170 thoughts on “Open Mic for the week of 12/16/2024”

            1. The article is paywalled but if the survey tracks all the others of its type both the GOP and the Dems opinions of the economy rises and falls depending on who is in the White House but the GOP’s swing is twice as strong as the Dems is.Report

              Reply

    2. My 401k balance has been going gangbusters since the election. I gotta think the market thinks all of the hoohah about tariffs is a bunch of BS since they’d surely tank the economy.

      It’s always seemed kind of comical to me that Americans can simultaneously be in love with a free market economy and a centrally planned monetary policy.Report

      Reply

          1. Eh, hard to say. Canada isn’t a two party state like the US but the left and right tend to rise and fall in turn. I would expect the conservatives will get a majority since there really is only the Tories on the right whereas the Greens and NDP will cannibalize the Grits from the left. If you’re talking historic landslide? I don’t think so, I’d doubt it- especially not with the stuff the Tories are babbling which seems like standard issue right wing fare rather than anything new. Long term the Canadian pattern would be that the Liberals lose to a healthy Tory majority. If the Tories rein cut taxes and spending too sharply then they’ll get bounced after a cycle and if the Liberals that come back, chastened, don’t go crazy on the spending/taxing again then they’ll be back in power for a good long run again. Whereas if the Tories are more circumspect with their spending cuts then they could get a longer stint but also won’t get the right wing red meat they want done.Report

            Reply

  4. Kevin Drum looks at the Democratic results in CA: https://jabberwocking.com/what-really-happened-in-2024/

    “For what it’s worth, in final polling before the election Trump gained a couple of points compared to 2020, which turned into a 1% increase in his vote. Harris lost a couple of points, which turned into a 17% drop in her vote. This points in the direction of laziness/strategic voting.

    Was this a problem with Harris in particular or with Democrats in general? Here’s the House vote over the past couple of decades:

    The Democratic share of the vote was down this year, so maybe it really is a D problem. But there’s evidence this is mostly strategic. Here’s the number of seats Democrats have won:

    It was up! Democrats voted where they needed to but skipped out where a seat was uncompetitive. In the end, the Democratic share of the California delegation reached an all-time record aside from the blowout year of 2018.

    I don’t have a big axe to grind here. I just want to know: Was there a specific problem with Kamala Harris this year or is there a widespread problem with the Democratic brand in general? Honestly, I see evidence both ways. You really can’t ignore the fact that every single state (in fact, every single county) shifted red. On the other hand, Harris lost by only 1.5% of the vote nationwide, while House Democrats gained 0.6% of the national vote compared to 2022 and picked up two seats. It’s the same dynamic that played out in the deep-blue state of California.

    It’s just a genuine mystery. Trump really did pick up support compared to 2016, but then again, so did Harris by a little bit. Trump mainly picked up support from the third-party vote, not from Democrats.”Report

    Reply

    1. My impression is that Team Blue didn’t turn out for Harris. So their numbers were suppressed, i.e. she was that bad. The lesson to learn is to pick a VP on their ability.

      She was Team Blue’s answer to Sarah Palin, who also would have failed at the top of the ticket if that had happened.Report

      Reply

        1. I didn’t say less. I said they’re comparable. On paper Sarah was a successful governor which is better than Harris’ on-paper experience.

          However neither was ready for the big time and both were selected because they were female and not because they could reasonably head up a ticket.Report

          Reply

            1. Yes, that’s why I say Sarah wasn’t ready for the big time. Alaska (like a few other states) is the size of a city. If we’re reaching down to that level we should also include big city mayors.Report

              Reply

            1. There is less management, leadership, governance, and difficulty in getting elected if we compare being a DA to being a governor. It’s a stronger “signal”.

              Blue could (and should) have taken a look at current and former Blue governors. Make a list, take the most charismatic and successful and you’re basically there.

              More importantly, trying to claim Harris was “better” than Sarah, even if we accept that as true, doesn’t change that neither of them were ready. Both could be expected to be terrible candidates because of their lack of experience in the big time and their ideological extremism.Report

              Reply

              1. She wasn’t just a DA in a county. She was State AG – which is every bit as challenging a management environment as governor. And Senator gets a lot of governance experience really quickly. As does a sitting VP.

