On this day in 1536, Anne Boleyn was executed.
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.
In this week’s “We’re all gonna die” news, cartoonist Scott Adams has announced that he has prostate cancer and his life expectancy is maybe this summer.
One has to wonder how long he and his people have been covering that up and if it contributed to his previously well documented descent into right wing madness.
Now see how ridiculous that sounds? Because that’s exactly how you sound ranting on about conspiracy theories regarding President Biden.
As a private citizen, he has every right to adhere to the requirements of HIPPO and keep his medical records private. I’m going to pretend to be offended that you think that everybody’s medical records should be publicly available.
His cancer isn’t related to his mental issues, but it’s possible both of those are related to something else.
The use of automobiles and paperclips aren’t related to each other but they’re both related to economic growth (PPP and so on). Similarly (Discovery of) Autism and Vaccines aren’t related to each other but they’re both related a child’s age.
Big picture the human brain is a pattern matching device and we should expect people to see faces in clouds and other worthless connections.
To paraphrase from my oncologist expert, prostate cancer is very tricky to diagnose. It is also not quite the killer it used to be. Biden’s cancer has spread to his bones apparently which is not good but there have been plenty of cases of guys in the same situation living for years after diagnosis.
According to the law of three, if I were Keith Olberman I’d consider getting my PSA checked right away.
Adams might be joking about his life expectancy.
I just made a post and it’s not showing up. Please check the post-jail. Also I don’t understand why it would be held hostage.
NM or thanks.
Found nothing in spam nor trash… can you give a hint?
I waited several minutes and it didn’t show up even after hitting “refresh”, then I came back 50 minutes later and it was here. I’d thought you did something.
It was the post with “Big picture the human brain is a pattern matching device”
Krugman on the sadism and cruelty of Trump’s tax and budget bill: https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/attack-of-the-sadistic-zombies
The TCJA, like the current legislation, gave big tax breaks to the wealthiest Americans. But it also threw a few crumbs to people further down the scale. By contrast, the House Reconciliation Bill, by slashing benefits — especially Medicaid — will cause immense, almost inconceivable hardship to the bottom 40 percent of Americans, especially the poorest fifth.
Medicaid, in case anyone needs reminding, is the national health insurance program for low-income Americans who probably don’t have any other way to pay for medical care. In 2023 Medicaid covered 69 million Americans, far more than Medicare (which covers seniors), including 39 percent of children.
Providing health care to children, by the way, isn’t just about social justice and basic decency. It’s also good economics: Children who receive adequate care grow up to be more productive adults. Among other things they end up paying more taxes, so Medicaid for children almost surely pays for itself.
And although Republican legislation apparently won’t explicitly target childrens’ care, it will impose paperwork requirements that will cause both children and their parents to lose coverage.
Back to the comparison with the TCJA. It’s true that 2017 would have looked considerably worse in this comparison if Trump had also succeeded in his attempt to destroy the Affordable Care Act, depriving millions of Americans of health insurance coverage. But he didn’t. This time the assault on health care and the tax cuts for the 0.1 percent are part of the same legislation — a “big, beautiful bill,” as Trump calls it. And after some adjustments to make the bill even nastier, it’s likely to pass.
Wait, it gets worse. One of the ways Republicans will try to slash Medicaid is by requiring that adult Medicaid recipients be gainfully employed — or, more accurately, that they demonstrate to the satisfaction of government bureaucrats that they are gainfully employed, which is not at all the same thing.
The belief that many Americans receiving government support are malingering, that they could and should be working but are choosing to be lazy, is a classic zombie idea. That is, like the claim that cutting taxes on the rich will unleash an economic miracle, it’s a doctrine that should be long dead. It has, after all, been proved wrong by experience again and again.
The belief that many Americans receiving government support are malingering, that they could and should be working but are choosing to be lazy, is a classic zombie idea…. It has, after all, been proved wrong by experience again and again.
After Clinton’s welfare reform (which I think has been since undone) people went out and got jobs.
We can add my ex-wife to the list of people who could and should be working but choose to be lazy.
People respond to economic incentives.
Trump-Supporting Christians have decided to bring out their inner Karl Lueger: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/19/opinion/antisemitism-israel-palestine-esther.html
“Here we see the perversity that can come from conflating antisemitism with opposition to an increasingly brutal and authoritarian Israeli state. “Those supporters of Palestine and Hamas who have claimed for decades that criticizing Israel’s policies does not equate to antisemitism are at best insincere,” said a strategic plan for Project Esther published online. In the twisted logic of Project Esther — which is also the logic of Donald Trump’s war on academia — ultra-Zionist gentiles get to lecture Jews about antisemitism even as they lay waste to the liberal culture that has allowed American Jews to thrive.”
I’m sure “deep” free speech thoughts will be given in response to this
I just really don’t like how the Right and the Left are using Jews these days. It just seems like both are using us as props for their own political purposes. The Right wants to say that the Left is anti-Semitic because they hate Israel. The Left wants to create a cleavage between good liberal Diaspora Jews and evil Israelis while creating a Palestinian movement in their headspace that doesn’t correspond to reality and ignoring how Islamists treat non-Muslims from the tip of Morocco to the tip of Indonesia. The Left does not attempt to create this cleavage with any other group but the Jews. Like I’m sorry but there is just way too much obvious issues with Palestinian leadership and their failures plus what is happening to the wrong types of Muslims let alone non-Muslims. They are imagining a liberal Islam that doesn’t exist and think they can fantasize it into existence.
Time for some moral clarity using the normal definitions.
Someone who is claiming the Jews are at fault for existing is being antisemitic. That is the “No Israel, No Jews” argument in a nutshell.
That means a good hunk of the Palestinians are antisemitic (to the point of being Na.zis) and the Pro-Palestinians’ moral backflips also become antisemitism after claiming 10-7 was the fault of the Jews. 10-7 was an act of open genocide, they killed every Jew they could.
Blaming the Jews for their own genocide because they exist is textbook antisemitism.
It’s amazing that, after all these decades of wanting to fight Na.zis, they’re not willing to denounce Na.zis because of the color of the Na.zis’ skin.
The brutal truth is the Right is correct, the Left is indeed being antisemitic.
The editorial that my brother posted was written by a Jew. Many well meaning but somewhat to very naive Jews have a magical underpants gnome understanding of how to fight anti-Semitism.
1. Have ecumenical multicultural events where people learn about us and we learn about them.
2. XXXXXX.
3. Anti-Semitism endss
There might be varieties to step 1 like Jews being patriotic citizens, loyal members of the cause, or something else but the fact that this never really worked doesn’t come into question.
The editorial that my brother posted was written by a Jew.
It’s behind a paywall so I didn’t read it and wasn’t replying to it.
Big picture my stance is we shouldn’t have special rules for Jews and I am pointing out where that happens as faulty logic.
Normal countries are allowed to fight wars. They’re allowed to be ethnostates. They’re allowed to react harshly to their citizens being terrorized. They’re forgiven the crime(s) of their creation. By normal standards the children of refugees are not refugees. By normal standards all wars are not “genocide”. By normal rules of war one side isn’t supposed to supply the other.
Subtracting Israel being Jewish brings a lot of clarity to the situation.
If it matters, I have no dog in this race. I am not a Jew nor Arab etc. I am a neutral bystander.
Israel will never be treated as a normal country because millions or tens of millions of people really hated it since came into existence and still dream of reversing it. There are also lots of similar criticisms voiced againt Israel that people make against other countries. Israel is just seen as something that is supposed to be easily more solvable because it isn’t a big country.
Being hated by your neighbors is also a normal country thing. The EU (and the various United States) are the exception, not the rule.
It is corrosive for international organizations to have a “Jewish exception”.
Israel is hated by a lot more than it’s neighbors.
I’m sorry but I’d really like the Pro-Palestinian Western left to actually address what real actual Palestinian leadership has said what they wanted along with how every Muslim majority country in the world sets themselves up. These people believe that despite no real actual Palestinian leader of any repute saying something that sounds like it comes from Mandela imagines that the Palestinian movement is making ANC arguments even when they were explicit since the PLO that they see Palestine as an Arab Muslim state and that Jews who weren’t there before 1918 would have to leave. Hamas and the other more extreme factions like the PFLP are even more explicit about the “No Jews” thing. They can’t even make the most mealy mouthed comments about the rights and needs of Jews as a people or our connection to Israel/Palestine. They just can’t.
But you have all these well meaning idiots who think that if Jews/Israelis just treat the Palestinians and other Muslims correctly and with honor than all the hate will go away despite their being no evidence for this. It just really sounds that they want us to unilaterally disarm while demanding nothing of the Palestinians or other Muslims. If they are Jewish, their entire concept of Jewishness seems so bound in Jews being weak and persecuted that they seem to think we have a sacred duty to get kicked in the rear and not take our own side in a fight or make any demands. I can’t accept that. Or the need to be good liberals doing allyship overrides any common sense and they will willingly screw over other Jews so they can be one of the good ones in the same sense that Steven Miller thinks he is one of the good ones by his actions.
These types are usually silent when you confront them with this. On LGM, one of them did actually answer me when I asked how would you create a history curriculum that would satisfy both the Israeli Jews and Palestinians in the newly united country. His answer was that the “kids will learn true history.” The idea that such “true history” would be something not easily determinable and that people whose ideas about “true history” are different from his own might be the ones writing the history curriculum never seemed to have crossed his head.
along with how every Muslim majority country in the world sets themselves up
Hold on, I have to call the government of all countries with majority Muslim populations to check that.
Albania, Algeria, Azerbaijan, Bangladesh, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Burkina Faso, Chad, Djibouti, Gambia, Guinea, Kosovo, Kyrgyzstan, Iraq, Mali, Niger, Pakistan (Yes, really), Senegal, Sierra Leone, Somalia (Wait, they have a government?), Sudan, Syria (Sorta), Tajikistan, Tunisia, Turkey (sigh), Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan would like to have a word with you.
That is a list of all the majority-Islam counties that are not operated by Islam or under Shari’a law and have generally free religious exercise and treatment of religious minorities. This does not mean they are good places, but if they are bad places, it is for other reasons. Like, don’t live in Burkina Faso. Or Turkey.
Fun fact: Sierra Leone, despite being nearly 80% Muslim, managed to fight a civil war with all religions represented on all sides and keep it completely secular, an impressive feat.
A special shout-out to Sudan on this list, which has had repeated military coups that established Shari’a law, and repeated democratic governments that removed it!
