about video games, so you can pretend anything is an example of anything.Report
The more traditional audience? Leigh Alexander wrote a pretty famous article that answers this question.
“(Suicide Squad) was aimed at exactly the ‘traditional audience’, it’s just the right audience said, seemingly correctly, ‘this sucks’.”
From what I recall correctly, the “traditional audience” was screaming something to the effect of “nobody wants a looter shooter” from the get-go. I can think of one significant difference between Overwatch and Concord when it comes to target audience.
What do you think I’m going to say it is? This is an easy one. Exceptionally guessable.
I am literally baffled as to what you think is going on with the ‘audience’ for this.
Yeah, it’s practically Tomb Raider.
What different audience do you think it is aimed at? ‘Stupid people with too much money?’
“Star Wars fans who are sick of fanservice” or something like that.Report
Looter-shooter is _also_ one of the current pillars of video gaming. It is a pillar that is hated by basically everyone who is not a fan of the genre because it is the place that commodification of gaming hits most hardest and they are basically designed as a skinner box to put money into and get cocaine out of, but that doesn’t make it not a pillar. It’s just the worst possible one.
Maybe this discussion would be better off served if you actually explain what time you think ‘traditional’ refers to. Because looter-shooters have been giant since Borderlands, a 2009 game, and really exploded in 2014 with Destiny. Which, ironically, is almost the exact same timeline as the hero-shooters. Hero shooters started in 2007 with Team Fortress and then exploded in 2016 with Overwatch.
I have to suggest that making games in gigantic genres that started a _decade and a half ago_ and have had a juggernaut lead them for a decade are not, in fact, aimed at a ‘modern audience’, and are about as traditional as can be in the world of mass market games, which is arguable only about three decades old at a commercial level. (If we date it to, let’s say, Doom and Myst.)
The actual problem here is that two of the games you listed came at the king, and they _missed_. Very very badly. Concord missed so badly it basically instantly phrased out of existence!
In fact, since you blame MBAs in that other post, you are correct there, and haven’t even mentioned that the problem isn’t just the MBA-ization of the games (Which affects all of them), but the fact that only an idiot would even attempt a looter-shooter at this time, or half-hearted hero shooter. Anyone who actually understands the industry would realize the sort of inertia the current leaders have, how invested the players are, and how hard (and expensive) they would be to dethrow, and make something else.
But the defining feature of MBAs are ‘I do not know the industry I am in but everyone considers me somehow important enough to listen to’.
…you do realize my point was that I don’t know what you’re talking about WRT to the audience, which means by agreeing with me, it appears _you_ don’t know what you’re talking about? What?
Let me repeat: Why are you talking about the audience of Star Wars Outlaws? Who do you think that audience is, why do you think that supposed audience is relevant to the failure?
The failure is pretty clearly a) the game wasn’t great, and b) the publisher did a bunch of stuff clearly intended to wring ever bit of profit out of the game, like DLCs that were really just ‘pay more to enable content’ and stuff like that, which turned a lot of people off what was already a mediocre and unoriginal game that already was extremely expensive.
And you are correct, Tomb Raider is almost the definitional way to do action-adventure right. And was wildly successful, not just the reboot but really the entire series has done pretty well. Is that because you think they aimed at the right audience?
I don’t even know how to objectively qualify fan service, I would argue it is “references and things that are includely merely to cause players to say ‘I recognize that”, which, again, isn’t something that would seem to impact _sales_.
Honestly, the way that game was described makes it sound like one of the _less_ fanservice games, as they talk about how they are exploring organized crime in the universe, saying explicitly that’s where the canon doesn’t delve into much and that’s why the set the game there.
That seems much less fan-servicing than, for example, ‘You are one of the only living Jedi and will fight the Empire and run across movie locations and characters and help rebuild the Jedi order and be implied to be very important to things that happen in the movie’, like Jedi Fallen Order and, hell, half the Star Wars games did.
But maybe it was full of constant fan service, with scenes from the movie happening constantly in the background, and the main plot being about some unnamed person needing smuggled lightsaber parts and it turns out it’s Luke. I dunno. But it really seems unlikely that would be able to even hypothetically impact sales (Because it wouldn’t be known before playing), much less actually doing so.
What impacted sales it that there was absolutely nothing exciting or interesting about it, and it was clear it was just a money-grab, and player shrugged, decided to wait until it was $15 on Steam, (Where they will buy it but never play it) and reinstalled Rise of the Tomb Raider instead.Report
Duck mentioned this in the Concord thread but one of the things that the successful games in all of the above have in common is a fanbase devoted to cosplay and another fanbase devoted to, erm, amateur art featuring characters in non-adventure pursuits.Report
Well…sort of. Let’s talk about human food instead, because the analogy to dog food breaks down when you take into account the fact that humans, who may have different desires for dogs, are the ones making the choices about what dog food to buy.
Whether it seems silly to blame consumers for not eating the food you’re selling depends on your goals. If you just want to make money, sure. It’s up to you to sell what consumers want to buy, and if they don’t buy what you sell, you’re the one who’s failed.
But if your goal is to make people healthier, and you do your best to make reasonably palatable, nutritious food that doesn’t stimulate overeating, then I think it is fair to bemoan the fact that people still choose junk food because it tastes better and they’re not thinking about how it will affect their health in the future.
Bringing it back to journalism, if you just want to sell papers, sure, it’s on you to give people what they want. If they want tabloids, and you don’t sell tabloids, you have no one to blame but yourself for not making money. But if your goal is to enlighten people and make them better citizens and voters—and you put out a product that genuinely would serve that purpose if people read it—then I think it’s fair to get angry about the fact that people would rather read misinformation that makes them feel good.
The thing is, most journalists at the Washington Post haven’t earned the right to feel that way, because that’s not what they’ve been doing. They may think that’s what they’re doing, but they’re doing a crap job of it. I suspect that this is because they’re not smart enough or don’t have the analytical skills needed to understand the topics they’re reporting on.
Bezos was too kind: He acknowledged that journalism is facing a crisis of credibility, but he didn’t acknowledge that this is, in part, because it’s facing a crisis of competence.Report
The 10% of subscribers who walked away in the past couple days- are you asking us to believe they did this due to the incompetence on the part of the reporters and editors?Report
No, I think many of them were specifically attracted by the incompetence, or more precisely by the way the output skewed because of that incompetence. Most of the Washington Post’s subscribers don’t want a paper written by people capable of seeing the holes in the Narrative and what lies beyond.Report
Can you give us an example of a paper which does expose holes in the Narrative, so we can see for ourselves?
Because otherwise, this just sounds like “Everyone who disagrees with me is deluded and can’t see the Truth like I do.”Report
The Biden Laptop story?Report
So Brandon is telling us that the Washington Post is an example of a paper that exposes the holes in the Narrative?
Somehow I doubt that’s what he is saying.Report
If there’s a reason to believe that “the media” is experiencing a credibility problem, there’s a handful of things that would happen as part of a correction.
I imagine that the people who actively enjoyed the loss of credibility would be upset by the correction.
So the WaPo lost 10% of its readers, you say?
Do we know what the WaPo’s numbers looked like when the paper was agreed to have a great deal of credibility?Report
I asked for an example of a paper that exposes holes in the Narrative, as Brandon suggested.
Got an example to share?Report
Eh, it’d probably look like something that Mel Gibson would have published in Conspiracy Theory.
You can really only point to multiple stories where the Narrative was upheld and then, when the narrative fell apart, see who was reporting something other than the narrative.
There are a handful of examples from recent years, though. Covid provides us some.Report
“I could tell you the truth but it would make me look like a raving lunatic” may not be the powerful argument you think it is.Report
That’s the problem with those who embrace the narrative, ain’t it?
People who don’t embrace it look crazy.
They even ask stuff like “isn’t this narrative different than yesterday’s narrative?!?” and, at best, narrative enjoyers can only ask “why do you care?”Report
I give that a big maybe. There are other moments where I might have applauded the decision. However I’m not sure it helps regain credibility if it looks like a pre-emptive, cowardly, and probably futile move by ownership to avoid adverse treatment of other business interests by an incoming illiberal administration.
I also think you might be misunderstanding the nature of the credibility problem. Yea there’s an aspect that stems from a work force dominated by the same milieu of Ivy and SLAC grads with stupid leftist political commitments. The bigger problem IMO though is that the WaPo lacks identity.
In absence of that it’s strategy has been to try (and fail) to out NYT the NYT, which is maybe the one big legacy outlet that’s found a way to navigate the larger disruption of the newspaper industry. Maybe this is the first step to correcting that problem. Maybe they will start bringing in some different people with different philosophies. Maybe they’re on the verge of unveiling a coherent editorial vision of what the paper should be that isn’t the JV NYT. Time will tell. But I would say that if they are not doing that then this is pretty meaningless. You’d be better off throwing whatever little weight you have left behind the politicians that aren’t promising to go to war with you for totally capricious reasons.Report
One of the things conservatives and liberals agree on wrt the legacy media is that they aren’t presenting the truth.
We just differ on whether that truth is more aligned with liberal beliefs or conservative ones.
Which is why I continue to ask for examples of media that doesn’t follow the so-called Narrative; One that gives us the red pill and lets us see the world as it really is.
For some reason, conservatives seem remarkably shy about mentioning one.Report
That’s because the conservative media is still about 1000 times worse when it comes to these problems. All you have to do is look back to the time Tucker Carlson (of all people) got laughed off the stage for his ridiculous suggestion that maybe conservatives should attempt to establish media institutions with their own, independently earned credibility. If they did that how would they ever sell gold coins to elderly people verging on dementia?Report
Part of the problem is that it takes decades to gain credibility and a couple of minutes to lose it.
