Open Mic for the week of 8/26/2024
On August 26, 1978, Frankie Valli’s “Grease”—reached the #1 spot on the Billboard Hot 100. the second #1 song from the movie soundtrack.
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.
You can’t “eliminate QI” and reverse this type of thinking:
https://www.cnn.com/2024/08/25/us/breonna-taylor-raid-charges-dismissed/index.htmlReport
While I’d agree that elimination of QI is not a silver bullet, I’d also argue that keeping it and screaming for defunding police departments is also not a silver bullet.
The latter, however, has been proven to fail over and over and over andReport
The judges decision to toss the charges has zero to do with QI, and eliminating it would not likely have changed things in this instance.Report
YOU’RE THE ONE WHO BROUGHT QI UP, PHIL!Report
Yes – and pointed out that, contra you, it had zero to do with the outcome here. Meaning its not a bullet, silver or otherwise.Report
QI rarely has much to do with anything, over the broad range of cases. In my 30-plus years holding down a job in which QI is supposed to be tremendously important, I cannot remember a single case in which QI came into play. (Given the limits of my memory and records, I can’t be absolutely certain that it has never come up, but I can be sure that if it has, it has come up in, at most, the low single digits.) The experience of several other colleagues and lawyers in other, similar jobs (including some who did almost nothing but police misconduct cases) was similar. Joanna Schwarz’s excellent book, Shielded, which is essential reading on police misconduct cases, is scathing on QI — and no one can be happy about the current, wild and woolly state of the case law (in my own federal circuit, it is far more civilized) — but repeats her own extensive empirical research, which largely confirms my (and others’) experience, showing that QI is rarely involved in civil rights cases and little would change if it were eliminated.
But some folks have an unerring instinct for the capillaries.Report
Well, maybe we could throw some improvised pyrogenetic devices into police cars and fix the issue.Report
This is one of those things that just feels like it confirms too many priors to be true, so it’s gotta be triple- and quadruple-checked.
But they claim to have receipts…
Robin DiAngelo Plagiarized Minority Scholars, Complaint Alleges
In her doctoral thesis, it looks like she lifted stuff from Thomas Nakayama (who has a white co-author) and Stacey Lee.
Now, it’s true, the Minority Scholars are AAPI rather than a less model minority but, hey, not every cosmic joke is going to be as funny as you want it to be.Report
Trump appears to be trying to back out September’s debate on ABC and possibly any debate that is not a Fox News rally. His current demand is apparently for no live mics and Harris is insisting on live mics and putting it out that Trump’s handlers don’t think he can last for 90 minutes without having a hot mic moment.Report
I think that this is an excellent opportunity for Harris to say “NO DEBATES!”
She obviously doesn’t need them.Report
Trump caught on a hot mic complaining about it:
“We agreed to the same rules. I don’t know. It doesn’t matter to me. I’d rather have it probably on, but the agreement was that it would be the same as it was last time. In that case, it was muted. I didn’t like it the last time, but it worked out fine. I mean, ask Biden how it worked out. It was fine, and I think it should be the same. We agreed to the same rules, same rules, and same specifications, and I think that’s probably what it should be, but they’re trying to change it. The truth is they’re trying to get out of it because she doesn’t want to debate. She’s not a good debater. She’s not a smart person. She doesn’t want to debate.”Report
At what point do we get to move from calling him Weird to coward?Report
Reread the script. You’re supposed to be calling Vance weird. This is no time to be ad-libbing!Report
I am already making chicken noisesReport
He is both.Report
According to some sources, his handlers are demanding to have a staffer on-site with a gong so when he says “ni-” they can hit it and make a “CLANG”.Report
What does “no live mics” even mean in this context? How could that even work?Report
TFG appears to want a repeat of last time, where Biden couldn’t get a word in edgewise when TFG was lying openly because Biden’s mic was turned off. Its a control dynamicReport
TFG is going to constantly interrupt her if they have live mics and lie constantly if they don’t.
I’m not sure there’s a solution here other than “no debate”.
I would prefer a robust debate but there’s no way he’s going to follow even the basic rules of discourse.Report
I think he wants to control the dynamic but in other ways. I think his handlers don’t think Trump could last for 90 minutes without melting down and having a hot mic moment where he calls Harris’ a n-word, b**ch, and/or a c&*! or many, many minutesReport
Of course he couldn’t. But it makes a convenient excuse to try and back out and throw everyone under the bus. I still think the VP should show up whether he does or not.Report
Report
Harry Sisson
@harryjsisson
·
May 10
I had the privilege of interviewing President Biden recently. He’s an amazing person who is focused on getting stuff done for the people. His kindness is unmatched. Thank you, Mr. President.Report
Where’s the lie?Report
Four years of predictions, right for three hours.Report
I’m of two minds learning that it seems to be Harris that wants the mics ON.
On the one hand, I take your point that maybe Team Harris is playing for a Colonel Jessup moment.
On the other, I wonder if they want to set-up Harris doing her [hand up] ‘I’m speaking’ line, which I think they think will be super effective.
If it’s the former, sure… why not gamble?
If it’s the latter? I don’t think that plays as well outside of Dem Circles and Academic sensibilities as they think it does. And, honestly, if Trump’s gonna bulldoze something it’s gonna be that.Report
The Biden-Trump debate had the mics shut off when the candidates weren’t responding to questions. It was a tactic that the Biden team insisted on, figuring that Trump would be interrupting Biden otherwise. But it made Trump look disciplined. I guess they think that Trump interrupting a girl would hurt him.Report
The state of Texas should be deemed a vexatious litigant by the Federal courts. Biden instituted a new program to allow certain non-citizen spouses and stepchildren of USC citizens who entered without inspection to be paroled in the United States so they may receive legal status here. Paxton and 16 other state Republican AGs over the program in the Eastern District of Texas. Luckily, the Federal Courts don’t seem to be playing ball anymore and the first hearing isn’t until October 23rd.Report
I still want Texas to just try and leave so we can settle this once and for all.Report
Wait until I get out, please.Report
Happy to host you in Mississippi should it be necessary.Report
I have long had a plan for an state of disconnected enclaves, comprised of El Paso, San Antonio, Austin, Houston, and Dallas, all places the state government hates anyway. I’d love to take Fort Worth, too, if only for the museums, but that place would be a major drag politically for my new state. If Texas wants, they can keep the capitol in Austin as their capitol, and we’ll just put a big wall around it so they don’t have to see us and we don’t have to see them.Report
We can reenact the partition of the Punjab.Report
https://www.cnn.com/2024/08/26/politics/mar-a-lago-classified-documents-appeal-11th-circuit/index.htmlReport
Hopefully Cannon gets removed from the case on this one.Report
I think it depends whether the senior judges see her continued service as an embarrassment or not. They SHOULD send it back to a different more seasoned judge, I have little faith they will.Report
Trump says this like it’s a bad thing:
https://x.com/JoeBiden/status/1792661626782437831?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1792661626782437831%7Ctwgr%5E3a5b5a5787516ee0f7196fa8a702187268ba9a73%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fdisqus.com%2Fembed%2Fcomments%2F%3Fbase%3Ddefaultf%3Dlawyersgunsmoneyblog-comt_i%3D14399620https3A2F2Fwww.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com2F3Fp3D143996t_u%3Dhttps3A2F2Fwww.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com2F20242F082Fsay-what-you-meant_e%3DSay20What20You20Meant_d%3DSay20What20You20Mean20-20Lawyers2C20Guns202620Moneyt_t%3DSay20What20You20Means_o%3Ddescversion%3D4cca83b0da0691f931ef86061fb7db43Report
RFK Jr decapitated a beach whale. His daughter Kick confirmed the story. Also she might be dating Affleck because we are stuck in the stupidest timeline for miscreants.Report
Who among us has not dated Ben Affleck?Report
Raises hand.Report
https://babylonbee.com/news/jennifer-lopez-now-just-one-away-on-her-divorce-punch-card-from-getting-a-free-husbandReport
Once again, a major media organization has a panel of “undecided” voters and at least one of them terms out to be a GOP operative/partisan: https://newrepublic.com/article/185290/cnn-undecided-voters-misleadingReport
I am about as YIMBY as you can be and think people are too protective of keeping a business around just because it is old but very rich venture capitalists/private equity purchasing properties then refusing to engage in lease renewal for long-term businesses that pay the rent on time does not help the YIMBY cause: https://www.sfgate.com/food/article/sf-la-mediterranee-fillmore-street-building-sale-19717605.phpReport
That sort of thing is expected of what we should see with YIMBY.Report
I get that the logic of capitalism can get very cold but it doesn’t look great that the money people can just shut down profitable businesses because something more valuable to them might come along. Very few people are going to accept a world where everybody but the wealthiest are totally exposed to the wolves without any protections. A restaurant is one thing but it could also be a law firm or something with clients with more serious needs that gets destroyed on a whim.Report
My divorce lawyer did just fight with his landlord and ended up in a new building. This sort of thing isn’t normally “destruction”.Report
Clearly I haven’t had enough coffee, because there’s nothing in that story that suggests that more affordable housing – the bedrock of YIMBY – will be a result of this acquisition.Report
If we allow people to build what they want, then we’re going to see more housing and more rich companies building random stuff.