The majority Muslim countries that _are_ under under Shari’a law or are unfree religiously are: Afghanistan, Bahrain, Brunei, Comoros, Eygpt, Indonesia, Iran, Jordan, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Yemen
You may notice the actual common thread here of that list: Most of them are not democracies, and the ones that are became democracies fairly recently, often directly off European colonialism. Here’s the list of those:
Afghanistan (War every few decades), Bahrain (Not actually sure this should have be on the second list, but they’re having a Sunni/Shia political disagreement over demographics. Christians and Jews seem fine, though.), Brunei (Became free of the UK in 1985, also still has sultans instead of democracy and has been under martial law since 1962.), Comoros (Became free of France in 1975), Iran (Became free of the US in 1979. Hehe. Okay, technically not true, but still.), Jordan (Never actually been a free country.), Libya (Islamized under Gaddafi), Mauritania (repeated military coups), Saudi Arabia (monarchy), Yemen (Become one country in 1990)
It’s worth noticing that not only did a lot of those countries get freedom from colonialism recently, the freedom movement was often _operated by Islam_, because, frankly, it was a system that could rally the people for freedom. Like Iran and their Islamic Revolution.
Hmm. It’s almost as if someone repress a population and does not share a religion with them, the religion the oppressed has become a focal point of resistance, even if the population is not particularly religious.
Something to think about.
Actual majority Muslim democracies (To some extent) that operate under Islamic law and/or restrict religious minorities: Eygpt, Indonesia, Morocco, Oman, Qatar, United Arab Emirates
That list is not zero, don’t get me wrong. But it’s a lot shorter than you seem to be implying, and most of those countries are not Eygpt.
Also, apologizes if I got anything wrong, this was a REALLY LONG post to make because I did literally have to check every majority-Muslim country.
Trump continues trying to bully companies to swallow the costs of his absurdly high tariffs: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/19/us/politics/trump-tariffs-walmart-mattel-prices.html
You could have seen this coming from a kilometer away: Klarna’s losses widen after more consumers fail to repay loans
That’s right, the company that gives hot-dog-sized loans to people who need to borrow money to get a hot dog isn’t really doing too well at getting that hot dog money back.
There’s a reason that nobody shells out a fiver to Wimpy, guys!
https://catalist.us/whathappened2024/
An in-depth breakdown of the 2024 electorate. The TL/DR version is that low-info, low-propensity voters are mesmerized by Trump and no one else. Harris received more votes than Biden in four swing states: WI, NV, NC, and GA but Trump still won those states because low-propensity voters came out for him and largely only him. This is how Democrats managed to win the Senate races in AZ, MI, WI, and NV even though the states went to Trump.
Which reinforces the notion that for most Americans, politics is not some in-depth chart and graph driven assessment but a meme fueled entertainment spectacle. Demi rats continue to IGNORE this basic precept. We continue to suffer for that ignorance.
I also think this sort of disproves the Bernie Sanders/DSA school of change though. To the extent that there is good news in this, it is that Trump is one of a kind in this ability and it is largely because of his carnival barker persona revolving around a concept of being a “business tycoon.”
Demi rats? Really? Yes, the Democratic Party or really just the American Left in general tends to treat political problems as an educational problem and believes that many people are more into serious policy and social justice than they actually are. The reason they do this is admitting otherwise poses certain problems with liberal democratic theor and representative government.
This is an interesting form of analysis, because it lets you cherry pick some states, important ones to be sure, but only some of the swing states, and ignore the overall trend that contradicts your conclusion, namely that almost 3.2 million fewer people showed up to vote, nationwide, than in 2020, with Trump getting 3+ million more votes than he did in 2020 and Harris getting 6.2 million fewer votes than Biden did in 2020.
Following your analysis to its logical conclusion, then, what happened is that around 3 million low-information voters showed up specifically for Trump, but more than 6million low-information (?) voters who’d previously shown up for Biden (not exactly a cult of personality, or a personality at all, by 2020) failed to show up for Harris. Does this result then say twice as much about Harris as it does Trump?
What conclusions can we draw from this analysis going forward? The Dems have only gotten less popular since the election. If this trend continues, can we expect even more low information voters in 2026, who would have voted for Dems in 2020, to vote for Republicans or sit it out, since the Republican Party still is just Trump at this point?
Building on this, a disturbing cultural change has occurred among liberals over the last quarter of a century, and it seems to only be getting worse, more compulsive, and more counterproductive.
Looking back at the aftermath of the 2000 election, while there was plenty of blame to go around (hanging chads, one of the worst SCOTUS decisions in history, and of course, the left/Nader), liberals were pretty consistent in placing the primary blame for the election loss on Gore specifically and the party more generally. If you went to any bookstore (remember those?) between 2000 and 2005, you could find any number of books on the Democrats’ failures, from failures of framing to failure of leadership, with some actual discussions of policy failures in between. After the 2004 election, the establishment Democrats’ complicity in the catastrophic decision to invade Iraq was pretty universally recognized as the primary reason one of the most establishment of establishment Democrats lost the 2008 primary, in a shocking upset, to a relative outsider.
Jump ahead to 2016, a short 8 years after the blame for Clinton’s primary loss was placed squarely at her feet (and the feet of her terrible hires, like Mark Penn), and suddenly liberals could think no reason to put any of the blame for the 2016 loss on Clinton or the Dems generally: it was mostly the left’s fault (even if Bernie voters showed up for Clinton at higher numbers than Clinton voters had shown up for Obama 8 years prior), it was a Russian disinformation campaign, it was the right wing media’s fault, etc., etc., etc. And this pathological inability to accept any responsibility or accountable, to undertake any sort of self-reflection, has only gotten worse in the aftermath of the 2024 election: who is to blame? There’s still a tendency to blame misinformation, as we saw all over the internet (including this site) even before the election had taken place, on e.g. how well the economy was doing, but this time something has truly broken in the brains of liberals, so that their current obsession is with blaming voters: people on the left who didn’t vote, Muslims in Michigan, farmers in Nebraska, “low-information” voters who are fooled by Trump the snake-oil salesman, etc. It is as though there was nothing the Democrats, and Harris specifically, could have done to win any of these voters over to her side. What a huge waste of money her campaign was, given that there’s nothing it could have done to sway people who are either too evil or too stupid to vote correctly.
Meanwhile, Bernie and AOC did an off-year tour of the Midwest, stopping in small towns and big cities, to record crowds of people from all walks of life, and from across the political spectrum, to sell a message, admittedly more abstract than it was in 2016 or 2020, of hope for a better future, and it’s hard to find a positive word among the liberals here or anywhere for what they’re doing. Just little jabs like above.
There’s been a lot of playing with the whole “Original Sin” thing.
What was the Original Sin of the 2024 election?
Harris was an awful Presidental candidate. Well, why in the hell was she picked as VP? Well, 2020 had some pretty weird dynamics. Biden, you may remember, floated Stacy Abrams for a second but Abrams, for some reason, slapped Biden’s hand away and there aren’t *THAT* many African-American females out there and the weird dynamics of the Mostly Peaceful Summer and some of the ghosts of #MeToo meant that the VP needed to be both Black and Female.
So why Biden in 2020? Well, he was the VP of the most popular president in recent memory. Why did Obama pick Biden as VP?
Well, back in 2008, Obama, believe it or not, was seen as pretty green. In order to give some strength to the ticket, the smoke-filled room decided that it was best to give the ticket some heft with a politician with muscular foreign-policy chops (and one who didn’t alienate the ever-living crap out of the main nominee).
Well, why did Obama win, despite being green, instead of the main person he was running against?
Well, now we’re talking about the Iraq war…
some of the ghosts of #MeToo meant that the VP needed to be both Black and Female.
That Stacy Adams is being floated as a serious choice shows just how thin the bench is if you insist on this.
My go-to suggestion for getting serious VPs (or Presidential Candidates) is get a Governor or a high level Washington type. None of the Governors are black women but there are 29 in Congress.
It’s possible that all of them are so far to the Left they’re unelectable, but if that’s the case then you shouldn’t be going to the non-serious candidates.
If your primary selection is something other than competence, then you’re running the risk of sacrificing competence for whatever you selected for.
In the *MOMENT*, she was a *FABULOUS* choice!
She had an election stolen from her! She epitomized Black Disappointment at a moment that it was never more important to be anti-racist! The media *LOVED* her!
This was the same mistake Lincoln made. It amazes me we’ve had so many VPs that are clearly underqualified.
She was the President on Star Trek!
Star Trek is a communist utopia where everyone works to the best of the abilities because that’s what the plot calls for. The economics of the future are different because they have no money.
The Ferengi were supposed to be the show’s Big Bads as Evil Capitalists.
However he also made them short and ridiculous so no one would respect them, thus unbelievable as big-bads.
That’s actually slightly reductive. While there were profound communist tones in Star Trek- specifically The Next Generation- it’s been pretty interestingly explored in fan writing that the Federation was not a communist utopia. Private ownership was very much a thing including of land. What the Federation seems to ultimately have been was a near-post-scarcity society where money had atrophied to the point where it was a not very interesting background system (it was called Federation Energy Credits) rather than prominent fact of life like it is today.
This, though, is mainly because Rodenberry was never interested in sweating the details- he mostly wanted to paint in broad strokes.
Really, though, there’s an opportunity there for the Star Trek franchise. It may actually be time for a series of Star Trek properties that look -inward- rather than outward. Something that explores what society would be like for the day-to-day Federation citizen rather than the elite of the elite Star Fleet cadre. Maybe a Federation version of Friends or even Seinfeld. Possibly something that’s set during the same period of time as TNG-DS9-Voyager and let’s you see how known events impacted day to day life.
It’s funny I thought the much (and not totally unfairly panned) Halo TV series showed what somethihg like that might look like. When you got glimpses of life on the more developed planets it seemed rather pleasant and hopeful in certain respects, certainly in comparison to the stock sci fi dystopias we usually see.
The show was still a total mess, especially the first season, but it was getting better as the second went on and I was sorry they canceled it.
I remember reading that Roddenberry also thought that their shouldn’t be interpersonal drama between the crew because humans in the future outgrew this or something. This was something of a nightmare for writers to deal with.
…Rodenberry was never interested in sweating the details- he mostly wanted to paint in broad strokes.
Rodenberry is all over the place. ST doesn’t use money for anything but we supposedly still have private ownership and there’s no congestion.
Missing is large numbers of private vehicles, apparently other than Star Fleet and the rare merchant, no one is interested in owning ship or going flying.
For all the happy talk on how there is private ownership, we have close to no one acting like private ownership is a thing. Even the instances where we know it exists are pretty damning.
Harvey Mudd, scumbag merchant (motivated by money, ergo he’s evil). Sisco’s Girlfriend (black market merchant). Sisco himself has a private vehicle so whatever rules prevent private ownership of transportation don’t apply to military commanders. And then there’s Quark.
So money doesn’t really exist, private ownership is rare, and people don’t seem motivated by increasing their social ranking, we’re deep into Communist ideology on how the perfect new-man will behave in the future.
