Open Mic for the week of 1/27/2025
On this day in 1967, a fire in NASA’s Apollo 1 Command Module killed Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger B. Chaffee.
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.
The ADL appears to have realized exactly how bad they looked defending Musk, and are now…criticizing his jokes about the Holocaust.
Not any of the actual important things Musk is saying, like his recent comments in Germany.Report
On the strength of China’s DeepSeek AI, NVidia is down 15% and the NASDAQ is down almost 2%.
These AI Wars have begun.
Edit: I just checked and Pelosi sold 10 big lots of NVidia stock on December 31st.Report
Yeah, honestly, that seems to have been much less of a crash than I was personally expecting. But of course, it’s not over.Report
Oh, and while there’s plenty to criticize about Pelosi’s stock trading, as far as I’m aware, the slide so far and the expected crash of NVidia isn’t really inside information she’d have. Is it?Report
I’m not sure what information Pelosi is privvy to. To be honest, it wouldn’t surprise me to learn that she has a lot more than you or I.Report
I mean, I certainly can understand the position that ‘literally no stock trades she can do can be trusted’, and I guess the CIA could have informed her of something, even in China.
But December 31st sounds like someone just wanted out of the incredibly, blaring, extremely obvious bubble that was, and still is, NVidia, and decided they wanted it to happen in calendar year 2024 for tax reasons.Report
The return of gangster government. Denmark and other nations seek to higher Trump connected lobbyists: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/27/us/politics/trump-denmark-panama-greenland-lobbyists.htmlReport
Trump’s Tactics:
https://prospect.org/blogs-and-newsletters/tap/2025-01-27-trumps-gestapo-raids/
At around 8 o’clock Sunday morning, in Mountain View, California, four ICE agents in full battlefield regalia followed a resident into a 19-unit apartment building. They carried M15 assault weapons, and had no warrants.
They were looking for two Venezuelans, who had lived there temporarily in the apartment of a lawyer, who was helping asylum seekers pro bono. The Venezuelans were legal residents with temporary protected status until last week, when Trump changed the rules and they suddenly became illegal.
The Venezuelans were not present at the time. There was another asylum seeker in the building with similar status, whom the agents ignored, apparently because she was not on their hit list. Residents called the Mountain View police, who said they could do nothing.
Despite brave words about sanctuary cities, state and local officials have not cooperated but have not resisted. Citizens who try to shelter targets of these raids are themselves inviting arrest.
This was only one of several ICE raids over the weekend. Others took place in Chicago, Boston, Austin, and L.A. Fox News reporters were invited to embed with the agents in Boston and Chicago, capturing the raids on video.
The agents wore tactical gear and vests with large letters displaying “Police ICE” and “Homeland Security.” According to CNN, at least two agencies told personnel to wear made-for-TV outfits, in case there were video opportunities.
This stunt suggests the performative aspect of these Gestapo-style raids, as red meat for Trump’s base. Trump has directed that ICE increase its raids and summary deportations, from a few hundred per day to at least 1,200 to 1,500.Report
There’s also the fear mongering performative aspect which is reported leading to immigrants abandoning crops in the field.
But this is what they voted for.Report
Incidentally, ICE almost never has actual judicial warrants that would allow them to enter premises and search for people.
They have things they wave around that they claim are warrants, and are warrants in the sense they are called ‘deportation warrants’. But all that means is they have identified someone they wish to deport, and can legally detain that person if they find them. It was signed off on by an immigration official, _not_ a judge.
A deportation warrant gives them _absolutely_ no authority to forcible enter a place and search for that person anywhere. None at all. They are just basically lying to you, hoping by waving a thing in your face and calling it a warrant that you think they have the right to enter somewhere.
You should never let them in anywhere. If they have judicial authority, they will force their way in, but 99.99% of the time, they do not, and will leave.
In fact, it might be a good practice to start doing that with the police in general.Report
Trump fires career DOJ lawyers who had civil service protections: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/justice-department/trump-administration-fires-doj-officials-worked-criminal-investigation-rcna189512Report
This is deeply concerning.Report
2025
This is deeply concerningReport
The massacre continues:
resident Donald Trump’s budget office on Monday ordered all federal agencies to temporarily block disbursement of grants and loans — other than for Social Security, Medicare and other programs providing direct aid to individuals.
The memo says the temporary pause, effective starting at 5 p.m. on Tuesday, is intended to ensure agencies are complying with Trump’s executive orders to root out “Marxist equity, transgenderism, and green new deal social engineering policies” from programs within their purview.
It’s not immediately clear how wide-ranging the pause will be in practice, due to the Office of Management and Budget’s ability to grant exceptions on a “case-by-case basis,” language exempting direct aid to individuals and a clause that states the pause is subject to what’s “permissible under applicable law…..
Still, as written the pause could affect a big swath of programs that aid lower-income households, including: Medicaid; school breakfast and lunch programs; Section 8 rental assistance; Title I education grants; Temporary Assistance for Needy Families; state grants for child care; Head Start; and the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children.
The Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Community Development Block Grant Program and EPA grants to states and localities for clean water infrastructure — both of which fund a large chunk of congressional earmarks each year — could also be impacted.
Foreign aid grants are likely to be put on hold as well as clean energy projects, as those are specifically named in earlier executive orders.”Report
Pete Beinart has one of his pieces where he questions whether “Israel has a right to exist.” A genuinely understand this line of thought for a few reasons. One is despite what a bunch of people outside I/P want, very few people who live in I/P actually wants a South African solution. It constantly doesn’t poll well among Israelis and Palestinians. Both want their own state. Also, well meaning outsiders imposing their solution on the people on the ground has a horrible track record of success and the idea of doing this to the I/P conflict is mind-boggling. The third reason why this seems like a no brainer solution is that Israel obviously currently exists and Israelis demonstrated that they will fight like hell for their country so making Israel not exist would require a massive use of force. That nobody is volunteering to be this force shows the questionability of the endeavor.Report
The massacre continues: Jim Acosta is out at CNN after having his slot moved to midnight.Report
He quit live on air.
You can watch the footage for yourself:
Report
More in the world of FAFO, Trump is threatening tariffs on Taiwanese chips: https://www.pcmag.com/news/trump-to-tariff-chips-made-in-taiwan-targeting-tsmc
https://www.pcmag.com/news/trump-to-tariff-chips-made-in-taiwan-targeting-tsmcReport
For years and years if you traveled down the highways of the Central Valley or San Joaquin Valley, you would see cranky right-wing ranch owners put up signs expressing their ire at CA Democrats for not giving them enough water. Trump is apparently trying to use the LA Wildfires to circumvent CA water laws and give water to the Central Valley ranchers on the pretense that it is for the wildfires: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/trump-seeks-circumvent-laws-californias-water-wildfire-response-rcna189386
Of course the ranchers won’t have anyone to pick their ample crops because all the fieldworkers are hiding from ICE.Report
Question for you Californians — is this tweet accurate? It’s pretty jaw-dropping:
Report
They famously built one (I think it cost more than $11.6 million) that was finished early in the pandemic, but it was so poorly constructed that they just scrapped it.Report
Chris Cillizza has a twitter thread in which he apologizes for getting the virus origin story wrong. He talks about, among other things, all of the bad assumptions he made when he took Fauci at his word and downplayed Trump’s statements.
I don’t bring this up because I think that Cillizza is trustworthy! Heaven forefend! This isn’t evidence of *ANYTHING* having to do with the origin of the virus!
Windsocks are, however, evidence for the direction of the wind. The “THE SCIENCE IS SETTLED!” pro-censorship folks are going to have a bad time in a few months.
Because the CIA ain’t gonna be the last and final drip out of the faucet.Report
It really come down to just how biased these folks are to Trump. Trump said China was the cause, so they had to believe anything that said that was not true. Because Trump cannot be right about anything.
Like this whole Columbian thing. Trump cannot have a win, so sources like CNN and BBC are believing and spreading lies. It must be because TRUMP CANNOT WIN!
Nice to see a person admit they were wrong. Though I wonder how many people here will say the CIA is lying because TRUMP CANNOT BE RIGHT ABOUT ANYTHING!Report
It’s Colombia, not Columbia. Pretend to care.Report
Yes, let’s be sure to use the exact spelling the settler-colonists chose after taking over the territory.Report
you sir are a riot!Report
No one thinks the science is settled. The science is, however, almost entirely pointing in one direction. Who knows what we’ll find in a 5 years, or even next month? But right now, there are no good scientific arguments for a lab leak. There are, however, good political arguments for one, and the politicians are putting serious pressure on scientists, which your talk of censorship would suggest you’re opposed to, but your continued beating of any talk of scientist with a stick suggest you’re actually in favor of.Report
Sure! Nobody thinks that the science is settled enough to censor people who disagree with the consensus.
I’ve brought up scientists who have argued for reasons to believe in a lab leak. The pivot then switch from “any scientist” to “well, the *CONSENSUS*.
Drip.
Drip.
Drip.Report
If you find a scientist who has published their arguments in the scientific literature — and there are some who have — then it will not be hard to find several scientists who’ve rebutted those arguments in the scientific literature. This is an exercise you can complete yourself, and I would hope that, since you seem to have largely made up your mind, you have done so and merely concluded that the counterarguments were impotent or incomplete.Report
denial: everybody’s saying it’s fake!
anger: nobody’s saying it’s true!
bargaining: find me anyone credible who’s saying it’s true!
depression: there’s still some people saying it’s fake!
acceptance: it’s Trump’s fault it happened!Report
I’m not smart enough to figure out whom this is meant to describe, but I am sure there is someone, and it describes them well.Report
you seem to have largely made up your mind
My mind hasn’t been made up on the origin.
Indeed, nobody knows where it came from and nobody can know where it came from.
It has, however, been made up on the topic of whether discussion of the lab leak ought to be censored on social media.
It remains made up on that topic and the whole “CIA changing its mind” and “reporters apologizing for how they covered it back then” is only making my mind even more made upper.Report
and nobody can know where it came from.
This is perhaps true in an abstract philosophical sense: there will always be room for doubt in any empirically-based conclusion, but it is not true in any meaningful practical sense. We absolutely can know where it came from. For example, if someone were, presumably at great personal risk, leak genetic evidence of laboratory-held viruses dated well before the pandemic (say, from 2018 or early 2019) that matched early strains of COVID in China (we have their DNA makeup, and have since early January 2020), that’d be dispositive under pretty much any theory of knowledge short of radical skepticism.
The same is true if we were able to find samples from the local wet market from well before the outbreak (similar timeframe) with the exact DNA signature, except this would give us pretty firm knowledge that it was the result of spillover.
Short of these two things, we have to go with the data we have, which is samples taken from the markets early in the outbreak, as well as later samples, and deduction from the genetic makeup of the early virus. These will not give us 99.999999% certainty, the way the two pieces of evidence described above would, but they’ll get us pretty close over time. To a large extent, they already have.Report
Wow. That is pretty damning for the conclusions of the FBI and CIA. Someone should explain that to them.
Maybe it’s good that the FBI was kept from briefing Biden with their findings, if what you say is accurate.Report
Yes, the FBI and CIA, two sources we should absolutely believe over the scientific literature.Report
As I’ve said elsewhere, the CIA (and the FBI) are intelligence agencies. They may have sources or insights the scientific agencies don’t have when it comes to figuring out the internal workings of Chinese labs. And they may not be able to tell us what those sources are. That’s what they’re good at, but I’m not aware of any particular spycraft basis for their very tentative, low confidence conclusions. If they are going on science rather than spycraft, the science stuff is more within the competence of our science agencies.Report
I thought “maybe I could do my own research…” and where better to do my own research than Wikipedia!
Here’s the talk page for the Covid-19 Lab Leak Theory. It’s even better than the real page.
It’s got a *TON* of sources in there.
I would like to hope that scientists are not particularly likely to be bullied into joining a consensus despite misgivings.Report
Hoo boy.Report
I dunno how to respond to a link to a Wiki talk page, but I can recommend this, and the works cited therein:
https://journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/jvi.01240-24?fbclid=IwY2xjawIGLypleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHWomOrcIBe_iUiWbpbj6ZoSFfu-JjoScNehZvizY9avZG96I__pEajP61w_aem_4Dz7htJWLtKLWHfB_GG6CQ
Particularly:
https://journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/jvi.01240-24?fbclid=IwY2xjawIGLypleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHWomOrcIBe_iUiWbpbj6ZoSFfu-JjoScNehZvizY9avZG96I__pEajP61w_aem_4Dz7htJWLtKLWHfB_GG6CQ
https://ct.prod.getft.io/YXNtLGFhYXMsaHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuc2NpZW5jZS5vcmcvZG9pL2Ficy8xMC4xMTI2L3NjaWVuY2UuYWJwODMzNw.O_lDOw2Z1t6rJr6L4WNDYt28rjYviyiQIL0SZvW8Hw0
along with this accessible counter to the main lab leak arguments:
https://pauloffit.substack.com/p/lab-leak-mania
And this more formal one:
https://journals.asm.org/servlet/linkout?suffix=e_1_3_2_15_2&dbid=4&doi=10.1128%2Fjvi.01240-24&key=10.1128%2Fjvi.00365-23&site=asmjReport
(If you think those links look awful, you should have seen how it looked when I first posted it. Forgive me; I’m old, and these computing boxes confuse me.)Report
Well, had you clicked on the link, you would have been taken directly to “Lab Link Theory Sources”.
It’s got a bunch of stuff in there.
Here’s the most recent paper from last year: Use of a risk assessment tool to determine the origin of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2)
Here’s the abstract:
They’ve got Patrick Berche’s Gain-of-function and origin of Covid19 that has a breakdown talking about the importance of the furin site and how unique it is.
Yeah, I wouldn’t click on them either. Life’s too short.Report
I’ve read this paper. As I’ve said, there are people publishing lab leak arguments in the literature. This should a.) be pretty strong evidence that your narrative about suppression of this theory among scientists is wrong, and b.) not be taken as indicating that there is not a consensus.
It’s important for scientists to publish ideas that challenge consensus, and they are doing so. Here you have a paper using a novel risk assessment method (novel as in, it’s the authors’ own method). I don’t yet know of a reply to this paper, though I’m sure they’re coming.Report
Nitpick. Covid-19, like all corona viruses, is an RNA virus.Report
Sorry, yes, I should have just said genetic material.Report
White House Counsel Alina Habba: “The law is ‘what our attorney general of the United States says'”
White House adviser Alina Habba lashed out at Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) after he blasted President Donald Trump’s freeze on federal grant programs.
“Your attorney general is not the attorney general!” she exclaimed. “We have an attorney general. That will be Pam Bondi.”
“And what your opinion is on what the law is doesn’t really matter,” Habba continued. “It’s what the White House counsel says and what our attorney general of the United States says.”
https://www.rawstory.com/alina-habba-attorney-general-law/Report
France is considering sending troops to Greenland to help the Danes:
https://ordinary-times.com/2025/01/27/open-mic-for-the-week-of-1-27-2025/#comment-4063674Report
It borrow from a classic movie, “it’s a trap” and a very stupid one: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/trump-administration-offer-federal-workers-buyouts-resign-rcna189661Report
Musk’s lackeys, are storming into government positions: https://www.wired.com/story/elon-musk-lackeys-office-personnel-management-opm-neuralink-x-boring-stalin/Report
Good news! New “Calexit” bid for California secession approved for signature gathering!
Should California be allowed to secede if this passes? Opinions differ.Report
This country is getting more absurd by the minute.Report
A modest proposal regarding the naming of things.Report
(Link broke)Report
I noticed and fixed it before you replied 🙂Report
Nice.