                And lets be real – none of the successful Blue Governors seem to want the job.Report

                Reply

              2. Forget it, Jake, it’s Dark Matter Town. Nothing you can possibly say would get him off his evidence-free belief that, on the face of it (perhaps literally), Harris wasn’t up to the job.Report

                Reply

              3. I get to say that she wasn’t up to being elected because she did so poorly in running.

                And burden of proof here is mostly on you. If you’re trying to claim she was super competent then you should be pointing to her record, ideally her VP record.

                The only thing of significance I can think of is her boarder czar role where she never bothered to visit the boarder and didn’t accomplish anything.Report

                Reply

              4. Phil: As does a sitting VP.

                This is the strongest part of her resume. I excluded that because she didn’t have it when she was picked to be VP.

                Having said that, she seemed to be given a lot of authority in her first year in Biden’s term and then ignored the last three.

                She certainly wasn’t being groomed for the top spot up until she had to take over.Report

                Reply

    2. Where the Democrats campaigned and spent money, they won. There just were more places where they didn’t campaign or spend money.

      As for “the brand”, I think it really hurt Harris that Republicans would put up ads with Harris saying something easily spun as “crazy radical”, and the Harris campaign response to this was to remind us that Donald Trump is a real jerk.Report

      Reply

  5. The rule of law is still alive in New York:

    A New York judge ruled that former President Donald Trump cannot claim presidential immunity to overturn his felony conviction.

    The decision from Judge Juan Merchan marks a temporary setback for the president-elect, who is set to return to the White House in January, and has recently secured a few wins including the indefinite delay of his sentencing in the case.

    A New York jury earlier this year found Trump guilty of 34 counts of falsify business records to conceal a $130,000 hush money payment to adult-film star Stormy Daniels, in order to influence the 2016 presidential contest.

    Merchan, who presided over the trial earlier this year, still has to decide whether the trial should be dismissed due to Trump’s upcoming inauguration, as Trump’s lawyers have requested.

    https://www.npr.org/2024/12/16/g-s1-38540/new-york-judge-says-trump-not-immune-from-hush-money-convictionReport

    Reply

    2. This is pretty funny. It was pretty much assumed AOC would win, and she went out of her way to show her subservience to the party, even telling leadership she’d stop supporting progressive primary challengers for incumbent Dems, but Pelosi swooped in at the end and undercut her.

      As someone who thinks the left wastes way too much of its energy on electoral stuff, this series of events is definitely going in my rhetorical arsenal.Report

      Reply

      1. I suppose we have no idea what will happen in 2026 (or 2028!) but it strikes me as a somewhat petty move to make that will prevent AOC sitting in that chair for a couple of years (maybe four) but not more than that.

        And the dude has cancer. I mean, God forbid, but he might not be with us at this time next year.

        It’s a one last double bird before exit.

        (She broke her hip, I understand. She should just go home and count her money.)Report

        Reply

      2. It was pretty much assumed AOC would win

        It was? By whom? And why would they have thought that other than wishcasting?
        I do know a lot of people who wanted it to come out that way, but that’s a different thing.Report

        Reply

      3. As an outspoken centrist I’m gonna go on record and say I disagree with Nancy Pelosi on this. AOC has been a trooper and deserved the nod. This is just obviously personal politics in that Pelosi jumped in to help an old friend and that just doesn’t help the party in the long run. I think AOC should have gotten the job.Report

        Reply

        1. I think amid the terminally online center-right’s obsession with wokeness and the center-left’s obsession with “misinformation,” one of the Democratic Party’s problems that has been underdiscussed is how much of a gerontocracy it is, and how much that hurts them in many ways, both with voters and with their own younger candidates.

          I mean, Harris was considered a young candidate at 60. The three Democratic presidents prior to Biden were, I believe, 52, 46, and 47 when they were first elected, and while obviously the Republican candidate the last 3 times has been quite old, the GOP seems to be really trying to elevate its young politicians, whereas the older Dems will hold onto power at the expense of their younger colleagues until death or the voters pries it away from them.

          A great example of how their oldness has left them out of touch was Pelosi, Schumer, et al. kneeling in Kente cloth stoles in 2020.Report

          Reply

          1. It’s actually worse than that: Harris, the “young” candidate, would have been the second oldest Democrat, after Biden, to become president since Truman.

            No, it’s even worse than that! She would have been the third oldest Democratic Party president when she became president, behind Biden and Truman, since Buchanan!