The tools which allow you to pick and choose what is built will be controlled by NIMBY and they strongly oppose affordable housing. So the more tools you allow to control what is built, the less affordable housing you’ll get.
If you’re going to go full YIMBY then it’s also expected that you’ll have rich builders seeking profit. That’s a good thing because stopping them also stops housing in general.Report
I see no data to back up the assertion that housing will be built from actions like this – and the venture capitalists quoted in the article talk about small businesses – not housing. Which, ya know, would men restaurants that pay rent on time.Report
From this specific action? Probably not. The builders seem unclear as to what exactly they’re building.
However we’re bouncing back and forth from this as an example and policy in general.
If we get rid of NIMBY’s ability to shut down the creation of housing and other changes to neighborhoods, then we will see more changes to neighborhoods and we will see more market forces resolving various issues.
If you’re saying that you’re in favor of change but just not this specific change and you want it stopped, then you’re deep in NIMBY territory. They’re always in favor of change but just want that change to happen somewhere else.Report
All I am saying – based on the article – is that this isn’t YIMBY. Killing off existing successful small businesses on the HOPE of recruiting other successful small businesses is vulture capitalism, nothing more.Report
They hate Democrats more than the actual authoritarian: https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/b470eb3062f8af96e998e6f5883a063d1412569dc3c06fda69dc940790840222.jpgReport
No, not in West’s case. He hates them both, because he sees them as historically aligned to keep Blacks and working class whites subjugated. His critiques have always been both racial and classist. And anyone willing to embrace that language has been his ally.Report
Effect matters as much as intent if not much more so.
RFK Jr, anti-vaxxer and all around kooky moron dropped out or suspended his campaign to endorse Trump. Cornell then called RFK his brother. This is helping thr corpulent, dementia-addled, authoritarian in effect if not intent.
The overall problem with the United States is that there are too many people who fundamentally misunderstand the purpose of politics. The purpose of politics is not to feel special or unique. Politics and voting are for collective action, civic responsibility, and moral obligation.
But there are seemingly a good number of leftists out there who think it is the perfidious Democrats and liberal winemoms who prevent socialist imaginary Sweden from emerging in the United States and don’t understand politics is all about compromise with close allies or close enough allies. They seemingly think getting some of what you want is less preferable than getting no policy goals but they get to keep being special, unique, and “unsullied.”
So I think people like West and Stein help Trump and the authoritarian theocrats and plutocrats they allege to abhor in effect very much and I see very little reason to pretend otherwise. These apparent anti-consumerists make very consumerist choices about politicsReport
West – whose work I know better as an academic – doesn’t see Democrats as allies. He doesn’t value compromise with them precisely because he has seen them move right to chase campaign dollars and thus away from labor and support of a radical end to racism and classism. His view is they are the enemy every bit as much as the GOP – an enemy that doesn’t deserve compromise.Report
When your political party makes good on a 40 year old promise, only to discover the electorate has moved on from the issue as you see it, and you need to win a general election, you sometimes run the risk of alienating your base. Doubly so when your nominee is a transactional narcissist and thus a coward:
https://www.npr.org/2024/08/26/nx-s1-5090224/trump-abortion-pills-comstockReport
Do you believe that applicable federal law should be enforced?Report
The Comstock Act? No I don’t. Because the intent of Hawkins and her ilk is to a pornography statute to regulate medical care. Talk about intrusive government overreach.
That aside, my pint was that what wins primaries won’t win elections, especially when your position and policy are deeply unpopular. Por-abortion activists seem to still have a huge blindspot in this regard.Report
As near as I can tell, this is the original text of the 1873 legislation:
An Act for the Suppression of Trade in, and Circulation of, obscene Literature and Articles of immoral Use.
That no obscene, lewd, or lascivious book, pamphlet, picture, paper, print, or other publication of an indecent character, or any article or thing designed or intended for the prevention of conception or procuring of abortion, nor any article or thing intended or adapted for any indecent or immoral use or nature, or any written or printed card, circular, book, pamphlet, advertisement or notice of any kind giving information, directly or indirectly, where, or how, or of whom, or by what means either of the things before mentioned may be obtained or made, nor any letter upon the envelope of which, or postal-card upon which indecent or scurrilous epithets may be written or printed, shall be carried in the mail, and any person who shall knowingly deposit, or cause to be deposited, for mailing or delivery, any of the hereinbefore-mentioned articles or things, or any notice, or paper containing any advertisement relating to the aforesaid articles or things, and any person who, in pursuance of any plan or scheme for disposing of any of the hereinbefore-mentioned articles or things, shall take, or cause to be taken, from the mail any such letter or package, shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor, and, on conviction thereof, shall, for every offense, be fined not less than one hundred dollars nor more than five thousand dollars, or imprisoned at hard labor not less than one year nor more than ten years, or both, in the discretion of the judge.Report
The problem with deciding that abortion pills are “articles of immoral use” is you have to get blue states to agree abortion is immoral and that a federal law should trump the “return to the states” that Dobbs granted.
Good luck with that, even if you are willing to argue for a national ban, contra Dobbs.Report
“Or”. They don’t have to prove immorality since the law includes “or any article or thing designed or intended for the prevention of conception or procuring of abortion”. This is simple. A or B includes B no matter whether A is arguable.Report
I don’t think it can be enforced. If the government can’t keep out a bazillion of tons of fentanyl coming in from Mexico there’s no way in hell it can keep mifepristone or whatever else from being mass manufactured in states where it’s legal and sent to states where it isn’t.Report
Fine, you win the battle of semantics. though I sure hope you and your anti-abortion allies are fully ready to enforce ALL the parts of comstock, like the ones were porn can no longer be mailed . . . . or “marital aids.” Somehow I doubt it.
Problem is you and every other abortion opponents will still loose the war. Dobbs sent it back to the states, and red states have no legal standing in our republic to regulate the actions of blue states. Using Comstock returns this to a federal issue, and there you have to contend with the fact that 67% of Americans want abortion to be safe and legal to somewhere between 15 and 24 weeks. That number includes a healthy number of Republicans.
Pick the path you want, own it and then deal with the consequences.
Either way the real immorality is believing you or anyone else have the authority to dictate to a woman how she handles her reproductive health or activity.Report
Law IS semantic. I don’t think of this as a good law, but that definitely doesn’t give you the option of saying it doesn’t apply.
If you want to complain about authoritarianism, you can’t turn around and prefer the executive branch ignore the law.Report
Right, because authoritarians NEVER seek to exert more and more control over the populace via imposing ever stricter laws and stricter enforcement of those laws.
And too be clear – there are hundreds if not thousands of laws on the books whose usefulness is long gone, but which Congress has yet to reverse. Because then they’d be doing their job.Report
More deflections. You raised the topic and didn’t realize that you were calling for the subversion of law, just because NPR told you that this would be a good attack strategy on Trump. You tried to read “or” as “and”, then admitted that the law isn’t on your side but…that doesn’t matter for some reason.
Just once after one of these, you should question that assumption that you’re always in the right.Report
There are plenty of laws on the books that are never enforced. Having something like this lurking around, waiting for to be used for selective prosecution, is why people have disdain for government.Report
One of the funniest things in the NPR article was that it said the law hadn’t been enforced in decades. Gee, why dya think that was, and maybe it wasn’t enforced from 1973 to 2022?Report
I’m gonna guess every AG has had a Playboy subscription. 😉
Seriously, however, it looks like it’s been used to prosecute kiddie porn cases. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comstock_Act_of_1873#Contemporary_enforcementReport
I don’t know that it’s quite dead letter but Roe has not been the only barrier. Based on current 1st Amendment jurisprudence I think many attempts at prosecution would fail. IIRC the W. Bush DOJ made some attempts to prosecute obscenity cases and couldn’t get around Miller. Given advances in streaming technology it’s probably even harder now than it was then, assuming SCOTUS isn’t going to overturn the precedent.Report
I remember when “Republicans want a nationwide ban on contraception” was dismissed as a hysterical smear.
Today, it is their orthodoxy.Report
It could be fun to go through this article and enumerate all the ways it looks like it’s giving the reader information but isn’t.Report
I will fully restate that I think America receives no benefit from enforcement of Comstock, and specifically it’s ridiculous and outdates stance on contraception and abortion. It is useless law, which is opposed by the 67% of Americans who support safe legal abortion up to around 22-24 weeks. As Chip also note, this make a lie out of the idea that conservatives will Not seek to ban contraception. Because Comstock, if fully enforced, would do so.
As to your deflection about authoritarians, you would do well to at least accept that history – including modern history – shows us that authoritarians use the color of law to hide their oppressions. Germany Nationalists killed 6 million Jews under German law. Putin invaded Ukraine under German law. Maduro refuses to accept election results that turn him our under Venezuelan law. Fully enforcing Comstock is an authoritarian approach to the issue that conservatives favor because they can’t get most Americans to agree with them.