(Love it.)Report
JD Vance says Big Tech has “too much power”:
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/jd-vance-interview-big-tech-too-much-power/
The ability of these men to SAY one thing: Drain the swamp! Big Tech has too much power! That wasn’t a Nazi salute! while clearly doing the other – and have people BUY it – is absolutely gobsmacking.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jan/20/trump-inauguration-tech-executivesReport
Big Tech *DOES* have too much power. It probably should have been broken up back in the 90’s (though the web browser bundling case was probably the worst surface area they could have picked to make the particular attack against Microsoft).
I’m not sure that “Big Tech has too much power” and “He wasn’t Heiling Hitler” are in *THAT* much tension.
Remember those eHarmony ads back in 2010 for Tanyalee and Josh? They were everywhere. Well, Josh posted to social media back then that he didn’t support gay marriage and, gosh, he got JUMPED on for the hypocrisy of meeting Tanyalee on eHarmony while, at the same time, supporting traditional marriage.
It was hypocritical, you see, because technology made it possible for him to meet Tanyalee.
And people who supported gay marriage saw the obvious hypocrisy and the people who didn’t were confused.Report
Hypocrisy is when you at least pretend to be doing one thing while doing the other in secret.
These men see no need to pretend. They simply tell us to do that part for them, and some of us do.Report
Power to do what?Report
Among other things, censor.
Remember that whole “private companies can do whatever they want” movement that was so popular there for a while?
Perhaps that was a poisonous attitude to take.Report
Now that Musk is essentially USG via DOGE and his White House office space, it seems to me that any action he now takes to prohibit speech on X now may possibly be seen as having 1A implications, as opposed to when he was strictly a private citizen and could prohibit or promote nearly any speech he sees fit on the app he owns, and did so via algorithms and more direct moves to help the Admin and hurt its opponents.
Then of course you have Zuck and Bezos and Pichai there at the inauguration, with varying massive media-reaches themselves; and of course the end of Net Neutrality means that any sites that are NOT already directly under the Admin’s thumb can have traffic slowed to them, legally, by the ISPs.
Your ISP, should it want to, can slow traffic to OT until it’s basically unusable for you, while prioritizing traffic to X/FB/Instagram/Google/Amazon/WaPo etc.
Well, good night! [turns out the light]Report
As far as I can tell, he’d have to get Bluesky to do the restricting…
There’s a billion $ start-up for the people who invent the app that combines all the various feeds into one space…. so you can comment and link to other people’s bad ideas. Like old-twitter.Report
Threads came out and the users demanded that they get posts from people they followed in reverse chronological order (newest first, then scroll down) and they would be cool with sponsored content every four or five posts so long as they would get the people they were following in reverse chronological order in their feed.
AND ZUCK SAID NO!!! BUT DON’T WORRY! WE’VE GOT A GREAT ALGORITHM!!! AND HE LOST 80% OF HIS NEW SIGNUPS WITHIN A WEEK!!!
THIS IS FREAKING INSANE!!!
Anyway, Bluesky feels like 2017 Twitter.Report
Yglesias has a free post on where Democrats should go from here. Figured I’d share:
https://www.slowboring.com/p/throw-biden-under-the-busReport
It’s a good post. March and I talked about a possible way to impeach Trump the other day.
It involves impeaching Biden first. “Biden abused the pardon power!”, the impeachment would say. It would go over each and every particularly egregious pardon and commutation that Biden did. He signed a bunch of them for the ACLU and they include a drug dealer who had a couple of potential witnesses killed as well as, sigh, Leonard Peltier.
If you don’t want to include Lenny, you don’t have to.
Include the pre-emptive pardons of his family members and *IGNORE* the pre-emptive pardons of the congressmen/senators.
Hell, include the pardon of Fauci, if you really want it to pass.
Then impeach Biden. Impeach the hell out of him. Send him to jail!
That’s step one. You can probably guess step two. But you can’t jump ahead to step two without doing step one first.
Step one makes step two possible.
Throw Biden under the bus.Report
Heh I don’t think that’s on the table. And unless Trump really does go out and shoot someone on 5th Avenue I think it’s probably worth giving the impeachment power a rest for the time being. I don’t like the outcome of this election one bit but the only way out to maybe something better is through.Report
Without some norms that everybody can agree upon to the point where they’re willing to punish bad actors on their own side, we’re going to be in a tip-for-tap BUTWHATABOUT THE BAD ACTORS ON *YOUR* SIDE for at least another four years. Maybe eight.Report
Biden’s the bait for putting it back on the table.
But yes, in general, the Impeachment Power is quiescent during this era of Presidential EO governance and Omnibus Reconciliation Legislation Congresses.Report
I don’t disagree but I also think part of re-establishing credibility is agreeing to put certain toys away for a time. I’ve been thoroughly browbeaten for this but my opinion remains that Impeachment 2 was undermined considerably by the arcane nature of Impeachment 1, both in the charges and the investigation.Report
Both impeachments were undermined by spineless republicans who, among other things, didn’t want to protect their power of the purse.
No need to mince words.Report
What Trump got impeached over for impeachment 1 was impounding funds, a thing that Congress explicitly made illegal after Nixon did it, and then the impeachment failed, and now that he’s in office he’s completely decided to do it. In fact, he’s assigned Elon Musk to do it.
I feel it was, actually, a bit important.
Part of the problem is they tried to make it about Trump trying to extort Ukraine into investigating Biden, because they thought that sounded better. So Republicans argued it _wasn’t_ that and it’s legitimate to condition foreign aid on blah blah blah.
No. It doesn’t matter. The President is required to spend the funds as stated by law. Period. End of story. It does not matter what he does not spend them on, it doesn’t matter why he doesn’t do it. That is perhaps an interesting backstory, but it is literally not important.
If the president starts deciding not to spend money allocated funds, he has seized the power to do retroactive line-item vetos. Remember, the line-item veto _itself_ is unconstitutional, even when it granted by a duly-passed law. Impoundment does it retroactively on existing law, and invents that power out of thin air.
Now, yes, there are probably some circumstances where the president feels the conditions have changed so much that to do so would be a violation of other parts of his oaths (Like if he’s directed to give money to a country, but that country literally declared war on us before he can.), and he certainly can choose to do that…and he can be impeached for it. In fact, I’d argue that even if everyone understood the situation, it would be good to hold an impeachment hearing and _make him_ defend his actions. In front of Congress, sworn in.
Instead, yes, the Republicans in Congress decided to be extremely impotent about the President stealing their power.
And so he’s done it again.Report
Counterpoint: What both Biden and Trump did was perfectly legal under the Constitution. Terrible but legal. Why not demonstrate good governance, instead, by getting busy and trying a legislative solution (hint: alter the Constitution by removing or severely limiting the pardon power)?Report
Well, for that, we’ll need a constitutional amendment. To do that we’ll need 38 states to ratify an amendment and not put a time limit on the ratification and not rescind the ratification before it becomes an amendment.
Or, I suppose, we’ll need a Constitutional Convention. Might be nice to have one of those, actually.Report
Let’s do it!Report
Nightmare fuel.Report
I’m really excited for the new Constitution to ban “Woke Gender Ideology,” “Marxist equality,” anti-fascism, and DEI.Report
Iceberg <--> TipReport
Worse than what we have already happening?Report
Does “what we have already happening” include the backlash?Report
Small point of order, even if you impeached a President, you couldn’t prosecute him for exercising his Constitutional Powers… so there’s no ‘going to jail’ as part of the deal. SCOTUS is correct on this front.* I also strongly suspect that the Pardons themselves would still stand.
Impeachment is a political check, not a legal finding — which I wish the (too) many Lawyers in Congress would understand and step back from the overly ‘legal’ reading of the constitutional stipulations on conducting the Impeachment process.
But yes, throw Biden under the bus to build a consensus around Constitutional limitations; it may pay dividends in the future.
*unless there is a separate unique crime to which the Pardon was attached, like, say, bribery.Report
Sure. So “impeach and remove” then. You know all of those folks who sneered and said “I guess I won’t be voting for Biden in November”?
CALL IN THOSE CHITS!Report
Think of it as an agency restoring act for Congress. A therapeutic impeachment.Report
“March and I talked about a possible way to impeach Trump the other day. It involves impeaching Biden first.”
i think you might be a little late on that oneReport
Nah. We also want to establish that you can impeach a guy after his term is over.
Think big.Report
tired: Mormons declaring people Actually Mormon after they’re dead
wired: Americans impeaching Presidents after they’re dead (starting with Nixon)Report
Visited the comments, was not disappointed.
A guy agreed with Matty and said that the fact that the White House was not run by Biden but by unelected staffers was a scandal.
Someone responded with how “unelected” was such weak sauce. Biden won the election and was therefore entitled to staff his administration with whomever he deemed fit to do so to carry out his policies.
As if it were 2022. As if the argument were taking place in a vacuum.Report
I said long before the Biden implosion that we never really got to see what a Biden Presidency would look like; the best Biden could’ve done for the Dems was make the avuncular pivot to a ‘normie’ liberal position… but he didn’t. I think a lot of folks who voted for him wanted this kind of normalcy, but for various reasons, Biden didn’t deliver, and Harris couldn’t distance… To be honest, I’m not sure they were being ‘insincere’ just that they were proverbial frogs in the pot who didn’t notice that they were no longer in the Normie Lib space.
MattY kinda buries his more controversial take on ‘the groups’ in the link.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/16/opinion/democrats-interest-groups-majority.htmlReport
The whole groups thing has some weird dynamics.
Unions, back when unions were a thing, made a big deal out of solidarity.
Maybe the United Farm Workers and the United Automobile Workers didn’t have a whole lot of overlap when it came to the day to day stuff, there were events like the Delano Grape Strike that had the UAW guys refuse to buy non-union grapes and they participated in the national boycott. In 1970, the UFW got a new contract and that was a victory for the UAW too.
And during the Mostly Peaceful Summer, the Teachers Unions and the Police Unions had static and I remember a big blowup where one of the police union leaders threw a fit after Randi Weingarten said something about defunding or whatever and he said something to the effect of “you won’t support us, we won’t support you”.
And starting with 2021, there was a hell of a lot more support for Police Unions and vigorous policing than there was for keeping teachers safe by keeping schools closed.
And now there’s tension between Teacher Unions and Police Unions that they are having to patch up.
So omnicause thinking makes sense!!!
But Greta doesn’t go to Global Warming protests anymore. She just goes to the Palestinian ones.Report
Paywalled. 🙁
Matt Y had a separate piece in the last month or two directly addressing the issue of the groups and the way the dynamic has changed for the (much) worse. Unfortunately it is paywalled. I assume he didn’t directly take that on in this piece is because he dedicated a full essay to it quite recently. Below is the link if you want to try and use some magic to read it.
https://www.slowboring.com/p/from-the-veal-pen-to-the-groupsReport
Here ya go: https://archive.is/O4ucr (The NYT op-ed)
My take on this is it’s pretty good advice. Win first, then you can work on policy. Trying to please everyone before you get elected exposes the fringier elements in your party (at least for the Dems) who may hold some fairly unpopular opinions.
Changing people’s minds takes time and winning an election or two buys you that time. People think Trump just happened. We could probably trace his origins all the way back to Goldwater if we really tried.Report
You the man!Report
People think Trump just happened. We could probably trace his origins all the way back to Goldwater if we really tried.
Rick Perlstein made a good start.Report
Yeah I have this general feeling that, coupled with the social media dynamic, the success of gay rights, the #metoo movement and BLM the “groups” have kind of gotten the bit in their teeth and flat out forgotten how to politic. This demanding fealty publicly and in advance to every group is political malpractice in the extreme. As odious as the right wing groups are they don’t seem to police their politicians the same way. Part of that I think is that the main “group” the plutocrats, flat out knows their desires are unpopular and that the GOP will deliver tax cuts however they can. But even the socialcons and other less central right wing groups don’t seem to do the same kind of policing. Then again, the rights politicians are just off the rails right and constantly afraid of being primaried so such language policing maybe simply isn’t necessary.
It’s pretty hard to primary a Dem for being insufficiently left it seems.Report
From out here I. The cheap leftist seats he couldn’t have been more centerist in his economic and foreign policy. If you want to hang your hat on his willingness to allow trans people to exist free of danger go ahead.Report
I think the critiques I’m seeing from the front row Lib Normies is that the Centrist economic policies, were horribly impeded by requirements added by ‘the groups’ such that it wasn’t good enough to build more broadband or EV chargers, you had to build them with the proper intentions and deference to theoretical concerns not relevant to broadband or EV chargers…
A theoretical ‘healthy’ Biden might have objected to having his signature legislation undermined by omnicause goals orthogonal to the objectives.
I actually supported aspects of his foreign policy… but just taking Afghanistan withdrawal — his popularity tanked after that — unfairly I think. BUT, as I said at the time, he never held the Military accountable for poor execution. Also at the time I chalked it up to his excessive Washington Establishmentarianism … but it’s possible that his decline prevented him from acting more forcefully (but that’s just speculation, I go either way on that one).
On the Trans stuff… yes, that’s also a losing proposition, especially as it’s framed by ‘the groups’Report
I have read some recent damming reporting from gift links at WSJ and NYT that the decline may in fact have come into play with Afghanistan. It’s an issue where I am as generous as possible to the Biden Admin given that I think it was still the right decision but… yeesh.Report
I think, in the cheap leftist seats, you’re being pretty uncharitable. Biden did a lot of leftist stuff like industrial policy and direct intervention. Stuff Obama never would have touched. He also spent a lot more post Covid than Obama would have (and, I submit, he got a good recovery for it. People raise the subject of inflation but Germany stuck to balanced budgets, still got similar inflation and anemic economic growth as well so that complain strikes me as bogus). He also was extremely friendly to labor even by Democratic standards. Obviously Biden didn’t nationalize the means of production or anything but on the centrist to left wing spectrum Biden was pretty left wing.Report
I don’t think throwing Biden under the bus would accomplish anything and I think his shots against Harris are cheap. Harris ran as good a campaign as anyone under the circumstances and final result was not a 1984 blowout victory for Trump. Also polling on what Trump is doing is not good for them: https://digbysblog.net/2025/01/29/trump-isnt-popular/Report
I think MY sincerely dislikes Republicans and Trump but this whole column feels like a whole lot of retconning and taking what might be reasonable points and going off the deep end with them.
Harris was an untrusted and untested VP? She whipped up her party when it was at its lowest morale and got them back in fighting mode. She did not win but she was far from a distant second and the “throw the bums” out election trend is not unique to the U.S., it is hitting governments around the world.
Blocking US Steel from being purchased by Nippon Steel? Trump also opposes it and there is no indication that US voters are up in arms on this one. Unions are a core Democratic constituency and politicians do things for their constituencies, what a shocker!!
I can concede that there were probably times Biden did let the cart get before the horse on some social issues but MY’s rage does not reflect that the polling for everyone is very close. 46 R – 45 D is statistically a tie.Report
i think one could quibble on various details. However the main thrust, namely that (i) Biden appears to have been seriously compromised by his age from a pretty early point in his presidency, (ii) his inner circle went to great lengths to camouflage this fact passed the point of no return for 2024, and (iii) that this has resulted in massive brand damage requiring a serious reboot for the national party, is all pretty self evident.Report
I wouldn’t quite call it massive brand damage yet and MY himself conceded that things can change quickly and 46 R – 45 D is still a statistical tie.
No politician has been able to do what Trump does successfully. Every one who tries to be a mini-Trump fails.Report
I agree with his point that things can change quickly, but the support he is using is Trump’s loud and open rejection of a handful of important Bush II era GOP positions. In a 2 party system the Democrats will always be to some degree ‘in it’ and that’s especially the case where the GOP and Trump in particular also regularly does and says crazy and alienating things.