            How did the party of youth and energy end up so old that a president younger than only two Democratic presidents since before the Civil War was considered the young one?Report

            Reply

          2. Well that is the “woke” business in a nutshell- the established powers embracing this new symbolism without substance and new language signaling because they can easily do so without making any substantial concessions or painful choices. Shouldn’t be a surprise that the Dems politicians do it too and, yeah, it’s very much a lot of elderly folks in very comfortable prestigious jobs clinging tightly to them because they don’t want to let go.Report

            Reply

        2. I agree. AOC doesn’t best align with my policy preferences but she’s been a team player when it mattered. She didn’t deserve to he done dirty like that. Certainly not for another end of career greybeard.Report

          Reply

    3. Related, from one of the organs of the liberal left:

      In other democracies, the leaderships of parties that have endured humiliating defeats like the one Democrats saw in November—or even just regular defeats—resign. That kicks off a process by which members determine a new, ideally more successful direction, represented by different people. But the Democratic Party isn’t really a “party” of the sort that exists in other democracies, with memberships and official constituencies, like unions, who have some say over how it’s governed. Members mostly make decisions based on their own interests rather than to drive some shared, democratically decided agenda forward.Report

      Reply

      1. Yeah.

        I mean, kudos to Pelosi and her ability to maintain discipline!

        But if someone wanted to argue that she saw more benefit from that than the country did, I’d probably have to start whatabouting in order to change the subject. Maybe call them sexist.Report

        Reply

      2. MattY has been spending a few cycles talking about “The Groups”.

        It strikes me that The Groups are exceptionally disciplined in the short term and have absolutely zero discipline for beyond that.

        But when are we ever not in the short term?Report

        Reply

    1. After getting ABC to capitulate for calling him a rapist – which a court said he is – this should surprise no one. Its the only tool of retribution he has until 20 January. And people openly criticizing him for actual things is clearly a behavior that he believes deserves retribution.Report

      Reply

        1. I find it fascinating that Trump is a “citizens of the United States and a resident of the State of Florida” while Selzer is “a natural person and a citizen of Iowa.” a subtle distinction, but one meant to imply she is somehow not a US citizen I suspect.

          I’m still trying to find the harm here though, much less Trump’s standing to sue in Iowa.Report

          Reply

  9. Mark Penn is *NOT* helping:

    America forgot

    What’s it is like to have a presidential press conference that is not staged.

    Real questions and real answers are back and critical to democracy and whether you agree or disagree with the answers having an actual exchange rather than pre screened journalists and pre set answers is refreshing.

    Report

    Reply

  12. Trump’s Revenge Tour 2024 is heating up, and it appears once again the old white men just can’t stomach strong women:

    The report singles out Cheney for prosecution for her role in working with one of the star witnesses against Trump, former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson, who provided some of the most detailed descriptions of the defeated president’s actions that day.

    Hutchinson had testified before the January 6 committee in 2022 hearing that she had not been forthcoming during her first interviews with the panel and had a “moral struggle” and wanted to return.

    She eventually ditched her Trump-aligned lawyer and later delivered a blockbuster public hearing, describing Trump at the White House as the Capitol riot unfolded.

    Cheney, in her own account in her book “Oath and Honor” of the committee’s work, had been crucial in meeting with Cassidy and worried for her safety as she decided to come forward.

    Loudermilk’s panel concludes these actions are witness tampering and grounds for prosecution.

    “Numerous federal laws were likely broken by Liz Cheney,” the committee wrote in its conclusion. “These violations should be investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.”

    https://www.cnn.com/2024/12/18/politics/jan-6-house-gop-trump-liz-cheney/index.htmlReport

    Reply

        1. He threw a fit because it was a compromise deal that included Dem priorities and because it didn’t include a debt limit increase. The nerve of Dems, not giving him everything he’d want and thanking him for the chance to do so. HehehReport

          Reply

        2. A temper tantrum? Ha ha! How very low status of him!

          Back in the 90’s, Clinton tried to pull the whole “line item veto” move and the Supreme Court stymied him.

          If the DOGE figures out a way to force Congress to remove line items on their own…Report

          Reply

    2. “President Musk” and “President Elon” are both trending on Twitter.

      Adam Kinzinger referred to “President Elon” on CNN.

      The best way to get Trump to fire a guy is to give the guy credit instead of him, I’ve heard.

      So if that’s true, more people need to refer to President Musk. Talk about how much President Musk is accomplishing. Point out that it’s President Musk who is making Congress look like a bunch of fools. President Musk is intimidating the Democrats in Washington. President Musk is making his opponents throw temper tantrums.

