Open Mic for the week of 1/6/2025
Monday Night Raw is on Netflix tonight! If you tune into USA as usual, you’ll be watching London has Fallen, a fun and dumb little 2016 movie where Gerard Butler saves the G7.
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.
Trump’s vote certification went through without a hitch, not even a symbolic protest like in 2016, 2004, or 2000.
Prepare your “straightforward from here” takes.Report
If Kamala had only had the courage… oh, never mind, we changed the 1887 ECA with the ECRA in 2022. Good for us anyway.Report
Jeffries gave a stirring speech in which he explained that Democrats were not election deniers.
Which, effectively, cuts the resistance off at the knees.
It’s going to be an interesting Semiquincentennial.Report
Trudeau to go. Official now.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/trudeau-news-conference-1.7423680Report
Ooops, missed it on the main thread.Report
So it turns out all the protect the kids from being turned transgender was indeed a moral panic. Well done us:
https://www.npr.org/sections/shots-health-news/2025/01/06/nx-s1-5247724/transgender-teens-gender-affirming-care-hormones-jamaReport
From your own link, about 3% of youth self identify as trans. “Youth” implies 43 million people.
Thus the potential “size” of this issue is 1.3 million people.Report
1.3M is the total universe, not the universe actually receiving medical treatments under psychological supervision – which is much smaller. That aside, this is still a vanishingly small community in a country of 340,110,988, and their receiving standard of care (under the supervision of physicians and psychologists with parental permission) makes them no threat to anyone – as if helping people live as their authentic selves should be a threat to begin with.
All this boils down to the fact that those who waste political energy on “battling” transgender people this cycle did so from a morally corrupt and cynical position, a statement now backed up by empirical fact. Those “warriors” deserve derision and mockery for attempting to inflict pain and suffering on a tiny number of children – and public shame if they attempted to do while claiming to be Christian.Report
“derision and mockery for attempting to inflict pain and suffering on a tiny number of children”
Funny, I would use this myself against your opinion on this. My position saves children from the pain and suffering of sterilizing and/or militating themselves before being and adult. We don’t let children drink, smoke, own guns, or marry until then.
Also, a large number of children with gender dysphoria do not continue into adulthood.
One such study
https://www.transgendertrend.com/children-change-minds/
This is a no brainer to add to the list for me and let the children’s bodies and brains continue to grow naturally and see how they finish in adulthood.Report
did so from a morally corrupt and cynical position, a statement now backed up by empirical fact.
Female genital mutilation doesn’t affect many people in the US. Ergo opposition to it must be “morally corrupt and cynical”.
Adults making serious and permanent changes to the genitals of children seems like something that should get a lot of attention.Report
Moral panics never depended on facts and numbers.Report
Of course they don’t. But when the facts don’t align with the panic-ers narrative I will happily call them idiots in public because they richly deserve the derisive shame I intend to pile on them.Report
Would it be weird if I came back just to remind everyone that I predicted Harris getting 230 electoral votes on July 2? That’d be weird, right? (I’m always terrible at guessing election results. I need this victory lap.)Report
No weirder then anything else going on here today.Report
Yes, it’s impressive calling 230 for Harris. It’s the 308 you called for JEB! that we’re less impressed with.Report
I was close though. He got 324 votes in NH that one time.Report
Take that victory lap…Report
Well done.Report
Looks like we might not have super high tariffs after all: https://jabberwocking.com/trump-preparing-to-abandon-yet-another-promise/Report
Though it comes with plenty of quid pro quo corruptionReport
When all you have is performative politics, all you get is performance. One has to wonder what the true believers he intends to employ in his White House will do when his short attention span turns away from their cause.Report
Facebook has announced new policies regarding… well, I’ll let Zuck tell you.
The content moderation team is moving from California to Texas.Report
Tough to fact check politicians who feed you billion dollar contracts. Just ask Jeff Bezos.Report
Hey. Private companies can do whatever they want.
More seriously, I think that Zuck is *REALLY* ticked off about the laptop thing. He sees that as a betrayal of trust and is moving forward accordingly.