The key to making things change quickly and in more decisive ways is to actually make some changes. Tell some people that annoy the larger electorate that they need to shut up because they’re wrong. Pivot on a policy or two that’s important and that mitigates a D weakness. I don’t understand why those propositions are so highly controversial in left of center spaces when they’re just basic sense, at least IMO.Report
Tell some people that annoy the larger electorate that they need to shut up because they’re wrong. Pivot on a policy or two that’s important and that mitigates a D weakness.
Where is the net vote gain here? Loudly throwing some constituents under the bus will surely cost votes that the Democrats already have. What reason is there to think it will change the votes of significant numbers of Republicans, or drag significantly more non-voters out of the woodwork — especially since it would be so transparently opportunistic?Report
There’re some policies that’re net vote losers and saying you don’t support them both gains you votes and de-escalates your opponents. I’m beginning to fear that most matters involving child trans issues* and zero sum issues where trans issues conflict with womens issues may be those policies currently. You could absolutely disavow those and still support every other trans rights issue and win votes. For politicians coming out of the blue staying silent on the subject probably could mostly cut it but for Harris, specifically, who went on record during the special times in 2020 as being very out to the left being silent as she was simply didn’t cut the mustard.
All that said you’re right that feuding with your own wingers is a dicey political proposition.
*Though it could be my old gay background making me biased, when I was a kid several gay rights activists I knew were emphatically of the opinion that gay rights orgs should generally stay the fish away from kids issues. Also transReport
Cut myself off: Also trans issues impact on teenagers in a profound manner in a way that previous LGB issues, frankly, just didn’t. So it’s tough. But the Groups have done some serious political malpractice in this area not to advance Trans issues so much as to posture for each other and they’re gonna need to accept that such stuff has to fishin stop.Report
Yes, soft peddling abortion is going to be a sure fire winner for DemocratsReport
It’s a classic trope when someone says a bunch of marginal positions are unpopular and marginal to try and hide behind a non-marginal and popular position and claim that’s being targeted instead.Report
At the risk of invoking Godwin,
At first they came for the Jews, and I did not speak because I was not…
Sometimes you have to take a position that is moral and correct and advocate for it even though it is unpopular. Slate has a story about a trans person stuck in passport limbo because of Trump’s new EOs and it looks like they are going to try and ban gender affirming surgery even for people over 18 potentially.
So yeah these might be marginal positions but it doesn’t make them morally incorrectReport
And we should fight like hell for access to surgery for people over the age of consent and for equal treatment for trans people in government services and treatment. But, maybe, maybe, when teachers boast on social media about how they’ll encourage their 5th graders to consider trans and conceal any inclinations of those same kids from their parents we should probably be on record as not supporting that. Because, setting aside the grey zone morality of this (and it’s very murky grey indeed), if everyone but the very left wing most parents hear “we’re gonna support teachers hiding medical info about your kids from you” they’re going to nod soberly and then vote for someone (anyone) who is opposed to that. And those fishers who get elected that way will go after everything, absolutely everything, while we sit powerless on the sidelines. Pure, but powerless.Report
And we should fight like hell for access to surgery for people over the age of consent and for equal treatment for trans people in government services and treatment.
If we do that, who will be convinced that our throwing the rest under the bus is for real?Report
Persuadable voters but, obviously, not anti-trans absolutists; but we were never going to get their votes anyhow.Report
North, do you have any evidence _at all_ that there is a demographic of voters that a) would base their vote on trans issues, and b) thinks the correct place is the middle?
The Republicans are doing a very good job of trying to force this issue into the mainstream when the voters do not actually care at all, but there is absolutely no ‘middle ground’, Republicans will just keep attacking whatever the next thing is, trying to make ground on _that_, and at some point it will be ‘being trans in public is essentially illegal’.
There are exactly two groups who care about trans issues: Morons who have fallen for Republican propaganda, which will continue to shift wherever Republicans lead the hate, and injured trans people and people who care for trans people. There is no middle group, at all, whatsoever.
You just think there is a middle group because the current place that Republicans have managed to lead things is not very far. Give them a victory and they will happily move to the newest ‘middle ground’ they see.
I swear to God, this is the stupidest logic I’ve ever heard. It’s like saying ‘Look, the enemy troops are only trying to take _the next trench_, the one closest to them, if we compromise and fall back a few hundred feet, let them have the trench, everything will be fine’.Report
I think, DavidTC, we can recognize issues where we’re, to use your example, trying to defend a trench that is on the low ground and flooded because it was dug through a marsh versus a trench that is on a defensible elevated slope.
And I can certainly see that the right isn’t stopping only at their photogenic causes on Trans and are going for blanket persecution.
I respect the argument for total purity but I suspect we’re eliding the issue. Even if it was established that giving ground on those issues would mean that we’d win the median voter and keep the GOP from winning overall I presume you’d say that the cost of that victory was too high yes?Report
Every single person who goes ‘Throw them under the bus’ has failed to explain how that makes the bus stop running over people.
Also, who is going to stop Republicans from just lying about this, considering how much they lie about literally everything related to trans people.
I mean, North literally repeated a lie right there ‘“we’re gonna support teachers hiding medical info about your kids from you’. That is not a true thing that has happened or will be happening, there is absolutely no ability for _any_ minor to access gender affirming gender affirming care without parental involvement.Report
That’s semantics DavidTC even though I wish it weren’t. I agree no minor can transition without their parents becoming aware of the matter but parents assuredly want to know about this and teachers affirmatively saying on social media they’ll hide it, let that genie out of the bottle.Report
Why, it’s almost as if some sort of institution should be pushing back against the Republican narrative, and explaining things, instead of agreeing with it.
Also…look, you’re queer, please learn the terms. Transition is a giant group of stuff, not a ‘thing that is done’. And it isn’t a synonym with gender affirming care. Transition includes things like asking to be called different pronouns and trying on a name, which means parents can, indeed, be unaware of it. So can teachers, so can everyone but close friends. In fact, you can do thing that are part of transitioning without telling _anyone_, just seeing how things feel when you think about yourself in a different way. There’s not any way anyone would know that, so it’s not super-important to call it by the right name, but it is part of the umbrella of transitioning.
And part of the problem is Republicans abuse definitions and use incredibly vague terms. The transition confusion makes it incredibly easy to come up with a very high number of detrans people and imply they had some sort of medical things done. Same with ‘gender affirming care’, which is often just counseling. (Which, again, kids can’t get without parental knowledge, generally.)
Both the media, which is almost entirely controlled by transphobic billionaires, and the Democratic party, which is almost entirely controlled by hundred-year-old corpses animated by necromancy, do not bother to actually explain any of this.Report
Yes, if the media lies and presents the story in that manner, that would be something people wouldn’t like.
The media could instead be presenting the story as ‘A lot of trans and gay kids are forced into the closet by their parents by the threat of abuse or abandonment and teachers should not being outing them, either if directly confided in by the student or just based on the student’s behavior in school.’, a thing that would have infinitely more support.
You know, I see the meme that says ‘You are not immune to propaganda’, but it really is amazing to see people here just repeating propaganda without critically looking at it.
Oh, and BTW, if you want a reason not to throw trans kids under the bus here, North, it’s because if you start mandating that teachers report trans students, you’re also essentially forcing them to report gay students. Hell, a lot of the reporting laws _literally would include gay students_ because they basically demand teachers tell parents when students are not conforming to gender norms, and guess what dating someone of the same sex is doing? Hint: Not conforming to gender norms.Report
We deal with the media, including the right wing fisher media, we have because we have no choice DavidTC and it doesn’t change the fact that the right wing clowns managed to find teachers publicly talking about how they were hiding this info from parents.
Again, I personally think trans folks should be able to transition as soon as they’ve sorted out that they’re trans. But the vast majority of even otherwise supportive parents do not like that idea so it’s an extremely bad idea for teachers to be broadcasting that- especially if they’re ostensibly trying to protect their students. If you’re concerned that your trans students might be outed to their parents you might, maybe, want to consider not broadcasting to everyone on social media that you actively conceal such info from the parents of your kids. Apparently the teachers self aggrandizement is more important than the kids safety.Report
It seems like it should be uncontroversial that the only things teachers should be required to report to parents are things that either concern their child’s academic or behavioral performance (are they failing or disrupting class?) and things that may affect the student’s health (do they seem super-depressed because they are being bullied at school?)
Now, that latter one could theoretically cross over into tangentially inadvertently “reporting” on a student’s gayness or transness, if that is why they’re getting bullied. “Richard wears pink skirts to school, and the other kids pick on him for it.” And it would be unfortunate if saying that resulted in the kid catching hell at home, but also seems kind of unavoidable if a teacher needs to explain why Richard got into a fight at lunch today.
But the idea that a teacher has a responsibility to tell the parents if the kid is just a little out of the ordinary in some way – be that gay, trans, or they’re just a noncomforming duck in some other way – if it’s not affecting their school performance nor putting them at physical risk, seems batty in the extreme. My kids’ teachers don’t owe me any reports at all on my slightly-odd kids, unless that oddity is related to some actual academic or health problem.Report
I’m on board with all of that but surely we can agree that if a teacher is trying to protect their students privacy, advertising that posture for kudos from their social media circle where anyone can see is a very bad idea and can lead to some predictably bad results?Report
Well, it’s a good thing we’re in a world where Democrats can magically stop stupid people from doing stupid things?
Hey, you know what Democrats could actually do there?
Publicize the actual _violence_ done to trans kids by their parents. Publicize the sheer number of homeless queer kids that have been kicked out of their house.
Or murdered. The next time they start yammering about forcing outing queer kids, Democrats could respond with these: https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/nbc-out/mom-pleads-guilty-murder-8-year-old-boy-thought-be-n848741
Pound: https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2018/06/parents-torture-kill-10-year-old-says-likes-boys/
It: https://www.ebony.com/father-kills-gay-son/
Into: https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/nbc-out/nevada-father-murdered-son-being-gay-former-foster-mom-claims-n817906
The: https://abc7.com/north-hills-father-gay-shooting-kills-son-hate-crime/1273400/
Ground: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2016/04/02/los-angeles-father-accused-of-fatally-shooting-son-for-being-gay/
Now, is this actually a lot of people? Not actually, but considering that only about 450 kids are killed by their parents a year, and 3/4th of them are custody ‘If I can’t have them no one will’ disputes, it is a noticeable amount.
But who cares the actual percentages? Republican blow up every single crime by an immigrant to get support for their policies, why don’t Democrats blow up every single instance of crime by homophobic parents for theirs?
And, of course, unlike with immigrants, the actual stats back up the position here…yes, child murder is incredibly rare, but a good chunk of that is because the queer children are either kicked out or run away first.
Make it clear that people who are demanding that teacher tell parents, or have a problem with teachers not telling parents, are demanding those things happen.
This would require some sort of backbone by Democrats, though, better just to throw those kids under the bus. Even some *looks pointedly* gay Democrats.Report
Hey far be it for me to disrespect the classically American strategy of simply repeating our position louder and slower. It hasn’t worked so far but maybe if we yell loud enough all the normie voters will just finally get it. Maybe the “we’re here, we’re queer, we’re coming for your kids.” chant should become mandatory for all Pride celebrations or something. Hopefully the thermostatic reaction to trumps being a dumb fisher will do the job for us regardless. I just prefer the party take more agency in its wins and losses.Report
It objectively _has_ worked. That’s how we have Trump as president.
The media are a bunch of easily lead idiots, and the Republicans understand how to lead them.
The Democrats do not.
Literally all they had to do was wait until some gay kid got murdered by their parents, and create a giant issue out of it. Talk about how teachers outing kids to parents is a huge problem. Propose legislation about it. Don’t actually pass it, that wouldn’t pass anyway, but be really really loud about it.
Trump signed the ‘Laken Riley’ law today, a law named after a person murdered by someone in the country illegally.
Why is there not a Giovanni Melton law?
There actually _is_ a Matthew Shepard law, over a decade ago, named after a gay guy murdered over two decades ago. That’s it.
Two can play at that game.
But only one does.Report
Whatever else can be said about North’s views, they are relatively nuanced and civilized. But how many Norths are there? Who, exactly, and how many, would accept his terms and vote accordingly?Report
Obviously we have no way of knowing for sure but I think a core question is being overlooked. -If- my general premise is correct and dropping the left most and most controversial, say, 10% of demands on Trans issues, for the sake of argument, would allow the Dems to win elections is that actually a sacrifice that you and/or DavidTC would even countenance? I think that is the question at the heart of the matter.Report
I think what’s at the heart of the matter is what’s so. What, exactly, would we have to “drop,” and is mere dropping enough, or would we have to performatively curb-stomp folks? And would it work? No point agreeing to curb-stomp in advance.Report
Can we start with the folks that the market is in the process of punishing anyway?
Run to the front of the parade and pretend that you’re leading it?Report
Piling on shouldn’t be countenanced. This is a pretty dark turn.Report
So just drop them quietly and then ask “why are you still talking about that?” five minutes after they’re dropped?
“Why are you so obsessed with this topic? We stopped funding that yesterday.”Report
Certainly I have never proposed curb-stomping anyone. At most I’ve suggested dropping some of the least popular stuff and stopping talking about the next least popular stuff, while still supporting it.Report
In principle, I’m fine with that, but I just don’t believe it would work. Such a subtle and civilized approach won’t change net votes because there aren’t enough subtle, civilized voters we don’t already have.Report
I don’t think anyone should be curb stomped either. I’ve been trying to avoid delving back into this topic but I think it’s worth remembering that adults were having surgeries and hormone treatments to try to resemble the opposite sex for decades without it being a serious political issue. I’m also not going to pretend that empathy is the strong suit of our species but all kinds of unusual and avante-garde appearances and self expressive behavior have been broadly tolerated in this country for a long time. No, not everyone is going to celebrate whatever any particular person is doing but that’s just life in a big pluralistic society. When I was in high school in the 90s enforcement of rigid gender roles was already history. There were goth kids who would cross dress or gender bend and I can’t imagine anyone ever denying that information to their parents, much less thinking it was part of some permanent identity in need of “validation.”
The fight got picked by a certain brand of activist pushing hard for medical interventions in minors, introduction of some pretty questionable, metaphysical stuff and dangerous policies into public school curricula, and the sudden appearance of men in womens sports and a handful of other places where women are vulnerable, like prisons and rape shelters. That’s what this is, and now predictably there is a backlash. I think it is a very open question as to whether pushing all of these things has shaken out to the benefit of those that identify themselves as trans. I for one am not sure that it has.
But if you really want to start somewhere it would be rejecting the kind of thing David is posting in the comment with all of the links. I read something like that and think I’d vote to abolish the public schools before I’d concede to them treating parents like criminals or telling lies to the tax payers they serve. It is not acceptable for reasons I think are quite clear, and it will never work.Report
Trans kids have been getting medical inventions for _decades_. There are almost no trans women in women’s sports, they certainly are not beating cis women.
And who is where in prisons is, and always has been, on a case-by-case basis, and trans women have been held in women’s prisons for decades. Please at least tell me you remember the TV show Orange is the New Black, a TV show that aired in 2013, and was based on a memoir book by Piper Kerman, about her 18 months in prison that ended in 2005…and the trans character in that show is loosely based on an actual trans woman in that prison with her.
A sentence that ended in 2005. A trans woman was in prison with her. Do I need to repeat that? This wasn’t some incredibly rare or crazy thing, either.
Rape shelters exist to protect victims of rape, which a hell of a lot of trans people are. They also set their own rules, and almost none of them have a problem with trans women.
What has happened here is that trans people have existed almost transparently for decades, doing things as their gender without any problems at all. We notably had most court cases without people even noticing. Nicole Maines parents sued her school in _2005_ for not letting her use the girl’s restroom.
Then Republicans lost gay marriage to the court, and found something else to scream about.
A deliberate reactionary surge is not a ‘backlash’, and the American people still care _almost nothing_ about trans issues, in either direction.
