Happy Birthday, Joe DiMaggio!
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.
Huh, a sitting ice cream cone licking democrat president gives the A-OK to send US ICBMs into mainland Russia.
The OT response: crickets
this is another reason this place can’t be taken seriously
it’s not the lies, it’s the multitude of things parsed into the Anti-Interesting categoryReport
Don’t let the door………………..Report
Long delayed, in my opinion.Report
I believe we discussed it in one of the comment sections last week.Report
Have we given Ukraine ICBMs, or does he mean the short-range tactical ballistic missiles Ukraine has already fired into Russia (ATACMS)? The distinction is massive, obviously.Report
Yeah he’s clearly, incorrectly, conflating ATACMS with ICBM’s.Report
Whew, worried I’d miss some earth-shatteringly (maybe literally) important news.Report
What North said. I guess I was so incredulous at the suggestion that something happened without us talking about it that I failed to make note of the (major) distinction.Report
Dude, I’m in Iceland.
And Nothing Ever Happens.Report
Jack Smith is throwing in the towel.
https://www.msnbc.com/deadline-white-house/deadline-legal-blog/jack-smith-trump-federal-election-interference-case-dismiss-rcna181669
I always thought the Stormy Daniels payoff being interpreted as election interference was a bit of a stretch. What we did get out of this case was the Supreme Court declaring the president above the law, so I guess in a perverse sort of way DJT ought to be very happy it was even brought.Report
Shoot, it was the classified docs case. I guess foreign entities can start lining up at the window. I wonder if he’ll be getting real intel briefings every day.Report
Well hell, it’s both.
Years ago I saw an allusion to a paper about how the Supreme Court could bring about one man rule through a series of seemingly innocuous rulings. It would probably be very interesting reading if I could ever find it.Report
The Shen Yun dance troop, associated with Falun Gong, is in trouble over disturbing child labor practices:
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/17/nyregion/shen-yun-child-labor-regulator.htmlReport
Big Ag begs Trump to spare their workers from deportation.
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-farm-groups-want-trump-spare-their-workers-deportation-2024-11-25/Report
I always interpreted “The South will Rise Again!” differently as a kid but now I understand the prophecy more fully.Report
“How could we get this work done if we didn’t have all these slaves?“Report
The problem is, no matter who does the work, the farm owners want to pay wages that are less than an American would take for doing that kind of work. To someone from south of the border they’re a king’s ransom.Report
” the farm owners want to pay wages that are less than an American would take for doing that kind of work. ”
Maybe the Americans have the right idea, considering that part of the “wages” are things like “sun-protection PPE, regular water breaks (and water), bathroom facilities, work aids like collection tools and wheeled carry tubs”, all of which are legally (and morally) required to be provided by the employer.Report
and many employers don’t because they know they won’t be policed about it.
That aside, farmers have tried to lure Americans back to the fields with high wages, profit sharing, and even 401Ks. No one applied.
Expect $15 lettuce shortly.Report
“the elected politicians threatening to take away your civil rights are a distraction from the real threat to society: the college students who annoy me on the computer” — @lauren.rotatingsandwiches.comReport
One of the ways to wrestle with what happened with the election is to play a quick game of Lifeboat.
Throw this 1% of the coalition overboard to make room for that 3% over there.
Play your cards right and get 4 of the 7 swing states.
Play them well and get 5 of them.
Play them perfectly and get all 7.
Which 1% are you willing to toss overboard?
Note: The answer of “NONE OF THEM!” will get you Trump.
Which 1% are you willing to abandon?
From where I sit, you could pick a far worse 1% than “annoying college students”.Report
Someone pointed out that one of the biggest problems of the Activist Left is that its concept of politics is based on the Russian Revolution, where the goal is to get a lot of people very excited and in the same place at the same time, and to effect change you point them at the current Obstacle and say “kill”. This is why you get Omnicause thinking, “antiracism is antireligion is antitransphobia is equal-pay-for-women is reproductive-rights is economic-justice is environmental protection is antiimperialism is Equality For Gaza is pro-vegan”.
And their problem is that you can’t jettison any particular part of that without going against your fundamental concept of political organization. It’s like telling Southern Baptists not to open with a prayer. If that’s what it takes to win then they’d rather lose, because “winning” by giving up everything you are is meaningless.Report
Reagan talked about the Omnicause back in the 80’s: “The person who agrees with you 80 percent of the time is a friend and an ally – not a 20 percent traitor.”