Au contraire my friend, you’re missing some of the better examples. Captain Picard’s family owns Chateau Picard, a long standing, respected and desirable vineyard (talk about private ownership of the means of production). Likewise Captain Sisco’s father owns and operates a restaurant in the “historic*” New Orleans district. Additionally, several crew members have family who owns land/houses on colonies (Beverly Crusher gets her infamous title of Ghost Fisher due to a “ghost” haunting her deceased Grandmothers house she inherits on a colony).
While the show doesn’t go out of its way to show privately owned transportation vehicles there’re regular references in the show to freighters and transport ships that operate privately over which Star Fleet acts as both protectors and cops. More locally on earth there aren’t a lot of vehicles shown but that is because A) most of the times they spend on earth are in “historic*” districts and B) This is a setting where transporters exist. There’s no reason to think that people who have further than a short jaunt to travel don’t just utilize civilian transporter systems.
I’ll reiterate that I think the argument has been made pretty well that Star Trek society is more likely a vestigially capitalist (but with a very very strong public sector) society that is largely post scarcity. With replicator, holodeck and transporter technology many of what we think of societal markers are obsolete but there are some scarcities still (land on the capital world -Earth, for instance). In one episode set on that same vineyard Picard chats with some characters who’re working on a (it’s implied it’s private) program to raise more land from the seabed of the Atlantic ocean to provide more land/living space on earth. While Picard says on some occasions that humans are no longer focused on the acquisition of material wealth and other crew members say they don’t obsess about money it’s not directly said it doesn’t exist anymore. Money seems to exist as a very background element that’s used to measure interest/allocate resources.
That said, the Federation seems to be obviously a very socialist society if not an outright communist one. And, of course, I grant that this could be wrong because Star Trek has generally shied away from talking about how human society works- their plots are generally very outward facing.
*These historic districts were very obviously a fiction used to save production costs for scenes set on earth.
…the show doesn’t go out of its way to show privately owned transportation vehicles…
To the point where it’s reasonable to go to a Federation Planet and encounter only Star Flee ships. Picture a cop show where no one who isn’t heavily connected to the gov owns a car.
Granted, a lot of this is plot oriented and massively handwaves why people aren’t behaving as people. Very few people are ambitious. Kirk stands out as the only womanizer. We also have the odd exception such as Sisco’s father owns a restaurant.
Various writers disagree, but the overall vision is that of a happy post-scarcity people.
IMHO it lines up pretty well with the Communist ideals on how post-capitalist people would behave, but the most important part is the people aren’t shown as behaving as people.
The moment we assume the people are pretty much the same in the future and ask “how would we make this vision happen”, then we need Communist style repression because (like with Communism) Star Trek is a description on how people should behave and not how they do.
That repression is never shown or even hinted at, so by the power of plot it doesn’t exist.
Eh, I think the absence of vehicles and ships is explained mostly by economics- not the economics of the fictional world but rather the economics of ours. During the golden age of Star Trek putting space ships into scenes was a non-trivial cost. You just didn’t do it unless there was a plot specific reason to. Consider Deep Space Nine: after a season or so it was basically a massive hub of interstellar traffic plus it was the stellar hub for Bajor- a significantly populous planet. There should have been dozens and dozens of ships docked all around the ring with larger ships berthed at its pylons pretty much all the time. You rarely saw more than a couple portrayed at any time not because they were absent but because our current economics didn’t permit tossing those ships in. Same with all the shots of earth. There should have been significant ship traffic and vehicle traffic at what was essentially the capital world of a massive interstellar polity. It wasn’t there because they were operating on a television budget with 90’s and early aughts levels of special effects budgets. Meta plot wise they probably should have been visible but there was no budget for them. That’s not a reason to think they didn’t exist in the fictional universe.
That’s not a reason to think they didn’t exist in the fictional universe.
In the episode “The Best of Both Worlds,” the Borg destroyed 39 of the 40 starships in the defense fleet at Wolf 359, resulting in the loss of nearly 11,000 crew members.
That’s the big battle to stop the Borg from the destroying the Federation and Star Fleet brought every ship they could.
We don’t see thousands of ships around the Earth or other planets because they don’t exist in the fictional universe. Star Fleet controls the bulk of starships and there are sources which count them having slightly more than a hundred total.
DS9 and Babylon 5 ran at the same time, and B5 had lots of ships and races running around because they did exist in the fictional universe and occasionally they’d show up on screen. But they’d always be there in drop phrases.
DS9, with a budget of zero, could have had Major Kira complaining about how overworked she was welcoming hundreds of ships a week and how she needed more staff. Then in the big CGI battles the DS9 could be alone because civilians ships fled before the fight.
In the ST universe, one ship is a big deal. It’s unusual enough for any flavor of the Enterprise to check it out and see what’s up.
In the Star Wars universe, space ships are common enough, even in 1977, that you can go into a rough bar and find someone who is willing to take you across the galaxy.
It’s an interesting angle I hadn’t considered but I do recall, in DS9, various characters complaining about how many ships they had to deal with coming and going. In terms of armed “starships” I agree the numbers of those vessels were very limited but it’s always been the presumption that tons of smaller civilian craft were bopping about. B5 did show a plethora of ships though they were.. erm… on a much lower degree of detail than Star Trek did. Still I’ve never read anything that suggested vehicles or civilian craft were absent in the Star Trek universe.
I’ve never read anything that suggested vehicles or civilian craft were absent in the Star Trek universe.
From Roddenberry himself on his vision:
Roddenberry confirmed the size of Starfleet as he originally envisioned it while making the show that launched the legendary franchise, saying, “In addition to the twelve starships, there are lesser classes of vessels, capable of operating over much more limited distances.”
So they exist, but they’re way more limited in range and/or speed. Limited enough that finding one is a big deal if you’re away from a star system.
That link below wants to claim that Star Fleet had many thousands of ships in the Time of the Borg, but we again have the reality that only a few dozen were able to face off against the Borg.
https://screenrant.com/star-trek-starfleet-ships-how-many
Roddenberry’s vision is that star ships are extremely rare and a big deal… and the people are post scarcity… and the vast bulk of people are happy.
How we have all of these things at the same time is a topic best not touched because any explanations are grim.
Are there very few ships because resources are lacking? If so then “post scarcity” isn’t the word. Do we actually have the resources to build star ships but the government doesn’t want that to happen? (star engines create anti-matter so yeah). How is that enforced?
How are Billions of people handling the fact that only tens of thousands can visit other stars?
Is being in Star Fleet a high status very select profession or not? Are people in general “equal” or not? We have both “all of us are equal and happy” but also “only a very few very selected people get to join Star Fleet”.
In DS9 Nog had to get Cisco’s permission to get in, so the strong implication is that you need to get the support of someone already in Star Fleet to join… which would mean serious levels of political connections are needed, which is going to instantly create serious problems.
The Star Trek civilization’s statistics instantly become a dystopian future the moment people behave like they should behave. Do we have a repressive gov preventing star travel? Does it take so much in resources that only the rich can afford star travel? Are people happy because the vast bulk of people are addicts lost in holodeck virtual paradises?
This is all based simply on the producers not bothering to put plethora of civilian ships in the background of their shows. This is something, I’d note, they started fixing in some of the more modern shows. Picard had several shots of worlds with considerably traffic of vessels coming and going.
While you noted that Kasidy Yates had her own private ship you implied she was a shady smuggler which is cannonically incorrect. In cannon Kasidy owned a small shipping firm which had office on Deep Spake Nine and also in Boston.
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Kasidy_Yates_Interstellar_Freights
Likewise we know there were other private firms like https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Yoyodyne_Propulsion_Systems?so=search which built private colony ships as well as contracting work for the Federation (they built Miranda class starships). So we know the private ships, private firms and even private shipyards existed.
That being said I think it’s a pretty understandable misconception to have because Star Trek has inveterately eschewed talking much about life outside of Star Fleet.
Kasidy Yates had her own private ship you implied she was a shady smuggler which is canonically incorrect
Yates went to prison for smuggling. The plot has her “not know” (typical ST having your cake and eating it too), but she still went to prison for smuggling.
Yes, you can be charged with smuggling if you own a private shipping firm. The point is that Yates existed, her firm existed and was in good standing within the Federation and operated there. I provided other examples of private firms that made private ships. I have not seen any concrete suggestion from you that private or civilian shipping didn’t exist within the borders of the federation or that citizens existed in some kind of unable-to-move utopia/dystopia.
The lack of “concrete” evidence is because ST is wildly inconsistent. Writers will write one episode which starkly overturns Roddenberry’s vision.
Single star ships are rare and important enough to be worth investigating just because they exist AND we have civilian shipping “within Federation borders”.
Because Stars being far away isn’t a problem if they’re within Federation borders.
Well, I’m with you entirely on the writing being somewhat inconsistent and Star Trek needing an internally facing show to flesh out/explore the life of Federation society but in this specific situation; the question of civilian shipping, privately owned vehicles and ships being present in the Federation; I think the evidence is just plain against you.
Many of the episodes have Star Ships in Starfleet performing police or rescue operations vis a vis civilian owned or operated ships. There are concrete episodic examples of private firms and individuals owning and operating vehicles and ships. There are no concrete episodic or lore references directly stating that Star Fleet capital ships are the only vessels operating within the Federation that I’m aware of. Cannon, if irregular, references that say “Yes civilians can and do obtain and operate their own vehicles and ships” and a total vacuum of references that say “No civilians can’t and are forbidden from obtaining and operating their own vehicles and ships and must petition Star Fleet for any and all transportation needs” puts the preponderance of evidence in favor of the former proposition.
That said it did send me down several entertaining trek rabbit holes and brightened my day considerably and for that I am grateful.
Thank you, and I agree this was fun.
Captain Picard’s family owns Chateau Picard, a long standing, respected and desirable vineyard (talk about private ownership of the means of production).
What good is a replicator that can’t scan one of the premier vintages from the Picard vineyard and reproduce it on demand? Or a transporter buffer that can’t crank out copies? What are the IP rules for wine? Did the Federation carry over the Sonny Bono rule?
On the good replicators available to Leadership? Yeah, they can make it. Romulan Ale, too (but don’t tell anybody).
On the DS9 station where they use Cardassian replicators (initially installed by Bajorans)? You’re better off wandering down to Quark’s and asking what’s on tap.
Star Trek replicators, much like Supermans strength relative to various enemies from story to story, seem to get adjusted up and down in strength as the story plot demands. The more solid fan reasoning is that replicators could replicate a premier vintage from the Picard Vineyard and reproduce it on demand but the quality is slightly off for a complex and nuanced chemical mishmash like wine. Alternative fan theory is that the fact that it’s artisanal is its own driver of demand. Replicator tech started out very magical (in TNG) and has tended to get dumbed down a bit as the Trek series have gone on.
I saw Yggles “Obama’s original sin” tweet, and thought it was pretty silly, but yeah, the reason Obama picked Biden was pretty clear, and made a lot of sense at the time, from an immediate Democratic Party electoral perspective. Very little of what happened during the Obama administration made sense from a long-term Democratic electoral perspective.