No one has been ‘pushing’ anything. Trans people have been fighting to not have things _taken away_ from them.
What _else_ should teachers be required to tell parents? If the kids are gay? It’s right there, it’s the next question, it’s actually technically the _same_ question because almost all the rules about teacher informing on students talk about gender roles.
Oh, so you actually _do_ think kids should be outed. Were you any of those kids? Was that you?
I love it when straight cis people wander around proclaiming that nothing bad ever happens to kids that got outed to their parents.
This is the point where I could mention the 120% higher homeless rate of queer kids, or stuff like, but I just linked to a half a dozen example of queer kids literally murdered, by their parents, for being queer.Report
My dude, don’t call me a ‘cis’ as if there’s any such thing. It’s just another nonsense word used to obscure and misdirect, and there’s no call for insulting my intelligence with that.
Homelessness is a problem for social services. Murder is for the police and the courts. None of it is justification for schools being able to lie to parents or mislead them, nor frankly is it cause for incorporating bizarre nonsense about gender identity into the pedagogy for young children.
Anyway I understand some things may have slipped through over the years. It may surprise you but I still don’t support all out bans on hormones or surgeries (serious medical gatekeeping on experimental treatments is another matter). But now that we’ve got record numbers of minors, many of whom clearly have a lot of other things going on, demanding major and at times irreversible medical interventions it’s time to dump the gender identity stuff and revert back to sex, which has always been the objective and appropriate categorization of most of these matters to begin with.
And look, this is America. It’s a free country and everyone is on their own journey. If William wants to change his name to Leah, have some cosmetic surgeries, and wear sun dresses on the boulevard well I’d say the first amendment means he can do just that. But he doesn’t get to swim on the womens team or show his penis to a bunch of coeds in the locker room, nor does he get to be incarcerated in a womens’ facility just because he feels more comfortable with the girls. This really isn’t that difficult and never has been.Report
On the Dem side this seems like one of the most important things to resolve. You’re never going to convince David — he’s a true believer; but the bigger problem is that the footsoldiers (i.e. those who are more partisan than ideological) are treating the extreme position as the party line to enforce, and that’s a drag on the party popularity (which is extremely low right now, as I imagine everyone has seen). Dems need a message akin to the “safe, legal, and rare” formulation for abortion to indicate compassion for trans people but not total capitulation to the extremists, that the pols can sign onto to be able to win more elections.Report
I think a lot of it is an Extremely Online phenomena. The DC burb I live in ain’t San Fran or Brooklyn (or even DC itself) but it’s in the same ballpark politically. I know that the public schools reinforce the bullsh*t but dammed if I can find anyone outside of a handful of whackadoo academic types or who work in the arts that seem to actually believe in any of it. And even among a lot of them I find that talking things through for 5 minutes walks them back to a much more reasonable position.
So it should be live and let live. People believe in a lot of weird stuff. I’m a practicing Catholic which plenty of people probably find pretty weird. But I don’t think the schools or the state or whatever public services have some duty to endorse my spiritual beliefs.
All that has to happen is for people to stop walking on egg shells. Bostock v. Clayton confirmed people calling themselves trans have the same rights as everyone else, and they do. They just aren’t due some special accommodation or endorsement of their gender metaphysics, not only because they’re obviously silly, but because the state isn’t supposed to be endorsing that sort of thing for anyone.Report
But is there a politically significant constituency that will be satisfied by this nuanced and civilized approach and switch votes or come out for Dems rather than stay home? The other side will still throw the red meat out there, and, barring a policy of curb-stomping rather than nuance (which those voters won’t believe anyway), it will still work.Report
A modest proposal:
Bring back JK Rowling. Don’t talk about anybody on our side, don’t curb stomp anybody except the opponent.
Just bring back JK Rowling and instead of comparing Trump to Hitler, compare him to Voldemort. Call Elon “Malfoy” and refer to everybody who is pro-Trump as a “Death Eater”.
We can all call ourselves “Dumbledore’s Army”.Report
That’s certainly modest.Report
I don’t think a lot or votes turn on this specific issue. What I think it does, along with a series of other issues around identity that fairly or unfairly have been associated with the Democratic party, is create a credibility problem. Or maybe a larger perception that Democrats are not focused on things regular people and/or the ones that turn elections care about. In aggregate it tends to muffle the more appealing parts of the Democrat’s message and alienate people from the politicians themselves. Most people aren’t sick political junkies like those of us that comment at OT. They hear very little and if what they hear is strange or confusing it will eventually show up in the polls.
Admittedly I lack the expertise to quantify that view but I think it explains a lot of whats going on. The Democrats aren’t the only party impacted by this, and I think we can expect a lot of headscratching at things the GOP does over the next few years, as some of the more online parts of the administration lash out about faux controversies that no one that isn’t highly engaged on TwitterX has ever heard of.Report
The people talking about the ‘least popular stuff’ are _Republicans_. If you drop it, they will simply move on to the _next_ in the list to talk about.
Hell, they already moved on to talking about how trans people in the military are dishonorable liars and they all have to leave. Were Demcorats talking about _that_? Were trans people overreach on that? No? It already was settled? Huh, weird.
—
Trans people have not asked for _anything_. Or, rather, they asked for them, and got them, mostly two decades ago. They existed, quietly, for decades. Almost entirely ignored.
They already were, quietly, using the restrooms they felt like. They already were, quietly, competing in sports and usually doing quite poorly against cis people because it turns out that screwing around with your hormones (In either direction) is actually a good way to disadvantage yourself there against cis people. Prisons were already, quietly, dealing with the situation, and as always have the discretion to assign prisoners where they, and other, were safe, which almost always ended up with trans woman alone in a cell in men’s prisons.
There is literally nothing trans people were trying to do except get some non-discrimination stuff about workplaces, because there is still massive discrimination there, and maybe make it easier to change their gender in a few states. They could already do it all states except four.
This is not some ‘trans overreach’. There was no reaching. At all.
What happened is that Republicans started yammering non-stop about trans people, at which point all the goldfish ‘political knowledgeable people’ suddenly became aware trans people existed and ‘wanted things’. Thing that, in fact, they already had, and had for decades without a problem.Report
In my time as a politically aware person I have seen it done successfully twice, once by Bill Clinton, and now again by Trump.
Part of the key is of course figuring out what does and doesn’t have a popular constituency. Trump’s big insights, whether intentionally identified or fallen into by total blind luck, was that (i) there is no serious constituency for neoconservative adventures overseas, and (ii) that there is no constituency and indeed the voting masses are downright hostile to SS and Medicare privatization schemes.
If I had to pick a constituency that the Democrats could do this with today it would probably be something like ‘university professors and administrators and people who work for NPOs/NGOs.’
Again, what’s strangest to me about this conversation is skepticism towards changing the game plan after a loss. If you can’t run the ball maybe you need to try a new blocking scheme.Report
“In my time as a politically aware person I have seen it done successfully twice, once by Bill Clinton, and now again by Trump.”
It occurs to me that you can guess who’s going to win an American political race by looking at the two candidates and thinking that if you were in jail, which one would be more likely to be standing outside the bars explaining how the whole thing was your fault and which one would be sitting inside the bars with you, saying “she sure didn’t look like no cop…?”Report
I think that an under appreciated implication of MattY’s thoughts here is the corollary to his point.
I agree, sorrowfully and reluctantly that, in the glaring blaze of hindsight, it looks like Biden did a lot of harm to the Dems out of hubris, venality and senescence (in that order).
The corollary to that point, however, is that Biden is gone; his heirs- if he even had any, are no longer extant as political forces in the party which means a great deal of the trouble the Dems face may simply be fixable by having a new set of politicians go through the crucible of primaries, define what they believe in and then they will be in a strong position to compete. The amount of movement in terms of core political beliefs and principles, for instance, is not very huge. You could disavow a very small number of fringe views, be silent on a slightly larger number of slightly less fringe views and avow some sensible reforms that don’t actually cut against but instead clarify left wing goals (permitting reform, educational excellence, most things YIMBY, etc) and probably have an excellent shot at major victory.
There, arguably, isn’t a big group of voters that’ll fight to the death against these kinds of changes. They are, instead, rooted in fashionable elites and groups. In theory, at least, that makes these changes a lot easier.Report
I am in total agreement.Report
Trump just tried to essentially ban gender-affirming care for people under 19.
I hope everyone here who was ‘just asking question’ about ‘how we need do more research on blockers for kids and what about detransition, a thing I am told is happening a lot’ is happy. Parts of the media have spent years carefully cultivating you into exactly this place, good job falling for it.
You may notice that 18 year olds are not, in fact, minors. A mere quibble, I guess.
This is along with kick trans service members out because ‘ adoption of a gender identity inconsistent with an individual’s sex conflicts with a soldier’s commitment to an honorable, truthful, and disciplined lifestyle, even in one’s personal life.’, which is about six months from calling them degenerates.
And maybe people should start trying to calculate when, exactly, in the poem to get off their ass.
Oh, sorry, queer people didn’t even _make_ the poem because the poem was written by a Lutheran Pastor who didn’t really see any problem with the government coming for queer people, even in retrospect.
Or the disabled, in fact. It really is amazing how many of you keep talking about ‘DEI’ and have not noticed that Trump actually stopped DEIA, aka, accessibility, removing any sort of initiative to hire handicapped people, including handicapped veterans.
But hey, useless eaters, am I right?
Anyway, might want to pick when in the poem you will actually acknowledge what is happening, or at least start prepping the lies to your grandkids.Report
It’s better than that. Banning trans medicine and pharmacology from American minors, and litigating against the doctors who have been practicing minor transitions through drugs and surgery, will also have the knock-on effect of, at least some extent, de-transitioning trans adults who won’t be able to find or keep a steady supply of drugs they need to maintain the transition.Report
Hey, at what point are we going to start doing something about the open fascists on this site?Report
“Trump just tried to essentially ban gender-affirming care for people under 19.”
Hold up. What’s the age of majority? Because I can’t drink until I’m 21, but I can vote at 18 and go to war. Maybe we need to harmonize the age of “adult” nessReport
Sure does seem odd that they included 18-year-olds in that, doesn’t it? Almost as though trying to establish precedent for telling anyone over the age of majority what they can and cannot do with their own bodies.
If precedent were needed.Report
Heh, it’s likely because 18 is still high-school age.
But yes, our legal regime combined with cultural assumptions with regards majority is all over the map.Report
The New York Post is reporting that the pro-Palestinian protestors who are on student visas who broke the law as part of the protests will have their student visas revoked.
Now, there’s “breaking the law” as in “smoking weed” and there’s “breaking the law” as in “watching the jury foreman pass a note that says ‘guilty’ to the bailiff” (as well as a couple of waypoints in between) and so I don’t know what “breaking the law” means in this context.
But the college protests come springtime are going to be lit.Report
OMB orders rescindedReport
They will likely be back and better written next time.Report
Yeah, no doubt on the first part. This was a battle and the pushback needs to be quick and strong.
I’m not certain on their competency levels.Report
I think we *can* be certain.Report
I heard that the next orders will be plural and name specific names.
Project A will be shut down.
Project B will be shut down.
Project C will be…
You get the idea.
If Meals on Wheels shuts down, you can ask “why? You weren’t shut down. Point to the EO that shut you down! You aren’t anywhere in A through ZZZ!!!”Report
I listened to an R congressman on NPR this morning praising DJT for doing this. He said we need to get this spending under control, and I sat there thinking, “Dude, you’re in the body that passed all this spending. Just pull it back! Pass a budget! It’s right in the Constitution!”Report
They believe – rightly so – that being honest about revenue and expenditures would be a one way ticket out of office.Report
Maybe y’all discussed it already, but Greg Palast wrote a detailed and numbers-based analysis purporting to demonstrate that all that was required for Trump’s victory was good ol’ racist voter-suppression (article is worth reading for deets on how some of these suppression schemes work), not Musk messing with machines. These schemes were successful enough to cost Harris both the popular and EC vote. The TL; DR’s are as follows, but really, read the whole thing:
Again, I’m probably late to the party on this but if you haven’t seen it, give it a read and maybe consider tossing some cash in his cup, since if we want journalists doing this kind of thing they need to eat.
https://www.gregpalast.com/trump-lost-vote-suppression-won/Report
If this analysis holds, it makes a lot of the local twittering around here about how the Dems need to throw Biden under the bus and change their messaging to better appeal to average Americans look a little frivolous.
If this analysis is valid, what the Dems REALLY need to do is get serious about calling out, challenging, and stopping Jim Crow-like voter-suppression efforts that are stacking the deck.Report
Given that these are state level activities in red states, that’s going to require a lot of legislating. Legislating that I’m not even sure is possible.
I once read that the U.S. could be thought of as a customs union instead of a country, and that seems truer and truer each day.Report
If the deck’s consistently being stacked like this, what difference does it make if your messaging is better than the other guy’s?
And maybe I still have too much misplaced faith in humanity, but I would like to believe that even a lot of people in red states don’t want to win the game by cheating. In that sense, even just consistently calling it out and continually drawing attention to it, might move the needle for them to back off on some of the more egregious examples.Report
We won in 2020Report
If it’s true then it means that state level politics, especially in purple states, has gone from important to nearly the whole fishing ball game.Report
It has always been thus. Draw the maps and decide who represents you in Congress.Report
Someone may need to let the Dems and the Groups know.Report
You would think that would be a good lesson to learn, but instead we’re trying to figure out how Dems can become just a hair more like Archie Bunker without selling their souls.Report
Your lips to His ears.Report
Your faith would indeed be misplaced. The legislature here last year created a legislatively appointed court district in the majority black capitol city and made the state level capitol police into defacto city police in Jackson because local elected courts weren’t throwing enough black people in jailReport
We also run a couple of really big insurance schemes and a huge military. But beyond that…Report
Sometime in the last few years Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) was on one of the Sunday morning shows. He had a list of talking points about things that must be purged from state voting systems (vote by mail, online registration, others). I have wondered since if he got phone calls from the Republican majority leaders in the Utah legislature pointing out that they had only recently finished installing all of those things in Utah.Report
The WH Press Secretary’s response to rescinding the OMB order is interesting in a “these are not very smart people and things got out of hand” kind of way and a disturbing kind of way too because it might imply that they are going to defy court ordersReport
The blatant stupidity of the lies is the point: Trump claims to have found 50 million dollars being used to send condoms to Hamas: https://bsky.app/profile/atrupar.com/post/3lgvoyiy26v2eReport
I may be going out on a limb here, but I think Hamas is bad and if they’re having fewer kids because we sent them some free condoms I’m not all that upset about it. They just better hope the Mossad didn’t intercept that shipment and the condoms don’t burst in ways never before seenReport
How many condoms is that and how much Hamas f*****g has to happen to make this work?Report
A billion condoms give or take.Report
It was the wrong Gaza. They were sending condoms to Mozambique.Report
Yeah I can see Trump making a mistake like thatReport
Elon made it and then Trump believed him.
Maybe this will result in Elon getting Viveked.
If that happens, you can really kiss the H1Bs goodbye.Report
https://www.audacy.com/wwl/news/local/lawmakers-threaten-superdome-funding-over-halftime-show-smut
Bring back Up With People!
Remember when Tempe lost the Super Bowl because the AZ legislature wouldn’t authorize an MLK holiday? If there’s anything bigger than government in this country, it’s the NFL. They don’t like to be irritated.Report
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/29/opinion/trump-inflation-bonds-debt-yield.html
The Bond Markets are not happyReport
Speaking of Columbia, Protesters vandalize University buildings on anniversary of Hind Rajab killing.