But the Omnicause Uber Alles.
Hell, driving around, my bud and I argue about the minutiae of the election (he’s a Redditor, I’m a Twitterer) and there are a *LOT* of weird dynamics about this last one that mirror Clinton’s campaign in 2016.
Caesar’s got a pretty good thread breaking down the appearance of Harris campaign staff on Pod Save America.
Harris was a perfect candidate who ran a perfect campaign *EXCEPT* the campaign was too short and, hey, if you don’t have enough runway, you shouldn’t be surprised if you don’t get off the ground (also Trump cheated).
They apparently started to believe their own B.S. and now they don’t know how to pivot away from it. They don’t even want to have the whole “how do we pivot away from it?” conversation because the opening response is always going to be some variant of “so who do you think we should throw out of the lifeboat, you lifeboat murderer?!?” and they can’t wrestle with the “how dare you?” part of that quite yet.
For my part, I think that the whole “three groups of voters” thing has soil worth tilling in it…
1. How would you do a better job of getting your own team excited to vote for you?
2. How would you do a better job of getting Trump’s team depressed away from showing up on election day?
3. How would you swing votes away from Trump and to you?
Of those, I think that #2 is the one that strikes me as having the least bang for the buck out of the three and is, ironically, the one that Harris leaned into the most: “Look guys! We’ve got the entire Cheney clan on our side! YOU ARE ON THE WRONG SIDE OF HISTORY!” and all of the people who voted Republican because they agreed with what the Cheneys were doing were demoralized… leaving only the ones who couldn’t give a flying fig about the Cheneys.
Well… what could Harris have done do inspire her own side a little more?
What could she have done to get a few more of the swings?
If you believe that the Harris campaign was pretty much a perfect campaign and you believe that Harris was pretty much a perfect candidate, you’re stuck with stuff like “maybe the media shouldn’t have been complicit with Trump” or “maybe the media shouldn’t have suggested that Harris go on Joe Rogan… there wasn’t enough time! Harris didn’t have enough runway!”
And so there needs be no introspection. No changes in course. Harris just needed more time. It’s Biden’s fault. It’s Trump’s fault. It’s the media’s fault.
It sure as hell isn’t the fault of *ANYBODY* on Harris’s team.Report
Of course her campaign people are going to defend themselves — we’ll see as the jockeying for 2028 begins how many of them get hired. The base will be coping however they can, but hopefully the people whose jobs depend on winning elections will be taking a more objective look at the outcomes.Report
You can do imaginary math all day, especially if you compare sure losses to conjectural gains.Report
So… Trump?
Your terms are acceptable.Report
“Trump” as the conclusion of imaginary math is, well, imaginary.Report
No, he’s the null hypothesis.Report
Says who?Report
Says the guy who knows that Trump won?
Wait, is it your position that this election was unwinnable under any circumstances?Report
My position is that made-up numbers (1% and 3%) of unspecified potential constituencies to be dumped or courted are made-up numbers of, basically, undefined pools of voters and don’t mean squat. That doesn’t make Trump the “null set.” Indeed, I’m pretty sure that’s not what a “null set” is.
As for the current election, world-wide trends suggest that Harris was always likely to lose, though it wasn’t inevitable, and ultimately she did. Though not as badly as initial numbers suggested. Probably for reasons more consequential than not going on Joe Rogan’s podcast when and where he wanted it done.Report
I didn’t say “null set”.
Why are you using quotation marks?
I don’t think that going on Rogan’s show would have won it but not going on it (as well as why) provides a good opening paragraph for the postmortem.Report
You’re right. Substitute “null hypothesis” and see if it makes a difference. But for that you’d need an actual hypothesis.Report
The hypothesis is that catering to a particular group to get a small percentage of the vote over here can turn off a larger percentage of the vote over there and either drive them away or cause them to stay home.
By changing focus, it’d be possible to cater to the larger percentage at the cost of the smaller one.
That’s the hypothesis.
I imagine a counterargument would go something like this:
“But that’s untestable!”
“Technically, it’s testable, but only in production.”
“Therefore it is not worth discussing at all!”