      We’ll have Elon out on his butt by New Year’s Eve.Report

      Reply

  15. Who wants to read a Nancy Mace thread talking about the bill?

    If your answer is “not me, just give me the highlights”, well, here you go:

    This CR is 1,547 pages long and covers a period of 84 days. The last CR on September 26th was 21 pages and lasted 85 days.

    First off: Dang. 1547 pages! That’s, like 39 squared!

    She points out that this is more of an “Omnibus” than a “Continuing Resolution”.

    Section 1002, page 938: Exempts Members of Congress from having to enroll in Obamacare.

    That’s kinda irritating. I really dislike when Congress exempts itself from its laws.

    If I could will an Amendment into existence, it’d be one that forces Congress to abide by its own laws.

    There’s a bunch of changed language:

    Section 102, Page 947: Redefines “homeless individuals” to “individuals experiencing homelessness.”

    Section 102, Page 947: Redefines “homeless children” to “children experiencing homelessness.”

    Section 111, Page 958: Redefines “out of school youth” to “opportunity youth.”

    OPPORTUNITY YOUTH!!! I haven’t heard that one.

    Section 111, Page 958: Redefines “low-skilled adults” to “adults with foundational skill needs.”

    Section Page 1398: Redefines “for criminal offenders in criminal institutions and for institutionalized individuals” to “justice involved individuals in correctional institutions and for other institutionalized individuals.”

    Section 208, Page 1400: Redefines “criminal offender” to “justice-involved individual.”

    To be perfectly honest, I’d like to know which Congressperson requested these changes and whether they’d throw a staffer under the bus.

    As CRs go, I’ve seen shorter CRs.Report

    Reply

    2. That stuff seems dumb. But it also included giving the RFK stadium site back to DC which was step 1 to getting the Skins back in the city. Sad to see that dream die for another generation.Report

      Reply

    4. Section 102, Page 947: Redefines “homeless individuals” to “individuals experiencing homelessness.”

      Section 102, Page 947: Redefines “homeless children” to “children experiencing homelessness.”

      Section 111, Page 958: Redefines “out of school youth” to “opportunity youth.”

      These are all, I believe, part of the reauthorization of the Workforce Innovation and Opportunities Act, and I find it very odd that anyone would single them out as bad. On the one hand, “experiencing homelessness” is pretty standard language now, and “out-of-school youth” is a distinction primarily concerning the sorts of services states are required to provide people within a certain age range, and I believe the label “opportunity youth” is a phrase in long use meant to define them not merely by their school status.

      I believe WIOA reauthorization got attached to this bill primarily because enough support from both parties that it was just assumed it would pass without objection. It’s so weird that anti-woke people are so obsessed with finding wokeness that they’d object to something because they don’t like the word “experiencing.”Report

      Reply

      1. “Homeless” used to be the new+improved “nice” term for the phenomenon.

        We’re on the euphemism treadmill again.

        As for the awesomeness of the Workforce Innovation and Opportunities Act, I think that it is awesome enough to be voted on as something standalone rather than part of a silly CR to get us to February.Report

        Reply

        1. Man, you’re old enough, smart enough, and well-read enough, to know that language changes constantly, and official language frequently. No one’s telling you use “people experiencing homelessness,” or “the houseless,” instead of “homeless,” but people actually working with such people new terms in order to better humanize a population that a huge portion of the country, liberals and conservatives, pretty consistently dehumanizes. Objecting to this is straight up ghoulishness. Seriously, it’s just downright disturbing how hard y’all are looking for reasons to be angry. You don’t have to look hard: shite is fished up, and it’s not because we’re calling homeless people something new.

          As for the awesomeness of the Workforce Innovation and Opportunities Act, I think that it is awesome enough to be voted on as something standalone rather than part of a silly CR to get us to February.

          My impression is that it got attached to this out of laziness: it was unobjectionable, and they didn’t want to work a moment longer than necessary, so they attached it to the larger deal instead of having to go through the process separately. It’ll probably get passed separately now, assuming the language police don’t object to “opportunity Youth” as a service distinction.Report

          Reply

          1. Objecting to this is straight up ghoulishness. Seriously, it’s just downright disturbing how hard y’all are looking for reasons to be angry. You don’t have to look hard: shite is fished up, and it’s not because we’re calling homeless people something new.