I clogged a bunch of toilets myself back in college.Report
The college diet has never been particularly healthy.Report
“EUROPE PLOTS TO STOP TRUMP FROM TAKING GREENLAND”-Fox News, topping itself:
https://bsky.app/profile/dandrezner.bsky.social/post/3lgwnkwzisc24Report
It’s difficult to believe how anybody could take any show that professes to be “news” seriously when they’re so very obviously biased.Report
FWIW, DEI is now polling favorably, largely because as the poster notes, Americans seem to be ornery and have pathological oppositional defiant disorder: https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/5c73ac9a456cc1f9e019d54c3cca2ced75d09d454864c674ab8f4f59d98c53b4.jpgReport
Yep. A poll from One Week Ago Today.
Not much of a gender skew! Part of the problem seems to be the Independent/Republican breakdown, according to the crosstabs.Report
These are not very bright fellows and things are getting out of hand: https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/475657302_1105985187874792_9154255246372883800_n.jpgReport
“The plane is a technical marvel but gets stuck in clouds, somehow.”Report
Marianne Faithful has died: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sgA4-bLcoN8Report
Ah, damn. What a life, though.Report
Why hasn’t Hegseth made a statement about the airport plane crash?
What else would you expect from a DUI hire?Report
He did? 7 hours ago?
Report
It’s a joke.Report
Oh, you wanted to put the “DUI hire” out there?
I would have waited for an opportunity to where I wouldn’t have had to explain “it’s a joke”.
It hits harder under those circumstances.Report
Trump apparently signs order blaming DEI and Biden for last night’s crash: https://bsky.app/profile/atrupar.com/post/3lgygvhryic2o
https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/immediate-assessment-of-aviation-safety/Report
Hey, you’re a lawyer. Could you explain Brigida v. Buttigieg to us?Report
Thin-skinned white guys with hurt fee fees sue Obama admin for changes it made in how hiring was done.Report
Changes? What changes?Report
Things that made it less of a white guys only profession and they hated that. What Trump is doing has no merit and you shouldn’t act like it does.Report
It’s not just Trump anymore. Vance is talking about it too.
Do everything you can to frame it as “thin-skinned white guys with hurt fee fees”.
If you can get that frame to stick, it’ll help defend against the charges that Vance is making right now, on camera.Report
Vance is Thiel and Trump’s dogsbody and has been largely let to the sidelines.
The E.O. seems to have blown up in their faces too quickly and they took the website on it downReport
Largely let to the sidelines? My dude, he’s going on the Sunday shows and throwing elbows.
Did you see his Face the Nation interview on Sunday?
He has some good soundbites on there and makes his case better than the journalist makes hers.Report
I had never heard about this case and it’s actually quite fascinating.
If the stuff in this summary is an accurate characterization it’s really pretty damning.
https://www.tracingwoodgrains.com/p/the-faas-hiring-scandal-a-quick-overviewReport
No! It’s about thin-skinned white guys with hurt fee fees! Say it! Say it!Report
I’m not sure one substacker is a credible weightReport
For sure and I could be convinced it’s a ‘bad take.’ However if you take a look he actually includes a bunch of the primary resources.
It also made me squirm when I saw WaPo’s headline this morning. Apparently the tower at DCA was understaffed when this happened with 2 trying to do the job of 4.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2025/01/30/dc-plane-crash-helicopter-recovery-no-survivors-potomac-river/
There’s been an ongoing local debate about whether the local airports and DCA in particular are above capacity. I had a hell of an experience a little over a year ago with an aborted landing coming into Dulles from Frankfurt. This combined with the litigation paint it in a terrifying new light.Report
It’s worth noting that this was not designed to increase diversity, it was just really poorly designed assessment of multiple traits. Also, they stopped using it in 2018.
The answer key with the weightings for each question used to be online, but it looks like the link is dead.Report
Assuming those email transcripts are not fake, it is rather shocking that the people involved felt so secure in their positions that they had no concerns about sending overt “here’s how to cheat” instructions from their actual work email accounts.
(There’s nothing that suggests ATC failure-to-perform was at issue in this event, though.)Report
The answers and question weights were put online as early as 2015.Report
Sure, and it’s since been eliminated. But if people can’t defend it on the merits then what’s the point? Even though it seems to have been eliminated we’re still apparently dealing with the pipeline constriction it caused, plus we probably have a bunch of less than competent personnel in ATC that were hired when the test was in effect.Report
I don’t think anyone but the FAA’s lawyers have bothered trying to defend it. Maybe whoever was contracted to build it. The air traffic controller subreddit is full of stories about people who either aged out, or almost aged out, because it took them so many times to pass it. It was a really bad metric, and should be a lesson in metric building.Report
Agree that early indicators are that the US Army and/or DOD are at fault not ATC.
But yea, the documents seem to show that you have a black aviator trade association lobby convincing the government to put a non skill based personality test designed to weed out white applicants in front of the objective merit test and on top of it a representative of that lobby group instructing black applicants how to navigate the otherwise nearly ‘unpassable’ personality test. Meanwhile the pipeline from the traditional programs starts to collapse.
If there isn’t more to this story it really is outrageous. Peoples’ lives are at stake with this kind of thing yet we’re supposed to believe that the narrow question of demographic representation is more important? Give me a break.Report
If the reporting on this is correct, the ‘shocking’ takeaway will be that it constricted applicants in a demand heavy field.
That is, whatever good it thought to have been achieving was so horribly executed that it did harm to the common good — without reference to race, diversity or equity.Report
Absolutely. But let me put my chaos theory cap on for a minute.
There are some very interesting comments in the Tracing Woodgrains substack. Among them are those that note that affirmative action, or DEI hiring, tend to be sold as something like ‘when presented with roughly equal candidates, we give the minority (or female, or whatever) candidate the tiebreaker.’
One could still debate whether that’s good policy, but it’s really misleading in terms of what actually goes on. And indeed, when the tiebreaker approach fails to create the desired demographic representation, behind the scenes, all kinds of crazy things up being implemented, encouraged, and tolerated that never would be in any other context. Apparently that can include strangling the pipeline of candidates for critical in demand jobs with huge public safety risks and economic ramifications arising from under staffing.
Anyway I am not ready to trade the chaos theory cap for the MAGA hat, not remotely. But I am starting to be convinced that the only way to secure the motte is to destroy the bailey, if you get my meaning.Report
Agreed; there are some layers here to unpack.Report
Something to remember is that ATC is a profession, and professionals get certifications, and as long as you’ve passed the certification you’re able to do the job, and there is no “better” or “worse”; there’s only “has the cert” and “does not have the cert”.
Like, that’s the joke-that’s-not-a-joke, “what do you call the doctor who graduated last in his class at med school? DOCTOR!” Doctoring is a profession, professionals get certifications, and while a smarter person might be able to get more certifications a less-smart person with a certification has a guaranteed minimum performance which is considered sufficient to the needs of the job.
So suggesting that ATC was hiring “less smart” candidates does not necessarily mean that they were hiring unqualified candidates; if you pass the school and got the cert you can do the job, whether you’re Einstein or Lennie Small.Report
Agreed… from the reporting I’ve read from Trace there are two observable outcomes:
1. The total number of certified applicants is lower than it should be owing to the screening process. This has impacted staffing levels nationwide… with the various ‘reputable’ reporting agencies noting 90% of all airfields are under-capacity.
2. On account of #1 over-screening on non-relevant metrics, the overall quality of certified applicants is lower – that is the % of actual qualifying Certs are of one level and not the higher level.
What isn’t being alleged from ‘serious people’ is that any of the ATC people weren’t qualified to be certified or ATC workers. If anything, the issue is that the bottleneck created a pipeline problem that has led to understaffing and, perhaps relevant to this case, an ATC having to cover too many processes while on the job.Report
Trump has issued an EO attacking schools that allow students to socially transition in any manner, and threatening to have the AG charge teachers for going along with with it.
This is, to repeat, threatening arrest of teachers who use the names that students wish them to use. It is not about restrooms, it is not about medication, it is not about informing parents. This is threatening the arrest, of teachers, that do not oppose students who, wish to use another name and pronoun. Even if they have the permission of their parents.
To be clear, this is not some weird interpretation of the EO. It literally says that. It is very clear.
Good to see so many people on this actual exact page that propose pre-emptivingly caving on trans issues as some sort of triangulation, a thing that surely makes logical sense.
So, again I ask: When _exactly_ do we actually start recognizing what is going on?
Is it next week, when they going after parents for it?
Is it when they go after gay students?
I am asking people to actually _state the line_ that they are waiting for Trump to cross to call it fascism. Draw it in the sand.
And maybe that will make you all stop being cowards.Report
Some of us are already well set on that line and how far across it the administration is. Others will never set the line because it’s all a funny game which they sincerely believe will never harm them.
And then there are those here who support him. Who are mostly silent.Report
I think Philip has it correct. There are people who realize what is going on and I think resistance is starting to snap in line. But there is still division over tactics. Marshall who is nobody’s idea of a slouch thinks calm and steady wins the resistance: https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/calm-amidst-the-storm
“But this is also fundamentally a battle for public opinion, which means it’s about the next election and sowing divisions in the majority party. That means it’s very much a long haul. Unsatisfying and scary, yes, but that doesn’t make it less the reality. The whole game here is whipping up false perceptions of urgency that can’t be met which leads people to despair and giving up.
I tend to think of these things in a political form of the “serenity prayer” usually attributed to the 20th century theologian Reinhold Niebuhr: know what power you lack, use the power you have to the maximum extent possible and do your best to distinguish between the two. “Serenity” sounds to many people to very much fail to meet the moment. But serenity is actually power. (It’s also resilience but let’s focus for now on the power part of the equation.) This is of necessity very much an asymmetric confrontation. It can’t not be. The White House has all the executive authority and, indirectly, the congressional power as well. When Trump or Bannon or Steven Miller talk about overwhelming the opposition, they really mean goading them to meet every new thrust as a pitched battle on open ground which they’ll of course lose since — to extend the metaphor — the Republicans have a big army and the Democrats have no army. Because of the 2024 election. So Democrats keep running out onto the open field with no power or defense and getting crushed, which creates these repeated set pieces of helplessness and impotence. That amounts to free programming for Donald Trump. To stretch the metaphor a bit further, this is for the moment a guerrilla conflict for the Democrats — cutting communications and supply lines, taking out fuel and arms depots and then running back into the hills. As we said yesterday: “Find what you can actually do that’s not begging or meaningless and then do it.”
There is palpably an appetite for someone to be the opposition to all of this. And what works as an opposition is knowing where the footholds of power actually are and using those aggressively and to the hilt. There’s is nothing to be gained by begging Republicans to do this or that. You attack them for supporting what’s happening. Raise the stakes. Gaining credibility as an opposition means demonstrating you know how to do it, that you can land wounds, catch your opponents off guard, leave them confused or force them to come to you. Results.”
The problem is that there seem to be a good chunk of people whose response to what Trump is doing is to quadruple down on norms*. Democrats are seemingly united on the spending freezes being chaos but the debate about dying on the hill of transrights is strong everywhere. I’m a “at first they came for the” kind of guy but opinion is split so far. Even Trump’s nominees can’t produce a unified wall of no yet. Burgum received 25 yes votes from Democrats and Democrats will debate endlessly on whether it should be a unified wall of no on everything or whether powder should be used successfully.
And if Trump is determined to rule lawlessly for the next four years and just ask “how many divisions does Congress and the Supreme Court have?” The pushback response to that is something that people would probably like to keep at the back of their brains.
*I swear there is a certain kind of person that thinks the worst thing in the world is to show any kind of heightened emotion or anger because they think it means their opponent got under their skin. They can be on a train to Dachau and they would still be tut tutting the person who is angry over this instead of the person who put them on the train to Dachau.Report
To be very clear, I am not panicked. In real life, I am slowly and methodically doing many things, a lot of which I will not say here, but mostly consist of making sure people are safe.
What I am doing _here_ is merely trying to get people to pay attention, because I am trying to figure out the arguments that can cause politically active people to stop being stupid.
Or, was. Instead what I’m getting here is a lot of people inadvertently answering the question: What would you do in Germany in the early 1930s?
A lot, and I mean a _lot_, of people are completely failing this test.Report
One of the pieces that needs to be included in this is a sober ability to say “wow, Trump is doing well here” or, worse, “wow, Trump’s team is doing well here”.
If you stubbornly insist that Trump isn’t succeeding anywhere, he never scores a good point, and never says something that 50%+1 of the electorate agrees with despite the fact that you made talking about such things taboo, you’re going to require a 100-year plague to take him (or his team) down again.
The good news: there’s a chicken flu going around and it resulted in a chicken cull and you can ask about the price of eggs for a couple of weeks.Report
Jaybird, we understand you do not understand what is going on, but this discussion is _not_ about whether or not Trump is doing ‘well’, it is whether or not elected Democrats and the people on this site and the public at large understand he and his administration have explicitly become genocidal against trans people, and that other minorities are next.
We do not actually care he has not accomplished much there. And we don’t particularly care, in this context, if the trains run on time.Report
Maybe your obvious moral superiority will do an even better job of being communicated to the riffraff if the trains start showing up.
“This *PROVES* that they’re fascists!” you can tell them.Report
This is why I’m skeptical that nuanced distancing on LGBTQ issues would swing significant numbers of votes. Who, exactly, would vote for a Democrat supporting 85% of the agenda when they can vote for the real thing?Report
Here’s a report from the DNC leadership meetings they’re having before they vote in a new DNC head.
Protestors are, of course, interrupting it.
What’s weird is that the protestors are interrupting the people who signed the various pledges the protest groups behind the protestors asked them to sign.
It’s, like, it doesn’t matter that they signed them!Report
“How dare you acquiesce to our demands and take away our justification for protesting! We demand that you stop acquiescing to our demands!”Report
From a former OTer:
“Trump announces federal funding freeze via EO.
Head of OMB issues a memo with specifics.
Judge orders a temporary restraining order.
OMB rescinds memo.
Press secretary says the freeze is still on, the memo was just withdrawn to avoid the court order.
Judge orders the temporary restraining order on freezing spending, citing the Press Secretary’s public statement.
Today, all funding requests made by postdocs for their salaries have been unilaterally rejected by NSF.”
Trump is announcing he is going to rule unilaterally and ask how many divisions does Congress and the Courts have?Report
Zaid has a pretty good essay: Democrats Are Blaming Activist Groups for Kamala Harris’s Loss, but the Problem Is Much Deeper.
My take on it is this: You might be able to run with this sort of thing if everybody who goes to college (or close enough to most everybody) ends up with a good career that is capable of paying off their college loans.
In a world where people are screaming for college debt forgiveness, the belief system that gets adopted by college goers is much less attractive.
Why are you so sure of your belief system? You cry out that you can’t afford it!Report
Jaybird, I would like a single bit of evidence that Democrats made a bigger issues of trans people than Republicans did this election.Report
I guess it depends on whether or not you count the stuff that the candidates said in 2019 or 2020.
If you are saying “NO! YOU ONLY HAVE TO COUNT 2024!!!!” then, obviously, it was all Donald Trump.
“Why? What did Trump do?”
“He ran ads quoting Harris in 2019 and 2020.”Report
Jaybird, I would like a single bit of evidence that Democrats made a bigger issues of trans people in 2020 than Republicans did in 2020 or 2024. You just sorta redirected back to 2020 without saying the example.
This because the example you cited last time on this topic was ‘prisoners should receive standard medical care’, a thing that not only is true in general, but prisons are extremely obviously a place where you can make the population angry for any nonsensical reason.
“Democrats are using OUR TAX MONEY to pay for food for convicted RAPISTS of CHILDREN.”
Yeah, that’s what happens when you imprison people, you have to pay for their care. That is not a policy choice per se, and more the fact that killing prisoners by withholding necessities from them is, uh, not only unconstitutional but very literally psychopathic.
As a ‘policy’, this is nonsense.