“I disagree.”Report
So let’s try to flesh this out, as if there were a real hypothesis on the table. (No hypothesis can be tested if it lacks content.) Democrats throw, say, the queers under the bus. (Let’s leave aside what this would actually involve.) This will lose them a bunch of votes, say half a million. Will three times that number then either switch from Trump or vote for Harris rather than stay home? Who might these people be, and where would they come from? And why would this happen? Unless you have answers to these questions based on some kind of evidence or some other theory, then all you’re saying is that three is bigger than one. Imaginary math.Report
For purposes of this hypo I think you’re assuming that the activist groups with the ear of Democratic leaders actually do a good job of representing the interests and perspectives of gay Americans. And hey, maybe they do. But at minimum I’d say that’s a premise that needs to be very thoroughly interrogated, lest the same kind of bleeding start there that has with hispanics (a term that may well be becoming meaningless) and black men.Report
Well, the first thing I’d ask is “do swing voters exist?”
Like, there are two definitions of “swing voter” that I’m using here:
1. Swings from “Not Voting At All” to “Showing Up To Vote” (or vice-versa)
2. Swings from “Voting for Team Good” to “Voting for Team Evil” (or vice-versa)
Now, I’m going to take it for granted that Swing Voters actually exist. Let me know if this is not a premise that you share.
Now, you use the example where, and let me copy and paste what you said here: “Democrats throw, say, the queers under the bus.”
I’d immediately run to something like “that’s not the example that I would necessarily run to”.
For example, let me copy and paste something I already said:
From where I sit, you could pick a far worse 1% than “annoying college students”.
I think that refusing to cater to annoying college students would, for example, get Harris to show up on Joe Rogan.
We might have been able to avoid the entire “LatinX” thing. (Can you believe that LatinX people hate the term? What ingrates! We let them jump the border and everything!)
I also think that the Democratic Party in general would be less annoying to “Men Without College”.
And, yeah, I also think that we might have avoided a situation where the ACLU would not have had a questionnaire about whether Harris would support gender reassignment surgery for imprisoned convicts.
“But refusing to come out and say that you support gender reassignment surgery for imprisoned convicts is throwing the queers under the bus!!!”, you may be tempted to argue.
I submit: Only a few of them. Maybe, oh, 1%.Report
So you’re making up numbers and not identifying any definable and significant groups of voters who might actually swing or explaining why they would. Imaginary math. Thanks for confirming.Report
This seems to be like the whole “define ‘woke’! You can’t! You can’t!” thing that was popular around 2018.
If you have no idea who I’m talking about, if you have no idea how “annoying college students” relates to the introduction of the term “LatinX”, and if you don’t know the relationship of “annoying college students” to “men without college”, that’s fine.
It kinda explains how Trump won, honestly.Report
Only if the numbers work.Report
Have you seen the breakdown of the demographics that swung to Harris more in 2024 than in 2020 (as well as the breakdown of the demographics of the swings to Trump)?
Here’s a chart:
To break this down a little:
White 45+
White College Men
White Urban
Post Graduate Study
All swung toward Harris.
Married Men and 65+ held steady.
Every other group swung to Trump.
I think that it shouldn’t be impossible to look at that chart and make guesses at how we could trim some of that red swing down at the cost of the blue swing.
But I am someone who assumes that swing voters exist.Report
I’m aware of those numbers. And swing voters exist. The question is whether throwing some constituency under the bus would pay off. And you’re handwaving about Joe Rogan and LatinX. (I checked out the Dem platform. Nothing about LatinX, didn’t even use it. Used “latino.” And I don’t recall Harris using it, let alone taking a position on it.) So what do you do, specifically, to whom, and what reason is there to think it would pay off big, not the non-zero dodge, but big.Report
This took less than 3 seconds to find:
Now the whole “I checked the platform, she didn’t run on this!” thing is interesting.
Would you say that it’s misinformation to point out that Harris supports (oh, pick something that she said in 2019 or 2020)?
Because if she said something loudly in 2019 and then just stopped talking about it (rather than loudly and harshly repudiating it), I don’t think it’s particularly unfair to say “Yeah, she still thinks that”.
I mean, imagine someone arguing that Trump’s opinion of the Central Park 5 doesn’t matter in the current year. Imagine it.Report
So you’re still obsessing about a silly and largely moot issue about LatinX. What was she supposed to do about it in 2024, and would it have mattered? With numbers, or a reasonable estimate.Report
So you’re still obsessing about a silly and largely moot issue about LatinX.