There is *NOTHING* that the WaPo could do to regain the credibility it had in, oh, 2003 by 2025.
Just not gonna happen.
There are pre-reqs that need to happen and essays that need to be written and mea culpas that need to repeated, loudly. Internal decisions should be made transparent (I mean, without violating privacy… the Weigel/Sonmez thing would be a juicy story… but I don’t think that learning the ins and outs of what happened would help regain cred).
And it’ll take a while.Report
Well, there’s this whole “revealed preferences” thing.
I may really enjoy a slanted newspaper story from time to time but if, after the story works its way through the snake, it turns out that the story wasn’t *EXACTLY* true?
Well, I’ll have a choice before me the next time I get a slanted story.
Do I believe it?
Do I not care and enjoy the slant?Report
If this is actually true, this is an extreme understatement:
If they were going to do it, the time to do it was months ago, being open about the decision and rationale with both their readers and newsrooms. Springing it now is such obviously garbage change management it’s hard to believe the claims that it’s a principled decision.
As for this:
Those people include the Trump campaign itself, of course:
https://x.com/thestevencheung/status/1850016625174388797?s=46Report
Yea the timing is, as my son would say, ‘sus.’Report
Kamala Harris has declined to do Rogan’s show in his studio, but has offered for him to fly out to her and do a one-hour show using her equipment.
Rogan declined.
JD Vance will be going out to do Joe Rogan’s show on Wednesday.Report
Not accurate.
Harris invited Rogan to join him on campaign for an hour interview. Rogan thought an interview in his Austin studio was best. Rogan stated Harris did not reject or turn down his invite.Report
Allow me to cheerfully restate:
Harris isn’t going to do a show in Rogan’s studio and Rogan isn’t going to fly out to do a show in a place that isn’t in his studio.
JD Vance will be going out to do Joe Rogan’s show, in Rogan’s studio, on Wednesday.Report
Can’t say with any certainty that she made the wrong call. There’s an opportunity cost to flying out to Austin to do an interview at his studio in the last days of the campaign. Harris and her people seem to have decided the possible benefits don’t outweigh the opportunity cost.Report
There’s a huge debate over whether or not Rogan should have made an exception for Harris.
I think that it’s in a state of superposition.
If she wins, of course he should have.
If she loses, of course she should have gone after his audience.Report
She’s the sitting Vice President. There are rules. The only conditions under which Harris’s security contingent — which includes, recall, a military officer carrying her copy of the “nuclear football” — would have allowed an interview in Rogan’s studio would have been unacceptable to Rogan.Report
Huh. I thought there were requirements like “it be an hour and not three” and “it be on her equipment and not his”.
Did it really come down to not allowing an officer to sit in the corner?Report
Well yes, we’re talking about the same thing from opposite sides. You’re pondering if Rogan should have gone to her. I’m pondering if she should have gone to Rogan. Michael is pointing out, helpfully, that the cost in organizational juice for Harris to go to Rogan is probably even higher than we realize.
But your superposition point is correct if anodyne. If she wins everything she did will be amazeballs and if she loses every path not taken will be a missed opportunity.Report
Jaybird thinks he is the best armchair consultant the Democrats refuse to hireReport
Eh, I’m not quite that insightful. I’m mostly surprised that my anodyne and banal observations like “she’d benefit from reaching out to Rogan’s audience” get pushback like “no, she wouldn’t”.
But I say that as someone who thinks that Trump and Vance got some benefit from reaching out to Rogan’s audience.Report
TFG and Vance were always going to get Rogan’s listeners. The Venn diagram of those two groups is a circle.Report
I think this is unlikely.
Rogan is, as far as I can tell, too popular, and too popular with people who shy away from politics, for this to be true.
Getting unearned media from someone who has millions of listeners, many of whom are likely low propensity and low information voters who the other guy really needs to show up, has some obvious upsides.
The question is really whether those upsides outweigh the opportunity costs of giving up a day of other campaign activities in the home stretch.
Win or lose, I doubt we’ll ever have enough information to say they do, and should Harris lose, I think we’ll have to look elsewhere for the tactical blunders we’ll desperately need to find in order to exonerate the Republicans and the legacy media for Trump’s return to power.Report
I keep hearing this, about “tactical blunders” or “mistakes” being the reason Harris might lose.
Its the way politicians talk, when they refuse to admit they lost because people just flat out don’t want what they are pitching.
I have to keep returning to this, because for the past decade, there has been this constant drumbeat that Trumpism is not real, sort of “If the people only knew!” refusal to believe that maybe 49% of Americans really, truly, sincerely and in full knowledge are willing to accept a dictator.
Shirley that can’t be true! It can’t happen here! No way- this has to be all a mirage, some trick of the light, or maybe because someone somewhere didn’t make enough phone calls or made a poorly worded comment or something.
It strikes me as a complacency, on par with the way we were constantly being soothed by Beltway pundits that tut tut not to worry, they would never overturn Roe, that of course the American people would never stand for it.
But…as it turns out, a lot of Americans WILL stand for it, and WILL meekly accept a dictator.
Its why I have to keep reminding people that even if Harris wins, this won’t be over. The fascists will still control about half of the states and SCOTUS and will only redouble their efforts.
We need to accept the fact that this is going to be a long fight and prepare accordingly.Report
How many GOP candidates have been accused of these things? All of them?
What has happened is Team Blue’s “purity police” where everyone in their way is Hit.ler has resulted in someone who is comfortable with false accusations.
Trump constantly spins up false accusations until nothing against him is believed.
So Blue claims Trump is an anti-Semite in the face of his daughter and grandchildren being Jews and his strong support for Israel.
For claims of his racism you’re bringing out housing lawsuits from the 1970s(?).
Since Team Red and Team Undecided have heard these sorts of claims many, many times before, they’re totally discounted and ignored.
You can’t beat something with nothing. Harris is running on raw charisma, being a black woman, hope and change (in spite of being in charge), not being Trump, and word salad.
It’s possible that not being Trump will be enough, I voted for her because of that. However she’s so bad that in Blue’s last serious primary she got zero votes.
The actual way to do this would have been for Biden to step down as being unfit and let her run as President. That would eliminate a lot of the contradictions in our current situation and give her a chance to look Presidential.Report
The Central Park 5, Haitians, Puerto Ricans and the sitting Vice President would like words . . .Report
And then what happens?
Like, can you conjure up some alternative timeline in which Trump is relegated to a footnote, a laughingstock marginal candidate that no one needs take seriously?
Well, no you can’t, because that would require rejecting the reality that is America today.
We now have a decade of Trump, running against three different candidates and the outcome being razor thin each time.
We have Trumpists elected with wide majorities as governor of two of the largest states, and with supermajorities and trifectas in many more.
We have the entire Republican party in every state enthusiastically embracing full dictatorship, promising to punish and criminalize dissent.
This is our reality, one that we have to struggle against. Its not a mirage, its not because Hillary said this or some campus radical did that.
It is what almost half of America has become.Report
can you conjure up some alternative timeline in which Trump is relegated to a footnote, a laughingstock marginal candidate that no one needs take seriously?
1) HRC doesn’t run on “it’s my turn” and instead Team Blue gets a serious candidate.
This was the second time she got blown out of the water by a political new comer, the first time should have taught you she’s really bad at running.
2) Harris doesn’t get the nod by skipping the entire primary system, and instead Team Blue gets a serious candidate.
Her previous run netted her a total of zero primary votes (meaning everyone beat her and she came in dead last), that should have taught you she’s really bad at running.Report
OK.
Name a few of these other candidates who would have won so convincingly that Trump would be relegated to a footnote.
We can start with the other Democrats who ran against Hillary.
Lets see, there was Bernie Sanders, Martin O’Malley, Lawrence Lessig, Lincoln Chaffee, Jim Webb.
Are these the “serious candidates” you speak of?
Or were there others you had in mind?Report
We can start with the other Democrats who ran against Hillary.
That’s a terrible place to start because she did a good job at keeping the field bare of serious people.
About half of the States have Team Blue governors. Pick the most Charismatic and successful and you’re probably done right there.
That algorithm gives you leadership experience, management experience, campaign experience, and electability in addition to whatever else he brings to the table.
Oh, and it doesn’t need to be “current” so it’s more than just those 25.Report
Alright so that gives us someone like Gavin Newsom or Gretchen Whitmer or maybe Mayor Pete, with the theory being that if someone like them ran, 2016 would have been such a strong victory as to relegate Trump to marginal status.
Actually, we can measure this theory.
Right here on this blog we have several self-described “reasonable” Republicans, maybe even Never Trumpers, and at least one confirmed Trumper.
So.
Lets hear it from them- which charismatic Democratic politician like Gavin Newsom, Gretchen Whitmer or Mayor Pete would cause you to cast a vote for the Democrat?
And when you answer, feel free to tell us what differences you see between someone like those three and Hillary Clinton or Kamala Harris because honestly i can’t see much daylight.Report
Before Trump, HRC was the most openly corrupt politician of our generation. Selling pardons, having her own personal “charity” which got donations from entities that she dealt with professionally as SoS.
Trump being able to run against her as the cleaner candidate says a lot.
In 2016 I couldn’t vote for either Trump or HRC and cast for whoever the Libertarian was that cycle.
I think I said at the time (maybe not here) that I would have voted for Pete and doing 60 seconds of research on him that looks right.
Whitmer (ironically) I know almost nothing about… oh wait, she took over as I was in the process of moving. NM.
There’s a lot to like there. I’m a little disturbed by her getting rid of “right to work” but there’s a lot to like there (too many strong points in her favor to list).
Newsom I don’t know enough about to rate.
More importantly, I seriously doubt that any of these three would respond to basic questions with word-salad “deer in headlights” ignorance.