I wouldn’t use the term “Original Sin” had others not picked it up first.
Personally, I’d have gone with “Technical Debt”.
Obama, from jump, put politics in a very distant back seat to other priorities. That probably served his personal stature very well but it was extremely bad for the Democratic Party (and arguably bad for the country).
And what made it worse is that he was so talented, and so confident, that he made many liberals feel like all is well even as the party rotted from within.
We saw it in real time.
Remember the whole “Democrats lost 1000 seats” thing?
They switched from Howard Dean’s “50 State Strategy” to a more “Omnicausal” school of thought.
The very idea that a Democrat in Idaho be different from a Democrat in Boston be different from a Democrat in Louisiana was offensive.
I mean we both were there in 2009; heck we both were -here- in 2009 IIRC. There was a huge wave of good feeling. The first black President had been inaugurated on a theme of pure Hope’n’change, he was “above” mere politics. He was breaking the political mold- preemptively offering the right “reasonable concessions” in advance if they’d simply join him in fixing what was wrong. And then it all went to fish. McConnell realized that, the way Obama had set himself up, all the GOP had to do to “defeat” him was simply uniformly refuse to cooperate while lying about what they were doing. They already had a dedicated media ecosystem to push the party line, the main stream media was deep in the both sides tradition and Obama himself thought jawjawing was mostly beneath him.
And so it went. Obama was happy to be the great historic leader but he was not at all being interested in being a political knife fighter. But politics needs BOTH.
“Well, why did Obama win, despite being green, instead of the main person he was running against?”
tangent: if my parents are anything to go by, he won because of Sarah Palin. My mother didn’t have any particular feeling for Barack Obama but still talks about how we dodged a bullet by avoiding even the remote possibility that Sarah Palin could be President.
I think Bernie and AOC are in to something – and what if their speeches I have read is more then just hopium. I haven’t dug into it much on account of the current existential burnout of being a fed these days. But if the Dems would just let these two – and David Hogg – lead they might actually win something.
Speaking of David Hogg, Congressional Representative Gerry Connolly has passed away.
Best friend the federal
Workforce had in the hill. May he rest in peace.
You may recall that he got the seat on the Oversight committee instead of some no-name from one of those “a glass of water with a D on it would win this district” reps.
Two things can be true at once Jay. Connelly prevented AOC from being on that committee – an error that can now be corrected. He also introduced dozens of pieces of legislation to protect us from the very political interference we are now experiencing. He also know better then anyone how federal civil service worked.
an error that can now be corrected
I am on the edge of my seat.
Bernie is 83, so I can’t imagine he has many more years of this in him. AOC is a talented politician, popular in her district and increasingly so nationwide, but flawed in ways that Bernie isn’t. He has clearly picked her as his successor, but whether she can carry on his movement, such as it is at this point, remains to be seen. I remain dubious.
My own belief is that the American liberal left, those of the “DSA school” as they’re described elsewhere in this thread, have poured too much time and energy into Bernie and the Democrats, including AOC, and the result is that there is not an American left capable of meeting this moment. It’s a shame, because liberals/the center and center-left have shown themselves to feckless, so utterly devoid of principles or ideas, that now would be the perfect time to have an organized, active left. Alas…
Voting was weird in 2024. Harris received 1.9 million less votes than Biden in California. She still crushed Trump here and Democrats managed to flip three house seats. On the other hand, the loss of votes in NY, probably resulted in some vulnerable Republican congressional members keeping their seats.
I’ve seen some articles suggesting the stay at home voters shifted to the right but could not bring themselves to vote for Trump.
I’m very friendly from a policy prospective to a much more robust welfare state. I also think the DSA theory of politics that there are millions of latent socialists waiting to be activated is dead wrong. If you were to ask me about the politics (if any) of the 89 million eligible voters who did not vote in 2024, I would be more likely to bet they are closer to MAGA than not and they are not waiting for the Democrats to clench their fists and sing the Internationale.
Trump has an innate knack for publicity like a carnival barker and it is tied to a persona of him being a successful “business tycoon.” We both know that he is actually a horrible businessman and negotiator, he just had a trust fund and a lot of dumb luck. Convincing low-information and low-propensity voters of this is an impossible task seemingly.
I don’t know what to make of an analysis that just says “Voting in 2024 was weird.” It’s a hand wave, or looking away. It’s not helpful.
As for the “DSA theory of politics,” I don’t think most members of DSA are socialists in anything beyond the Scandinavian sense (if that, even), and I do think that Scandinavian style social democracy would be pretty popular if consistently sold by Democrats as it was/is by Bernie, who was and remains very popular because of it. But actual socialists, people who understand what socialism entails, even in the abstract, pretty much all think that everyone’s a latent socialist, in much the same way that libertarians think everyone’s innately capitalist. It’s not a matter of messaging, though, to get the latent socialism out of people; that’s something that happens through history, a word and concept almost completely foreign to the American political mainstream, liberal and conservative.
Personally, I should add, I am more skeptical of the latency of any way of organizing society, in large part because there’s always been a little bit of the existentialist in me, but also because I’ve read enough anthropology to believe that there are many, many ways of organizing society, and that human history is not strictly unidirectional, though I’m enough of a Marxist to at least hope that it continues to move us towards greater freedom.
My stance is this. A winning anti-Trump coalition is going to need to be broad and contain members with very strong ideological disagreements. Maybe even ideologies and policy beliefs that make each other retch.
The good news on Trump’s seemingly magnetic appeal to irregular voters as the report calls them is that it seems to be one of a kind. No one is going to be fanatically devoted to JD Vance except JD Vance. No other politician has his carnival barker/Reality TV mojo.
Fight Trump now, fight each other later.
We really need to stop using the term low-information voters when we mean negative-information voters. The problem is not that voters do not know a lot, the problem is that they know things that are not slightly true.
Agreed… both that we need a new word and in your description of the issue.
Part of this is all the damage the traditional media has done to their brand. When it’s obvious that they’re not doing their jobs people look for other sources, and Trump has filled that void.
Maybe we could set up something like literacy tests.
Maybe we could come up with some sort of independent groups that distributed actual facts about politics and government in a fairly neutral manner. Or, at least, opinions about actual facts instead of conspiracy theories and randomly printing everything that one political party is willing to spew even if it is patently, obviously, false.
I feel this is important enough we could functionally consider it _part_ of the government, a sort of ‘fourth estate’, if you will.
A somewhat serious question: What the hell happened to journalism?
It used to be good. If not “good”, it sure as hell used to be *BETTER*. Why are they now incapable of distributing actual facts about politics and government in a fairly neutral manner?
Lemme guess… the problem is Fox News and AM radio? Joe Rogan?
What the hell happened to journalism?
Economics. It’s way more profitable (or maybe just: profitable) to try to attract a smaller group of people than it is to offend everyone equally. People want to hear things which support their point of view.
That’s on top of the issue that the bulk of newspaper income came from classified advertising, which has been moved online to Facebook Marketing, Craig’s List, various job posting websites, and so on.
Now maybe the issue is that journalism has been disrupted recently and not found it’s way yet.
So, if that’s true, I imagine that readership and viewership has gone up in recent years since any significant changes.
Don’t know why that implies increasing readership. A lot of old media has been running on fumes for years.
Their established habitual readership from before social media is aging and moves away and/or dies.
They have had serious damage to their entire business model and have yet to recover.
“Increasing influence”?
“Increasing ability to mold and pat the public opinion”?
Maybe we could come up with some sort of independent groups that distributed actual facts about politics and government in a fairly neutral manner.
We’ve seen them occasionally then they change into cheering squads for what they want to believe.
The problem isn’t that they can’t read; it’s that they don’t.
Sure.
We’ve had voting since well before literacy rates got that high.
https://bsky.app/profile/atrupar.com/post/3lpmbmmjkjk2i
HASSAN: What is habeas corpus?
NOEM: Habeas corpus is a constitutional right that the president has to be able to remove people from this country
HASSAN: That’s incorrect
Bobby Brainworms is going to make it impossible for most American adults to get COVID vaccines this year: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/20/health/fda-covid-vaccines.html
I was just about to post this. Here is a non-paywalled version from the Associated Press:
https://apnews.com/article/vaccines-fda-kennedy-covid-shots-rfk-trump-bb4de15b6ff955d6cd0b406aaec3cdc5
Hmm… he has a point in it’s unclear if there’s much benefit to the individual if you’re young and healthy.
The counter argument can be summed up as “herd immunity”. There are people who can’t take vaccinations at all. It’d be nice to protect them by vaccinating the rest of us.
Personally I’d like to get vaccinated just because some protection is better than no protection. It’s sort of like how a bullet proof vest is only rated up to a certain level of bullet but if you get shot with something above that you’re still likely a lot better off.
This is coming from Marty Makary, who is not RFK Jr and is a very smart and well-credentialed dude. It’s certainly possible there’s some pressure from above, but at the same time this is not a kooky out-of-left-field decision. There’s genuine debate about the best approach, and as the articles say, the current US policy around vaccination recommendations is significantly more aggressive than most of the world.
Norm from Cheers has died.
Thanks to LeeEsq, TIL that his maternal grandfather took one of the most infamous photographs in American history. His grandfather was the photographer who snuck in a camera to Ruth Snyder’s execution and got a photo of her execution.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Howard_(photographer)
…and Wendt is Jason Sudeikis’ uncle and godfather. I did not know that.
Based on his Wikipedia page, Wednt was raised very Catholic. He died with the new Pope being from his hometown.
The shock probably killed him!
Trump’s administration is deporting immigrants from Myanmar and Vietnam to South Sudan in defiance of judicial orders:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/05/20/deportation-immigration-south-sudan-department-of-homeland-security/388ae16c-35bd-11f0-9c9e-0db2d748bea7_story.html
Guess we will see if this judge does what the others have not and issues contempt citations.
We’re going to start seeing Judges point out that Justice Lawyers are lying to them and recommend that they be disbarred.
Until those recommendations are backed up by contempt citations and arrests it’s not going to change anything’.
Disbarment is a big deal, especially on the young lawyers who are foolishly going in front of these judges and following their boss’s instructions on what to say.
Contempt sends an immediate message that needs to be sent.
Chess grandmaster Magnus Carlsen is forced into a draw in a showdown against ‘the world’
This is kinda cool. One guy vs. 143,000 people and the 143,000 people forced a draw.
The previous two games versus the world were won by the grandmasters who played them.
The game wasn’t normal chess, it was freestyle chess, where the pieces (other than pawns) are set up in a random array on the back rank. Takes away a lot of the advantage of knowing opening theory. I’d love to see how the pieces were set up in this game.
You can check it out here.