Is all that clear enough for you?Report
Clearly I need more coffee as that should have read Russian law. Too bad you only get 4 minutes to fix it.Report
It’s clear to me that NPR served you gruel and you came here expecting us to pretend to like it too.
The law is the law. If wrong, it should be fixed. If you say “that’s too difficult”, then you’re making yourself an enemy of law and order. If you excuse one violation while complaining about another, then you don’t get to claim moral high ground. Authoritarians don’t care about the rule of law.
I don’t know what parts of the original law are still on the books, or enforceable, and I’m sure not going to learn that from the NPR article. If you cared about those things, you’d have posted them.Report
As far as I know, 1) the original Comstock Act is still on the books in its entirety; 2) most of its provisions are no longer relevant in the modern America we find ourselves in and are indeed not enforced by the police or anyone else charged with doing so; 3) Congress Won’t do its principal job and appropriate funds on time so I have no expectation that it would repeal Comstock or anything else of substance; 4) Authoritarians do not care about the rule of law applying to THEM and their regime, they very much care about using the law to maintain power through coersive oppression by the state (see Maduro, Venezuela for a current ongoing example).
Again, I refer you to the bottom line that 67% of your fellow Americans – a number including a sizable percentage of conservatives – want abortion safe and legal up to 22-24 weeks (depending on polling). The only reason Comstock has even been dragged kicking and screaming from its grave is that you and your fellow travelers in the pro-forced birth camp can not get a majority of Americans to support your position. Especially now that we see clearly the lengths you will go to to suppress public will on this (see Arkansas Supreme Court for an example this month). thus you all are indeed falling into the authoritarian playbook by seeking to use the law to oppress your fellow citizens.
That you all STILL refuse to acknowledge this reality is tiringly stupid. You all caught the car. Own the consequences proudly.Report
If you wanted that to be the discussion, you could have led with it. Thank you for acknowledging that you don’t know the history of the Comstock Act.
I see that you did go with “passing laws is too difficult”. If this was the only time you did that, then I might consider it a weak moment. But you do it regularly, along with believing that the executive branch (you) has freedom to do what it should but the executive branch (Trump) is a totalitarian if he does what you don’t like. Authoritarians use force rather than consent, whether they’re judicial, executive, legislative, military, whatever. You refuse to acknowledge that.
I’ve said that I don’t know if the currently-debated and -applicable portion of the Comstock Act is a good thing. What you seem to want me to “acknowledge” is that Dobbs was a bad decision. It wasn’t. It’s normal for the legislatures and courts to take time to sort out the implications of a new framework. The position you’re taking is like the people who complained that the ACA website crashed on its first day.Report
The number one group of people who were not prepared for Roe vs. Wade to be overturned and the issue returned to the states are the people who had spent the last four decades calling on Roe vs. Wade to be overturned so that the issue could be returned to the states.
It’s like when he moved the embassy to Jerusalem.
NOBODY COULD EVER RUN ON THAT CAMPAIGN PROMISE EVER AGAIN!Report
On this you and I agree.Report
That’s not true. There have been more legislative issues about abortion in the past couple of years than in the usual decade. Just like, the Middle East didn’t stop being an issue just because of an embassy move.Report
The difference between “moving the embassy” and “the middle east being an issue” is huge.
The difference between “Roe vs. Wade being overturned and the issue returned to the states” and “Roe vs. Wade being overturned and the issue returned to the states” is trivial.Report
But it’s not just being fought out in the states. If you’re solely focused on campaign promises, I mean, it’s one of the hottest issues in the election.Report
Sure. But at the Federal Level, Trump delivered the biggest “pro-life” win in 40 years.
Roe vs. Wade was overturned and the issue was returned to the states.
While many pro-lifers may say “no, we wanted the issue to no longer be an issue”, well.
People in Hell want ice water.Report
Yep – the strategic problem with return to the state is there is not a uniform interpretation, but 50 interpretations. You either have to live with that, or you have to pass a national ban. Which has likely been the goal along, but like so many other conservative policy goals, its not openly articulated because they know well it would be repudiated by the electorate.Report
Problem? That’s a strategic *SOLUTION*!
Sigh.Report
Yea, if I had to put money on it I would bet that the ultimate irony of overturning Roe is going to be that legal abortion becomes even more deeply entrenched than it was. Not today, not tomorrow, not with no casualties along the way, but eventually.
The best thing conservatives could do is push for referendums in all 50 states then when they lose every single one say ‘well, we tried’ and never speak of it again.Report
The GOP is not capable of loosing with anything remotely like grace or owning thier failures.Report
A Roe-style law a Democratic trifecta gets to pass in 2026 or 2028 immediately becomes the ACA Part II – something Republican partisans demand their legislators try to repeal, but lead to electoral wipeouts if they try too and it looks like they might be successful.Report
Fahran Kadi, a middle aged Bedouin man from the Negev, has been freed from Hamas captivity by the IDF:
https://www.jns.org/israeli-forces-rescue-alive-a-hostage-in-the-southern-gaza-strip/Report
Donald Trump’s campaign demonstrates contempt for veterans:
https://www.npr.org/2024/08/27/nx-s1-5091154/trump-arlington-cemeteryReport
Tastes vary, but to *my* taste, these are great lyrics:
“We take the pressure, and we throw away / Conventionality belongs to yesterday / There is a chance that we can make it so far / We start believing now that we can be who we are”Report
Apparently Israel is not satisfied with leveling Gaza:
https://www.cnn.com/2024/08/28/middleeast/israel-operation-west-bank-intl-hnk/index.htmlReport
My brother had a high prey drive dog who found a squirrel under a car. After that every car had a squirrel.Report
Nate Silver says what we’re all thinking:
Report
Let’s not bicker and argue about “who killed who”.Report
Nate Silver is saying what we are all thinking. Please stop thinking everyone agrees with you on everything. Some of us disagree with you quite a lot.Report
So you *LIKE* the rhetorical model of “pshsh, old news!” when an inconvenient truth is finally too much to ignore?
Wait. Never mind. Of course you do.Report
No, I think Silver has he biases and so do you and you are both too cowardly to openly admit it and like to do pseudo-Socrates/JAGGing off.
Biden is no longer the nominee. Zuckerberg choose to write to a right-wing partisan attack dog. Asking social media to combat misinformation and the spreading of wildly unsubstantiated conspiracy theories is not censorship. Zuckerberg also looks like another billionaire going for Turmp because he loathes the idea of higher taxes and thinks conspiracy-addled Pizzagaters bring in more revenue than normal people because they can be swindled easily.
See, I can really disagree with you without the dismissive old news which you and Silver are pushing onto the Vox article.Report
“See, I can really disagree with you without the dismissive old news which you and Silver are pushing onto the Vox article.”
What do you mean by that? That Silver and Jaybird are unfairly interpreting the Vox article as claiming that the story is old news? Because the Vox article says:
The right is taking a victory lap over this Zuckerberg letter. Others are simply wondering why on earth, on an otherwise quiet week in August, did Zuckerberg even bother to remind us of all of these familiar facts?
That’s not all it says, but it does say that.Report
Of course I have biases!
This is as interesting to me as pointing out that I eat meat!
OF COURSE I EAT MEAT! WHY IN THE HELL DO YOU NEED ME TO TALK ABOUT HOW I AM A MEAT EATER?Report
During Covid, we started out without much information at all because we haven’t seen this in a century so the entire situation was effectively brand new.
Is covid worse than the flu? Is covid so bad we need to shut down the economy? Do the vaccines work?
Turns out that many of the answers are “it depends”. So what “the official truth” was could reasonably change from day to day.
Unfortunately, shutting down unreasonable questions and unreasonable demands also includes shutting down reasonable questions and demands.
We also have the complications that…
1) The gov loves to use excuses to take power and keep it
2) There are segments of society that reject vaccinations and don’t trust science.
3) Those segments in #2 need to be beaten down in order for herd immunity to be a thing.Report
If I remember correctly, the Clinton administration’s four-step plan was:
it didn’t happen
it always happens
it was the right thing to do
we already apologized, why aren’t you moving onReport
Why was pressuring them to curb misinformation during a global pandemic killing hundreds of thousands of people “wrong”?Report
If you need a bit of accommodation, I’m sure Jaybird is happy to grant you the extra time required to read all the content he posted before you comment.Report
Chip prefers to have me pick and choose paragraphs from the stuff I post and then he can ask questions about other things the article got into and I can post those paragraphs.
I suspect it’s because he’s secretly trying to help me make my points, but I can’t prove it.Report
Why is the news , in your words, “inconvenient”?Report
IT’S NATE SILVER’S WORD, CHIP!!! IT’S IN THE TWEET ITSELF!!! I SWEAR TO GOD YOU DO THIS CRAP DELIBERATELY!!!Report
So…its not what “we are all thinking”?
Or is it?Report
“It’s old news that Nate Silver used the word first.”
Why is it inconvenient?
Well, for one thing, people testified before Congress (under oath, even) that this did not happen.Report
I guess it is inconvenient for them.