It’s one of the things that I think actively did harm with the democrats to a group that swung towards Trump, yes.
“Why do you care about something that alienated a group that swung towards Trump?”, you may be tempted to ask.
“That’s a pretty stupid question in the middle of a discussion of what could have been done differently to have prevented swing voters from swinging”, I might answer.
What was she supposed to do about it in 2024, and would it have mattered?
She should have said something to the effect of “we need to stop this silly Oberlin-esque language policing and cancelling each other over silly virtue signalling. Like the ‘LatinX’ thing from a few years back. Now, I’m not going to lie, I did it too. But no matter how good the intentions were behind it, it was offensive to a lot of people *INCLUDING* the Latino community. We need to do a better job, people. It’s about reaching out, not issuing language fatwas every other week in such a way that only someone with a Master’s Degree in Gender Studies can keep up. We need to figure out a way to talk to *ALL* Americans. Not just the post-grads.”
That’s something she could have done.
With a reasonable estimate? Eh, I imagine that that might have pacified 2-3% of that non-white non-college bar from 21% to 19% (or ever 18%).
As for some of the other annoying college students, here’s James Carville:
“WHAT DOES JAMES CARVILLE KNOW ABOUT WINNING ELECTIONS?”, you may be tempted to ask.Report
“The question is whether throwing some constituency under the bus would pay off.”
It worked for Clinton in 1992…Report
So it seems. What about now?Report
The situation now is the same as it was before the election. There’s a body of work and an understanding by the electorate of what the Democratic party stands for.
Going silent on a few topics doesn’t change perceptions nor signal a new direction.
Silence in this situation doesn’t signal change; and that’s fine if there no intention to change. But I’d not act surprised if silence continues to imply consent for folks who wonder if the silence should actually imply change.Report
Trump announces his intention to spark a recession by imposing 25 percent across the board tariffs on our biggest trading partnersReport
The reason it all went to Mexico is tax cheating, and for automobiles more esoteric games involving fuel-economy standards. These cars should always have cost as much as Trump’s tariffs will make them cost.
I mean, you’re not wrong to say “these tariffs will make all the stuff more expensive” but most of the people complaining about this were just talking about how rotten it is that these big companies don’t pay any taxes on anything ever.Report
More corporate taxes, higher priced goods. There is no cost business will incur that won’t be passed on to consumers.Report
“There is no cost business will incur that won’t be passed on to consumers.”
I never suggested anything different, sir.Report
Taxes on profits actually aren’t passed on to consumers in the way tariffs are. When a tariff is levied on your products, it doesn’t make your profit-maximizing price go down by anywhere near as much as the tariff, so you charge more or less the same price, maybe a bit less to account for reduced demand, but pretty much the whole tariff is just passed on to the consumers.
Having a corporate income tax levied on your profits doesn’t really change your pricing strategy. The pre-tax profit-maximizing price is still the same as your after-tax profit-maximizing price. What does change is your incentive to invest in the jurisdiction where the tax is levied. The investments you’ve already made there are largely sunk costs, but you’re going to be looking elsewhere for a lot of your future investments.
Less investment means less growth and lower real wages. This is why the corporate income tax is an incredibly stupid and myopic way to raise revenue. The Biden administration negotiated a 15% minimum corporate income tax, and we should absolutely be taking full advantage of it by lowering our corporate income tax rate to 15% and raising other taxes and/or cutting spending to make up the difference.Report
That is the funniest and most unhinged from reality thing I think I have ever seen you write. Raise taxes? Really? The GOP certainly won’t do that, and Democrats are now out of power.
And as to cutting spending – my dude the cuts that would be necessary to balance the federal budget would destroy the economy. They are of such magnitude that you’d either have to shut down every federal executive agency – which granted Trump seems to want to do – or you’d have to deeply injure earned benefits – which aren’t actually the driver for deficit spending and the ballooning of the national debt since they are not from the same revenue stream.
But keep dreaming i guess. Better yet, start fiddling . . . .Report
The age of in your face oligarchs
https://www.vox.com/money/387348/elon-musk-trump-president-billionaire-oligarchyReport
hm, yes, but I’m old enough to remember this.Report
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/nov/26/trump-transition-team-fbi-security-clearances-background-checks
How to plan a coup in the openReport
We need an administration that *RESPECTS* the intelligence community!