If you just want a quick description: Rook Knight Knight King Bishop Bishop Queen Rook (and black was mirrored across the board).
The Chicago Sun-Times and Philly Inquirer published an summer reading guide. The big problem is that actual readers noticed most of the books and authors were AI hallucinations but the Power that Be don’t seem bothered that they were caught: https://defector.com/chicago-sun-times-and-philadelphia-inquirer-publish-huge-summer-insert-of-pure-uncut-chatbot-slop
AI chatbots make stuff up. That’s not a bug, that’s their job.
They do format and spelling. This list would be an example of what a real list is supposed to look like. It’s not supposed to be taken seriously, you-the-human are supposed to replace it’s details with your own.
So it’s a first draft.
Edited by ChatGPT as well, apparently. “These books all seem fine to me!”
Meanwhile, the folks out there who think that Boiling Point by Rebecca Makkai are going to be running from bookstore to bookstore, going mad.
Note to Rebecca Makkai: WRITE BOILING POINT. THERE’S AN AUDIENCE THAT HAS BEEN PRE-BUILT FOR YOU.
I saw this news earlier and someone commented that there will very quickly be ways for the unwary to purchase these fake books.
It was an insert from a syndicator – the newspapers are just taking the hit for not checking that outfit’s work.
Last week, there was a mild kerfuffle on the twitters where someone asked Google about the Michael Madsen movie “Humdinger” (no such movie exists, mind).
Instead of being told “look, no such movie exists… not on imdb or in any movie history that I can find”, the searcher was told:
There is a picture of Michael Madsen wearing an all-black old west costume.
I don’t know about you but I WOULD WATCH THE EVER-LIVING CRAP OUT OF THAT MOVIE.
Stuff like that is what I go to the movies for.
Anyway, Google is useless now. It’s a weird situation where I think “this software product would be better if they just abandoned a decade of ‘upgrades’ and just went back to 2012 code.”
But here we are.
It’s a good concept but sounds more like a madcap Jason Statham vehicle than something you’d ser Michael Madsen in.
In the current year, sure. But 2005? Hell, yeah, I’d watch Madsen in a rip-off of Kill Bill set in the old west!
In which Democratic “congressional leadership” beckons itself AGAIN by not groking the fight it is actually in and what it takes to win that fight:
https://www.salon.com/2025/05/21/wasting-our-time-democrats-dismiss-impeachment–revealing-their-cynicism/?fbclid=IwQ0xDSwKa4kNleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHlLq1r5OXeyMwXoChrXX5v6eo5BWbP020VbsHQ_OvhKJbukYq6LaAHXUNoGm_aem_exihUyozGfgGIXpZ6dWfAA
From what I can tell, the non-fight Democratic politicians in Congress believe, probably not without reason, that they have the votes of the people who really hate Trump in the bag and what they need to focus on, because of the American political system, is winning back just enough Trump-Biden-Trump voters to win in the Electoral College in 2028. This is not a necessarily wrong perspective politically and they might see as fighting back too hard, especially on contentious issues, can destroy this. It’s the logic behind Pelosi’s self-impeachment line from 2018 when activists began pushing more impeachment.
That set of ideas failed in 2024. Because you don’t get the declines in turnout without declines in anti-Trump voting from 2020. 36% of voters sat it out in 2024. Continuing to take charts and graphs to the boxing match voters want us to keep inserting your head further into your own backside.
Trump’s meeting with South Africa’s President appears to be as horrible and shameful as one can imagine it to be. Meaning it is shameful beyond imagination.
Yeah but South Africa’s president is a black man so MAGA will be thrilled with how he is treated since a he’s not an equal
Guys, please don’t let disgust with Trump and his per usual undignified and embarrassing conducting of foreign affairs turn into a championing of characters like Ramaphosa or really anyone else in today’s ANC. Whatever they once were they are no longer defensible today. Getting riled up is what’s called taking the bait.
What? Did he play that “Kill the Boer” song for him or something?
He made false accusations of White Genocide. Also he is too thick to realize when he is being made fun of.
Fine, I’ll google it.
Yep. Looks like he played “Kill the Boer” for Ramaphosa.
Here is a link:
https://www.rawstory.com/opposite-of-apartheid-trump-rants-about-theory-as-south-african-president-squirms/
From Original Sin: https://www.axios.com/2025/05/21/biden-town-hall-event-new-book-original-sin
The claim is Biden’s scripted town halls were so bad it was difficult to make TV commercials from them.
Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act will result in $500 billion cuts to Medicare.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2025/05/21/medicare-cuts-big-beautiful-bill-republicans-house/
To say nothing of what trillions it’s going to add to the deficit. So much so that Trump and the GOP fools seem to be genuinely spooking the bond market. Just unbelievable. I still have a faint hope that they’ll manage to fish it up and pass nothing.
The bill is apparently bogged down in the House Rules committee with 500 Democratic Amendments
Good. The Dems should throw everything they can at this stuff.
That didn’t work
Was curious what they were cutting and why… turns out that the bill’s deficit is tripping a pay-go provision that will automatically trigger a 4% across the board cut… which amounts to approx $45B / yr for the next 8-years.
Technically it doesn’t impact services, ‘just’ a 4% haircut on expenditures… which will have uneven effects downstream, one summary: “These cuts would affect Medicare payments to providers and health plans, but not directly reduce benefits to enrollees. However, reduced provider payments could impact access to care for Medicare beneficiaries.”
Of course, the downstream paragraphs also point out that the pay-go ‘rule’ can also just be set-aside in the bill if they want.
So… a catchy headline that’s probably a bit over it’s skis in terms of what will actually happen.
https://newrepublic.com/article/195300/democratic-tea-party-bernie-aoc-failed-succeed
To see the difference, imagine you’re asked at work why you gave a customer a refund. You might say, “Because I thought it was the right thing to do,” or you might say, “Because my supervisor told me to.” The former centers the agency on you (it happened because of you). The second describes the same act but puts the agency on another person. Agency is important because it’s directly tied to our moral response (who we blame) and our emotional response (who we get angry at). Changing the bearer of agency in a story transfers blame and emotion with it. When we say, “Because my boss told me to,” we’re also saying, “Take it up with them, don’t get mad at me.” Likewise, in political narratives, agency informs not only our strategy but who we blame and how we feel.
The reason the Democratic Tea Party failed is the activists who organized it explicitly ran on a low-agency “reaction” account of Trump. When asked to explain Trump’s appeal, Sanders, in a 2020 New York Times interview, said:
How did Trump become president? … Not everybody, but tens and tens of millions of Americans feel that the political establishment, Republican and Democrat, have failed them. Maybe The New York Times has failed them too.
Interviewer: That explains the appeal of racism?
Yeah. OK. What you have is that people are, in many cases in this country, working longer hours for low wages. You are aware of the fact that, in an unprecedented way, life expectancy has actually gone down in America because of diseases of despair. People have lost hope and they are drinking. They’re doing drugs. They’re committing suicide. O.K. They are worried about their kids. I have been to southern West Virginia where the level of hopelessness is very, very high. And when that condition arises, whether it was the 1930s in Germany, then people are susceptible to the blame game.
I call this combination of political progressivism and a low-agency account the “antiestablishment left.” Post-2016, it was the most common view within the activist class. In contrast, the most common view of democratic core voters is what I call “mainline liberal”: This is also progressive but combined with a high-agency account of Trump and MAGA. They stress affirmative actions the right takes—such as directly appealing to racism or sexism. (These labels aren’t one-for-one with how people describe themselves but are close enough to give a sense.)
Life expectancy is going down because of Covid and drug overdoses. https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/why-life-expectancy-in-the-us-is-falling-202210202835
More importantly, if Team Blue is planning on reaching out to the “southern West Virginia hopelessness” then maybe they shouldn’t also be calling them racist because they question whether [groups other than them] should be at the front of the line.
So Bernie can claim “progressive values” are popular and would be successful if we ran on them, but he can’t actually define what those values are because they wouldn’t be popular in practice.
Focusing on helping [this race/gender/whatever group] means, by definition, that you’re disfavoring everyone not in that group. For example, HRC really did as much as she could to “fix” the primary at the expense of Bernie which then made it much harder to convince Bernie voters to vote for her.
I’d suggest focusing on things like good government, lack of corruption, economic opportunity (not equality), and so on but that’s me.
The NYT has an opinion piece today: Why Does It Matter Whether Covid Came Out of a Lab?
So, if you were waiting for a signal to switch from “the science is settled” to “why does it matter?”, well, there’s the New York Times.
Heh… but have you considered that maybe the Lab Leak was Trump’s fault?
“But few may even know that it was under the Trump administration in 2017 when the National Institutes of Health lifted an Obama-era pause on gain-of-function funding in what may have looked at the time like an inside-baseball argument among scientists but now looks more like a strike against liberal safetyism, which reopened the door to the kinds of research the American right now reflexively blames for the pandemic”
However you need to shape the narrative to get there is fine with me.
It’s stuff like that that tells me that these people have no conception of how someone else might think about something. Oh, it’d make Trump look bad too? Do you think that I will change my opinion on the lab leak based on that?
We saw the same crap with Epstein. “You know, if the files were released, it’d take down Trump too!”
I just find myself scratching my head. “Is that why you’re opposed to it?”
Imagine if the dominant response from the left to the lab leak hypothesis at the time was not “that’s racist!” but rather “it’s Trump’s fault!”. It might’ve entirely flipped the sides on this issue.
It’s not too late! Just switch the toggle as if it’d already been there for five years and ask why you’re the only one brave enough to blame Donald Trump for a disease that caused the death of 1.2 million Americans.
Okay, apparently enough people roasted the piece. The title has now been changed to “Why Are So Many People Sure Covid Leaked From a Lab?”
Please go back to “the science is settled”.
Two staff members of the Israeli embassy in DC shot dead outside a Jewish Museum.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c9vgrkdje1ro
DC police stated that the gunman allegedly screamed “Free Palestine.” I have to admit that I am utterly confused at the logic of the Pro-Palestinian movement at this point. It is pretty obvious that a military defeat against Israel is not possible and the world isn’t going to swoop down and impose a solution on Israel anymore than they would for any other ethnic or national conflict in the world. This leaves either unilateral Israel action like with the Gaza withdrawal in 2005 or a negotiated solution. The Pro-Palestinian side seems to view a negotiated solution with distaste though because it means they aren’t going to get everything they want and Israel will still exist.
Also creating a state of fear in Israelis or even the global Jewish community isn’t exactly going to do anything for the Palestinians either. After 10/7 and the massacres of non-Muslims and the wrong types of Muslims in Syria by the new regime, Israeli Jews aren’t going to be in a state of not wanting the Palestinians under their direct control unless they get a lot of guarantees that nobody can give.
The Palestinian Enthusiasts can’t defeat Israel, but they can increase the cost of business-as-usual.