So we should expect that their skill in running for office (and their history in leadership, management, and so on) will be much greater than Harris.Report
I don’t think Hillary ever had pardon power.Report
Bill did the actual pardon. HRC accepted the money. Marc Rich’s ex-wife was the one who paid the money. Rich was the one who benefited.
There was no reason for the pardon except the money. There was no reason for the money except the pardon.
They managed to structure everything so it wasn’t provably illegal in court.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marc_Rich#U.S._indictment_and_pardonReport
When you’re a celebrity they let you do that.Report
So we have one possible Republican who would cross over to vote for one of these people.
Do you think this scales?
Does anyone here think that there exists a large number of Trump voters who would do this?Report
Harris & HRC are both really bad at running and they both managed to tie Trump.
Having a much better candidate implies doing better.Report
What makes you think so?
As I keep asking, what evidence is there to suggest that Mayor Pete or any living Democrat would perform significantly better?
Isn’t this really just an assertion that Trump voters are mostly Secret Disney Liberals, just waiting for the right Democrat to come along?Report
So you’re claiming that having a terrible candidate makes no difference? Everyone is in one of the camps?
If Obama could run for a third term, would he be doing as badly as Ms. Word-Salad?
For example Obama took something like 95% of Black male voters and Harris is going to do something like 75%.
RE: Trump voters are… just waiting for the right Democrat to come along?
If memory serves, back in 2017 we evaluated the Obama voters who changed their vote to Trump. Claiming that they’d all become racists is fun but imho is jumping the shark.
Does that mean that they’re all “Secret Disney Liberals”, of course not. No group of any demographic is “all”, some are persuadable to your message, many are not.
Everyone has their own motivations. Some are deep into Blue/Red tribalism, others less so.Report
I’m claiming that “candidate quality” has only a very marginal effect especially in this environment.
Again, no one can seem to come up with the name of any Democrat, including Obama, who would move the needle by even a bit.Report
I suspect Newsome could move the needle if he wanted to, but why would he want to?
Beyond that, it’s a pointless debate in the final 36 hours of the election.Report
NewsomReport
SEE!?!?Report
Well, yes, I saw. Hence the comment.
Eric sends his regards.Report
I’m claiming that “candidate quality” has only a very marginal effect…
I disagree. Candidate quality is why Obama won and HRC lost.
If Harris loses, in part it will be because the people who voted for Obama won’t vote for her. That’s the same reason why HRC lost.
Of course in a close election everything is decisive.Report
And that’s really my point.
The race will be close no matter who the Democrat is because about 45% of the electorate will knowingly vote for a man who openly promises to be a dictator.
They are reluctantly choosing him, or confused, or economically anxious or whatever other excuse people want to make.Report
There is some fairness to the first–the party as a whole probably fell in behind Hillary more quickly than they should have, and a more vigorous primary would have been for the best.
Not much to be done about the second–it took a lot to force Biden out/make him realize he had to drop.
I don’t see any evidence Harris is really bad at running besides the fact that she’s not polling way ahead of Trump, and I’m of the opinion that reflects more on Trump’s (extremely bad) candidate quality than hers.
Most complaints about her boil down to “just another politician” stuff.Report
Not much to be done about the second–it took a lot to force Biden out/make him realize he had to drop.
That’s because Blue has been lying about Biden’s lack of mental decline for probably years. Everyone who interacts with him on a normal basis must have known this.
What was necessary to force him out was the American public had to see that he really was in serious decline.
I don’t see any evidence Harris is really bad at running besides the fact that she’s not polling way ahead of Trump,
Word salad. No clue how to answer basic questions (what will you do on day one, what would you change from what Biden is doing). No grand plan or even detail on whether she’s running for 4 more years or “hope and change”.
Biden is so mentally infirm that he can’t run but she’s fine with him being President because she doesn’t want to own any responsibility.
I’m not sure what she’s supposed to be after “generic Blue who is a black woman and not Trump”.
Trump is awful but you can’t beat something with nothing and my never-Trump friends are having to seriously reconsider Trump because they can’t see anything there.Report
https://www.edisonresearch.com/who-joe-rogan-listeners-are-likely-to-support-in-the-election/
Could she have made gains in that audience? Maybe in that 35% of unaffiliated men, but I doubt it.Report
This is one of those times where I think Jaybird’s framework for thinking about those listeners, especially the 35% who don’t self-identify as Team Blue or Team Red, means there’s room for improvement.
Some might hear Harris and decide, “Sure I can vote for her,” and others would hear her and decide, “Well, maybe I won’t vote for her, but she sounds personable and sane (if a bit dorky) so I don’t need to vote against her.”
I think there would have been an upside and evidently the Harris camp did as well. Just not enough of an upside to justify the disruption to her schedule.Report
Knowing what else we know about those listeners, to get an upside for her, especially in numbers that would matter, would be next to impossible. I suspect they made their come to us counteroffer knowing full well he wouldn’t take it. Because then she’d be in control. And its hard to play independent king maker and arbiter of fact when someone else is in control..Report
Joe Rogan listeners are almost the definition of low information. Possibly even negative information.Report
Yup–good people to talk to directly, generally speaking.Report
Terri Garr and Paul Morrissey, two legends on cinema in very different ways have died.Report
Oh, one thing I’ve noticed: October 2016 was INTERMINABLE. Holy crap! It moved slower than molasses and there were October Surprises every freakin’ day and each was more crazy and chaotic than the last!
And this year, October was… you know. It was October.Report
Two kinds of jokes, plus one kind of “joke”:
The first kind of joke is when the comedian is laughing with you.
The second kind of joke is when the comedian is laughing *at* you, but it’s a good-natured roast kind of atmosphere.
The “joke” is when the “comedian” is laughing *at* you, but it’s a he’s telling you you’re sub-human scum kind of atmosphere. You know…the kind of “jokes” Donald Trump makes.
Whenever you hear about “cancel culture” and how “people don’t have senses of humor any more”, it rarely involves a real joke.Report
Trying to grok where Jews are in the current political ideological cosmology is exceedingly difficult. On the one hand, we have a resurgent Right and a lot of White nationalists who most definitely believe that Jews aren’t white and say so. On the other hand, Jews seem to be an awkward fit at best for the Intersectional Left or other other variants of the Left. As David Baddiel would put it, Jews do not fit into the “sacred circle of oppression” paradigm. We come across as too bougie and educated and most of them see us as mere wypipo with a different religion. You can explain Jewish history and identity to them very carefully and it is basically hitting a brick wall. They will just raise their first in defiance and say “Jews are wypipo, end of story.” There is a feeling of political homelessness.Report
Tea leaves:
Report
Eh, maybe a tea leave, maybe not.
The NBC early voting has the turn out almost in even thirds pretty Democrats. Republicans, and Unaffiliated voters.
A poll from Elon University:
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/f6c6081ba6d1d622623184a1235c873f1a4eccd2da4d7142b30416e6746539c3.png
Trump and Harris are allegedly tied at 46 percent but all the other Democrats are ahead.
Stein is up by a staggering 21 points;
The Democratics have +5 leads for AG, LG, and SoS and a +8 for Superintendent of Schools.
Called me unskewed polls if you will but I think Harris has a fair chance to win if the all the other Democrats are this far ahead.Report
RCP has four NC polls today. Two show a dead heat, one shows Trump ahead, one shows Harris ahead.
I wonder what Harris’s internals say that she’s reallocating the money. Maybe it’s “we’re so far ahead, we can use the money to shore up places that are less of a sure thing”.Report
Another variant: “we’ve already bought every ad available for the next week that reaches the NC markets, and the GOTV efforts say they can’t use more than 20% of what we had allocated because they have already fully funded all the volunteers they have”Report
Tea leaves:
Report
I don’t see the alumnae of either school welcoming him.Report
This. He didn’t like being booed by Washington Nationals fans when he was in office, he won’t like being booed by college football fans now.Report
Here is what we are fighting against:
A Texas Woman Died After the Hospital Said It Would be a “Crime” to Intervene in Her Miscarriage
https://www.propublica.org/article/josseli-barnica-death-miscarriage-texas-abortion-ban
Josseli Barnica grieved the news as she lay in a Houston hospital bed on Sept. 3, 2021: The sibling she’d dreamt of giving her daughter would not survive this pregnancy.
The fetus was on the verge of coming out, its head pressed against her dilated cervix; she was 17 weeks pregnant and a miscarriage was “in progress,” doctors noted in hospital records. At that point, they should have offered to speed up the delivery or empty her uterus to stave off a deadly infection, more than a dozen medical experts told ProPublica.
But when Barnica’s husband rushed to her side from his job on a construction site, she relayed what she said the medical team had told her: “They had to wait until there was no heartbeat,” he told ProPublica in Spanish. “It would be a crime to give her an abortion.”
For 40 hours, the anguished 28-year-old mother prayed for doctors to help her get home to her daughter; all the while, her uterus remained exposed to bacteria.
Three days after she delivered, Barnica died of an infection.Report
The anti-abortion movement’s plan for addressing any backlash caused by the lethal cruelty of their preferred policies is to make it illegal to tell anybody about them.Report
That’s pretty disturbing. I still think the long term is going to be broad, re-legalization of abortion in those states that have bans in effect, but it will be a bloody road.Report
C’mon, Ted, just pretend she was a pretty blonde woman killed by an immigrant!
As recent reports detail a Houston woman’s “preventable” miscarriage-related death in 2021 under a strict abortion ban, Texas’ candidates for U.S. Senate have very different responses.
…
“My heart breaks for the Barnica family,” said Colin Allred, the 2024 Democratic candidate for a Texas U.S. Senate seat, in an Oct. 30 statement.