Do you have an example of a _policy_ that Democrats made, or will your next example be something like ‘Democrats continue to enforce laws that make it illegal to murder trans people where they stand!’Report
Oh, is that what Kamala was quoted as saying in the ad that swung 2% of the undecideds who watched it?Report
Again, you have, very mysteriously, not listed a policy that helped trans people, and instead have chosen to present an example of the thing that prisons are constitutionally required to do (provide healthcare) and that Harris and the Democrats did not do.
In fact, the idea that prisons have to provide gender-affirming care was decided by the courts, in Edmo v. Idaho Department of Correction. And others. The court decision is also correct, the courts have long held that denying medical care to inmates is ‘cruel and unusual punishment’.
But none of that is important, because we’re not talking about that. We’re _trying_ to talk about the thing you assert has been happening, where Democrats do a lot of stuff that is pro-trans and there is ‘pushback’ to that.
And I am asking you, again, to _literally name a single example_. One that wasn’t, in fact, done by the courts. You seem incredibly sure this has been happening, please name one instance.Report
So we’ve pivoted from making a bigger issue to specific policies?
Sure, I am willing to talk about a single specific policy that was rolled back just today (or maybe yesterday).
The CDC now refers to “pregnant women” rather than “pregnant people”.
The language change was not mandated by the courts.
“But that’s rinky dink! That doesn’t matter! It doesn’t matter!”
I’d say that it matters around 2%.Report
So we are at the point that the only example of ‘pro-trans policy’ is a government agency using slightly different phrasing.
Is that your final answer?
I’m not arguing it doesn’t technically fit the criteria I laid out, I guess is it a policy that Democrats did, but I don’t even have to point out how weaksauce that thing is, you already know how weaksauce that is because you preemptively apologized for it.
But…it doesn’t work as an example of _priorities_ anyway. If you go back to the original comment, we are talking about what ‘kind of issues’ are ‘prioritized’ by the Democratic party. That was the original claim.
You have managed to track down a single tiny pro-trans thing that ‘Democrats did’, but it sure as hell was not presented as any sort of priority. The people who brought it up as a talking point were _Republicans_, not the Democrats. The Democrats just…silently did it. Not even them. The administrators that Democrats staffed the government with silently did it. It’s not even a law.
Since apparently I need to clarify: Do you have anything pro-trans that the Democrats _presented as a thing they were going to do_? And then did?
Either in an election as a platform, or as some sort of policy statement, or anything like that.Report
(In case you’re wondering why I am harping on this, it’s because you don’t actually speak to any trans people on this, who know damn well that neither the Biden administration, nor the Harris campaign, actually did anything for trans people, not even speaking to fight against the massive wave of anti-trans laws. It is laughable to claim elected Democrats were too pro-trans.)Report
Nope. I just have stuff like “the stuff they said in 2019/2020” and “rinky-dink phrasing choices”.
And these trivial tiny things, that you admit don’t matter, are part of why they lost in 2024 to Donald Freakin’ Trump.
Was it worth it?Report
Made-up math makes everything easy.Report
I didn’t make it up. I got it from the New York Times.
Report
Jaybird, the argument being made here by me is not that the trans issue didn’t change things.
My argument is that that Democrats didn’t ‘support’ trans people ‘too much’, but instead were incredibly neutral towards them, saying things like ‘the courts says we provide healthcare to prisoners, including gender affirming care’ and ‘there’s already some legal protection for discrimination’.
Incredibly milquetoast statements. And no policy changes at all, as evidenced by the fact you have to dig up the most trivial wording change and pretend it means anything at all.
What happened is a populist demagogue started railing about a minority and running ads about about how the other side wouldn’t make that minority cease to exist, but instead kept saying vague platitudes about them.
Those are not the same thing.
Which means that when you say ‘The Democrats shouldn’t have left themselves open for attack’, the only way for them to do that is to do the same thing as the populist demagogue, preemptively. They can’t stop doing what they are doing, because they aren’t doing anything. All they can do is also do what they other party is doing and attack trans people the same.
Actually…do worse. Because moving to that point would just move the demagogue farther into attacking the group. Or expanding it into gay people. So the Democrats would have to keep following them, presumable straight into, I dunno, where does the story _sound_ like it ends up?Report
I didn’t say that they shouldn’t have left themselves open for attack.
I said that the whole enlightened cosmopolitan thing will only work if getting an enlightened cosmopolitan degree results in getting an enlightened cosmopolitan job that will pay off your enlightened cosmopolitan debt.
If you’re instead screaming about how you need the government to pay off your student loans, your views will not only be seen as alien but also useless.
You turned that into asking for evidence that Democrats made a bigger deal of the trans thing than Republicans did.
Over the weekend, Newsweek had an article that requires all of the trigger warnings about a prisoner on death row who transitioned and also got a resentence from the death penalty to six life sentences plus 106 years.
Republicans will, no doubt, make a big deal out of this.
You can ask “how did the Democrats make a bigger deal out of this than the Republicans?” and I can only say that the Democrats set it up that Ms. Lee could achieve the inner peace that she so desperately needed and did it quietly and without making a big deal out of it at all. Well, other than a Newsweek puff piece.
And when the New York Post writes an inevitable piece criticizing Ms. Lee using provocative (perhaps even crude) language and sensationalizing the stuff that requires a trigger warning rather than focusing on how Ms. Lee is a better person today than when she identified as her deadname, you will easily be able to make the case that the New York Post is making a far bigger deal out of this than the people who changed the policy allowing Ms. Lee to live her life as her authentic self did.
You can easily make that case.
To be honest, the people who oppose this sort of thing really come off as troglodytes who have very little empathy for Ms. Lee, focusing instead on the stuff that requires trigger warnings.Report
So what I’m going to do here is write that sentence down, that you agree that Democrats did not, in fact, do anything to open themselves up to this attack.
And I will be repeated posting that the next time you start talking about why Harris lost due to how actively pro-trans she was, by reminding you agree that Democrats did not actually do anything pro-trans and for them to not been attacked on trans issues would have required them swinging hard anti-trans, to match the other party. (And somehow have done that decades ago.)
And the other party’s position on trans issues is *checks notes as of 2/3/2025* holy f_cking sh_t. I’m not even going to try to describe it.
And if you want to make the argument that _both_ parties should turn to minority-bashing and oppression, you’re going to have to make it explicitly.Report
“You said ‘X’.”
“I didn’t say ‘X’. Let me copy and paste what I said: ‘Y’.”
“So you agree with ‘~X’.”Report
You’re right, the Democrats had plenty of opportunities to say “despite what the Republicans want you to think, we are not going to ram any kind of Trans Agenda down your throats” and they did not take those opportunities.Report
Probably because it seemed such a juvenile thing to say. What with not having done that at all while in office, other then trying to make sure trans people could get standard of care and not be harassed in their workplaces.Report
Philip: other then trying to make sure trans people could get standard of care and not be harassed in their workplaces.
The two issues that seem problematic are what to do about young trans children and what to do about trans athletes.
https://www.foxsports.com.au/more-sports/bearded-man-smashes-womens-weightlighting-record-held-by-trans-lifter/news-story/92986fdec0b7e855b8b6f6271d938e8dReport
What to do about young trans people is let parents and doctors decide together how to treat them. Which is what was already occurring. And is similar to what parents keep being told is their right regarding books.
As to the red herring of trans athletes – what exactly is the issue? How many championships are they winning compared to cisgender persons? How many are there? The NCAA claims 100 out of 500000 collegiate athletes. Even if that number is low I don’t see anything that’s an issue – especially an issue that requires draconian destruction.Report
As to the red herring of trans athletes – what exactly is the issue?
And there you go. I post a link to an openly male athlete winning at women’s sports because he’s willing to check a box that says he’s female (see my link), and the counter claim is that’s an acceptable outcome because it’s rare. (If I’m misstating that stance please say how).
The issue is parents of females don’t want their kids potentially matched up against males. Worse, the basic ideology which claims that guy is female because he’s willing to check a box looks nuts.
A politician or activist who proclaims this is acceptable or even desirable is also proclaiming they shouldn’t be trusted on this issue.
If the movement wants to be believed on “this is medically necessary for children” then they shouldn’t be openly undermining their creditability.Report
Did she have to meet any qualification for the sports governing body? Attest to psychological care prior to hormones or transition (which is standard of care)?
And again – how often does this occur? And why do you think modern parents want to retain rigid gender segregation based on secondary sexual characteristics? Or do you think girls can’t beat boys in boys sport?Report
Phil: Did she have to meet any qualification for the sports governing body?
You really should read the link. The “qualification” was apparently checking a box.
And this is the logical outcome of an ideology which claims gender is a social construct which can change based on subjective feelings.
So this outcome is what this ideology claims is desired and appropriate.
And again – how often does this occur?
This ideology is claiming “not often enough”.
Or do you think girls can’t beat boys in boys sport?
We separate genders for extremely good reasons. Big picture the “male” package is over powered for most sports. That the occasional girl can bet the occasional boy doesn’t change that.
And what is the argument you’re trying to make here? That we shouldn’t separate the genders in sports? Are you seriously claiming that men beating up women in a ring or on a court is acceptable?Report
Hey, Dark Matter, what if I were to tell you that that obviously stupid policy was changed to actually require checking testosterone levels a few months later _by_ the governing body of the sport?
You know, like the IOC and pretty much all international sports organizations recommend.
And…trans people do not complain about this.
https://www.powerlifting.sport/fileadmin/ipf/data/rules/IPF_Trangender_Policy_21.8.2023_v3.pdf
You notice the date on that in the URL? September 8, 2023. And the date on that video? The competition was the March 23, 2023.
Five and half months. That feels like ‘Literally the next meeting of the national organization’ to me. I don’t really know they work, but this is an national organization that managed to decide to change their rules, and actually change their rules (Yes, those are often two different things), and get them published, in five and a half months, which honestly feels rather astonishing.
And again, this is not something trans people object to. This is no trans person saying people should self-identify into sports. (Although you will find a lot of them pointing out that essentially no laws care about the rules of sports _except_ somehow when it’s about them, and also that sports are literally unimportant recreational activities and should not be involved in policy discussions _at all_, and we certainly shouldn’t be basing legal policy on sports being ‘better’ or whatever.)
This is not some ideological thing this guy found. It’s a loophole of an organization that was careless. In fact, under their old rules, he shouldn’t have been allowed either, because he was supposed to produce some ID with that gender on it, and he has none.
A loophole that got fixed immediately.
And somehow, this has political meaning. A loophole in an event that happened in a different country, under the control of a sports organization in that country, that was a bit slow on the uptake about the recommended way to do this but fixed it immediately. About an activity that is _entirely_ recreational and has no actual meaning for anything at all.
Weird how that’s somehow meaningful to US politics or serves as an example of anything.Report
“what if I were to tell you that that obviously stupid policy was changed to actually require checking testosterone levels a few months later _by_ the governing body of the sport?”
Why did they change the policy?
Were they already planning to change the policy?
“It’s a loophole of an organization that was careless. In fact, under their old rules, he shouldn’t have been allowed either, because he was supposed to produce some ID with that gender on it, and he has none.”
Intriguing. Tell me more about your support for a cruel heartless reactionary gender-purist regime that insists on Official Documentation for your actual identity.Report
Really? Those are the only two that seem problematic?
Have you tried pointing that out to the Trump administration, which has currently stopped research about any sort of trans people, calling it ‘trans ideology’, and has deleted a bunch of existing data like from public access?
Or blocked medical access and threatened to arrest people who provide it for people who are 18? Not under 18…under 19. Sure is sounding like they think _no one_ can consent to transition.
Who have decided to forcible de-transition prisoners? And note I’m not talking about ‘not transitioning’ or ‘what prison people are in’, I’m talking about, for example, trans women who have been in prison and fully transitioned for decades, and the Trump administration is not only trying to (It has been blocked for now) sending them to male prisons, demanding they use their old names, trying to cut their hair, but also refusing to provide hormone prescriptions. (Which to be clear, are incredibly cheap, just in case anyone is going to pretend it is about cost.) Many of these are women who cannot produce testosterone anymore, and thus will be left with no sex hormones, which of course poses long term risks.
Because it really looks like you got pretty badly motte-baileyed here, to use the official term of this site, and that what the people pushing these concerns _claim_ have an issue with is not actually limited to that.
In fact, they appear to dislike trans people existing at all.
Maybe at some point we start thinking about these two ‘problematic’ issues in the context of the very obvious goals of the people who keep talking about those things. (And, as I pointed out below, the government doesn’t even _regulate_ sports rules, so that’s almost nonsensical to pretend is somehow a political concern.)Report
The people who respond to this won’t be moved by Democrats taking a “moderate” position on LGBTQ issues; they want their real thing. What they want we cannot and should not give them, if for no better reason than that it won’t work. But sure, let’s pretend that there is some subtle and civilized play here.Report
I’m going to bow out of these exchanges because I think it’s all been beaten to death and we are swiftly approaching point of more heat than light.
However I think what you’re saying here is really worth examining and thinking very hard about. Because if it’s something like ‘If you have concerns about boys playing on the girls field hockey team then you should vote for the Republicans’ I think we are truly effed. And I emphasize we, because as much as people here like to treat me otherwise I am in fact a Democrat.Report
We’re not going to do what we never said we were going to do?Report
“We’re not going to do what we never said we were going to do?”
Does it seem like not saying it worked out for you guys?Report
Jaybird’s hardwiring towards contrarianism circumvents all senses of dignity and decency.Report
DavidTC: I would like a single bit of evidence that Democrats made a bigger issues of trans people than Republicans did this election.
The GOP was clearly making a bigger deal of this than Team Blue.
The better question is whether the GOP was nut picking or whether they were attacking something Team Blue backs but main street doesn’t. If it’s the later then Blue knows the general public doesn’t back Blue activists but they can’t/won’t disown them… and don’t want to talk about it.Report
Modern Democrats seem like the kind of people who can’t recognize the joke in “World Ends, Women And Minorities Hardest Hit”.Report
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/1328c91bbcbedb713d0c2ce2d3bab0ff2c33f2114cbd4890ec5d89cfb77c51d4.jpg
But sure get your underwear in a twist about transpeople.Report
“That’s Different.”Report
I am not at all shocked to find out Joe Rogan astroturfed VP Harris.
https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/5111125-harris-rogan-deal-fallout/?Report
The main thing that surprises me about that is, if The Hill is being accurate here, why in the heck would Kamala’s staff spread the malicious rumor that staffers didn’t want her going on Rogan’s show?Report
Because some of them didn’t. She clearly directed otherwise, and the ones that didn’t want her there saw this as an “I told you so” moment. It happens. It doesn’t mean anything hover since those staffers didn’t win the battle at the time. Or so it appears.Report
Hey, so, I guess that renders all the ‘Harris should have gone on Rogan and it was a huge mistake not to’ discussion into utter gibberish, right?Report
Sadly, I don’t think it does because of articles like this.
Palmieri may be lying.
But what she said was not gibberish.Report
No, Jaybird, what she said was not gibberish.
What we all talked about, while operating off lying sources, was gibberish. There was an entire discussion here (I think more than one) about how Harris _choosing_ not to go on Rogan was her fatal mistake and maybe she could have won, or at least come out better, if she had chosen to.
It turns out, she did not, in fact, choose not to go on Rogan. She tried, and was pretty overtly blocked by him. (And while it might be possibly she could have fought her way past that, it was clear at that point he was actively hostile to her appearance and was pro-Trump, despite pretending otherwise, which means it would be incredibly stupid to go on to a show he controlled.)
Which means the discussion on this site about her ‘choice’ was utter gibberish.
—
You know, this is the second comment I’ve written in a row where we’re talked about how people on this site have been _very_ wrong about why Harris lost. It wasn’t the ‘choice’ she made not to go on Rogan, which she didn’t do, and it wasn’t her pushing a pro-trans agenda, which she didn’t do.