They’re also breaking their relationship with Politifact. That’s another huge thing.Report
Oh, and Dana White is now on the board at Meta. (He’s the UFC guy.)Report
https://www.thebulwark.com/p/the-curious-case-of-lindy-li
The Bulwark looks at the curious case of Lindy Li, a woman who spent 2024 being a very big Democratic cheerleader in PA but turned to a proud Fox News apostate right after the election.Report
That transformation worked for Trump and Gabbard, so …Report
Meta’s retreat from fact checking (trying out Elon X) makes malicious rewriting of history even easier:
https://www.salon.com/2025/01/07/why-mike-johnsons-fake-jefferson-prayer-matters/Report
Oh, Amanda Marcotte! There’s a blast from the past!
Anyway, I would prefer a note at the bottom of a post praising Johnson’s statement saying “we have no documents where Jefferson said this” to censoring the post praising Johnson’s statement.
“You’re not allowed to praise what Johnson said since what Johnson said was factually inaccurate”.
Who the hell are you to make that call?Report
I would prefer Johnson being publicly shamed for lying. And those defending his right to lie being publicly mocked.Report
I support you in your efforts to shame Johnson.
I’m not defending Johnson’s right to lie. I’m defending your right to praise him for lying. On top of that, I’m denying someone else’s right to censor you for praising Johnson for lying.
Well, of course, maybe if it’s not a private company or something then they’d have the right to censor you for praising Johnson.
Private companies can do whatever they want.Report
I don’t praise liars.
And yes, private companies can do whatever they want.Report
Of course you don’t, Phil. Of course you don’t.
But I hope we hammered out some distinctions in this conversation anyway.Report
The GOP has learned things from Trump:
Read more at: https://www.newsobserver.com/news/politics-government/article298115113.html#storylink=cpyReport
So, for some reason, this is important. Yeesh.
https://www.mediaite.com/trump/just-in-trump-announces-plans-to-change-gulf-of-mexico-to-gulf-of-america/Report
Trump said it so it must be important. Just like taking back the Panama Canal or taking over Greenland.Report
You have to wonder why Mediaite went with “Gulf of America” rather than military threats to Gaza, Greenland, and Panama, and economic threats to Canada and Denmark.
I suppose someone has convinced Mr. Trump that he can achieve a Greater United States that includes all of North America above Mexico, much like Putin thinks he can achieve a Greater Russia.Report
We can call it “North America”.Report
If Trump’s going to go with “Gulf of America” he probably doesn’t mind dropping Mexico from its historical designation as part of North America.Report
Important right at that second. I’d love to have that moron’s ear for 20 minutes. Whispering the right things in his ear could accomplish so much good.Report
Jay Varma has written an opinion piece for the Daily Beast: Why I Shouldn’t Have Been Shamed for My Pandemic Sex Parties
The main thing I was thinking while I read it was “why, oh why, did he not share this with the world *BEFORE* the election?”Report
What economic forces will Trump use to get Canada to bend the knee?Report
Threats of chili powder, cayenne pepper.Report
Oooh, there may be a wrinkle. Pierre Poilievre has tweeted “Canada will never be the 51st state. Period.”
Conspiracy theorists speculate that Trump was tossing the Conservative party of Canada a slow one right over the plate.Report
This is not a good issue for the CPC and making Canadian politics about it is the biggest risk Poilievre has of going from an easy win to real fight. Poilievre has been trying to stay as far away from it as he can afford to right now.Report
Tariffs in theory could utterly tank the Canadian economy fast, because North America is so networked together.
The upshot is that American takes all kind of damage that the voters weren’t going to expect in that scenario. Gasoline becomes crazy expensive in the Pacific Northwest and Midwest because it runs on Canadian imports, the traditional American automakers have production grind to a halt because the supply chain is integrated. Chaos is the word of the day.
Canada takes way more damage, but is also going to have vastly more political will to weather the crisis than Americans who had no idea why the prices went up but hate it.Report