For the rest of us, and I’m sure we’re all thinking this, it makes the Biden administration look great.Report
I’m kind of surprised that Zuck doesn’t agree with you. I mean, he’s kind of in charge of facebook. You’d think that he’d have feedback on what everybody thinks.
Of course, maybe he’s actually reading the reports being shown him.Report
Chip, just to make sure — you accept that the Biden administration did what Zuckerberg says they did per the above, and you’re totally fine with every individual part of it?Report
I mean actually, you already said you were, so I take it that you support government censorship of humor and satire. So I guess when you call other people “fascists”, you’re not criticizing them so much as saying “one of us!”Report
The government didn’t censor anything, or prohibit Facebook from publishing whatever it wanted to publish.
They asked Facebook to suppress false and dangerous health claims which resulted in people dying, and yes, I am perfectly fine with that and in fact, applaud them for doing it.
And when Facebook voluntarily suppresses false and misleading health claims, I applaud them for that too.Report
Including humor and satire. You seem to keep editing out that part.Report
Depends on the content of the humor and satire.
I mean, there is a vast territory of “humor and satire” that can get you banned from social media, or sued or even arrested, depending on the content.
This is why I keep trying to get everyone here to say “Censorship Is Good, Actually” because everyone here believes it, depending on the content in question.Report
Everybody agrees that (egregious example) is okay to censor, right?
Therefore it’s fine for the government to forbid record stores from selling Frank Zappa albums.
Why is this difficult?Report
I never said it wasn’t difficult.
Its difficult to discern the difference between murder and self defense, between criticism and libel, between risqué entertainment and child pornography.
But everyone here, yes every single person here without exception including you firmly believes that murder, libel, and child pornography should be punished while self defense, criticism, and risqué entertainment should be protected.Report
Because it isn’t censorship!
Biden did not tell Facebook or any other social media company that “we will shut you down and jail your executives unless you take this down.” They stated “we noticed that there is false and misleading information being spread on your site. Here are some examples. Would you please develop some protocols to counter the spread of false and misleading information on your sites so it does not add fuel to the fire of racial prejudice”
There is nothing wrong with a government combating the spread of false information especially if that information is being used to enflame prejudice and violence against minorities or immigrants.Report
Oh, is that what Zuck said happened in the letter he just released and I linked to?
You’d think that only cranks would disagree with what he did, then.Report
I believe the technical term for the case I have seen made is motte and bailey. Anyone willing to tolerate narrowly tailored tort statutes for libel should he willing to accept prior restraint, jail for off color jokes, prosecution for tweets, etc. It’s quite easy to understand why no one has found it convincing.Report
Are you talking about why no one finds Jaybird’s arguments convincing? I agree.Report
My preferred fallacy isn’t motte and bailey! It’s a carefully constructed begging the question!
Do better.Report
Maybe find the guy who is arguing that, and tell him I disagree.
If someone here has an example of the Biden Admin. suggesting the suppression of humor or satire, please give us the example so we can judge for ourselves whether it falls into the motte or bailey category.Report
It comes from what Zuck wrote in his letter. You can read the Washington Post article about his letter here.
Here’s an excerpt:
If you don’t trust the WaPo, you can read Zuck’s letter yourself here.
The letter does, indeed, contain that quotation.Report
So…
His quote and in the link doesn’t give any example of the “certain satire and humor”.
Can you come up with one?
Because you seem to think this reflects badly on the Biden administration, so I assume you have some smoking hot incriminating example of how censorious they are.
This would be a good time to produce it don’t you think? I’m happy to withhold judgement until I see the evidence.Report
Are we jumping straight to “Zuck might be lying and I need proof that he’s not”?
Because the best I can do is a government official committing perjury and saying that this didn’t happen at all (and not that it was okay because the satire and humor was bad).Report
No, as usual we have arrived at “Jaybird is making assertions that we can’t really engage with because he’s not backing them up.”
Chip asked:
To which you responded with a Zuckerberg quote that says nothing about what content he was asked to moderate and thus is not actually a response to Chip’s question.
See we accept Zuckerberg at face value that the Administration asked him to do better at removing disinformation because the Administration has said they asked him to be better at removing disinformation. You, and Ken, have asserted that such removal targeted satire and humor that should not have been removed. Based on the full Zuckerberg letter there is no evidence provided that we see saying such. SO we are asking for you to provide that evidence, or admit Zuckerberg made no such assertion. None of that is about Zuckerberg’s actions or words.Report
To which you responded with a Zuckerberg quote that says nothing about what content he was asked to moderate and thus is not actually a response to Chip’s question.
Here’s the quote:
“In 2021, senior officials from the Biden administration, including the White House, repeatedly pressured our teams for months to censor certain covid-19 content, including humor and satire, and expressed a lot of frustration with our teams when we didn’t agree.
Seriously, that is a direct quote from Zuck’s letter where he specifically says “covid-19 content, including humor and satire”.
That is the content that he, himself, says he was asked to moderate.Report
Maybe the third repetition of the original assertion will cover for the lack of support, I don’t know.Report
So your complaint *IS*, in fact, that Zuckerberg is not supporting his assertions in the letter?
Not that Zuck “said nothing” about what content he was asked to moderate, just that we’re in a he-said/she-said situation and Zuck isn’t offering any support for his version?Report
His assertion is that he suppressed “certain content”.
I’d say that is undisputed.
No one here has even the foggiest idea what the “certain content” was.
You don’t, and it doesn’t look like the GOP does either.
Maybe Zuck does but he chose not to say.
In fact, no one here, including you, has even made the assertion that the “certain content” was harmless.
You just don’t know.
So why should anyone find any of this troubling?Report
So we’re in a “yes, this happened, but we don’t have proof that it wasn’t good”, place?
Because, you’re right. I don’t have any examples of the memes that were suppressed by the Biden administration.
All I’ve got is a government official committing perjury and saying that this didn’t happen at all (and not that it was okay because the satire and humor was bad).Report
We are in agreement “certain content” was voluntarily suppressed by Facebook , yes, and that somebody lied about it.
You know that “certain content” is still being suppressed by Facebook, right?Report
Yes! I do!
I have no reason to believe that it’s happening at the behest of the current administration, though.
You know, in violation of this or that amendment.Report
That amendment constrains federal actions, not private actions. And the govenrment telling Meta to rethink how it’s algorithm deals with misinformation is not actively telling Meta which content to suppress by specific post or meme. Meta made those choices.Report
So all we have to do is pretend that the gov has no ability to hurt companies if they don’t do what is wanted and we’re good.Report
No, just have to prove things.Report
Kinda funny that the government pressured Zuck to get him to admit that they had been pressured by the government.Report
I can’t wait until next year’s letter!
“While the things we said were technically true, we preferred to keep them hidden. We only revealed them at the behest of others. In the future, we hope to never again write a letter like this one.”Report
We could check to see if he’s blinking a hostage message, but does he blink?Report
I think I am seeing to see one of the attractions to STEM heavy public education, it avoids fights between the population groups because the humanities can be filled with tension. California requires high schools to teach ethnic studies as part of the curriculum. In the wake of the Israel-Hamas War, Jewish parents have alleged that many of these ethnic studies have become vehicles to teach anti-Semitism and teach a very distorted history of Zionism and Israel that presents Zionism as a form of settler-colonialism rather than as Jewish self-determination. There has been an attempt at creating a guardrail bill to prevent this but this bill is being opposed by educators and an Islamic Civil Rights organization. On non-Israel issues, Jewish parents think that the ethnic studies requirement places Jews firmly in the wypipo category rather than deal with how Jews were really seen in Europe.
There is obviously no way to thread the needle between these two divergent world views. Most of the educators and activists behind the ethnic studies requirements have contradictory views about Jews, Israel, and Zionism than most Jews. American Jews are determined to fight back against this and the Intersectionalists want to go forward no matter what. I think many politicians see the beauty of STEM as avoiding these sorts of controversies.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2024/08/27/bill-adding-guardrails-to-mandated-ethnic-studies-courses-pushed-to-next-year/Report
On non-Israel issues, Jewish parents think that the ethnic studies requirement places Jews firmly in the wypipo category rather than deal with how Jews were really seen in Europe.
Where is California?Report
Should that matter? These people should know better and the continual application of American race understandings outside the United States doesn’t really help things or make much sense. The logic that because the Jews are wypipo and privileged in the United States, therefore they are wypipo everywhere is incredibly dumb.Report
As a Native American, let me tell you that American race understandings are pretty dumb in the first place. It’s a social construct, you know?Report
“…Zionism and Israel that presents Zionism as a form of settler-colonialism rather than as Jewish self-determination.”
I made this point in an earlier discussion thread, but I think at this point Zionism doesn’t really, IMHO, serve any purpose. If you want to move to Israel, it’s just emigration. Taking over land that doesn’t really belong to you is rightfully called colonialism.Report
I was curious as to what would happen, when, and where…
BREAKING: Arrests made at the University of Michigan after police mobilized to stop a pro-Palestine demonstration at The Diag during Festifall on campus.