Incumbent Republican U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz declined to comment to ProPublica.Report
That was 3 years ago, so right after the laws changed. Is this sort of thing still a problem?
My less-than-one-minute of research suggested the laws haven’t been changed, and the legislature didn’t want this to be the result. I didn’t find others but I didn’t look very hard.
If it’s not still a problem then the hospital was being unnecessarily legally cautious.Report
Yes, it’s still a problem.
https://www.nbcnews.com/health/womens-health/texas-abortion-ban-deaths-pregnant-women-sb8-analysis-rcna171631Report
When people say “are you honestly suggesting that you’ll let innocents suffer as part of a protest action against political decisions we don’t like”, here are some doctors saying “yes, we will”.Report
There was a time, years ago, when I would have wondered what the hell was going on in your head to make you think some complete and utter bullsh*t like that, so I’d have engaged, but it’s 2024, people are dying, and I’m too angry to care about why people like you are so god awful.Report
Speaking as someone who wants to make abortion legal in all situations, looking at the data in Chip’s link, I think Duck is correct.
The number of people dying spiked wildly before the law was passed and dropped after it did. We’re not back to normal, and we might not get to normal, but we need to wait another year or two before we can make that evaluation.Report
I know that’s been your take on this but I still don’t get how you can lay so much more blame on the people trying to comply with the law than the ones who wrote it.Report
They’re not trying to comply with the law. They are saying that when it comes down to cases, their job is more important than someone’s life.
And yeah, it sucks that there’s legislation saying “abortion is a crime” and making doctors have to worry about that, and the people who passed that legislation are the kind of people who skate through English class on Cliff’s notes and “extra credit” and D-is-for-Diploma instead of paying attention to what the books were trying to teach them, but if my wife had a dead baby rotting inside her and the doctor started bleating about “legislation” and “his job” I would tell him that unless he gloved up and got busy he would not have to worry about his job because I would drag him out in the parking lot and step on his fingers until they were so broken that he couldn’t be a doctor anymore.Report
Which would get you then hauled out of the hospital in handcuffs. Leaving you able to do nothing else for your wife and leaving doctors even more unwilling to treat her.
Which seems like an odd way to make a point.Report
“Leaving you able to do nothing else for your wife and leaving doctors even more unwilling to treat her.”
Well. She’s already not being helped. And “now they’ll let her go septic to punish you” is maybe not making the best case for doctors being sympathetic healing-masters regrettably constrained by Evil Republican Scum.Report
So just to be really clear – you EXPECT the doctors to commit an act that would result in them being both fired AND criminally charged with a felony to help your wife, and if they don’t you believe the correct response is physical violence on your part? And the doctors are the bad people here?Report
“you EXPECT the doctors to commit an act that would result in them being both fired AND criminally charged with a felony to help your wife”
Right up until just now they’ve always told me they would, so, yes dot jpeg
But, hey, if the doctors want the deal to be “I’m just workin’ here, I don’t set policy, I just do what the law permits” that’s fine but it also leaves me wondering why I need to consider them any more highly than an auto mechanic with a lot of training, and why there are so many regulations and laws saying that I must pay them money before I’m allowed to do anything medical to myself.Report
Do you expect the Republicans to create a safe harbor allowing doctors to perform medically necessary procedures?
And if they don’t, is it fair for us to accuse them of depraved indifference?Report
I’m not sure the deal for any profession is ever, “I do set policy here, up to and including ignoring criminal statutes!” and I really don’t think it would be a good idea if it were otherwise.Report
When they tell you who they are, believe them.Report
You moved those goal posts so fast they visibly reddened.Report
“You moved those goal posts so fast they visibly reddened.”
mmhmm? How is “my job is more important than your life” not a restatement of “if I save your life I might lose my job”?Report
Because that’s the penalty for providing an abortion?
Losing one’s job?
Is this really your argument?Report
My understanding is that in TX the provider could be charged with a felony.Report
How is, “My job is more important than your life,” in any way, shape, or form a restatement of, “We’ll let innocents suffer as part of a protest action against political decisions we don’t like?”Report
Y’all pretty quickly insisted that it was not about A Protest, it was about Their Job, so, I’m going with that. It doesn’t make you look better but it seems like the argument you want to have, so that’s fine; we’ll do it.Report
what are you even talking about anymoreReport
The change in abortion laws is apparently responsible for a lot of deaths before it was passed.
Massive spikes in deaths in 2020 and 2021. Law was passed in Sept of 2021. Deaths came down a lot in 2022.
“We’ll let innocents suffer as part of a protest action against political decisions we don’t like?”… is one way to interpret the data.
I would guess doctors didn’t know what the law was going to be, were afraid it would be applied retroactively, and got caught up in hysteria.Report
Like Phil said that would not achieve anything.
Not to make it overly personal but my wife and I went through this several times (albeit thankfully much earlier in the pregnancy). The goal would be to get somewhere you can get help, not waste time fighting with people who can’t.Report
From your own link, pregnancy deaths spiked in 2020 and then again in 2021 (that law was passed in Sept 2021) and then went down a lot in 2022.
I think we’re looking at people/doctors over reacting and it’s unclear if maternal deaths will drop to where they were.Report
What causes you to think the legislature didn’t want this to be the result?
As you say, it’s been three years, and no change in the law, no clarification to create a safe harbor for doctors to terminate a pregnancy without fear of prosecution.
So from what I can see, they seem very satisfied with the result of their handiwork.Report
Doesn’t Jaybird have a quote he likes to throw out about systems doing what they are designed to do that would be germane here?Report
Abortion deaths are *DOWN* since 1986.Report
This isnt an argument, its a factoid.
And this factoid means what?Report
I dunno. It’s the same argument used in the whole “crime” thing.
Whenever people complain about crime going up, it’s pointed out that it’s better that it was in the 80s.
I figure that that argument would either prove to be rigorous or prove to be specious in a similar circumstance.
Which would you say it has been proven to be?Report
No, the two arguments have nothing whatsoever to do with each other.
I mean, it’s a logic error so basic a high school student would flunk.
Try again.Report
I mean, it’s a logic error so basic a high school student would flunk.
I agree.
We encounter it anyway.Report
No, the crime argument is rigorous.
Your comparison is an absurd and amateurish failure of logic.
Just let it go.Report
I’m pretty sure it’s not.
If I complain about an illegal immigrant murdering a young woman in this or that circumstance, it’s quite regularly pointed out that crime is going down *AND* that crime has been trending down since the “superpredators” moment in the 90s.
So, too, here. If a horrible situation 3 years ago resulted in the unnecessary death of a young woman, pivoting to the trend over several decades strikes me as equally appropriate and the only reason that someone would argue that it’s not is one of the self-serving ones.
I mean, it’s kind of obvious.Report
My God, you’re serious.
You can’t even frame the logic here.
The immigration law analogue to the Texas law forcing doctors to watch a woman die is…what, exactly?
And the rejoinder to your complaint about a murder (That crime rates are lower) is a valid rejoinder only if your complaint is that the murder is evidence of rates going up.
So if that was your complaint then the response is valid.
I really am stunned that you would even attempt this.
Lax immigration laws force immigrants to murder womenReport
In both cases, the women are the victims, Chip.
Do you not see the women murdered by undocumented visitors as victims?Report
Stop digging.Report
“Crime has been going down since the 1990s”
goose-meme dot jpeg
“what happened in the 1990s, huh? WHAT HAPPENED IN THE 1990s?”Report
What do you even mean by “abortion deaths”?
Total number of women dying during abortions?
Number of women dying per 100 000 abortions?Report
I just googled “abortion deaths”.Report
Uh, OK, so… why do you think abortion deaths are relevant to the discussion here?
The death here–precipitated by the bloody-minded misogyny of the Texas Republican establishment–would probably not even be counted as an abortion death, though I’d have to see the actual source of the statistic to be sure.Report
An awful law with unclear enforcement resulted in the death of an innocent woman who, otherwise, would still be alive today.
I’ll grant that this is a case of over-enthusiastic cops while immigration-related deaths are the result of negligence, but, for the sake of pointing out that the whole “we should compare these numbers to the 80s!” comparison is bunk, I’m willing to do that.Report
If you really are searching for a way to inject immigration into this discussion, maybe start with laws that force immigrants to trek through the desert and result in heat deaths.
That’s about as close as you are going to get.Report
No, I’m searching for a way to get future arguments about crime to not have “but what about the 80s!” injected.Report
Why?
Its a perfect refutation of “Crime is out of control!”
You will still need to provide some reason why immigration has anything to do with either crime or abortion deaths, but that’s for you to work out.Report
But these aren’t even the same numbers!
To use your (already pretty terrible) analogy, this would be like if you were talking about a murder committed by an undocumented immigrant, and Chip responding by talking about how multiple myeloma death rates had fallen since the ’80s.Report
That’s why I leaned on “abortion-related”.Report
Ok but I’d be surprised if the original death would be picked up in a study of abortion-related deaths. Overall maternal death rate, sure–and there the picture from the ’80s is much less rosy–but abortion related?
I’d be surprised and would have to actually read the original publication to know one way or another.Report
I do wonder how these kinda things were treated back in the 80s. Were they categorized significantly differently than “abortion”?
If so, I think I may have found part of the problem.Report
He’s not trying to defend the Texas law, or even comment one way or the other about it.
He’s trying to use it as a pretext to attack the “Crime has gone down” refutation to “Immigrant related crime shows that…”
And this is where the wheels come off the crazy train.
Because if the argument is that Crime rates have risen, then a statement that rates have fallen effectively refutes that.
But his argument isn’t about rates.
it’s about an “awful law that results in death”.
So the reference to historic rates has nothing to do with either argument.
So what he’s really trying to do is claim that lax immigration laws inevitably result in women dying.