            I think you’re misrepresenting my emotional state but beyond that, I am pretty much in a place where I do not believe that unscrewing this particular pooch has *ABSOLUTELY NOTHING* to do with that we’re using the wrong terms.

            And, get this, fixing the terms strikes me as 100% cosmetic.

            It’s the equivalent of getting rid of Aunt Jemima in response to the BLM riots.

            It’s not “anger”. It’s an eyeroll.

            And “opportunity youth”. Jeez louise. I’m going to start calling my younger co-workers that.Report

            Reply

            1. The way we talk about things changes the way we think about them. The labels we use have a pretty significant effect on how we represent people and things. This is not just me, a lefty, talking about it, but decades of research in psychology. For example, instead of labeling someone a carrot eater, saying they eat carrots, changes the way we think about them, specifically making us less likely to see eating carrots as an immutable property that says something about who they are as a person. It’s possible that doing the same with homelessness will similarly encourage people to think of people who are homeless without essentializing the homelessness.Report

              Reply

              2. That’s not true (I know for a fact), but if it were, it would suggest that we live in a truly dysfunctional country, that the words “Opportunity Youth” and “Experiencing Homelessness” would tank a bill.

                (I’ve been reading drafts of and comments on the reauthorization bill for more than a year.)

                If you want a more pragmatic reason for the change, it better aligns the language of the bill with the language of service providers and others in the field.Report

                Reply

              6. It was a real bill. They added it to the CR as a sort of consent agenda item.

                Sounds like there’s a non-trivial chance it’ll go independently now. If the anti-woke keep it from passing because of this sort of thing, it will be a pretty clear indication that y’all are wholly unserious people.Report

                Reply

              10. What’s particularly funny is that this language wasn’t put in there by bleeding heart liberals. While it’s true that a bunch of the writing came out of the Senate HELP Committee, chaired by Bernie Sanders (to the left of the Democratic Party, but not aligned with the “woke” wing), this wasn’t a Bernie bill (and the ranking member was at least as involved), with language largely from the Department of Labor, which isn’t a bastion of liberalism.

                Furthermore, the language in the bill had to go through the hands of every state, and I promise you the labor/workforce people in states like Alabama, Tennessee, or Texas, aren’t the least bit woke. I know even some red states have already adopted this language (and similar changes in other areas covered by the bill).

                That a bunch of online trolls have now latched onto it is a pretty good example of how messed up our political discourse is.Report

                Reply

              12. No, the language policing, weird euphemisms, and attempts to use fuzzy language to stymie clear thinking has become utterly ridiculous. As much as I wish it was grown ups putting a stop to it instead of Republicans it’s what needs to happen. People into this sort of thing will lose now and need to lose over and over until such time as heads are removed from asses.

                Anyway, homeless, homeless, homeless. No person without a home has been harmed by the writing of those words.Report

                Reply

              13. This is just silly. This language doesn’t affect clear thinking in any way, and as I mentioned (and wrote about here, once upon a time), labels do matter. There’s a reason people in the field say “experiencing homelessness” instead of “homeless,” and there’s a reason Federal agencies would want to align with that language, and it’s not language policing. Literally no one is policing your language here. You are the language police in this case, and you look as utterly unserious, but many times more ghoulish, than the people pushing “latinx” a few years ago.Report

                Reply

              14. Eh, I think the lessons learned from post-modernism is that owning the language is actually part of the political power game.

                I think you know that, but we know that too… what’s newish is that what used to be an academic power move (successfully) transitioned into politics and now is being challenged in ways it wasn’t before.

                The Left successfully stole a march for about two decades on the language/power axis… but I don’t think it will be as uncontested moving forward.

                We might not enjoy how it plays out … but I don’t think anyone will believe the ‘nothing is happening here’ story going forward.Report

                Reply

              15. I definitely understand that language is part of the power game, and I get why people would fight against some kinds of language changes, because language is itself quite powerful. In this case, it seems to be people who’ve gotten used to getting upset about everything as though it were woke power move. I mean, getting upset about “opportunity youth,” which might be the most corporate-ass language in the bill, is very silly. Getting upset about language designed to humanize the homeless is, well, it’s sick.Report

                Reply

              17. What does ‘humanize the homeless’ even mean, and how does the change accomplish it? How would we measure it and how would we know if it’s working or not?