And there it is: Announcement from the University of Michigan Police Department stating “if you are laying on the ground and obstructing The Diag, you are in violation of Section 750.552 of Michigan Compiled Laws, trespass after warning”Report
There’s something refreshing about seeing people 10 feet away walking around oblivious to it. After years of reading insane accusations against the right wing, >99% of whom don’t hate Jews enough to lose sleep over it, I should have intuited the same thing about the left wing.Report
Can you actually say what side you are on? I’m not a fan of the Pro-Palestinian movement in the United States either but when you post stuff like this, it seems like you are more like somebody looking at the chaos from afar with glee rather than being for or against something.
Like I really disagree with Chris and a few others about this issue and many other issues but I at least know what they believe. There is some courage in that. I have no idea what you believe in.Report
You know, I actually do think he sees a certain glee in the chaos, because it means he can ignore all the people on any side who come at him with moral arguments, since the chaos enables his “Well, you have to understand” approach to everything.Report
The war of all against all.Report
I answered your question below, for the record. You may not have seen it yet.Report
Oh, absolutely.
I’m not a fan of the Pro-Palestinian movement in the United States as practiced on college campuses. It doesn’t strike me as having much of anything to do at all with Palestinians or the Middle East at all.
It’s, like, “hey, we’re having a party on the quad and, get this, if anyone tells us to knock it off? WE’RE GOING TO CALL THEM A NAZI!”
And I hold that in contempt.
In the days that followed October 7th, I was 100% on the side of Israel and was 100% willing to defend their response to the Palestinians. I even wrote an essay with my thoughts here: Auribus Teneo Lupum: Holding a Wolf by its Ears.
The comments are interesting. They forsee some of the stuff that happened, seems to me.
For what it’s worth, I still think that Hamas needs to no longer exist.
However, in the days that followed, Israel did a great job of acting poorly. Now, please, don’t get me wrong. I’m not talking about stuff like “they bombed a hospital!” (and, as it turned out, the missile that blew up did *NOT* blow up the hospital but landed in a parking lot and the missile in question was not an Israeli missile but one launched by forces aligned with the Palestinians).
I am, instead, talking about stuff like “Israel acting like White Supremacists during Jim Crow and treating Palestinians like how White Supremacists treated blacks during that time.”
This doesn’t include stuff like “killing journalists helping guard hostages” (which, seriously, shows up). It *DOES* include stuff like “smashing tea cups” and “destroying ultrasound machines”.
You may snort and think “it’s okay to shoot people but not smash tea cups?” and I will, instead, say “it’s the difference between acting like people who are fighting back against a terrorist attack and putting the Philistines back in their place.”
I am on board with fighting back against a terrorist attack. 100%. Even if it involves shooting people. Even if it involves collateral damage.
I am not on board, at all, with putting the Philistines back in their place.
Do you see the difference? Do you see the distinction?
Are you just going to get hung up on how smashing a few tea cups here or there should pale in comparison to killing people?Report
I reread the comments and think my own high altitude overview remains correct. Unfortunately I also think that your prediction (which I ruefully agreed with) that the Israeli’s would continue to pursue the “NuLikud” strategy also remains correct. The next inflection point is probably the Israeli elections.Report
The whole thing about how the Palestinians calculated this to make Israel counter-attack and, in the process, taint whatever moral capital they continue to have… well, that struck me as giving the Palestinian leadership a hell of a lot more planning ability (let alone grasp of 2nd and 3rd order effects) than they’d demonstrated thus far.
But… I’ll be damned. While I don’t believe that they planned for this, it happened anyway.Report
I find Israel troops videoing themselves breaking teacups a lot less of a problem than someone videoing themselves killing civilians.Report
When you’re there in the middle of it, seen a stain of tea where your buddy once stood, well, you and I can’t know what war really is like. Jaybird gets it.Report
I’ve no doubt that you do. Continue as your conscience leads you.Report
How could they have not noticed the pattern? I still think the telos of Muslims killing Jews is Muslims killing Jews, but they’d be idiots not to have noticed that a percentage of people would end up hating the Jews more.Report
Swap out “Palestinians” and “Palestinian Leadership” for “Hamas” and “Hamas leadership” and I would agree with you.Report
Fair enough. But the extent to which they are interchangeable is already depressing enough that I feel like you’re making a distinction without much of a difference.Report
As long as we do the same for the actually democratic nation doing the genocide, that is, the people who continue to vote for the settlements, to vote for the occupation, to vote for the siege, to vote for endless war, to vote for decades bombing civilians, to vote for shooting children, to vote for the torture and rape of prisoners, to vote for decades of ethnic cleansing, and now to vote for full-blown genocide. Is there a distinction with a difference here?Report
The definition of “full-blown genocide” just got equated to “civilians killed in a brutal war”.
The result of that redefinition is Israel isn’t allowed to have a brutal war in Gaza.
This then becomes “Israel must tolerate it’s civilians being terrorized and even subjected to mass murder”.Report
Israel is engaging in genocidal activities by actively denying food, water, medical aid and evacuation routes to civilians in a war zone. Further, they are now attacking civilians of that same ethnic group in another unrelated location. On top of a long history of unilaterally and illegally seizing land from Palestinians who both occupy and own it. While the Israeli Government is claiming to simply want Hamas extirpated, it is using tools to do so that will lead to the mass death of more Palestinians.
This is not hard.Report
Philip: Israel is engaging in genocidal activities by actively denying food, water, medical aid and evacuation routes to civilians in a war zone.
That is the claim. It’s been the claim for a year.
So… how many people have died from this?
Here is a graph of Gaza death toll for every 5 days since the beginning of the war. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Israel%E2%80%93Hamas_war#/media/File:Gaza_death_graph.png
If vast numbers of people were dying from hunger and thirst, wouldn’t the per day body count be going through the roof?
We have a “genocide” where the number of dead per day is going down, not up.
The numbers suggest people aren’t running out of food or water. The lack of medical care is killing fewer people as time goes on.
The UN claimed the lack of humanitarian evacuation routes would kill hundreds of thousands of people in the invasion of Rafa, but after the invasion Hamas claimed 900 people died.
The numbers strongly suggest the “genocide” narrative is wrong.Report
I’m fascinated that you trust the numbers when they appear to back your narrative but distrust them otherwise. You might want to think about that.Report
So what is your claim here?
That Hamas is greatly undercounting the number of people dead? Are we missing hundreds of thousands of people? Maybe vast numbers are starving to death stick-figure like but Hamas hasn’t felt the need to mention this?
Or do we have a “genocide” going on without people dying?
IMHO what we have here is a brutal war but Israel isn’t engaged in genocide. Even Hamas’ numbers don’t back that up.Report
I still feel compelled to protest, Jay:
-Hamas was elected in Gaza once, subsequently discontinued elections and rules over around 600k Palestinians.
-Fata/The Palestinian Authority was Elected a few times in the West Bank, subsequently discontinued elections and rules over 3 MILLION Palestinians.
-Finally, there are estimated around 6-7 million Palestinian refugees/their descendants living in various places around the Middle East governed nominally by their host countries.
Hamas has largely been violent towards the Israeli’s attacking civilians and soldiers furiously with only intermittent pauses to regroup/rearm. The Israeli’s have responded by turning Gaza into an open air prison and, now more recently, levelling it.
Fatah, while it has a history of violence, has largely been not only peaceful to the Israeli’s, in the last decade and change, but has actively suppressed violence against Israeli’s through maintaining order in the West Bank, cooperating with Israeli security services and keeping rival militants in check (or in prison) in the West Bank. The Israeli’s have responded by alternately neglecting the West Bank, strangling the Palestinians movement in it, terrorizing Palestinian residents and slowly, steadily, expropriating their land.
Now, just to be clear, my sympathies -still- lie more with the Israeli’s than the Palestinians and always have (though they have waned steadily in intensity as the years and Israeli choices have worn on them). I try, however, to be at least somewhat fair to the Palestinians. It seems to me that to talk about Hamas, which nominally governs between 16.66% or 5.66% of the total Palestinian population (depending on if you count refugees or not) as representing Palestinians in general or Palestinian leadership just strikes me as profoundly unfair and also innumerate.Report
If you want me to change it to Gazans, then I will without hesitation or pushback.Report
Had you said Gazans instead of Palestinians you would have gotten no protest from me Jay-me-lad, sorry for being pedantic.Report
The PA is deeply corrupt, repressive, and doesn’t represent it’s people. Hamas is also deeply corrupt and also repressive.
However, violently opposing Israel is popular and desired. Attempting to get a “meaningful RoR” is so popular that the PA officially is trying to do that even though they’ve been bought out by Israel.
If they held elections right now Hamas would probably win, just because it managed to kill lots of Jews.
Hamas tends to get a pass because it’s viewed as representing the “legitimate political aspirations” of the Palestinians. Those political aspirations can be summed up as “kicking the Jews out”.
That’s why I think Israel can’t win the war in Gaza. Kill every member of Hamas and we’d instantly see a Hamas-2. They’d have to be violent because non-violence won’t destroy Israel.