How much is possible right now that wouldn’t be possible if Israel had less moral authority in a year?
None of that matters when they’re fighting someone whose goal is “No Jews”.
A less rich Israel won’t be as ethical in it’s war, so it will have to increase brutality. Brutality is cheap, ethics is expensive.
The argument, as I understand it, is that Israel is committing Genocide currently.
What’s the threat? “Oh, Israel will commit genocide FOR REAL”?
How much is possible right now that wouldn’t be possible if Israel had less moral authority in a year?
And there are already debates on BlueSky as to whether it’s fair to compare the shooter to Luigi.
Great going, everybody!
What’s the threat? “Oh, Israel will commit genocide FOR REAL”?
There aren’t a lot of people dying in the current conflict by WW2 standards. For example the number of births is greater than the number of deaths. During WW2 we killed just under half of Germany’s men.
How much is possible right now that wouldn’t be possible if Israel had less moral authority in a year?
Israel is a significant player as a supplier in the global arms market. They also have a lot of ugly options that are pretty cheap.
There aren’t a lot of people dying in the current conflict by WW2 standards.
Oh, well then. Let’s look at murder trends over the last five years.
Murder rates experienced a sharp increase in 2020 and stayed elevated in 2021. There was a decline in 2022 but the decline didn’t become a sharp decline until 2023. 2024’s numbers look like they’re going to return to the numbers found in 2019.
While these murders were tragic, you have to compare to 2021 and 2022, when murders were much more common.
Fine, I’ll rephrase that.
This is a WW2 style fight. The numbers suggest that Israel, with it’s current resources, is doing an amazing job and using a light touch.
It’s brutal and ugly by “peace” standards but not by “war” standards.
If we insist that it fight with WW2 tools then we should expect WW2 results, which were much nastier.
If we want the conflict to end then we should lean on Hamas to surrender.
Or what? What is the threat?
“Oh, Israel will commit genocide FOR REAL”?
How much is possible right now that wouldn’t be possible if Israel had less moral authority in a year?
If it wasn’t “genocide” when we killed half of the male population in Germany then it wouldn’t be “genocide” if Israel does the same.
The threat is a lot more civilians will die than need to.
IMHO it’s not useful to dumb down the word “genocide” so that every war is genocide.
That obscures the difference between Israel’s efforts which have largely avoided killing the civilians and actual genocide, which Israel could do in a few days if it really wanted to.
How much buy-in will you have for that, do you think?
Please keep in mind, your opponents are currently discussing whether non-violence is an option during Israel’s genocide against the Palestinian people.
How much buy-in will you have for that, do you think?
The choices currently on the table are Israel allowing itself to be terrorized or Israel continuing the war.
Israel has the resources, all by itself, to keep the war going forever if it’s willing to increase the level of brutality.
My expectation is if we reduce Israel’s resources we’ll discover that the body count goes up, not down.
It won’t be “genocide for REAL” even then any more than our war with Germany was “genocide” (words have meanings, I suggest we use them correctly), but it will mean the war gets uglier.
The correct way to finish this is for the world to help Israel win the war, and for the Palestinians to lose. After that happens hopefully the Palestinians will rethink their ideology just like German and Japan did post WW2.
The incorrect way to finish this would be for the World to force a stalemate on Israel and then we will see this again after Hamas rearms.
I would like to see this issue resolved and that means Israel should be allowed to win the war.
The genocide vs. non-genocide debate in regards to the Israel-Hamas War comes from the Pro-Palestinian side using the very broad definition as defined in the Genocide Convention, this broad definition is not applied to any other war, and the Pro-Israel side using the more conventional understanding of genocide.
The Palestinian movement has been claiming Genocide ever since Israel was created. They consider Israel existing to be an ultimate crime. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinian_genocide_accusation
If you mean South Africa’s lawsuit, then Hamas and the war are air-brushed out the picture.
Yes, I realize this. It’s just amazing how what would otherwise be an ordinary humdrum ethnic conflict gets turned into something incredibly big and metaphysical by the Pro-Palestinian movement. It doesn’t do much to actually resolve the conflict but you keep getting books with titles like “The World after Gaza.” Even if you consider the Israel’s response to 10/7 to be excessive and Netanyahu and Ben-Gvir evil incarnate, this seems more than way too much. The Israel-Hamas War as some sort of world changing atrocity? Really?
The speed and sheer volume publication of these books was outstanding. It’s almost like they were pre-written and they were just waiting for the right event.
(Oooh, I gotta keep this argument in my back pocket. I get the feeling that I’ll be using it soon.)
The speed and sheer volume publication of these books was outstanding.
It’s been more than a year and we have AI now.
If it wasn’t “genocide” when we killed half of the male population in Germany then it wouldn’t be “genocide” if Israel does the same.
Between this claim and the one that the population of Gaza has grown since 10/7, I’m starting to think you might not be a numbers person.
There were about 71 million people within the German borders by 1940 (I realize this is after the invasion of Poland, where Germany suffered ~17k dead, but that’s a drop in the bucket compared to what came after). Between military and civilian casualties, Germany (along with soldiers from Austria and some of the occupied territories who joined the German military, either by volunteering or, in the case of countries, conscription) lost about 5.5 million total. Even if we assume the 500k-1 million civilian casualties were all men (obviously they weren’t; in fact, were heavily not men since a large percentage of the male population wasn’t in the cities that were being bombed, which is where the civilian casualties occurred), we’d have to assume that about 59 million out of the 70 million Germans were women for “half the male population in Germany” to have been killed.
Even if it had been half the male population, the analogy wouldn’t hold, since about about half of the German deaths during the war occurred on Soviet soil, where the Germans were invaders.
And it’s further worth noting that much of what the Allies did during WWII would now be considered war crimes.
Chris, does the Pro-Palestinian movement in the West want to Free Palestine more or hurt Israel more? Because all their actions from 1948 to the present show a bigger desire to hurt Israel than help or create a Palestinian state. What has the Pro-Palestinian movement ever accomplished for the Palestinians?
Free Palestine. Simple question, thanks.
And several people in the Free Palestine movement have been killed or attacked by Israel, so they’ve at least tried to accomplish something.
It’s disappointing, isn’t it?
Arguing against people who cannot even comprehend someone with an opposing point of view.
“My Morality and Moral Authority is Obvious!”, they say… from the gutter.
We used to train for this. We used to be able to explain that stuff like this existed… What the hell happened?
I understand the point of view of the people who think that the Palestinians got a raw deal just fine. What I don’t understand is what did the expect Jews to do in the face of death and persecution.
Most Jews in continental Europe and the MENA region attempted to prove themselves as loyal patriots of the countries they lived in. They were utterly rejected by their Christian, Muslim, and secular neighbors no matter what their politics were. This either led to mass death or exile. If the anti-Zionists really believe that Zionism is so evil that Jews should have accepted persecution and death instead they should at least have the courage to come out and say so.
Instead we get some sort of reverse thinking where anti-Semitism is caused by Zionism rather than Zionism being caused by anti-Semitism.
I honestly think that most people aren’t looking at it taking the 1930s into account but are looking at pictures of the dead kids.
“But you need to understand the *CONTEXT* of the dead kids!” is a tough row to hoe when you’re alternating that argument with a “HOW DARE YOU” variant.
I don’t know. The Left doesn’t seeem to have problems going into the deep past for other evils they care about. Not really sure why living memory should be so hard for them when it comes to Jewish issues. It also isn’t the 1930s but basically the entire Mid-20th century including the expulsion of the MENA Jews and the Jews that got stuck under Communism.
Look at the setup of those “going into the deep past”.
Blacks are bad off today, go into the deep past and find: Slavery.
Native Americans are bad off today, go into the deep past and find: Smallpox.
Palestinians are bad off today, go into the deep past and find: the Nabka.
What’s the setup here? “Israel should be allowed to kill more Palestinians because of the Holocaust?”
Well, what about October 7th?, you may ask.
How many Palestinians do you think that October 7th should get you? 1200 Israelis died that day…
I’m sure we agree that it can’t be 1:1.
Would killing ten times as many Palestinians be good enough, do you think? How about twenty times? 24,000 Palestinians. Would that be enough?
Forty times?
If the answer is “I think that the Israelis should get a pass on killing fifty times as many Palestinians as Israelis died on October 7th”, you need to see how some people won’t see that as a deal worth accepting.
“But the Holocaust!” doesn’t become a good argument under those circumstances.
It’s, like, the *OPPOSITE* of a good argument.
Would that be enough? Forty times?
What is necessary to get the Palestinians to think launching a genocidal war is a bad idea? Whatever the number is, we’re not there yet.
Now if you mean “ethically”, the answer is that the ratio is irrelevant. We don’t count up how many civilians were killed and insist that Israel can only kill X times that number. When we were bombing the Germans we didn’t let them kill some number of our own civilians.
This is a war, it’s expected that the weaker side will suffer more. If the Palestinians dislike the current situation, then they can surrender and return the hostages.
If they’re not willing to do that because they still insist on killing Jewish civilians, then the war goes on and we’re back to it being expected that the weaker side will suffer more.
The Palestinians hold their key to unlock their own jail cell.
And no, this has nothing to do with the holocaust. These are the normal rules for everyone.
If we’re going to say “this has nothing to do with the Holocaust”, then we’re going to have to abandon the whole “we need the Palestinian Enthusiasts to tell us what should have happened from 1950-October 2023!” demand.
What “should have happened” is Israel should have been treated as a normal country.
Normal countries are allowed to exist and are forgiven the “crime” of their creation.
Israel has the “ethical” advantage that it didn’t destroy an existing country to create itself. Great Brittain doesn’t count because they wanted out. However that is irrelevant because normal countries are forgiven the crime of their creation.
All of this talk about the Holocaust is pointless unless we’re trying to oppose the idea that Jews should not have a country because they’re Jews.
I don’t see the need to hold the Jews to some insane higher ethical standard than I hold anyone else. One size fits all.
There are hundreds of millions or billions of people who do not see Israel as a normal country and really do not accept it’s legitimacy. I don’t like it but they never have and never will. Inconsitent rules because of messy reality is always how it worked.
If they try to describe why Israel isn’t a normal country, then what it comes down to is “because they’re Jews”.
Someone who is using that kind of thinking should be called out on it. Pointing to the Holocaust is not calling them out on that thinking nor making it clear that they want a Jewish exception because Jews.
We can’t change the thinking but we should put a spotlight on it.
‘ There are hundreds of millions or billions of people who think that Jews only exist on their sufferance and the Jewish State is no exception to that.
If it’s necessary to do a deep dive in history to find justification then you’re trying to justify something you shouldn’t.
He keeps saying that, often to people who came from the very background that, supposedly, they don’t understand.
If they rely on “HOW DARE YOU” rather than attempts to persuade, I’d say that they are demonstrating a lack of understanding rather than a mastery of it.