The stuff about historic rates is an irrelevancy.Report
I believed I called it an “awful law”.
Because if the argument is that Crime rates have risen, then a statement that rates have fallen effectively refutes that.
It does.
What does pointing out that rates have risen do?
So what he’s really trying to do is claim that lax immigration laws inevitably result in women dying.
Eh, I don’t think it’s *INEVITABLE*.
I merely can point to instances of it actually happening.Report
Right which means that the issue of crime rates is irrelevant to whether lax immigration laws are responsible for murder.
Which means that pointing to historical rates of pregnancy related death is also irrelevant.Report
It’s whether the awful enforcement of the law can be held responsible for *THIS* murder.Report
The phrase that keeps running through my head is “Depraved indifference”.
Like immigrants getting tangled by barbed wire and drowning, to women dying horrific deaths, to minors being mangled by factory equipment, the Republican response, every time, is a shrug of depraved indifference.Report
Good summation.Report
The Supreme Court puts its finger on the scale for Stop the Steal 2.0
https://bsky.app/profile/jamellebouie.net/post/3l7qdplzrne2sReport
Unsurprising but still disappointing.Report
The 2024 Ranma 1/2 anime attempts to deal with some of the more problematic aspects of the original series by saying that the series takes place in the 1980s and leaving the problematic elements, for both Japanese and Western audiences, in tact.Report
They just want to cater to the people most likely to purchase their product!Report
Seeing how they deal with Happousai is going to be interesting.Report
“It’s like Family Guy! You like Family Guy!”Report
New York Times is reporting: Devices With ‘Free Gaza’ Messages Found at Ballot Box Fires
You know the voting drop off boxes that were vandalized?
Well, the cops are investigating “Free Gaza” messages left by the perps. They want to hammer down whether the Gaza messages are sincere.Report
“Investigators are trying to determine if the perpetrator was actually a pro-Palestinian activist or someone using that prominent cause to sow discord, one of the officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity because the investigation was ongoing. But the message has added a heightened layer of political sensitivity to a closely watched investigation in the final days of a tense presidential election.”
I don’t think the right-wing is clever enough to do this. I suspect quite a few Free Gaza protestors are dumb enough to burn ballot boxes and think it is a great moral action even though electing Trump is about the worst thing that could happen to Gaza now and anyone who believes otherwise is an idiot.Report
The location seems to indicate to me that these were sincere antifa types and it wasn’t a false flag.
If it was Chicago? Maybe? That’s where Jussie was attacked, after all.Report
The Oregon ballot dropoff box that was vandalized happens to have been the one where I had planned to deposit my ballot (I put it in the mail instead), so I feel like I know the location fairly well.
I sincerely doubt antifa was involved. Why would they do that specific, risky thing with their time and their energy? It doesn’t fit their MO at all. If they wanted to protest Gaza, they’d spray paint a federal building or knock out some windows at a Defense Department office.
The Portland area has PLENTY of right-wingers. It seems to have taken only two people to commit the crime.Report
Why would they do that specific, risky thing with their time and their energy?
Why would people protesting Gaza take over a college quad and barricade it like they’re in Les Mis?
It’s not like we’re in “rational actors” territory, here.Report
College students protesting at the center of a college campus is evidence of not being rational actors? What?
Are pro-Palestinian protestors now the Official “Other” of the Ordinary Times commentariat? Are we all supposed to sagely nod our heads when someone writes that “violence is the only thing they understand”?
Anyway, to reiterate: I live in the specific part of Portland where this went down. What went down does not match Antifa’s MO, and the method of attack was much more complicated than lighting some paper on fire. There are plenty of right-wingers in the Portland metro area, and it would have taken only two to do this deed.Report
These kids today don’t respect the hallowed tradition of protests, like levitating the Pentagon or smearing feces on the Speaker of the House’s desk.Report
I guess I wouldn’t be surprised either way. But that message by itself suggests the perp is high enough functioning that we’re past “random nut” territory.
So looks like my first expectation (posted further up) was wrong.Report
Echoing Steve, the local skinny here in Portland is that the bomber was a Millenial (age 30-40), white, and male, with experience in metalworking, driving an early 2000’s model Volvo S60. We aren’t being told the license plates in the news, so far as I can tell, but there’s pretty clear video of the incendiary device being deposited so it’s a good bet that investigators do know the plate.
This might describe an Antifa although as noted, I don’t think Antifa resistance to voting extends to making it difficult for others to vote, only discouraging people from participating in the process for far-lefty type reasons that I do not fully understand. It might describe a Proud Boy trying to divert attention away from the Proud Boys, and if so that seems a lot more congruent with trying to disrupt elections in Very Liberal Portland and the downtown, bluer part of Vancouver WA where the related arson took place (there’s a very close election in that district and the rhetoric in the campaign commercials is Satanically heightened). Or it might describe someone whose political beliefs are not so easy to classify.
Folks who have reason to suspect their ballots were destroyed should seek out provisional ballots and re-vote. Election officials in both Multnomah and Clark Counties are working to determine whose ballots were destroyed (and in many cases they’ll be able to if part of the ballot survived the fire).Report
“the bomber was a Millenial (age 30-40), white, and male, with experience in metalworking, driving an early 2000’s model Volvo S60.”
A vandal but one that cares about safetyReport
My guess that this seems to be the actions of a severely dumb activist as well.Report
Don’t drive your own car to do crimes where you should anticipate getting your picture took.Report
Honestly, that’s why I doubt it’s going to be any experienced left-ist protestor: Those people actually understand op-sec.
The right are complete and utter dumbasses about it, as evidenced by how many took their actual personal cell phones to do a coup, which they planned out on social media. They do not understand how to actually treat law enforcement as a _threat_, because, because a huge chunk of the time when right-wing actors are acting lawlessly, the cops are right there as part of the lawless crowd.
So when they cross the point that the authorities do indeed act against them, they have no idea what to do, they didn’t bother to plan or prep at all, they just assumed law enforcement would just very carefully avert their eyes and mutter about free speech.
Now, it’s also possible it’s some pro-Palestinian protestor who is incredibly new at this, I won’t say it couldn’t be them, but it’s not anyone with experience doing protests that could actually result in arrest…and the right, even the lunatic neo-N.azi right, is usually operating with at least tactic understanding that the cops will not go after them. (They’re the Right Sort of people even if they have not good ideas.)Report
Donald Trump is now campaigning in a garbage truck.
He’s working a shift as a sanitation engineer in Wisconsin.
I am not making this up.Report
Cite? All I can find online is a picture of him sitting in the passenger seat of a spotless white truck. Hardly “working a shift”.Report
It’s a shift as a union worker.Report
Okay, I was wrong. He isn’t working a shift. He just got picked up in the garbage truck and they’re driving around for a bit before his rally.Report
https://www.cnn.com/2024/10/30/politics/video/donald-trump-garbage-truck-biden-comments-wisconsin-tsr-digvid
Not for Jaybird’s phrasing though.
He is completely losing itReport
Overall this has been one of the most ridiculously bad faith stories of the election, and allegedly non-partisan media outlets were extremely eager to run with it.
This all despite the fact that:
Biden wasn’t calling Trump supporters garbage;
and that Trump calls Biden supporters “vermin” and the “enemy within” routinely.
I can understand the partisan double standard coming from the GOP on this, and to an extent it’s all in the game.
But I really don’t see why allegedly mainstream media outlets have decided that it’s completely fine for Trump to be an absolute f*ckhead 24/7 but any sign of rudeness on the part of the Democrats has gotta be the whole f*cking news cycle.
(Also for the love of all that is holy can someone please change the way the moderation filter works? It’s unreasonable to expect us to discuss contemporary American politics without using the F-word.)Report
“It’s unreasonable to expect us to discuss contemporary American politics without using the F-word.”
not making a good argument for being the intellectual superior here
“Biden wasn’t calling Trump supporters garbage;”
he ain’t running anymore, bro, you don’t have to make excuses, you don’t have to tell us how Naked Is The New ClothedReport
i could not possibly care less
could have fooled me with the way CNN et al. were flogging the storyReport
The story wasn’t “Biden calls Trump supporters garbage!” it was “Republicans Pounce!”
And sometimes the story about the reaction to the alleged event spreads the story about the alleged event.
Even now, Trump had a photo op in a garbage truck. Someone might (reasonably) ask “Why is Trump having a photo op in a garbage truck?!?”
And the answers come either easy or really complicated. “He’s pouncing on something that Biden didn’t say” is probably the least complicated complicated one but it quickly turns into a question about what Biden said or did not say and now we’re arguing about Biden with a small dash of arguing about the news and we’re no longer talking about how Trump called Nazis “very fine people”.Report
I am so glad I’ve already voted and can ignore all this.Report
I thought about voting early but I still wouldn’t be able to ignore all this.Report
I’d swear just a couple months ago the every story and meme I saw from conservative media and Facebook was about how gone Biden was mentally. If they actually believed that, the “garbage” comment shouldn’t mean much to them, right? In which case, the pouncing part is the story.Report
For me, I’d wonder if Biden weren’t deliberately trying to tank Harris.
But I’m big on conspiracy theories.Report
Biden’s been famous for his gaffes for literally decades. I think the most parsimonious explanation is that it was Joe being Joe.Report
Yes, yes you are.Report
Could this be the Dukakis Tank moment? (probably not, he’s been photographed in trucks before.)Report
Yeah, I saw one person explain that the McDonald’s photos and the garbage truck photos make for *TWO* Dukakis moments! Within days of each other!