Hamas exists because the Palestinians want it. That’s especially true for the people of Gaza who lost their land in the 1940s and have been told every since that they’ll get it back.Report
I am finding the entire Pro-Palestinian movement to be insane and living in an alternate reality. There are posts on Facebook that present the British Mandate Palestinian passport as a Palestinian passport like there used to be a country called Palestine with foreign relations and everything that was destroyed by “evil Zionists” rather than a British colony that was formerly part of the Ottoman Empire.
There are no indications whether the people in these passports are Arabs or Jews but rather than the creation of a false reality that there was an Arab country called Palestine. It is sort of like how the all Jewish football team of the Mandate was presented as a “Palestinian” football team a few years ago.
Nobody seems remotely interested in stopping these crazy propagandists from creating their alternative reality. People laugh them off but I don’t find it that funny. There are all these allusions to allege moderates but nobody can name them.Report
I’d add that these are very skilled propagandists who are great at using motte and bailey arguments. Nearly all of their propaganda points are technically correct in some way that they can retreat into if somebody calls them out.Report
The PA is non-democratic and corrupt, agreed, but so are the overwhelming majority of Arab states. The Palestinians say vile things about the Israelis but so do the majority of people in Arab states. Israel treats productively with Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Quatar etc… and your tea leaf reading would say the exact same thing about an Israeli hostile government winning an election in any of those states (though, after what they’ve done in Gaza, I very strongly doubt that Hamas would be able to win an election in the West Bank).
None of that changes the fact that the PA administers more Palestinians and has been behaving generally quite well towards Israel for the past decade or so. Nor does it change the absolutely indefensibly (morally or intellectually) way Israel has behaved in the West Bank.
Hamas tends to “get a pass” because it is the opponent both the Israeli and American right wants. The same way that a lunatic babbling on Twitter about the most identarian nonsense gets branded, by the right, as representative of the left. To be fair the left does the same to the right- it’s just that said lunatic is also the Rights’ presidential nominee. Let us not forget that the Israeli right stood up Hamas in the first place to split the Palestinian movement and to provide a more “ugly” face to the Palestinians cause.Report
The PA is non-democratic and corrupt, agreed, but so are the overwhelming majority of Arab states.
One thing that always trips up Americans is the whole “bribe” thing.
There are cultures where you show up and you show up with a bribe. That’s just what you do.
American culture calls this “corrupt”.
It’s so much less corrupt to have people kiss your butt for a half hour praising you and mimicking your political beliefs before you do your job than just showing up with a bag of something.Report
At least the people showing up with cash are being transparent about wanting to buy the actions of the politicians. I’ve been a big fan for years of requiring US politicians to wear logos for their “sponsors” like race car drivers – and the size of the logo should correspond to the size of the sponsorship check. It would make it a whole lot easier to determine who is bought by whom.Report
Not *QUITE* my criticism.
It’s more that the customs of foreign countries are called “corrupt” in ways that strike me as presenting identically to cultural chauvinism.
If the culture has done this sort of thing for somewhere around three thousand years, it doesn’t make sense to call it “corrupt” as much as “culture”.
(Now, of course, some cultures do need to be destroyed and I’m not saying they don’t.)
The argument about how American Politicians are corrupt (just in different ways) is a good one.
As for who is bought by whom… some light research gives away the game. “Oh, this guy’s son was hired onto the corporate board of this company? Gotcha. Oh, this guy’s brother sells ‘art’ for tens of thousands of dollars? Check. Oh, this lady gets six-figure advances for her book that move merely hundreds of copies and similar paychecks for 30-minute speeches? Check.”Report
I don’t believe that politicians are being bought, at least not usually. In my perfect world, a senator in California has very limited say over my life. In our current setup, he does, and so I’m going to donate to organizations that best represent the causes I support.Report
North: Hamas tends to “get a pass” because it is the opponent both the Israeli and American right wants.
When I say it “gets a pass” I mean “it gets a pass from the Arab media that I listen to”.
The phrase “represents the legitimate political aspirations of the Palestinians” is something I’ve gotten from Al Jazeera a time or three.
That phrase is the flip side of them pretending Hamas doesn’t exist and Israel is at war with the people of Gaza.
North: the PA administers more Palestinians and has been behaving generally quite well towards Israel for the past decade or so.
True. And this is one of the reasons they can’t have elections. The people want their land back, to do that they need a war with Israel.Report
I am much less amused or tolerant of all the tolerated anti-Semitism among Arabs, Muslims, or just about anyone then you are. Any slight criticism an Israeli Jew or Doaspora Jew might have of a Palestinian, Arab, or Muslim is treated as a big problem and horrible racism that must be dealt with immediately. Frequent and common rank Jew hatred is an “oh well, what can you do about it” and you need to understand.Report
The post on Nate Silver (I hate Democrats for school shut downs during COVID) praising a letter that Mark Zuckerberg sent to Jim Jordon (Wingnut-Ohio) re Biden’s “censorship” tells the story of a man who wants to tell us he is voting for Trump without telling us he is voting for Trump. The fact that he describes this as “Nate Silver says what we have all been thinking” is another reveal.Report
You know, “side” doesn’t always mean Harris or Trump. You’re replying to a comment about sides of the debate over Palestine and Israel.Report
It also displays a complete blind spot for stuff like third parties.
“If you aren’t supporting Israel, you must be supporting the Palestinians!”
“Nope.”
“So you support Israel?”
“I’d like to. I started out supporting Israel. But they did a very good job of acting like White Supremacists under Jim Crow or, get this, Afrikaners under Apartheid and I can’t, in good conscience, support that.”
“HOW DARE YOU BE ANTISEMITIC”Report
You can’t really count the blind spots in this one. There’s only one spot that isn’t blind: Trump Bad! It’s the answer to every question, the reason for every thread.Report
I mean, you’re not wrong.Report
On last week’s open mic thread, Saul posted:
Trump is allegedly on the phone or was on the phone with Netanyahu to tell him to not agree to a ceasefire because a ceasefire helps Harris: https://x.com/RonFilipkowski/status/1825934511038939515?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1825934511038939515%7Ctwgr%5E59f08fffe736995dbba0ee5cfe2166db18501488%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fdisqus.com%2Fembed%2Fcomments%2F%3Fbase%3Ddefaultf%3Dlawyersgunsmoneyblog-comt_i%3D14385220https3A2F2Fwww.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com2F3Fp3D143852t_u%3Dhttps3A2F2Fwww.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com2F20242F082Fwe-will-never-know-if-biden-was-right-to-drop-outt_e%3DWe20Will20Never20Know20if20Biden20Was20Right20to20Drop20Outt_d%3DWe20Will20Never20Know20if20Biden20Was20Right20to20Drop20Outt_t%3DWe20Will20Never20Know20if20Biden20Was20Right20to20Drop20Outs_o%3Ddefaultversion%3D4cca83b0da0691f931ef86061fb7db43Report
Both sides denied the story, and Judy Woodruff has since apologized, claiming she read it on Axios and Reuters. There is no record that Axios and Reuters ever reported that story. All evidence indicates Woodruff made it up on air.
Saul hasn’t followed up on this. The link indicates that the story came through LGM, making this the third time he’s recently posted a baseless accusation of theirs against Trump. But if “Trump Bad!” is the answer to every question, then once you’ve said that, you don’t have to think about anything else.Report
The US Army agrees:
US Army rebukes Trump campaign for incident at Arlington National Cemetery
https://www.cnn.com/2024/08/29/politics/us-army-rebukes-trump-campaign-arlington-incident/
Or should I say, the “Woke military of suckers and losers”Report
We have in the past discussed whether former NY Times editorial page editor James Bennet was a victim of cancel culture or just not very good at his job. Here is a data point in favor of “not very good at his job”:
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/28/business/media/sarah-palin-libel-trial-new-york-times.html
That said, given the high legal bar Palin has to clear, the Times may still win on retrial. It might have won, cleanly, the first time around if the judge hadn’t been more clever than sensible. It takes a really smart judge to make a mistake that an average hack judge would never think of making.Report
Oh, I agree. When pressed as to why he ran the Tom Cotton editorial, he said that he hadn’t read it.
Wanna read the thread where we discussed it back in 2020?
Good times.Report
And you didn’t believe him when he said it:
Maybe he was just thinking “Ugh. Another senator like the last 48 senatorial op-eds we’ve run since I worked in the mail room. Ho-hum.”
And then when he realized that his options were:
1: Pretend to not have read it
B: Enjoy a pleasant struggle session
He chose 1.Report
Yeah, I still don’t. Hey, did you ever read the article that Bennet wrote for The Economist?
“When the New York Times lost its way”
Here’s some part from the middle of the beginning:
Get this! He forgot to mention that he didn’t read it!Report
Yes, I did. More evidence that he wasn’t very good at his jobReport
Personally, I think that if he was good at his job, he’d have been fired.
As such, he was hired in the first place because he wasn’t good at it.Report
ABC news *STABS* Democratic Party in the back!