Weird how everyone keep being wrong about this, and moreover, appear to be wrong in exactly one direction, whereas every wrong conception of her loss asserts she should have moved more towards center. It’s almost as if this is calculated misinformation where the center libs once again fail because they have absolutely no solutions for anything or any way they can make anything better…but then blame the actual left for those losses, so they can demand even _further_ movement into Democrats being a Republican Lite party that literally no one wants to vote for.
Ah, I’m being conspiratorial.Report
What we all talked about, while operating off lying sources, was gibberish.
Is the new source lying? Because if the new source is lying, you may be hoodwinked.
Weird how everyone keep being wrong about this, and moreover, appear to be wrong in exactly one direction, whereas every wrong conception of her loss asserts she should have moved more towards center.
For what it’s worth, I think that he loss is due to the fact that she is a hollow person without any opinions of her own that have not been pre-chewed and pre-delivered to her.
She said what she did in 2019 and 2020 not because she believed it, but because she believed that it would bring her power.
She said what she did in 2024 not because she believed it, but because she believed that it would bring her power.
Any argument that says that she should have mouthed different platitudes that she didn’t believe is going to make the same mistake.
That said, if an empty suit is going to mouth platitudes, it is better to mouth platitudes that have a majority of support out there than platitudes that have a minority of support.
Lest you find yourself having to avoid topics that are unpopular and leave your supporters saying stuff like “but she’s not running on that!” or “that was back in 2019!”Report
Vice President Kamala Harris wasn’t performing well in softball interviews as her sugar high faded in September and early October. But if she wanted to expand her support — and she needed to — she would have to expose herself to tough questioning
Then the article talks about how Rogan more or less refused to meet with Harris. Because reporters never want exclusives with potential Presidents.
But fine, let’s ignore Rogan’s incentives all seem to be stacked the other way and assume that’s true.
Rogan isn’t the only reporter/podcaster/news source/etc.
What non-softball interviews did Harris do instead?
If the answer is “Harris never did hard interviews, ever”, then the issue probably wasn’t that everyone who could conceivably give a hard interview was on a fishing trip on every day between September and the election.Report
Rogan is not a reporter. And I don’t say that to diminish or insult him. (Although to be clear I would like to diminish him and insult him as much as possible, and I shall pause here and do so: Rogan is a credulous dumbass who has actively harmed this country by platforming people who should not be platformed and giving weigh to outright conspiracy theories.)
Anyway, back to being polite: Rogan is not a reporter, and has never claimed to be a reporter. He doesn’t even claim to be political. He claims to just be some entertainment guy with a podcast.
Politics doesn’t do hardball interviews anymore. If Trump won’t do them (He honestly seems to have backed off even softball interviews!), it seems odd for the Democrats to be expected to.Report
Chuck Todd is parting ways with NBC.
Maybe NBC will hire someone who isn’t a secret Republican this time.Report
I tried to post two comments here and they seem to have vanished. Someone want to check into that?Report
I think I caught it.Report
Musk purges career nonpolitical Treasury official that displeased him: https://meidasnews.com/news/musk-allies-push-out-top-career-treasury-department-officialReport
Not the first or last to suffer his wrath.Report
MSU college obeys in advance and abruptly cancels Lunar New Year celebration: https://statenews.com/article/2025/01/msu-college-abruptly-cancels-lunar-new-year-event-citing-trump-ordersReport
This really seems like an overreaction.Report
2025
This really seems like an overreactionReport
I’ll stand firm in my conviction. If people want to make the efforts of DJT and his ilk easier, this kind of thing will continue to happen. We can whine about it on the internet, or we can actually do something about it.Report
I don’t disagree in the least and didn’t mean to give another impression. I was just trying to make a joke about [gestures around at EVERYTHING OCCURRING AT THE MOMENT].Report
Whoosh! Stupid internet.Report
Part of the premise of fascism is that people ‘voluntarily’ overreact and comply in advance, because the regime is always extremely erratic, lashing out at random, and that is no possible way to actually follow the rules perfectly and be safe. So the only possible thing to is ‘virtue signal’ that you are trying as best as you can, please, daddy, don’t hit me.
No, I’m not making a joke there, fascism, when taken a as a whole, looks very much like how abusive relationships with huge power dynamics(1) work, and people under fascism react in much the same way as people do to abusers with power over them. Often by desperately trying to please them in advance so the abusers target someone else instead of them. Sometimes even offering up targets.
1) Aka, things like parent/child abusive relationships. Relationships where the victim can exit the relationship look a little different and the abuser has slightly less power, has to occasionally cave and pretend to offer care and support. Although of course, the abuser doesn’t like that and will always try fix that situation so the victim cannot leave.Report
The bring down costs President: https://www.nytimes.com/live/2025/01/30/us/president-trump-newsReport
“Mister Voters, you could have saved the Republic, I gave you all the clues.”
Trump is announcing steep 25% tariffs on America’s biggest trading partners. The tariffed countries can get this steep tariff waived or lowered by bribing Trump in the open and there is nothing that can be done about this thanks to the infinite wisdom of the Supreme Court. We are being ruled by a literal gangster.Report
“Was it important enough to save the Republic that you run an actual candidate that didn’t suck?”
“THIS INTERVIEW IS OVER!”Report
Jaybrid, is it always the Democratic Party’s fault in your world view? Trump was open about what he was going to do and is doing what he says he was going to do. Being a citizen comes with agency. People should have paid attention and vote for the candidate that was not going to do a coup.Report
It depends on what we’re talking about.
When it comes to losing an election after running a gawdawful candidate?
Um… yeah. That’s something that I’d be willing to put on the Dems.
The possibility, of course, exists that America preferred a return to Trump after four years of Biden at which point there is another conversation we could have about Democratic Leadership.Report
To put a finer point on it:
If the Democrats are impotent and incapable of fighting back against Trump without the headwinds of a 100-year plague at their back, I do not blame them for Trump winning.
But neither do I blame the voters for choosing someone like Trump over a party so impotent and incapable.Report
Well there ya go Saul- that’s not the tone or attitude you’d get from a right wing troll who’s gleeful that Trump is in office. That’s genuine irritation that Harris lost showing through the normal contrarian and detached tone.Report
Musk, an unelected person in charge of a non-existing program is locking government workers out of computer systems at a US agency: https://www.reuters.com/world/us/musk-aides-lock-government-workers-out-computer-systems-us-agency-sources-say-2025-01-31/
“The systems include a vast database called Enterprise Human Resources Integration, which contains dates of birth, Social Security numbers, appraisals, home addresses, pay grades and length of service of government workers, the officials said.
“We have no visibility into what they are doing with the computer and data systems,” one of the officials said. “That is creating great concern. There is no oversight. It creates real cybersecurity and hacking implications.”
Officials affected by the move can still log on and access functions such as email but can no longer see the massive datasets that cover every facet of the federal workforce.
Musk, OPM, representatives of the new team, and the White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
OPM has sent out memos that eschew the normal dry wording of government missives as it encourages civil servants to consider buyout offers to quit and take a vacation to a “dream destination.”
Don Moynihan, a professor at the Ford School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan, said the actions inside OPM raised concerns about congressional oversight at the agency and how Trump and Musk view the federal bureaucracy.
“This makes it much harder for anyone outside Musk’s inner circle at OPM to know what’s going on,” Moynihan said.”Report
Musk’s crew continues:
https://www.doomsdayscenario.co/p/a-red-alert-for-democracy-the-patel-fbi-purge-beginsReport
https://bsky.app/profile/whstancil.bsky.social/post/3lh353p4mtc2iReport
A second plane crash. This one is in Philly.
I don’t know if Saul has made a joke about it yet.Report
The second crash was an “Angel Flight”, apparently. A mom and daughter flown from Mexico to get medical treatment and they were flying back home. 4 crew, 2 people… the kid and the person escorting her.Report
You don’t? I checked. He didn’t.Report
We are watching a coup d’etat play out before our highs and people want to blame Democrats rather than the people actually doing the coup d’etat.Report
As far as I can tell, the people who voted for the Republicans are saying something to the effect of “holy cow, this is *EXACTLY* what I voted for!!!”
And if you don’t think that it was important enough to have a real convention in order to prevent this, well… who do you expect to disagree with you?Report
Heh that’s just Captain Hindsighting Jay. For all we know had a convention been held we’d be looking at bigger losses as a bloodied and divided party crashed and burned worse in November* and you’d be here saying “you thought it wasn’t important enough to unify behind a candidate quickly in order to prevent this, well… who do you expect to disagree with you?”
*And, yes, it’s also possible some remarkable and gifted politician could also have risen from the scrum, united the party, raised tons of money and trounced Trump but you keep pointing out that many of the Dems politician and apparatus people are heavily into DEI stuff- who do you think would have been choosing the new candidate at the convention?Report
“Jeez, Jaybird! Unite behind whom?”
“Kamala Harris, of course!”
Anyway.
I still think that Pritzker would have done better than Harris.Report
I don’t know that you’re wrong, you could be right, but you could also be catastrophically wrong. Counterfactuals are hard as fish. Me, when I wanna daydream, I imagine Biden had bowed out after the midterms or, if I’m really ambitious, if he hadn’t run in 2020 in the first place.Report
What would “catastrophically wrong” look like in this situation?
Losing 7 of 7 swing states?
If so, I have bad news.Report
Catastrophically wrong would be like the reverse of Obamas victory in 2008: the GOP with 60 or more Senators and a much bigger margin of victory than 3 congrescritters, obviously.Report
Well then, let me say this: I don’t think that Pritzker would have done worse than Harris ended up doing.
He would not have given the GOP 60 or more Senators and would have lost no more congressional seats than Harris lost.Report
It’s Captain Contrarian Lacks a Moral CompassReport
My Overton Window is larger than yours.
You, for some reason, interpret this as me not having one at all.Report
See further up in these comments Saul.Report
I don’t think being a contrarian is an admirable trait and I dispute his assertion that Harris was a bad candidate or choice and his constant trolling on trans issues is juvenile and as others pointed out, assumes a whole lot of facts not in evidence.Report
Harris was an unavoidable candidate and I think she did ok with the hand she was dealt both by her past 2020 decisions and by Bidens’ decisions. Harris was an unambiguously bad candidate in 2020- that’s not controversial, she didn’t even make it to voting; and that past haunted her in 2024. Maybe a better candidate would have either sold their past positions in a way that moved voters; or reversed on their past positions in a way that was convincing to placate voters or cleverly dodged their past positions in a way that charmed voters. Was Harris a good candidate? We can argue that I suppose but what is not ambiguous is that Harris wasn’t good enough.Report
Yes she obviously wasn’t good enough but it could be that no one was good enough because “throw the bums” out has been a global phenomenon over the past few years and this is a very silly hypothetical because it allows anyone to say anything to prove their priors.
I’m generally not a fan of hypotheticals for this reason.
Anyway, Jaybird would rather make a trolling remark about a routine action like the DNC choosing their new head instead of:
1. Acknowledging that Musk getting his people in total control of payments, OPM, and GSA is very, very bad;
2. Democrats as the minority party do not have magical mystical powers to stop all of this.
It’s immature and it is not good analysis. I don’t see why I should accept it as Jaybird just being a big old contrarian.Report
So the possibility exists that nobody could have beaten Trump in 2024?
Just like 2016, I guess?
It’s not possible to have done better than Clinton and it’s not possible to have done better than Harris?
Yeah, I can see why you’d prefer me to yell about how bad Republicans are to complaining about the clown show.Report
Yes. There is a possibility that no one could have beaten Trump in 2024 and this aligns with global trends.
COVID and the post-COVID inflation surges have produced “throw the bums” out elections around the world. This has happened to center-left and center-right governments. Basically, almost anyone or party who was in charge of government in 2021 had big issues in their next elections.
If anything, the Democratic Party did much better compared to others. The Tories lost 251 seats in their July 2024 election. The LDP lost 68 seats.
https://apnews.com/article/global-elections-2024-incumbents-defeated-c80fbd4e667de86fe08aac025b333f95Report
My main quibble with that is the whole issue of how nobody seemed to be aware of this fact until the time came to ask “so do we need to change?”
And given that nobody could have beaten Trump, obviously we don’t need to change.
Whew!
Worried there. Change is painful, after all.Report
I think we’re well into the realm of multiple things being true at once. Biden’s failure to identify how far gone he was and step aside saddled the party with a compromise candidate. She did not totally sh*t the bed, and was better than many would have predicted, but failed to transcend her own shortcomings or those of her party, particularly in the face of strong anti incumbent winds.
Biden has ruined his entire political legacy and may fairly be considered the worst president in decades (“you only had one job..”). Now that he’s gone the Democrats need a big overhaul and to rebrand themselves. They’re too old, too focus grouped, and too bad at making a comprehensible case for themselves to the voters on whom elections turn.
At the same time Trump had no coattails and it isn’t like MAGA is super popular. The GOP in its current form also seems to have a pretty low ceiling at the national level and the incoming tariffs aren’t going to help once they start hitting food and energy in the next few weeks. That means that the Democrats could bounce back pretty quickly and pretty strongly if (and I stress IF) they play their cards well.Report
Harris won 75 million plus votes and Democrats increased their house seats. You and Jaybird are treating this like a 1972 plus 1994 defeat and there are only 180 or so Democrats in the House and less than 45 of the in the Senate.
In the meantime, guess who is whispering to Trump about South Africa: https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/4e61eff1e920d5a836ca4d9a65a4bf983f8f85e96110dc8f6131787c62979576.png
You guys don’t have to like the Democrats but surely there are more important things going on right now like a looming massive trade war which could cripple the economy, Musk’s young edgelords being given carte blanche over critical information and systems, at least one of whom might not be an American citizen and many just graduated high school.
Is litigating the 2024 election with snark really the thing to do now?Report
I literally said “The Democrats could bounce back quickly and pretty strongly..” and echoed some of the points you yourself have been making. I’m also not seeing anything that could possibly be read as snark.
So I have to ask.
Why bother replying if you aren’t even going to read the comment?Report
A million years ago, we got into the whole “Conflict vs Mistake” thing (it’s in comments more than in the essay).
You operate on a “mistake” paradigm.
Saul is operating on a “conflict” paradigm.
You see him as making a mistake. So you point it out. And everybody else who operates on the mistake paradigm sees what you’re doing and nods sagely.
He sees you as attacking him instead of attacking the enemy. Which means that you and the enemy are both attacking him… and he’s responding accordingly. And everybody who is operating on the conflict paradigm sees what he is doing and nods their freakin’ heads like they’re listening to Busta Rhymes’ “Break Ya Neck”.Report
You say that as if Trump had won in a landslide, but it was actually a reasonably close race. A better candidate who actively distanced herself from Biden’s screwups, who hadn’t made a total ass of herself in the 2020 primary, and successfully positioned herself as a responsible moderate, could plausibly have gotten the couple extra points needed to beat Trump.Report
Liu Lijun was a grad student at UCLA. She got arrested last year for organizing Palestinian protests there.
Apparently, she has just had her student visa revoked.Report
I am bringing this down here to talk about this policy instead of up there, because I do expect the production of a better example up there. But I do want to mention this:
When the CDC changed its wording, there were people who are _legally_ not women who get pregnant. (1) There were people who had their legal gender as male or non-binary who were pregnant.
That is a true statement and not debatable.
What the CDC did was change its terminology to reflect existing reality of the law.
The law acknowledges trans people exist. This is a thing that is true in every state, it is true at the Federal, trans people are just a thing that exists in US law. You can argue they shouldn’t, but they do. And this has been true for _decades_.
In fact, I would suggest that people complaining about the CDC’s change, which again reflects legal reality, is just people complaining about trans people existing.