But maybe social shaming will work this time.
Well, yes, that is another thing you say.
Not just me! Here’s the New York Times:
Six Months Later, Democrats Are Still Searching for the Path Forward
If you think there is someone here that is (a) talking to the target audience rather than the folks here and (b) is confused about the difference between something being true versus being effective, feel free to argue with them.
The main benefit of arguing for something that is true, I find, is that you can argue it yesterday and today and the worst argument against it is something of the form “yeah, you say that a lot”. Makes it easy, if predictable, to say it again tomorrow.
Say what you will about fashionable positions, you never know what they’re going to be tomorrow!
Lewis Carroll would like a word.
I’d like to read his idea of the dialog when SAM was created, I tell you what.
Free Palestine.
What does “Free Palestine” look like?
Is that, “The entire area is free from Jews” so all the Jews flee or are killed, or is it “The Palestinians get a state but Israel stays there and remains Jewish?”
(I think that’s all the choices but if there are others put them on the table).
LGM is a much more left leaning blog than this one but even on that blog most people realize that a right of return into Israel proper is a non-starter.
you might not be a numbers person.
Sigh. Never trust bot summations.
lost about 5.5 million total.
Sources vary… the top link gives me 5.5 million military deaths with an extra 1.1 to 3.3 million civilians.
https://www.nationalww2museum.org/students-teachers/student-resources/research-starters/research-starters-worldwide-deaths-world-war
Having said that, wiki (I can’t post the link because it has a banned word in it) suggests some of that is German on German war crimes and some is Germans-native-to-other-countries who presumably were pressed into service.
Total deaths as a percentage of the population was 8% to 11% depending on source. Obviously even if that was all men it’s not going to be 45% of the men, I think they meant “percentage of the German army”.
RE: Gaza births being more than military deaths
Current death toll is roughly 55k. The war has been going on for 19 months. So that’s about 35k a year.
UNFPA claims there are 50k pregnant women in Gaza right now. “Save the children” claims 130 births per day, which would be 47450 a year.
https://www.savethechildren.net/news/about-130-children-born-daily-gaza-amid-total-siege-aid-and-goods
much of what the Allies did during WWII would now be considered war crimes.
All war crimes are not “genocide”. If we’re going to insist that all wars are genocide then we lose the ability to tell the difference between forces which deliberately target civilians and those who don’t. We also lose the ability to even talk about groups which are engaged in actual efforts to exterminate groups.
First, the 50k is pretty much universally acknowledged to be a gross underestimate of the death toll (estimates have it well over 100k), and pretty much every estimate now has the population of Gaza shrinking 5-6% since 10/7.
every estimate now has the population of Gaza shrinking 5-6% since 10/7.
That includes people who have fled.
50k is pretty much universally acknowledged to be a gross underestimate of the death toll
I said 55k. Wiki has a study which suggests an undercount of 44%… which would still result in more births than deaths.
This line of thought comes from the realization that the facts don’t fit the desired narrative so the facts need to be changed.
which would still result in more births than deaths.
Although to be fair that’s using the high end of births so within the margin of error we might be tied or have deaths edge out births.
Which doesn’t change that the reasoning seems to be that since the facts don’t fit the narrative the facts need to change.
I can’t help but feel an understanding of the false-flag conspiracy types because literally everything about this story sounds like it was put together in a lab by experts to inflict the maximum damage on non-activist-American support for Palestinians.
There apparently video. Which sure could be made up but still.
The guy who did it is apparently on BlueSky:
Stancil has acknowledged the situation.
He also made death threats against liberal-left internet personality and lawyer Will Stencil.
I’ll be honest here: Hating Will Stancil does not bar someone from being on the left.
There is no excuse for cold blooded murder.
A big part of the reasons why Pro-Palestinian activists latched onto the settler-colonialist narrative when dealing with the I/P conflict is that settler-colonialist does sound like a bad thing to be even if you aren’t fully versed in leftist verbiage. If you establish that Israelis are evil settler-colonialists, they become fair game. We saw this with the faculty longue bomb throwers that were celebrating Hamas. This is just taking it to the next logical step.
I’m not actually sure that Israel has any sort of moral ground to complain about the killing of civilian government employees, considering how they talk about Hamas and completely fail to distinguish the fact that Hamas operates the _entire_ government in Gaza, including the civilian part. The _military_ of Hamas is called Al-Qassam, but Israel doesn’t talk about killing Al-Qassam, they talk about killing _Hamas_.
Civilians in the opposing side’s government are _supposed_ to be off limits in a war, but it would be interesting to have someone actually ask Israel if they would consider someone in, for example, the Hamas media office a fair target. Or the health ministry.
I don’t know, maybe they don’t! Maybe all the talk about killing ‘members of Hamas’ (Which itself is a strange way to describe a government) instead of ‘Al-Qassam’ or ‘The Hamas military’ is just rhetoric, and they don’t really target _all_ ‘member of Hamas’. But I think someone should at least ask them.
Granted, some random person in the US is not part of the Hamas military, and attacking embassies in neutral countries is not something anyone should be doing anyway. Like, this isn’t acceptable even there.
Hmm…
in 2022, 21% of employed individuals in the Palestinian territories were working in the public sector.
At least 61 per cent of employment, equivalent to 182,000 jobs, has been lost in the Gaza Strip.
So roughly 62k people in Gaza worked for Hamas as “civilians”. Of course some of those are going to be co-mingled with military and military activities.
WE FOUND THE CULPRIT!!!
Kamala Harris Allegedly Covered Up Biden’s Mental Decline, Democratic Source Says
Ooh, trying to hit two birds with one stone — though one of the birds is significantly larger than the other.
There’s no good answer for Harris there. Either she was so out of the loop within the admin that she didn’t have enough access to Biden to know the ups and downs of his day to day status or she did and was but participated in keeping in quiet. Yet another reason why I don’t think she’ll be a major contender for future nominations.
There’s that third pesky option that she knew and since it wasn’t indicating his performance if his actual duties it never occurred to her to say or do anything.
So the third option is distinct from “she knew but participated in keeping it under wraps” because “she knew but it never occurred to her to say or do anything” is significantly different?
Do you mind if I say that “it never even occurred to her” is even worse than “she actively chose to not do something”?
Not on a moral level. On an executive capability level.
You can – and do – say whatever you want. Me minding has never stopped you before.
To give you something else to rabbit hole on – IF Biden had say 6 good connive hours from 0800 to 1400 each day, took a nap and 3 more food cognatuve hours between 1700 and 2000 as a result, and made policy choices you supported which his administration carried out; would it occur to you that you needed to say something?
Um… yeah?
I mean, we’re not talking about the guy who owns the chicken shack and doesn’t want to sell it, are we?
We’re kind of talking about the President of the US.
So I’m going to put you down for “she didn’t have the ability/insight to notice that it would have been appropriate to say something”.
… IF Biden had say 6 good connive hours from 0800 to 1400 each day
If he were that functional he would have timed those 6 hours so his debate and his interview with the Special Council were better.
Biden and the people trying to cover for him aren’t stupid. They should have made sure he was at his peak for those things because they could make or break him.
Ergo the Debate was Biden on a good day. A good day with a good amount of pressure, but that’s normal for the President.
“Original Sin” claims that multiple people told them Biden’s team had him do several hours of scripted question answering to look like a Town Hall. They wanted to make a 5 minute TV ad with him looking really competent answering “random off hand questions”. They failed and had to reduce the ad time a lot.
His debate performance was his normal level of functionality. Similarly the Special Council said he saw the same thing.
since it wasn’t indicating his performance in his actual duties
Special Counsel Robert Hur’s report suggested it was. He was basically the only person outside of Biden’s bubble to talk with him. He interviewed Biden in 2023 and reported that his memory really bad and he was “haltingly answered and frequently paused as he seemingly struggled to answer [questions]”
Biden’s debate performance was not him on a bad day. It was average for his functionality.
I’m going to be rude.
The GOP just passed a budget which gives huge tax cuts to the ultra-wealthy and has crushing blows Medicare and other decent parts of American society. This is the meth binge-nihilist-edgelord version of Reaganomics.
The fact that the media would rather spend endless hours talking about Taper’s book and Biden’s alleged or apparent infirmities and who knew what when is a big part of the problem on how we got here. The fact that people here are talking about this more than the GOP budget shows we fall for it hook, line, and sinker. I can already imagine the protests I will get on “well actually, the GOP budget is why we should endlessly re-litigate Biden and who knew what and when” because humans are rationalization machines who do what they want and work backwards to justify it.
We don’t have journalists and reporters. We have courtiers and gossips. We have an audience where even Democrats/liberals/lefties fall into the trap. Democrats/liberals to show how above the fray and “serious” and “we are not hacks” they are and lefties because they think bashing Democrats and liberals is more important than attacking Republicans because a Wine Mom is cringe and hypocritical for being a corporate lawyer while having an In This House poster on her suburban lawn.
Meanwhile, Liz Truss of all people is given space in WaPo to defend Trump’s reckless budget because LOL nothing matters.
It is pretty fishing pathetic all around.
I don’t find that rude I think it’s generally accurate. That said it also should be noted that, as venal as the media is, this also falls on the electorate.
Well I was pushing back at you a bit for speculating on what Harris knew or where she was at and whether she has a place in the party in the future. That is the kind of court gossip we should avoid now.
Perhaps, but we are a political website so talking about this stuff is kindof what we do. Harris, it has been suggested, may run and/or be a contender for the next go at the President and I think this issue is yet another weakness for her.
We will see if she announces she is going to run for CA governor or not in 2026. Newsom is term-limited. We should get an announcement this summer but I heard that months ago.
I am probably a Team Pritzker guy at this point.
Harris running for Governor will let her showcase her campaign skills, maybe she’ll surprise everyone.
RE: What Harris knew and when
I see no suggestions from Original Sin that she knew or helped shield him.
That’s not a good thing. Bidden is unable to have a conversation without his issues being obvious.
Full support.
Seems pretty on point. The cuts are bad, but I find the total nihilism about the long term fiscal health and prosperity of the country even worse.
Spot on.
The House passes the Billionaire’s budget bill 215-214. All Democrats voted no. The Senate has apparently nuked the filibuster in a 51-46 vote: https://bsky.app/profile/senatepress.bsky.social/post/3lpq5bwgwjc2e
Interesting on the filibuster… it wasn’t a nuke, more of a mythical H-bomb. Kill the vote requirement for the filibuster, but leave the structure standing.
Honestly, I flipped on the filibuster during the McConnell/Obama years… I genuinely now believe that it is better to have bad legislation from parties I don’t like than no legislation at all.
Better to vote on legislative failures as a way to trim the direction of the parties than to have this false wall to mask the death of the legislature as a branch of government and hand power to the Executive branch.
p.s. this is not Justice Roberts’ alt.