It’s even called “intelligence”!
No wonder Trump doesn’t like it, am I right?Report
You really don’t see any national threats in any of this do you?Report
Given the number of conspiracy theories that have been proven true, I’m curious as to whether there are national threats that might end if something like this happens.Report
Trump’s plans to go after birth right citizenship:
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2024/11/trump-end-birthright-citizenship-how-to-project-2025-mass-deportation/Report
This deserves its own post but I don’t have my real keyboard or anything approaching a real desk (or a real three or four hours to devote to writing it) so I’ll just put down some quick thoughts:
Huffpost is reporting that Harris internals *NEVER* had her ahead.
This makes the whole “not going on Rogan” downright stupid. If you are behind, then you need to pull a Crazy Ivan. Going on Rogan was the best thing she could have done.
UNLESS
Harris is a lightweight empty suit who would have been exposed as being paper-thin by a three hour interview.
Not going on Rogan, in that case, wasn’t a bad move. It was the smart move. She’d have lost by even more had she gone on Rogan… if that was true, of course.
The rumors that Pelosi wanted an open primary become a little more credible. The downsides of having an open primary become a little less risky when weighed against what the insiders knew the actual risks actually were.
WHAT THE HELL WAS UP WITH THAT IOWA POLL
One-point-five billion from the donors? Hrm. Maybe *THAT* was what was up with the Iowa poll. One last little injection of hope before the rug-pull. (I’d check that lady’s financials. She torched her reputation with that last one. I wouldn’t mind setting my reputation on fire for 2.3 million bucks. I could retire with enough to take the occasional trip. How is Selzer doing?)
Was this a Harris problem or is it a Democrats problem?
Or is it not a problem at all and concern trolls should shut up and start working on 2026, the most important election of our lifetimes?Report
He doesn’t like vaccines but that doesn’t mean he is against all injections. RFK Jr states heroin helped him get ahead in school: https://www.newsweek.com/fact-check-rfk-jr-says-heroin-helped-him-reach-top-his-class-1991956Report
From “just say no” to “straight into the veins” within living memory.Report
COVID lockdown critic Jay Bhattacharya going to be head of NIH:
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2024/11/26/trump-picks-jay-bhattacharya-covid-lockdown-critic-as-nih-director/76608013007/Report
I’ve been playing with Claude AI.
I asked him if he could do a Big Five personality analysis of me based on my senior thesis. He said he’d be willing to try.
He then gave me additional insights that were flattering off the charts so I asked him:
“Now try again without flattering me so goddamn much” but I had run out of tokens for the day.
Anyway… if you want to have fifteen minutes of fun, give an essay to Claude and ask him to give you a Big Five analysis.Report
Jim Abrahams, the Abrahams in “Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker” behind Airplane!, Hot Shots!, Top Secret!, and Kentucky Fried Movie, has passed.
I laughed until I cried.
Report
Pete Hegsmith’s mom has some choice words to say about him:
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/29/us/politics/pete-hegseth-mother-email.html?unlocked_article_code=1.d04.hkIK.QnXcVaptGbvi&smid=url-shareReport
Which she then walked back as a good older white woman would …Report
The San Francisco Standard has a great article talking about deals available at the 16th Street BART Plaza:
Report
Comments:
* Some respondents on Twitter are wondering why anyone would possibly take these deals when Amazon is so much cheaper. This is a really good example of a “let them eat cake” moment, someone who can’t imagine why a person without a fixed address to receive shipments or a secure place to store things wouldn’t want to get a four-liter bottle of detergent.
* It’s amusing, though, that the vendors are complaining about the buyers going to big-box providers anyway, suggesting that their main business was not actually street-dealing for loosies, but rather the people who do have places to live in and keep things but wanted to feel like they were getting a special deal.
* Picking up from that last, I read a book of written-up interviews with an at-the-time incarcerated fence operator, and he suggested that the way he made money on stolen stuff was less on the markup and more on the marketing. The markup for “hot” items was usually the same dollar figure as on legit stuff; it was just less expensive and thus more attractive to buyers. (He did say that one negotiating tactic was to hint that legit stuff was actually stolen, making customers less likely to haggle because they already thought they were getting a better deal.)Report