And that, in fact, is what the claim that the Democrats are ‘ fixated on social or cultural issues’ is. Just…complaints that Democrats are refusing to say that trans people do not exist.
1) And still are, despite Trump’s gibberish EO.Report
You’re right that it’s a good example but it’s a good example because no man has ever been pregnant. We are sexually reproducing primates. One sex produces lots of small gametes and is incapable of becoming pregnant, the other produces a single larger gamete and is. We all know this.
Now in America people are still free to believe or to profess ‘male or non-binary’ people can get pregnant, the same way they can believe that dinosaurs coexisted with cavemen, that the Earth is flat, or that crystals have healing properties science is unable to detect. Due to the pluralism and religious diversity of our society, Americans also tend to try to be polite and indulgent about this sort of thing in interpersonal interactions. But when a politician professes something like this, that something all people understand to be false, or maybe a kind of social pretense, and advocates for its implementation as official policy, people think that politician is (i) stupid, (ii) a liar, or (iii) pandering and disingenuous to a degree that is absurd even for a politician. I think (iii) is the most likely read but ymmv.
Does it in itself change a vote? Often enough probably not. I’ve continued to generally vote Democrat in spite of it. People vote for lots of reasons and vibes and amalgamations of different feelings (or are voting against another candidate more than for the candidate for whom they cast their ballot). But it does create cynicism and skepticism about what that politician’s priorities are, and whether they can be trusted to approach other matters that might turn a vote with sufficient seriousness or principle.Report
You know, it’s funny how you can tell what circles someone hangs out in because of how they define that. The ‘gamete’ one is pretty much ‘extreme transphobic social political circles’. Notably, it’s what transphobes have settled on after having been demonstrated wrong on basically every other definition they came up with.
Now, explain to me: How do you know what size gametes you produce? Did you have them checked?
Or are you just _guessing_, based of other things?
Could it be that you’re seeing various clues based off body and presentation, calculating a sex from those, and then _working backward_ to try to guess what sort of gametes someone produces, a thing you cannot possible know on sight, and likely do not even know of _yourself_.
And then claiming _that_ result is what everyone uses to do the calculation to start with.
That seems very dishonest.
You cannot use some sort of magical idealized version of reality where everyone has measured their own ‘gamete size production’ and pretend it applies to the world, at least not without admitting that means the sexes are currently about 1% male, 0.5% female, (Men are slightly more likely to have their sperm looked at) and 97.5% unknown. (And note I’m guessing really high here. People only tend to get reproductive cells looked at when having problems with infertility. It probably is a percentage of a fraction.)Report
Heh this is well known, well studied biology.
Anyway if I don’t want to get pregnant should I, a man, start on birth control pills? Would they not do something now, today, but then start doing something, if tomorrow I told people I identified as a woman? How would that work? Is there a way I could become pregnant?
Cards on the table, I don’t think there is and no doctor I have seen has ever suggested that was possible, but I’m curious if you think I could, and if so, how it might happen.Report
You are doing almost as much mental gymnastics as Jay sometimes does just so you don’t have to respect people’s wishes on what they want to be called. No wonder Trump had such an easy time coming to power.Report
Do you think I can get pregnant?
If it’s possible I need to tell my wife yesterday.Report
We are not talking about biology. We are talking about your assertions of how we sort humans. You claim the determining factor on how we sort humans is a thing almost no one has measured, for anyone. And certainly aren’t doing it while walking around.
It doesn’t actually matter how scientific or non-scientific the determining factor is, my assertion is not that isn’t (See my other post), it is that we do not use it.
If you to claim that we sort bananas into large or small by the molecular density of their peel, I would also object to that. Even though it is a very specific thing we could measure. But that is not the way we sort bananas, and that is easy to demonstrate because absolutely no one knows what the molecular density of any banana peel is! It doesn’t matter that fact could be measured, it is not a fact we use in sorting bananas.
You are an actual human, one assumes. You know, when you look at someone, you do not sort them into male or female using the size of their gametes. That is a flatly insane lie. You are not Dr. Manhattan, you cannot see the size of their gametes!
Um…in what universe are we even talking about if people who ‘identify as women’ can get pregnant? That literally was mentioned by no one. We were talking about people who ‘did not identify as women’, or, more to the point, ‘people who are not legally women’, could get pregnant.
Everyone, you can tell the transphobes, and the people who operate in transphobic spaces, because they always somehow make discussions about trans men into trans women, because they mostly forget trans men exist at all, often in the middle of a sentence.Report
You brought this topic up. These agencies are referring to pregnancy, which is a real, observable, measurable, physical, biological function, that we know happens to one sex and not the other. It is not some legal fiction about categorizing humans or bananas or whatever other random thing.
So stop playing language games. I’m a man. I am not a woman. Can I get pregnant or not? What do you think?Report
I don’t know, are you a trans man or a cis man? Based on the ignorance you’ve always had about the topic of trans people, I have assumed you were cis, so no, you cannot.
If I’m wrong, and you’re a trans man, then you _might_ be able to get pregnant. I don’t really know your medical details.
But we are not talking about you, specifically. We are talking about what categories of people can get pregnant. Trans men can get pregnant.
Do you _literally_ not know what trans men are and that they can get pregnant? I want you to answer that question, yes or no.
You can then talk about how you want to reclassify trans men, but I do need to demonstrate you _literally understand the basics of the topic under discussion_. Because I don’t think you do.Report
Hey I’m just glad we’ve finally established that you understand physical reality, as opposed to a bunch of cultural contingencies and language games.
But here’s the part all the words in the world won’t get around. At the end of the day, a person calling herself a ‘trans man’ as you defined that concept is really just a woman who pretends to the social conventions of a man, and may have had some cosmetic surgeries and/or hormonal treatments in hopes of changing her body to better resemble the secondary sex characteristics of a man.
If she has had surgeries and/or hormonal treatments she may have harmed her reproductive system to the point pregnancy is not possible, and while I think an adult has the right to do that stuff if they want, she’s still a woman. Again, not really hard.
As an aside I’ll also reiterate, no such thing as a ‘cis’ so please stop with that.Report
And if he has legally changed the sex on his driver’s license, and becomes pregnant, do you think the things the CDC says about pregnancy apply to him?
Because you may _think_ such a person is a woman, but he has a driver’s license that says otherwise and the Federal government has laws recognizing him as such. Should material that the CDC prints _recognize_ that, or should it operate in some other universe where those legal facts are ignored?
But we’ve already got an answer there. Your problem is not with the CDC. You’re just an person who thinks trans people don’t exist and should not be recognize by the government at all.
Hey, Jaybird, you still paying attention here? This is what I meant when I said ‘Harris did not do anything, and the people complaining about ‘pregnant people’ literally are just arguing that Democrats should stop recognizing trans people at all’.
The problem is not that the Democrats are ‘pushing’ anything, the problem is that Democrats don’t want to rewind trans rights back to *checks notes* …well, they probably think it’s 2015, but it’s actually more like the 1960s.Report
Hey, Trump signed an executive order about trans people in sports today.
Blanchard’s taxonomies really got in the way because the defenders of transfolx usually pretend that we’re not talking about autogynephilic or autoandrophilic people and it’s whatever variety of “phobic” to bring them up (and don’t even THINK about bringing up the detrans people!) while the “what the hell are you talking about?” snickerdoodles are thinking primarily of the autogynephiles and the obvious gamers of the system.
Anyway, Harris might not have “done” anything but she talked about it in 2019 and they made an ad about it and that ad swung about 2% of the people who watched it.
“But she didn’t *RUN* on that!”, you can say. “She certainly didn’t *DO* something!”
Sure.
Trump didn’t run on Project 2025.Report
Contact me when he does something about the designated hitter rule.
That sentence makes it sounds like you think trans people think the classifications are real and it should be understood they’re implicitly not talking about certain people.
Um, no. Trans people generally think Blanchard is a moron and, at some level, a bigot, even if not overtly. And his classifications are roundly rejected by almost all medicine.
For those who do not know, his theory postulated that all ‘real’ trans, the ones that are not autogynephilic, are attracted to men and are feminine and dress ‘as women’ and do womanly things.The category literally called ‘homosexual transsexuals’. That is, again, the _normal_ trans woman, who are a form of gay men who are like, super gay, so gay they’ve wander over into being women, not the autogynephilic, who are just straight men who are aroused by their own bodies.
This is really obviously stupid, it’s so stupid even non-queer people can realize it’s stupid, and really homophobic honestly (It was, after all, 1989), which is why he’s had to constantly rewrite it to be less stupid.
And as pointed out in the link below, this group is almost certainly a product of ‘That is how you have to act in front of the doctors for them to let you transition’. It turns out that when you gatekeep medicine from a group of people based on their behavior, and at the same time _study_ that group’s behavior, they, um, lie to you in the study and present exactly what you want to see.
As has been pointed out, it’s time to retract the entire paper: https://www.assignedmedia.org/breaking-news/ray-blanchard-retraction-proposed
If only sports had some sort of _rules_ or something and didn’t need laws dictating how they operated.Report
Well, they have an executive order now, don’t they?Report
Really? That’s the part of the comment you decided to respond to?
I don’t know if you expect trans people to be outraged by that, but no one fishing cares about sports except as part of a slippery slope. Transphobes got what they wanted, the incredibly minuscule amount of trans girls and women will leave sports, and all it will cost is in the future is dealing with accusations of being male being hurtled at girls and women that do not appear feminine enough and people doing genitalia inspections of them, including the children. *thumbs up*
Meanwhile, you don’t bother to respond to the Blanchard part?Report
Because the Blanchard taxonomy seems to be true enough for, for example, Lia Thomas (according to a number of her lockermates).
If it’s not in the ratio that he thinks exists, a ratio of almost everybody to only a handful is enough to upset the apple cart if the only a handful contains enough bad actors.
I don’t know if you expect trans people to be outraged by that, but no one fishing cares about sports except as part of a slippery slope.
CNN had a segment the other night that said that the numbers for transwomen in female sports is something like 18% support/79% oppose.
You know how four out of five dentists recommend sugarless gum?
No one, in this case, is 1% from getting sugarless gum numbers.Report
Incidentally, the 1960s is sorta wrong. People really, really do not understand the history of legal gender changes on documents. Whether or not that was possible in any jurisdiction was pretty much completely random until the 1970s.
Plenty of trans people found literally all they had to do was go to a judge with a doctor’s note saying the person was now the other sex, and the judge would issue a new birth certificate.
Other people found themselves in states where judges could only reissue birth certificates due to ‘mistakes’ on the original, so couldn’t change it, and sued, and usually lost in the 70s…and it’s around that point that laws started being passed to allow such a thing, or make it easier in places where it technically was already allowed.
This wasn’t ever really something that was barred by law on purpose, and when it was barred, it rested on the ‘situations under which new birth certificates could be issued by judges’ rules, a completely obscure area of law that no one had cared about before and certainly wasn’t designed to stop trans people. The judges themselves seems perfectly fine with issuing them if the law allowed and a doctor said ‘This person is now the other sex’. In fact, they mostly seemed to think that was how things should work, that doctors determined someone’s sex, and that was how you knew what sex someone was.
Ie.., anyone who think that trans people demanding to be recognized as their gender by the law is a new thing and ‘everyone has always known what man and woman are and it is based on gametes’ is not very knowledgeable about history or how the law _and_ medicine functioned for the longest time.Report
David, what the CDC says still applies to the pregnant ‘trans man’ in this hypothetical and is still accurate because she is in fact still a woman. Pregnancy is impossible for anyone who isn’t a woman and even if she may not like being a woman, absent some crazy scientific breakthrough, it’s what she is and always will be. A piece of paper issued by the government doesn’t change that and can’t change that. The demand and at times willingness of the government to endorse beliefs that are at odds with very easily observable physical reality is indeed at the heart of the problem.
I know your only way of trying to debate that is with histrionics and I used to be more sanguine about all of it. However it is now clear that the language games you demand invariably lead to all manner of unacceptable and unworkable accommodations. In these very comments it’s gotten you demanding public schools treat parents as guilty until proven innocent child abusers, whose price for using the public schools is to be treated by the state with extreme suspicion and as a threat to their own children. And that’s not even getting into the other absurdities like ‘female identifying’ male sex offenders in womens prisons.
What those that call themselves trans should do is take their freedom under the 1st Amendment, and their freedom under Bostock and enjoy their lives. What they should stop doing is fighting for an official redefinition of physical sex with the nebulous concept of ‘gender identity.’ In the former lies a better path to a sustainable equilibrium. As for the latter, well, you see what’s happening.Report
…wait wait wait, you’re asserting there _is_ a way to change sex, but science has not managed it yet?
Tell me, what is the thing you think science needs to be able to do to make a woman into a man?
Is it ‘manufacturing different-sized gametes’? Is that literally your definition?
Or is it pregnancy, something you seem to have conflated with that?Report
Ken Martin is the new DNC chair.Report
Elon Musk and DOGE apparently gained full access to the federal payment system from the Treasury Department on Friday. This is the system that sends out money on behalf of the federal government. Musk just got a very powerful tool to crush his enemies. He also basically seems to be the President rather than Trump in terms of who is making a lot of decisions. Anybody who isn’t freaking out right now is just useless.Report
Half the country isn’t freaking out right now – though I have to wonder if they are having g this reported to them accurately.Report
I’d say more than half the country. Obviously Red America has been propagandized beyond the recovery point but you have lots of non-propagandized people with their heads up their posteriors at the danger we are in.Report
A poll from the 29th of January.
Looks like less than a third of the country is immune to propaganda.
The good news, I guess, is that the people most susceptible to propaganda are the most susceptible to propaganda. Quick! Make a Progressive Joe Rogan!Report
Every GOP President since I’ve been alive has been accused of this. After a while we realize that no, the country isn’t in danger, the claims are hysteria.
If you want to claim that Trump is different then we should review what claims were made about him at this point the last time he was elected. I was around then.
People on this site were claiming he was going to set up death camps. The closest we got was pictures of children in cages which turned out to be from Obama.Report
Can we also introduce as evidence the other way, of the books and articles written by the people around Trump during his first presidency of things they stopped him from doing?
Asserting that ‘Trump is going to do X’, and then Trump not doing X is not exactly a false claim when it turns out that Trump _tried_ to do X and was stopped by his staff doing border-line illegal things to distract him and make it difficult and sometimes even just not actually carrying out his orders.
That’s perfectly understanding _Trump_. It’s just underestimating the morality of the people around him.Report
Good news! The DNC just elected David Hogg to be vice chair!
The opposition to Trump is Zooming!Report
Trump is apparently hell bent on making Canada the 51st state: https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/GiyVs3ZWUAAyDnV.jpg
Canadian Bacon as a Grecian Tragedy. Joy!!!Report
The problem with having the power of an empire is that eventually you are going to get a President that really wants to be Emperor. We are now in that situation.Report
And it looks like Trump should be taken seriously and literally on Greenland too:
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/fb8e18a624c8253d9343816a7443e5b4725f3027af51f4c8a820c3059cce735f.jpgReport
Elon Musk, a non-elected, non-appointed head of a non-existent government department, apparently on behest or suggestion of Michael Flynn has labeled payments to Lutheran Social Services as “illegal” and stopped them.
Lutheran Social Services is the largest employer in South Dakota and mainly operates senior homes. This was probably Medicare and Medicaid money.Report
Wired has identified some of the edgelords helping Musk destroy everything: https://www.wired.com/story/elon-musk-government-young-engineers/Report
One of Musk’s shock troops is a 19 year old who goes by Big Balls: https://bsky.app/profile/kevinmkruse.bsky.social/post/3lh7upwp5j22yReport
Trump is very mad at South Africa now: https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/4e61eff1e920d5a836ca4d9a65a4bf983f8f85e96110dc8f6131787c62979576.png
I wonder whyReport