If the press chose to report this accurately democrats could easily retake both houses next election. Le sigh.
Let’s hope that they haven’t set their own credibility on fire over the last few years…
Their reputation for not fishing up the economy or obliterating the national fisc? I’d say the Dems credibility is pretty solid on that objectively and is rock solid when compared relative to their opponent party.
He’s talking about the media’s credibility.
Ah on reread I’d say you’re right and so is he probably. Le sigh.
Yeah but this is a right-wing trick and abuser’s logic, “It’s your fault, we don’t believe you.”
Now I happen to agree that the media has lots of faults, just not what Jaybird thinks they are.
“You know the story of the Boy who Cried Wolf?”
“That’s a story about abuser logic.”
“What? That’s stupid. That’s the stupidest crap I’ve ever heard. I honestly cannot believe how stupid that argument is. Did you say it with a straight face? Seriously, that’s stupid.”
“And you’re being abusive right now!”
“You should still believe me despite my lies because the other people are so evil!”
“Now *THAT* is abuser logic, my dude.”
Objectively yes but they don’t quite know how to sell it.
One of the things Trump does have is an innate carnival barker’s knack for publicity and this works wonders on the low-info voters that always give him his victories. We saw this during COVID-19 when he insisted that the relief be done in the form of physical checks with his signature/name on them. It slowed things down but apparently people did react with “Hey! Trump sent me money!” luckily it did not help him in the 2020 election.
The current budget bill gives every baby born in the next four years $1,000 dollars in “Trump accounts” There are probably other things named for Trump in the budget.
Democrats did provide something better in Biden’s term but it was buried deep in the tax code and probably just turned up as “Hey, I got a bigger refund this year.” It wasn’t a big check called “Democratic Party repayment money”
Part of the reason I think Democrats do this is that we are so ideologically divided that means-tested, after-the-fact tax credits are about the only thing we can do often (this is not good). But the other reason I think we do it this way is that too many Democratic politicians probably thinks Trump’s constant carnival barker self-promotion is tack, gauche, crass, vulgar, etc. Democrats care too much about self-image to get some “Hey, Democrats gave me money” juju going on.
TL/DR, Democrats need to learn to embrace, even if just a bit, the kind of personal injury lawyer who has no shame about putting his or her name on Billboards all over the highway or on every bus in town.
We need a bit of Something Wrong? Call Ahn Phong!*
*Ahn Phong also has certain other assets she is not ashamed use.
Yeah we do need to get away a bit from the to cool for politics sensibility. We also need to move away from the too old to hustle reality though times whirling scythe seems to also be doing that work for us to a degree.
These are the times that try men’s souls
The Democratic Party has too many goo-goos who couldn’t do this and think it defiles sacred good government.
Apparently Trump’s budget bill contains the following little gem:
“No court of the United States may use appropriated funds to enforce a contempt citation for failure to comply with an injunction or temporary restraining order….”
They are relentless bulldozers.
And they will remain so as li g as no one stops them. SCOTUS gave away their power with the immunity ruling and the Senate gave away its power by acquitting him twice before. The district courts are close to giving up their power since they are rambling about contempt but never imposing it.
It seems no one quite yet accepts that the emperor has no clothes.
Republicans are a cult and everybody else is afraid to make the big first move because they don’t want to be the one that lit the match.
I think the more accurate summation is that they don’t want to risk raising the banner of opposition and turning around to find out that everyone else is busy looking at their phone or suddenly had to run off to get their nails did.
That is part of it. There is also whether their fellow Dems will go along. My State Senator is up in arms about everything and anything Trump and Co are doing and I believe he is sincere when he writes “they must be stopped.” But I don’t see him write anything on Bluesky about what legislation he is introducing to Trump-proof California. And part of me suspects while many of his colleagues hate Trump, they are not ready to go “Fish the Supremacy Clause.”
I’m really not a fan of the Carville “Play Dead” approach and wait for thermostatic voting and the midterms but I can’t say that it is necessarily wrong either. So far special elections have been very favorable to Democrats and should contain signs that are very worrying to Republicans.
But I think it provides too much comfort for people who would rather not leave their comfort zones. Schumer’s politics are generally okay but he clearly dislikes and is not up for the current moment. The do-nothing moderates and consultants are more worried about their sinecures and place in the party (the iron law of institutions) rather than Democracy and the Rule of Law. Plus the idea of figuring out what to do about ICE at this point makes them queasy but clearly ICE needs radical reform.
I don’t disagree and, moreover, what really makes me feel ill is imagining the task we’ll face if we do seize the Presidency/trifecta next cycle. The clusterfish President D and their partners in Congress will face will make the pool of flaming sewage that W left for Obama look like a flower covered gazebo.
It will be brutal hard work and require a combination of imagination, discipline, cynicism, and a certain amount of acting without being overly troubled by scruples.
a certain amount of acting without being overly troubled by scruples
WAIT WAIT NOT LIKE THAT
I do get a sense that many of my fellow citizens aren’t exactly in a state of emergency yet even though I live in deep blue area. Ringing the alarm bell and having people not paying attention certainly won’t help. In a just world, there has to be away to get citizens to wake up but the just world is a fallacy.
Well we’re about to have a big test. If what the GOP does with this budget doesn’t make people wake up and if it doesn’t make a whole lot of Trumps own low info supporters defect in fury then something is being missed in the way liberal analysis works.
Trump admin completely strips Harvard of its ability to enroll international students: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/22/us/politics/trump-harvard-international-students.html
“About 6,800 international students attended Harvard this year, or roughly 27 percent of the student body, according to university enrollment data. That is up from 19.7 percent in 2010. Tuition at Harvard is $59,320 for the school year that begins later this year, and costs can rise to nearly $87,000 when room and board is included. International students tend to pay larger shares of education costs compared with other students.”
There will of course be more litigation that drags on for years over this.
The court has effectively overturned Humphrey’s Executor on the Shadowdocket and this is probably one of those opinions that most people will be confused by but is actually the end of the Constitutional Order as we know it. You can bet your money that every Democratic appointee to a Federal Board is being fired ASAP
They might or actually probably will try to go after every Immigration Judge hired by a Democratic President as well.
This is yet another image trap – aside from its pernicious destructiveness. MAGA wants a “strong father” who they believe “should” get to have “his people” run things. Since hand they have taken the narrative hostage, Democrats are already at a disadvantage. And since the impacts from this decision won’t hit MAGA for months or years, democrats can’t scream about this hard enough or long enough to make it matter.
Aspiring Palestinian-American politician Kat Abughazaleh is apparently being dragged online as a bootlicker for making a statement against the murder of two Israeli foreign embassy officials by a Pro-Palestinian activist. Here are some examples:
https://bsky.app/profile/katmabu.bsky.social/post/3lprjjcsn6c2v
The non-Western “Pro-Palestinians” largely buy into the “No Israel, No Jews” plans for how to resolve the issue. This sort of thing is part of it.
We tend to forget that and think they’re not serious because we’re drowning in violent rhetoric on so many other issues.
They are religious fanatics.
Let’s look at the mental acuity President: https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Fw4qt4esrke2f1.jpeg
Republicans have inserted a provision into the budget bill to bare Medicaid for covering ‘gender affirming procedures’ for trans people, and by that the bill also means ‘medicine’.
Please note that _cis_ people are specifically exempt from this. If you’re a cis woman going through menopause or a cis man who has been conned into thinking he’s got low-testosterone, your gender-affirming HRT is still paid for. If you’re a trans woman who needs estrogen or she’ll go through menopause, or a trans man who _actually_ needs testosterone or he’ll through male menopause, nope.
Fun random historic trans fact: For the longest time, a lot of laws, including laws in the US, require trans people to be _sterilized_ to legally be recognized as the other gender. Sweden literally just made it legal for them to not have to do that this year.
You know, sterilization, where the gonads are removed, and hence the person cannot produce sex hormones on their own, and must take HRT.
Oh, and the house has just made it apply to ACA and chip plans.
Hey, anyone remember when we that discussion about when we could start calling this a trans genocide?
Alasdair MacIntyre, the author of ‘After Virtue’, ‘Whose Justice, Which Rationality?’, and ‘Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry’ (and others) has passed. After Virtue is best known, but I was always partial to his Gifford Lectures published as Three Rival Versions.
https://iep.utm.edu/mac-over/#SSH4bii
I had him as a professor when he first arrived at Notre Dame; without calling the class, After Virtue, he basically taught After Virtue (not assigned) and WJWR to undergrads. I’ll link my twitter recollections below.
His teaching style and relationship with Grad students was somewhat the stuff of legends and Chris Kaczor has a pretty solid remembrance that 100% squares with my experience plus those of my friends who continued to work with him in grad school (I did not). It’s worth reading if only to find out how he personally was responsible for the break-up of the Beatles.
https://www.wordonfire.org/articles/remembering-alasdair-macintyre-1929-2025/
This is one of those things would be heavy-handed if you put it in a movie.
Dad of suspected terrorist Elias Rodriguez was invited to Trump address by left-wing Democratic lawmaker
It might work in a kids’ movie that was really heavy-handed in the moralism department.
White House will no longer make transcripts of President Trump’s demented ramblings, I mean media statements, available.
https://www.cnn.com/2025/05/22/media/donald-trump-media-white-house-transcript-purge
Hiding the egg apparently is ok if you are a republican.
Two potential students involved in the Harvard fight:
1. The Future Queen of Belgium
2. Mark Carney’s son
The students will miss out on their opportunity to make her apologize for the Belgian Colonial Empire.
Which, quite honestly, is too bad.
Leopold II of Belgium is one of history’s larger mass murderers and showcased how evil a repressive state can be. Estimated body count something like 10 million although there are higher and lower guesses. That’s Congo from 1885 to 1908.
Sh*th*le countries both.
Karmelo Anthony got charged with first degree murder last month, it looks like yesterday it was decided that he’d be charged as an adult.
It’s no wonder the GOP attacks science – science keeps describing a world that’s not in alignment with GOP ideology. Utah is the latest sufferer of reality – their two year exhaustive study of the efficacy of gender affirming treatment has coalesced 1000ish pegs of documentation that gender affirming care is critical to the survival of trans youth. Utah’s GOP politicians now want to ignore the science they demanded because it didn’t meet their preordained conclusion.
Once again science doesn’t care about your feelings.
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2025/05/utah-transgender-youth-affirming-care-ban/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=0939f52b-cdc1-46f2-921c-5bba1ed37b83&utm_campaign=Hootsuite&fbclid=IwQ0xDSwKfQatleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHuWMPQQIJYUDAGlDtRZr45OPVPZgj5e4csKb0-rjoxv8V45bVVXa9F4h4NAz_aem_0ulCvnvLnsZE2mugGzNgVg
Also why lefties keep attacking economics, genetics, psychometrics, etc. Willful ignorance is the only bipartisan consensus.