Which strikes me as incorrect but I’m sure that there were people who thought that Dukakis looked like a guy in a tank rather than like Snoopy in one.Report
I’ve seen some stories quoted to the effect of “he looked like a clown, he looked like he was making fun of us, he’s standing there in six hundred dollars of tailored clothing and wearing an ANSI vest like it means he has any idea what we deal with”, so maybe people are starting to figure out that he’s just a jerk who says mean things about whoever he’s looking at, not some Real American Savior who’s gonna put those so-and-so f-word c-words back in their places, etcetera.Report
Probably a lot more than $600 if the suits came, as most of his do, from Brioni. The tailors probably want to wear bags on their heads. Making them fit right would be an easy fix for them.Report
“Garbage Force One” is trending. It seems to be about 60/40 people crowing about it and celebrating it versus scowling while they say it and decrying it.Report
I think the whole thing is ridiculous and Trump looks small and silly doing it. I suspect I’d say that even if I didn’t dislike him so much. The face-bronzer makeup is being applied with less and less skill these days, have you noticed? And the orange high-viz vest looks silly over his suit, and no real garbage truck is ever that clean, and garbage trucks don’t just drive around airport tarmacs, and to quote Tim Walz, Trump damn near killed himself trying to get in the thing.
The whole “Joe Biden called you garbage!” thing is also to my ears a clear attempt to recapture the magic of the Hillary Clinton Basket of Deplorables moment and drive Trump voters to the polls in a fit of outrage. Again I question how effective that will be — it wasn’t the candidate saying it this time, it was an old guy who is admittedly associated with the candidate, an old guy already driven out of the race for verbal miscues and perceived mental infirmity, and an old guy who we have thirty-five years of book on committing stupid gaffes that might or might not be attributable to his stutter.
I also think that the Basket of Deplorables Moment was not something that stands out as a singular cause of Hillary Clinton losing in 2016. The Comey Report and a general weakness in the Great Lake States by the Clinton campaign, on top of Clinton’s sky-high negatives going into the campaign, all seem much more powerful to me by comparison. (Oh, and she still won the popular vote.)
Harris said the stateswomanlike thing when asked about all this “garbage” business. No one is paying attention to her on this flap, though, which yeah, that’s net bad for her.
Whose mind is going to change because of it? “I wasn’t going to vote at all, but now I’m gonna vote for Trump because Joe Biden called Trump supporters (who weren’t me because I wasn’t going to vote at all) garbage after a different Trump supporter called Peurto Ricans garbage?” (Presumably, such a person would simply omit the whole calling Puerto Ricans garbage part of this line of thought.) I submit for your consideration that such a person was probably going to find their way to the polls and vote for Trump anyway, because to paraphrase our own Andrew Donaldson, such a person views a Trump vote as an opportunity to show their middle finger to the Establishment, and that’s kind of fun.
The result is a distraction from something else I guess. Good Gods in Asgard Above I am sick unto death of this sort of thing.
But as for the power of the garbage motif now? I personally don’t think it’s going to matter a damn bit. We’re less than a week before election day. Alea iacta est.Report
Well, there’s the whole Three Groups of Voters thing.
This is not something that changes the calculus for #1s at all. Not for a second.
This seems to be something that helps fire up the #2s. Like, they’re having fun again and they’re no longer playing defense on the Puerto Rico thing.
#3s? Eh. I could see it anywhere from “eye-rolling and confirming the priors of someone who wasn’t going to vote anyway” to “a gigglesnort on the part of someone on the edge of voting”.
Doesn’t change a whole lot overall but it might move stuff a tiny, tiny bit at the margin in Trump’s direction (and staunches some, not all, but some of the bleeding from the Puerto Rico thing).
But I say that as someone hip deep in Trump Country.Report
“I think the whole thing is ridiculous and Trump looks small and silly doing it.”
In other words, he’s playing himself.Report
Oh god. The next Republican candidate for president will work a shift as a cop and get a good shoot caught on bodycam.Report
The footage will be used as a campaign spot with Inner Circle’s “Bad Boys” as the backing track.Report
Sadly, important programs like these are the “socialism” that the GOP detests. Americans deserve better.
https://www.npr.org/2024/10/30/g-s1-30916/housing-crisis-affordable-homes-deteriorating-shortage-repairReport
The Silver One has written an essay explaining “The early vote doesn’t reliably predict results“.
So an anti-tea leaf essay.Report
He does love to stroke his own … ego.
His modeling is equally interesting:
https://www.natesilver.net/p/nate-silver-2024-president-election-polls-modelReport
To be fair, that has been the tune he’s sung since The One He Got Really Right in 2008, and there’s no reason to not take the basic message (“don’t read much into early voting trends”) to heart.
Absent some black swan event… alea iacta est.Report
The Silver One is paid by Thiel and dislikes Democrats for pushing back on him in 2022 and there are even more garbage right-wing polls now.Report
Totally not garbage people…
A Fox News host who threatened his wife with marital “D-Day” if she did not vote for former President Donald Trump faced swift backlash from viewers who swiftly roasted the controversial conservative pundit.
https://www.rawstory.com/jesse-watters-comment-about-harris/Report
They really haven’t gotten over women getting the vote, much less getting credit cards in their own names or birth control have they?Report
JD Vance’s Joe Rogan Experience is out:
Report
“Democratic enthusiasm is double digits ahead of Republican enthusiasm: https://www.newsweek.com/democrat-voter-enthusiasm-republicans-double-digits-poll-1978203
Polling data just days before the U.S. presidential election has found a voter enthusiasm gap between Republicans and Democrats, with Vice President Kamala Harris more likely to benefit.
Gallup polling released on Thursday showed that while early voting has declined compared to 2020, the rate remains higher than it did in the years before the coronavirus pandemic. More than half of registered voters say they have already voted or plan to vote before November 5, declining from 64 percent in 2020 to 54 percent in 2024.
Gallup conducted the poll between October 14 to 27 and found that 70 percent of voters say they are “more enthusiastic than usual about voting,” marking a significant jump from the 56 percent in March who said the same, but matching the roughly 71 percent in August.
More striking is the divide between the two parties, with 77 percent of Democrats saying they are more enthusiastic compared to 67 percent of Republicans. This marks a drop on both sides compared to Gallup polling from September, which found 80 percent of Democrats were more enthusiastic compared to 75 percent of Republicans.”Report
Will this be as much of a scandal as a wilful misinterpretation of what Biden said?
https://www.cbsnews.com/pittsburgh/news/kamala-harris-chains-pennsylvania-halloween-parade/?fbclid=IwY2xjawGQ4zhleHRuA2FlbQIxMAABHd1GJpZZufdOaZlUSb_34yJdvR5TJay95PKLrwbFh41sD-Dq9_p3v05FnQ_aem_nh0MMRaxfPy6mHeYn-r9CQ
Pennsylvania Halloween parade features float of Harris changed to golf cartReport
The Catholic Church apparently decided it needed an anime mascot for Japan. I’d really love to know what meetings led to this decision.
https://www.tokyoweekender.com/entertainment/anime-and-manga/the-vatican-unveils-its-anime-mascot-luce/Report
the dove sidekick is pretty adorable nglReport
This article on Wikipedia is pretty interesting: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aroostook_Valley_Country_Club.
If you want a microcosmic view of how fearmongering has transformed this country and our neighbor to the north, give it a quick read.Report
Trump calls for Liz Cheney to be executed in an interview with Tucker Carlson, the media has to sanewash it because reasons:
https://www.cnn.com/2024/11/01/politics/donald-trump-liz-cheney-war-hawk-battle/index.htmlReport
In a less degraded political environment, merely being interviewed by Tucker Carlson would be a campaign-ending blunder.
Of course, we’re going to see a lot less outrage over this than we are over Kamala Harris suggesting that Trump might be fascist, just like people took to the fainting couches over Biden supposedly calling Trump supporters “garbage” despite months and months of Trump calling Biden and then Harris supporters “the enemy within” and “vermin”.Report
Also, it’s not like, “It’s fine to gun down our political opposition in the streets,” is anything but a mainstream Republican position at this pointReport
There will be mandatory Tucker Carlson watching if Trump wins. He will be the anchor of the nation. The official dispenser of propaganda and public enlightenment.Report
I can’t believe that he’s calling her a chickenhawk!Report
Seriously? You aren’t even the lest little bit outraged that a Presidential candidate is calling for the execution of a politicians nominally from his own party? \
You really don’t take him seriously do you?Report
Well, I understand how the Gen Z folks out there might not know this but the whole issue of whether the people who start wars and call for more wars should be on the front lines was a BIG DEAL back after Afghanistan and Iraq.
Here’s a 2003 article from The Onion: Bush Bravely Leads 3rd Infantry Into Battle
I can understand how young’uns might be really taken aback by the argument if they’ve never heard it before but, seriously, the oldheads out there are feeling some nostalgia for yet another Cheney being accused of chickenhawkitude.Report
Wow. You totally have no idea what he actually said do you? Your reading comprehension ABSOLUTELY failed you didn’t it?
Facing nine barrels isn’t about combat – its a firing squad reference. He’s talking about putting her on a wall and having her executed by a firing squad.
Your priors are utterly failing you. So is your approach to all this. Sometimes Jaybird there is unequivocal right and wrong in the world. And even people who PREFER to “just ask questions” need to address WRONG.
This is one of those times.
Do better.Report
I listened to his speech and I didn’t think he was serious anymore than Obama was serious about bringing firearms to political fights.
This is an example of Blue’s hysteria and not Trump’s foulness.Report
So if Trump pulls out an electoral college win and governs as he said he would with revenge against his enemies and mass deportations, etc., what are you going to do? The amount of cognitive defenses that people are putting up is staggering.
We have lots of evidence from Trump’s first administration, especially the last two years of it, that Trump is being literal and serious. Elon Musk is threatening to crash the economy and that is the least evil of Trump’s plans. Yet, many people just refuse to take this seriously and go “oh Trump, you silly.”Report
So how is HRC doing in prison? He ran, for a long time, on “Lock her up”. That was a lot more serious than this.