They’re refusing to make accommodations for Harris!Report
I think its hilarious that you chose to quote the Post on a story that every other news organization is also covering, and in a much less incendiary way. While it is true the unmuted mikes could make Trump look as looney as he is, muted mikes mean people get to hear VP Harris as a strong intelligent caring human. Its not actually a big deal.Report
If you want to link to NPR, link to NPR. Give us all a clinic on how a *REAL* news agency would cover this non-story of TRUMP GETTING EVERYTHING HE EVER WANTS, INCLUDING TWO SCOOPS OF ICE CREAM.Report
https://www.cnn.com/2024/08/29/media/abc-presidential-debate-rules-harris-trump-microphones/index.htmlReport
“ABC News declined to comment.”
Pretty hypocritical of them, given that other people were complaining that Kamala isn’t giving interviews.Report
[Does word search… no results for STAB]Report
I just have no idea what the Pro-Palestinian faction is up to with actions like this. It is just so wrapped up the culture of the Further Left that they don’t know how to reach out to ordinary people and voters. Incoming students at MIT have been handed flyers to the Mapping Project, which is apparently an interactive map that doxes Jewish institutions in Boston with connections to Israel:
https://www.jpost.com/diaspora/antisemitism/article-816981#google_vignetteReport
See? Imagine being someone who supports Palestine trying to defend this!
I imagine something like “well, it’s not as bad as genocide!” would show up.Report
Do you have anything you actually believe in that you are willing to come out and just say in plain language?Report
Oh, absolutely.
I’m not a fan of the Pro-Palestinian movement in the United States as practiced on college campuses. It doesn’t strike me as having much of anything to do at all with Palestinians or the Middle East at all.
It’s, like, “hey, we’re having a party on the quad and, get this, if anyone tells us to knock it off? WE’RE GOING TO CALL THEM A NAZI!”
And I hold that in contempt.
In the days that followed October 7th, I was 100% on the side of Israel and was 100% willing to defend their response to the Palestinians. I even wrote an essay with my thoughts here: Auribus Teneo Lupum: Holding a Wolf by its Ears.
The comments are interesting. They forsee some of the stuff that happened, seems to me.
For what it’s worth, I still think that Hamas needs to no longer exist.
However, in the days that followed, Israel did a great job of acting poorly. Now, please, don’t get me wrong. I’m not talking about stuff like “they bombed a hospital!” (and, as it turned out, the missile that blew up did *NOT* blow up the hospital but landed in a parking lot and the missile in question was not an Israeli missile but one launched by forces aligned with the Palestinians).
I am, instead, talking about stuff like “Israel acting like White Supremacists during Jim Crow and treating Palestinians like how White Supremacists treated blacks during that time.”
This doesn’t include stuff like “killing journalists helping guard hostages” (which, seriously, shows up). It *DOES* include stuff like “smashing tea cups” and “destroying ultrasound machines”.
You may snort and think “it’s okay to shoot people but not smash tea cups?” and I will, instead, say “it’s the difference between acting like people who are fighting back against a terrorist attack and putting the Philistines back in their place.”
I am on board with fighting back against a terrorist attack. 100%. Even if it involves shooting people. Even if it involves collateral damage.
I am not on board, at all, with putting the Philistines back in their place.
Do you see the difference? Do you see the distinction?
Are you just going to get hung up on how smashing a few tea cups here or there should pale in comparison to killing people?Report
I’m curious about something: Why did everyone on both sides so readily adopt the term “pro-Palestinian?” It seems pretty loaded to me, so I would expect the other side to prefer to call them “anti-Israeli” protesters (or rioters, where appropriate), but I’ve hardly seen that at all.Report
Both sides of the issue within the left are willing to use that term, as is the anti-Semitic, Jew-hating, pro-terrorist right, but on the pro-Israel right we use terms like “anti-Semitic”, “Jew-hating”, and “pro-terrorist”. And when I say “the left”, I’m including the members of the left who call themselves mainstream journalists.Report
Power mapping is a pretty common tool on the left, and the Mapping Project” at least attempts to use the language of power mapping to explain and justify their work. Worth noting that the national BDS org condemned it from the start, and other left groups have as well (some of whom initially endorsed it, when it was just supposed to be like police stations, weapons manufacturers, and NGOs).Report
Is there anything that will cause you to believe the Pro-Palestinian movement either crossed the line or are at least engaging in ineffective tactics?Report
Here is the official statement from MIT on what I wrote about:
https://president.mit.edu/writing-speeches/rejecting-antisemitismReport
That’s a good response on the part of the president. Clear, concise, and establishes boundaries.
I think that it’s a sign that the administration is putting its foot down and warning against any bullcrap like the occupied quads that we saw last year.
Sorry freshmen! You’re going to have to go to mixers like the rest of us!Report
Well, they finally did it. Those hicks in North Carolina arrested someone for wearing a mask.Report
Pretty sure the headline says New York?Report
The story identifies the location as Nassau County, on Long Island. It doesn’t identify the town, but it could be Hicksville, which is in Nassau County.Report
Maybe Brandon hadn’t had enough coffee when he wrote that. Maybe he doesn’t care about geography. Last I checked, Nassau County, New York is nowhere near North Carolina.
And yes I’m being snarky and pedantic, mostly because I routinely get raked over the coals for misplacing a letter or two in a word. He misplaced a whole state.Report
Pretty sure he was being ironical.Report
Calling southerners hicks while posting a story about New York is many things. Ironic isn’t one of them.Report
You should be more sophisticated.Report
I think he meant that people criticize North Carolina for the law they passed about this sort of thing, like it’s some sort of backwards, southern, COVID-denying thing, when in fact those sophisticated urbanites in New York City are also doing it.
Granted, the NY dude was wearing a ski mask, not the sort of mask that people where for health reasons, which I believe were part of the North Carolina law, so if I’m reading him right, it’s still a swing and a big miss.
Or maybe I’m reading too much into it. Either way, I doubt he thought the story was about North Carolina.Report
One of the many problems of only writing one sentence very broadly that doesn’t appear to relate to the thing you are highlighting is it ends up highlighting your bad writing most of all.Report
You should read the article.
Oh, wait a second. I keep forgetting that I’m arguing against people who are on The Left. Here. I’ll post excerpts.
Here is the headline to the article:
“Man Is First to Be Charged in New York With Wearing a Mask in Public”
Quite a headline! Covid is still a problem!
What’s the subhed, you might ask. Well, here it is:
“Wesslin Omar Ramirez Castillo was frisked and charged with knife possession after the police stopped him for wearing a ski mask.”
Oh. A ski mask. Well, at least it wasn’t a gaiter.
What’s this about “knife possession”, though? I mean, I have had five of these things confiscated by the TSA and it’s a serious pain in the butt. I use the scissors more than I use the knife itself and I use the toothpick more than either. They’re totally harmless and it’s a silly post 9/11 thing that they’re still confiscating them and calling peanut butter a liquid and making you take your shoes off.
From the article:
14-inches probably includes the handle and so calling it a 14-inch knife is really dishonest on the part of the police there.Report
I didn’t read it because its paywalled by a business I don’t want to give money too.Report
“We’ve got, you know, armadillos in our trousers. I mean it’s really quite frightening.”Report
“Well, they finally did it. Those hicks in North Carolina arrested someone for wearing a mask.”
“You should read the article.”
So should the person who linked to an article about an incident in NY while commenting on North Carolina.Report
Specifically on the types of people who would outlaw masks even though we’re in a global pandemic.Report
It’s a joke. It’s ultimately a joke about confirmation bias. The more critical readers and the people not on the left got it. The question remains whether the people on the right would have failed to understand the joke if the setup were reversed.Report
You know he was making a joke, right?Report
Honestly – no I didn’t. Still not sure he is, but I suppose he and you are off somewhere laughing about me in this regard.
I keep telling you all I’m a verbal literalist . . . but whatever.Report
The problem is not that you’re a verbal literalist, it’s that you’re a narcissist. Everyone else understood that BB was snarking — why are you expecting that he should cater to your limitation specifically? That’s your thing to account for when reading others’ comments.Report
wow. Just wow.
I’m not expecting him to cater to anyone. I mean it would be great if he or you or anyone else chose to clarify when I get it wrong. That’s a decent polite thing to do. I read it as him having mistyped, and – since I’m as prone to that as anyone – wanted to give him a chance to clarify.
I should know better in this crowd.Report
Several people did try to clarify for you and you pushed back on them.Report
because I took them literally. Take CJ’s initial comment – since it’s true the story talks about New York (and Jaybird backed him up) I felt reassured that it was a typo and carried on. Chris’s comment about it being ironical was interesting to me, since as southerner I have spent most of my life having people assume I’m 100 or so IQ points dumber then I am. Still wasn’t a marker that BB was telling a joke. Jaybird just added to the confusion by writing about the contents. It wasn’t until Pinky wrote what he wrote that the idea of it being an intentional joke became clear.
And since BB hasn’t weighed in – and I expect he won’t now – how wrong I was may or may not ever be definitively settled.