RE: Mass deportations
Pretty sure he’ll try this.Report
This time around he will be less constrained by his staff, his cabinet, the safeguards on the federal bureaucracy, and the Courts.
This doesn’t, I believe, get us to Liz Cheney in front of a firing squad, but it will get us a lot more investigation and prosecution of political enemies.
Between stuff the Trump Administration set up during his first term, the planning done by policy entrepreneurs from the Heritage Foundation and Peter Thiel’s orbit, and the permission structure the Right has built around “lawfare” (i.e., prosecuting Trump for criming) and the “stolen” 2020 election, I think things will be much worse this time.
There’s also been a much stronger focus on vengeance in his rhetoric, and a lot of promises to use military force against enemies within, coupled with characteristic fascist vagueness about what, precisely, constitutes an enemy withinReport
And this time around he will have a 6-3 majority on SCOTUS, which has already resulted in him being held immune from any prosecution.Report
Trump knows to fill his staff with loyalists this time.Report
Has anyone in here actually know what it is like to live in an unfree authoritarian society?
It doesn’t sound like it.
Because this is what it looks like.
Like where newspapers spike stories to avoid offending the powers that be, when corporations pre-obey and avoid “controversial” spokespeople, when books are pulled from shelves and librarians quit rather than face the wrath of the supporters of the regime.
When the supporters of the regime use violence to overthrow free elections that don’t go their way, when the government threatens media outlets that run truthful ads that criticize them.
We just got finished talking about doctors that stood by and watched while a woman died, because of fear of the government, and still, still, people are scoffing that It Can’t Happen Here.Report
If we’re looking for “gov oppression between Team Red and Team Blue” then the big example is Blue repeatedly trying to arrest Trump.
There are strong arguments he deserves it, however to someone who lacks details it looks like Blue is more repressive than Red.
In addition, Blue’s cult of DEI took over colleges (including having all Professors in all disciplines swear allegiance to it and talk about how they’ll be furthering it).
We also have Blue Media claiming Joe was fit as a fiddle, presumably out of fear that pointing out the obvious would cause problems.
A commitment to actual free/liberal society would mean goring a number of Blue’s sacred cows.Report
Against prosecuting Trump for actual crimes, we have Florida threatening to prosecute TV stations for airing ads opposing abortion bans, and the Governor of Texas pardoning a neo-N@zi for gunning down a law-abiding BLM protestor in the street.
Really doesn’t seem balanced at all on that front, no matter what the sufficiently clueless might think.Report
“But what about your Negroes” is a time honored deflection.
Its a historical truth that everything- literally, every single thing- that Stalin did was also done by the United States.
He killed people, we killed people; He drove communities into starvation, we drove communities into starvation; And so on.
Oh of course, they were done on very different scales, and to a different degree, but that makes the defenders uncomfortable so they prefer not to talk about it.Report
‘Team Blue’ is not trying to arrest Trump, _the justice system_ is (in a general sense) ‘trying’ to arrest Trump for the absurd number of crimes he’s done.
No one is running for a political office on the promise of arresting Trump.Report
So just to be clear, you do not take any of his calls to lock up, deport or execute political rivals seriously?
Good to know. Frightening, but good to know.Report
“Any” is a big word. However in his first election he used this language a lot more and dropped it (and told his followers to drop it) the moment he was elected. This time he seems even less serious.Report
He used the “Lock her up!” language much more, but has superseded it with claims that he will use force against the supposed Leftist “vermin” and “enemy within”, which is not a shift I find entirely reassuring.Report
This is from CBS:
It seems fairly obvious to me that this is a callback.
But I remember the early oughts.Report
So? Because he adds a callback he can get away with calling for the execution of a political rival?
Wow.
Just.
Wow.Report
Where does Kathy Griffin go to get her apology?Report
Two things can be true at once. Liz Cheney is generally loathsome and she is doing the right thing this time.Report
My beef here is definitely not with her.Report
He’s not calling for her execution, any more than happened when Dumbya was prez.Report
What did Dumbya have against Liz Cheney?Report
Nothing! They were peas in a pod.
I’m kind of surprised that he hasn’t endorsed Harris, to be honest.Report
I’m not trying to be charitable to Trump but it reads to me like he’s calling her a chicken hawk. Which, I mean, is factually true.Report
I think he started there and ended up at firing squad, with customary word Trumpist word salad in the middle.
This could be intentional ambiguity (like he does with the “enemy within”) or, more likely, it’s because his brainworms have brainworms.Report
One thing that drives me kind of crazy is how tough it can be to find him quoted at length.
Soundbytes make him sound way more coherent than he actually is.Report
What I have to keep reminding people is that it isn’t just Trump, as if he is an isolated oddity.
Lets look at Ron DeSantis, and the entire Republican establishment including the conservative commenters here at OT.
DeSantis threatened to prosecute the owners of TV stations that broadcast advertisements he didn’t like.
This was obviously unconstitutional and a clear threat to jail his opponents, no different than some 3rd World dictator.
Who objected? Who stood up and spoke out against this?
Not one single Republican. Not one, not anywhere. None of the commenters here spoke out against it, and meekly remained silent.
Imagine for a moment if the court hadn’t intervened, and the threat was carried out, and his political opponents actually were arrested and thrown in jail.
Why should we believe that any Republicans, and I’m talking about the “reasonable” “sensible” ones, why should we think they would ever, ever, stand up and speak out against any sort of injustice, if they can’t even clear this, the lowest of bars?
If you can’t even speak out when there is no real threat to you, why should we believe that you will be any braver when there actually is a threat?Report
Three words: Daniel Perry pardon.
Handed down by Greg Abbot, who is notably not Donald Trump.Report
The Republican body count grows:
A Pregnant Teenager Died After Trying to Get Care in Three Visits to Texas Emergency Rooms
https://www.propublica.org/article/nevaeh-crain-death-texas-abortion-ban-emtala
Keep in mind that Donald Trump didn’t do this; This was the direct result of “reasonable” and “Sensible” Republican politicians, with the full and enthusiastic support of the voting base who greet this news with a collective shrug of depraved indifference.Report
Fun fact, Texas has no depraved indifference statute, but it does have a law against moral turpitude, defined as:
One could argue that following this new law banning abortion care in Texas now violates this older statutory precedent.Report
Netanyahu seems in danger again because of cover ups.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/netanyahu-media-organizations-request-removal-of-gag-order-on-pmo-security-affair/Report
Look just because the worst national security failure in Israeli history happened on his watch doesn’t mean he’s not also a gigantic crook.Report
Happened on his watch AND was massively exacerbated by his policy choices during that time AND was executed by a Palestinian group his political party and ideology expressly promoted, supported and advanced in order to diminish a different Palestinian group that has, in the past decades, been largely peaceful and cooperative (undemocratic, scholeric and corrupt, mind, but also cooperative and peaceful).Report
depressed +1Report
At least after they got hit with the clue stick enough.Report
Nate Silver has a post on herding.
I knew that something like this was happening but I never knew it had a name.Report
It’s pretty sad that people’s inability to understand poll results leads directly to polls purposely being made useless.Report
Here’s the line that should make you take a little bit more of the covers tonight:
“The irony, as I wrote in 2014, is that although herding may make individual polls more accurate, they actually make polling averages less accurate.”Report
“herding may make individual polls more accurate”
I see what he’s trying to say here but I don’t think it’s a fair statement if the polls are being manipulated — the whole point of doing polls is that we don’t actually know what the right answer is, and a manipulated poll is definitionally not a measurement and so doesn’t really have any amount of “accuracy” as a characteristic.
It’s like if I have a stopped clock, and based on the last time I looked at my watch I figure it’s about 10:30, so I put the hands to say that, and then I say “my clock is accurate” — in fact my clock is not providing any new information at all, so “accuracy” doesn’t enter into it.Report
My poll doesn’t match everyone else’s, ergo there is a good chance that I’m wrong and everyone else is right. Of course that approach fails wildly if everyone is doing the same thing but hopefully at least a few are doing their job.Report
Also Silver kind of gets at this, but if you have absolutely no idea what is going to happen, the safest guess is a 50/50 split.Report
Oh yeah, if the baseline polls are cooked…so are we.Report
Welp there is a poll with Harris at +3 in Iowa. The last time a Democratic candidate won Iowa was 2008. Though they did elect 3 Democrats to Congress in the 2018 Midterms. https://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/politics/iowa-poll/2024/11/02/iowa-poll-kamala-harris-leads-donald-trump-2024-presidential-race/75354033007/
Other polling shows Harris with a solid to overwhelming majority of Puerto Rican voters in Florida and rebounding with Latino voters nationwide.
If all this is true and stays true on Tuesday….Report
Also Democrats knocked on 600,000 doors today in PennsylvaniaReport
This is unlikely to happen but if every state were to shift as much as Iowa did under Selzer’s poll, Harris would crush Trump in the EC with 412 EC votes to 126: https://x.com/AriDrennen/status/1852851096588538062?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1852851096588538062%7Ctwgr%5Ed82136f310c53f2f41e43fc9aa42d43d89978b84%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fdisqus.com%2Fembed%2Fcomments%2F%3Fbase%3Ddefaultf%3Dlawyersgunsmoneyblog-comt_i%3D14583820https3A2F2Fwww.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com2F3Fp3D145838t_u%3Dhttps3A2F2Fwww.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com2F20242F112Fis-trump-blowing-itt_e%3DIs20Trump20blowing20it3Ft_d%3DIs20Trump20blowing20it3F20-20Lawyers2C20Guns202620Moneyt_t%3DIs20Trump20blowing20it3Fs_o%3Ddescversion%3Df7a73aced2afb4b2a80d8f8c751c458bReport
If you would like some cognitive dissonance, I have some for you:
Report
Might be similar to what I’m seeing from Palestinian activists. Team Blue isn’t making things better so might as well try the other side.
I guess I respect that thinking although I think the Palestinian activists’ expectations and description of what is going on are somewhat faulty.Report
I gotta say I find any Palestinian-American support for DJT kind of breathtaking. Has he said anything to indicate he’s on the side of the Palestinian cause? His actions as president sure don’t indicate that.Report
Biden has called for restraint, Trump has not. Trump has said he thinks Israel hasn’t gone far enough.Report
There are only 250,000 Palestinian-Americans. Most of the people calling for Trump because of Biden’s policy on the Israel-Hamas War are other Muslims or Heighten the Contradiction Leftists that would find another reason to not vote Democratic.Report
Trump isn’t winning Minnesota and Dustin Grage is a right wing hack for Townhall Media. And I googled and couldn’t find anyone else talking about this. How does Grage conclude these men are leaders of the Minneapolis Somali community?
On the other hand, Selzer is considered a gold-standard pollster and the reigning dean of polling Iowa. Her poll reveal thusly:
“The poll shows that women — particularly those who are older or who are politically independent — are driving the late shift toward Harris.
“Age and gender are the two most dynamic factors that are explaining these numbers,” Selzer said.”
I will give this concern troll an F.Report
Imagine, just for a moment, Koz calling the Selzer poll “concern trolling” on your part.
Like, can you imagine, just for a second, how dumb that would strike you?Report
(And we were just talking about “herding” the other day! The Selzer poll is an example of something that we should *EXPECT* to see!!! I’m *GLAD* to see it!)Report
There is a video of some members of the Minneapolis Somali community endorsing Trump because of the the economy and inflation. Fine. Communities are generally not monolithic even when overwhelming numbers vote in a particular way. There have always been Jewish Republicans even as most Jews vote overwhelmingly Democratic. Some of them have even been elected to office (Josh Mandel, Arlen Specter). Some are embarrassing trolls (Laura Loomer, Ben Shapiro, Jacob Wohl). Some are dangerous (Stephen Miller, Libs of TikTok Lady).
But I see no evidence that these men are leaders in their community and two seconds of googling revealed that Dustin Grange is a right-wing partisan warrior professionally.
So pardon my skepticism about the strength of this videos and its purpose.
On the other hand, Ann Selzer has a Ph.D from the University of Iowa and has been polling since 1996. She was closer than anyone in predicting 2016 and 2020 outcomes in Iowa as well as the elections between after. The one election she got wrong was she predicted Fred Hubbel would win the IA governor’s race in 2018.
Do you see why I think there is a difference in credibility and a difference in what I think the two are doing?
Do you see why I question your posting of the MN video?
Is Harris going to win Iowa? Not necessarily and I would state it is still more likely than not that Trump carries the State. Emerson had Trump up by 8-9 and they are also respected but Selzer’s result is not to be dismissed out of hand.
The most recent polls have Harris up between 5-10 in MN.Report
There is a distinct souring on police reform in the Bay Area. Both candidates to replace Barbara Lee, two non-white women, are running variants of a law and order campaign. Latifah Simon ads feature her having “worked” with Kamala Harris to fight crime and talks about gun control. Jennifer Tran has an ad about visible disorder on BART narrated by an African-American father.Report
Most people’s tolerance for disorder isn’t very high.Report
Kamala Harris has secured the coveted Richard Spencer endorsement. I’m sure that the media will cover this with the same zeal with which they covered his support for Donald Trump in 2016.Report
Look all I’m saying is don’t let Trump near this Open Mic, his technique is terrible.Report
Hey yo!!!!Report
Didn’t even tickle the taint or nothin’.
I really didn’t think anything could surprise me anymore but seeing a former President and current Presidential candidate mime oral sex onstage as a dogwhistle reference to the many off-color “jokes” on the right (such as those he himself has retweeted in the past) asserting that his opponent achieved her position via her skills in that department – well Saul, I don’t mind telling you, it seemed just a bit unprofessional to meReport
Its enlightening to see Trumpists laughing and sharing sexual content that they themselves are demanding be removed from libraries as obscene.Report
And if any major news org calls him on it, he gets to flip it around on them. “I was talking about the mic stand! Get your minds out of the gutter, you perverts!” His base understands the “joke” he’s making and his “microphone problems” routine gives him the plausible deniability he needs so that others are merely confused – I’ve seen baffled online comments asking, “why did he do this?!” and people reasonably responding, “It’s probably his dementia making him act inappropriately in public”.
Don’t get me wrong he’s absolutely in severe mental decline, but in this case he knew exactly what he was doing.
1. There were no mic issues, that’s just the cover routine to get him to his “joke”.
2. But that routine still of course implies that he’s a Big Man who needs a Big Mic Stand; and the Little People who failed to recognize and provide him one should have physical violence visited upon them (luckily for them, they are just as imaginary as the rest of this story, which as I said is all just a frame to get to his “joke”)
3. And the crowd goes wild, and he gets talked about on the news-dead weekend just before the big day; including by me here; I’ve indirectly fed the troll by paying attention to this childish, schoolyard-bully B.S.Report
The crowd at the rally were apparently perplexed and bored.Report
While its interesting to look at the madman, its more important to look at the people who support the madman and understand them and what they want.
At first the punditry struggled to tell us that Trumpists were simply mistaken, that they didn’t realize who he was or that it was some sort of protest.
But after a decade, it is clear that they know exactly who he is and they understand that he is mad, but they hope that the madman will inflict suffering and cruelty upon the people they hate.
Its that simple, really. Pundits often try to make politics esoteric and complex, when often it is brutally simple.Report
I think it is fairly obvious that Trump is going more and more into cognitive decline.
I also think that the Nuremberg Rally at MSG was one of the great unenforced errors/self-owns in American political history. No one was able to white-wash it and a lot of people saw Trump and his GOP for what they are and I think if Harris wins, the MSG rally will be seen as one of the watershed moments.Report
With any luck, but he’s crossed *so many* lines in the sand before, again and again – lines of legality, lines of tradition, lines of decency, lines of “but that’s political suicide”, and nothing has stuck yet. But I hope with all my heart that you’re right.Report
I left out “lines of sanity”. I regret the omission.Report
Let’s compare and contrast a righr-wing pollster with a normal pollster: https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/
AtlasIntel (right-wing pollster) has Trump up by 6 in Nevada. The Times/Sienna has her up by 3.
AtlasIntel has Trump up by 3 in North Carolina. The Times has her up by 3.
In PA, AtlasIntel has Trump up by 2 and the Times has it even. Michigan is even per the Times but Harris is up in Wisconsin.Report
A very interesting look at the Trump Campaign’s descent into more chaos: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2024/11/trump-2024-campaign-lewandowski-conway/680456/Report
Here’s an example of Trumpism at the theoretical level:
An article describing a “pro-natalist” familiy which is seeking to create a world of elite superbreeders, where “low productivity” people are second class citizens:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/nov/03/simone-collins-pronatalist-pennsylvania-candidate
The Collinses often describe their pronatalist agenda in humanitarian terms – part of a wider bid to save the developed world from impending social and economic catastrophe. Their website outlines their desire to work with “any person or organization that shares our goal to preserve as much of civilization and as many cultures as possible”.
But in the recordings made by Hope Not Hate, Malcolm describes their pronatalist agenda as being principally designed to transform the current socioeconomic elite into a future biological elite.
“It’s easy to forget how small the population of people in the world who actually impacts anything or matters is,” he said. “When we do our campaigns we work really aggressively on how do we spread ideas within that narrow network, because also they are the people we want having kids and we want in the future.”
She is most excited about billionaire Elon Musk’s high-profile involvement in the Trump campaign, and the Republican nominee’s promise that Musk would lead a cost cutting and “efficiency” drive in government spending. Musk has admitted it would lead to “temporary hardship” for Americans.
Musk is reportedly a father of “at least” 11 children, according to a recent New York Times report that detailed the Tesla co-founder’s effort to fill a compound full of his own children and their mothers. Although he has been open about his pronatalist views, the New York Times reported that Musk likes to keep details about his own growing family a secret.
It is the emergence of Silicon Valley as key partners in “the new right” that has the couple most excited about Republicans today. The Skype co-founder and Estonian billionaire Jaan Tallinn (a father of five) donated just under half a million dollars to the Collinses’ pronatalist foundation in 2022.
What all this talk about creating an elite is about of course, is the punishment and cruelty to be inflicted upon the non-elite.
As has been true throughout all of human history, part of the joy of being elite is the knowledge that the nonelites are suffering according to their station. That those without a star on their belly are burning with envy at those who do.Report
Review of the Israeli Conflict from Dan Schueftan.
He’s an Israeli academic and chairman of the National Security Studies Center at the University of Haifa.
Schueftan is credited with having advanced the concept of “unilateral disengagement”, or “unilateral separation”.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VH3-h44VRrQReport
I am supposed to believe that something about a pet squirrel called Peanut is supposed to change the election.Report
It’s not like the death of a mammal changed the one in 2016.
The writers have also decided that the death of a squirrel was too subtle.
Report
Dicks out for Harambe.Report
Netanyahu under fire.
“If Netanyahu didn’t know that his close aides were stealing documents, planting spies within the IDF, forging documents, exposing intelligence sources, and passing classified documents to the foreign press to stop the hostage deal—what does he know?” [Opposition leader Yair] Lapid said on X.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/israel-leak-scandal-netanyahu-aide-arrested-gaza-hostage-talks-rcna178617Report