But I’ll say again – if you write that the moon is made of green chees I’m gonna ask you why cheese and why green, because that’s what I expect you are talking about. No one is required to clarify for me, but just as we keep boing told how Jaybird thinks and why we should choose to react to him accordingly, I think I should periodically remind folks how I think. Because how I think is definitely not the norm around here.
You can most definitely go back to pointing and laughing now. As you do every day.Report
I don’t want to pile on here, but everyone’s a literalist unless they’re making exceptions. Just above, you were reading legislation as if it were commentary, and reading “or” as “and”. We all apply our interpretations to things, and it’s ok to admit it, just as long as you work to counterbalance it.Report
And my interpretation that BB had made a mistake got me called a narcissist.
Noted.Report
I’m also a southerner, born and raised in Tennessee, though I’ve lived in Texas for too long now (trying to get out). I’m pretty sensitive to people being unfairly critical of the south and southerners, but didn’t read it that way, perhaps because I’ve been online too long and just automatically assume irony over literalness.Report
Lucky you to be able to discern that.Report
Not saying it says anything about you that you didn’t, except perhaps that the internet hasn’t yet made you thoroughly cynical.Report
I guess the “Hicksville” joke didn’t land. But only hacks blame the audience.Report
It was clever enough – if we had reaction buttons here, it would’ve been like-worthy.Report
Most jokes are somewhere around as funny as they are funny.
But if I wanted to make a joke significantly funnier, I’d pay a guy to yell “that’s not funny!” afterwards.Report
National Lampoon once did something about how when people say “that’s not funny” they mean “that’s funny but I don’t want to admit it”, and vice versa.Report
If you have to say “that’s not funny!”, it is.
If you have to say, “that’s funny!”, it isn’t.Report
“How many feminists does it take to change a lightbulb?”Report
That’s the joke.
A few months ago, there was a minor moral panic, including here, over North Carolina’s anti-mask law. They’re actually pretty common; people using masks to avoid identification while committing crimes is an actual problem.Report
Love it or hate it, the VP has sat for an interview with a legacy media outlet. You can read the transcript here – https://www.cnn.com/2024/08/29/politics/harris-walz-interview-read-transcript/index.htmlReport
She is doing the right thing and should continue to do more. The more she seems like a boring, normal politician, with boring, normal views, the more the contrast will work in her favor.Report
AgreedReport
TFG knows no other path then delay:
As if the precedent set by federal courts denying removal in other cases doesn’t exist.
https://www.cnn.com/2024/08/29/politics/trump-hush-money-case-move-delay-sentencing/index.htmlReport
Judge tossed the appeal because he did something unprofessionally foolish in writing out the papers. Something about the PDF.
Note it’s impossible to appeal that.Report
Trump was going to pretend that the Arlington event was actually public and attack Harris for not attending: https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/trumps-arlington-cemetery-campaign-eventReport
If you want to guarantee you loose an election so you can grift off it, I see no better path then the one he is on.Report
No offense but that is what everyone said in 2016 and look where we ended up.
I’m encouraged by the polls and hope the momentum stays but they are still relatively to very close in some swing states and there is a plausible chance of Trump getting another 2016 black swan. There is also a plausible chance he loses worse than he did in 2020.Report
Apparently, Chase Bank had a small window where it was possible to withdraw money that you didn’t actually have in the account. This news went viral and a bunch of people, apparently, attempted to exploit it.
Expect new policies making it harder for folks to cash checks in the coming weeks.Report
Hersh Goldberg-Polin, the son of the Israeli-American couple that spoke at the DNC, has been found dead in Gaza with six other hostages in Rafah.Report
Looks like they were recently killed by their captors. There are suggestions it was when Israeli troops got too close. No clue if that’s speculative.Report
It could also be in response to the DNC speech of his parents. Hamas is lying when they say they have no idea where the hostages are. We are also supposed to pretend that this is true though. I am tired of all the humanitarian aid ads by the International Caring Community that conveniently forget that Hamas exists and started the war, are getting their asses handed to them, but are still negotiating like they are winning everything.Report
They’re negotiating like they’re going to be killed if and when the hostages are released and the war ends.Report
I don’t think this accurate. Hamas reminds me of the more fanatical and insane members of the Japanese Imperial government at the end of World War II. The types that wanted to force a ground invasion. The slightly more rational members are the types who thought that Japan would be able to keep most of it’s colonies.Report
Hey McGill! You want to support Israel? Well, you don’t *GET* a nice quad!
Report
Seems like they should just expel everyone involved.Report
Also have them arrested and sue them for damages.Report
I don’t know how things work in Canada. In the US the cost of suing them would probably be more than what you could reasonably expect to recover. To me bothering with the police would be overly vindictive, and serve to give what they did more dignity than it deserves. But they’ve obviously shown that they’re too immature to be in any sort of respectable, adult environment.Report
You’d think that McGill would have an in-house guy or two.
“You know that retainer you got? Well, this is what it’s for, eh?”Report
Well, if you’re in house you’re salaried. Funnily enough I got asked to do exactly that back in February, and won a motion to dismiss at my first time in court (as a lawyer) in over a decade. So I suppose if you really wanted to make a point you could try to get a judgment against them if you wanted to (again, speaking in terms of how things work in the US, no idea on Canada).
Nevertheless, my recommendation would probably be to throw them out and let anything beyond that go. In my experience litigation rarely results in the moral vindication people expect and only makes sense when the stakes are high. Too much paperwork, too much wasted time for trifles.Report
Whatever McGill University decides to do, the protestors are going to be shocked to find out that their actions have consequences. My guess is ultimately that McGill University will decide to do nothing.Report
If you asked me to come up with a half-decent false flag attack that bad actors could use to make the Palestinian Enthusiasts at McGill look bad, you could have given me a month and I wouldn’t have come up with this one.Report
Both Sides Have Plans For The McGill Quad, But Horticulture Experts Cast DoubtReport
I find this entirely less amusing than you do. It is very bewildering. I’m not remotely sympathetic to the Palestinians generally but they have the worst allies possible.Report
I just have no idea what the protestors political strategy is in this case. There are some rather good and simple arguments that they can make in this case like Israel losing the moral high ground in this war due to the excessive response to 10/7 that leaved many more Palestinians dead. Rather than make these simple and good arguments, they are going straight into the entire Israel is an ipso facto illegitimate settler-colonial state and engaging in stunts that just pisses everybody off.Report
Wiki’s per day body count graph suggests Israel’s “over reaction” may not be a thing.
Hamas did 10-7.
The appropriate response is a brutal war.
It’s expected and acceptable if civilians die in a brutal war.
Genocide is illegal and immoral… but we want Israel to do seems to be more “not have a brutal war” than “not commit genocide”.
As far as I can tell, as horrible as it is, Israel can keep the war going basically forever and have it still be ethical because Hamas refuses to surrender or stop it’s war crimes.
Requests for us to prevent Israel from fighting the war are also requests for them to live with a fascist genocidal terror group terrorizing their civilians.
It would be nice if Israel found different ways to protect their civilians, and I’m doubtful that the current approach will work. Having said that, if their current approach is ethical then it’s ethical.
That’s why the Protesters keep jumping the shark. They need to spin a fascist genocidal terror group terrorizing civilians into something that’s justified and ethical. Part of doing that is going to include “not dealing with reality”.Report
I think it’s some variant of:
“You’re going to try to pretend that last year’s occupation of the quad didn’t happen? OH YOU’RE GOING TO NEED MORE SOD THAN THAT!!!”
Meanwhile, everybody who doesn’t own a keffiyeh is looking at that and thinking “what a bunch of jerks” at best. Even the Palestinian-sympathetic types are looking at that and thinking “I walk across that place three times a week… what in the hell do you turds think you’re doing?”Report
In a just world, the protestors would be taught a lesson they would never forget.Report
Major strike in Israel planned for tomorrow against Netanyahu:
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/09/01/world/hostages-strike-israel-gaza-warReport
I’m surprised at this. My impression was the bulk of Israel was still in “punish the Palestinians” mode.Report
Most Israelis do not like Netanyahu’s government and think he really bungled things up since 10/7. They aren’t that sympathetic towards the Palestinians either.Report
He certainly bungled things before 10/7. Israeli security is supposed to be focused on stopping Gaza from breaking out of their cage but he seems to have insisted on other things. The settlements also make security a lot harder than it needs to be.
Having said that, I find it very hard to accept that Israel should not have a brutal war because Hamas took hostages, or that Hamas would accept less than that.
His big focus should be to drive home to Hamas and their civilian supporters that 10-7 was a horrible idea even from the Palestinian point of view. Treating Hamas as a serious army/threat and attacking them everywhere they are has the predictable outcome of putting Gaza through a woodchipper. But I’m not sure how else you showcase the whole “horrible idea” thing.Report
I agree with you on all of this and I’m not sure if any other realistic Israeli PM would have acted differently than Netanyahu. The problem is that there are lots of people who generally don’t like what the Palestinians in Gaza have to go through because of Hamas’ fanaticism for whatever reason.Report