                I don’t think you know. I don’t think anyone knows, or that there is an answer that doesn’t assume a bunch of highly contested premises. Which is the whole problem. At this point it also doesn’t escape notice that those who prefer and aggressively promote this sort of terminology, when given the opportunity, have tended to use it to enable the most dangerous and destructive behaviors of people with serious addiction and mental problems. The system is adapting to the tactic.Report

                Reply

              18. Language plays a big role in how we see and treat people. If you don’t believe that, it’s unlikely I’m going to convince you, but I’ve got some studies and books I can point you to. You can also see the post I linked discussing the importance of labels.

                In a past life, I was a cognitive psychologist who studied kowledge representation, including analogical reasoning, concepts and categories, and long-term episodic memory, and one of the projects I worked on back then was the role of labels in concept/category representation, so yes, I know.

                I mean, of course I know that changing a label to reduce essentializing homelessness is not going to fix the homelessness crisis, or immediately and on its own make everyone stop treating people who are homeless like they’re less human, but it’s one tool in the arsenal, and it’s something that people who work with the homeless take very seriously, so I’m all for including it in the language the government uses when working with the people who work with the homeless.

                Again, no one’s telling you that you need to stop calling them “homeless people.” This is about the language service providers use at the local level, and most of them are probably already using this language (most of WIOA, previously WIA, language changes over the years have been driven by field staff and local/state policy folks).Report

                Reply

              19. That last paragraph has me doubting all of this. If the people in the field already use that terminology they should have some set of results that show how it helps.

                My perception (which I grant is unscientific) is that the opposite is happening. People are more pissed off at the homeless than they have been in decades because of the loss of public parks, libraries, mass transit, and similar accommodations to addicts and people with serious mental health problems. And it’s the people that insist on terms like ‘people experiencing homelessness’ most likely to tell them that frustration with the situation is a personal moral failing.Report

                Reply

              20. Calling someone homeless implies that they are intrinsically in that state. Inherently flawed to a point that lacking a steady residence is the only outcome that could be ascribed to them. Like calling someone fat or stupid.

                Saying someone is experiencing homelessness means that they are in a stage of their lives and that they can be helped out of it. And maybe that just means rent assistance; maybe it means treatment for addiction. Fundamentally it means they are humans living in a set of conditions.Report

                Reply

              21. Precisely.

                And again, this isn’t idle speculation. There is an entire empirical literature on how labels affect the way we represent people and things, and specifically about their essentializing tendencies.

                I realize the ghouls and members of the political peanut gallery may not care, but we’re talking about one of the most vulnerable populations in the country, and every tool to further humanize them is important.Report

                Reply

              22. No, that’s a kind of abstract rationalization, not an accurate diagnosis of reality.

                It also assumes that all people who are homeless could cure that condition without at minimum some pretty serious coercion from the state. And even then not all people can be rehabilitated. This is just a fact. And so the euphemism becomes a bait and switch (intentional or not) to use the fixable condition of those down on their luck to justify helping fentanyl addicts and schizophrenics live indefinitely in squalor in a park or behind a train station or wherever else.

                This is also a good example of the kind of fuzzy thinking I referenced above.Report

                Reply

              23. I don’t want to help them live in squalor. I do want to help them live. And that MAY mean not forcing them into treatment. It may mean needle exchanges for clean needles, hot soup and warm sleeping bags. But I bet if you told an addict she could move to a tiny house with solid walls and regular meals she’d do it even without consenting to coerced treatment.

                Regardless, “experiencing homelessness” for whatever reason is a labeling that grants humanity to the person. And you can’t really intervene until you do that.Report

                Reply

              24. I think the hope was that by “humanizing the homeless”, people would have a but for the Grace of God go I moment and vote for generous welfare provisions and social services. That did not happen. And yes, certain sections of the left took to a rather strong defense of visible disorder.Report

                Reply

              25. I dunno about where you live (wait, your in San Fran? Then yes, I do know about where you live), but liberals are some of the most ghoulish people when it comes to the homeless. Hell, the Democratic governor of California, whom many believe to be a likely top candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2028, is about as bad as it is possible to be on the issue.

                I currently live in one of the most Democratic-voting areas of Austin (I think we’ve had the highest percentage Democratic vote share in the city in the last two presidential elections and the midterm in between). We have the currently most liberal city council member (though another district just voted a likely more liberal one in), and the neighborhood is filled with “In This House” signs, but the neighborhood Facebook and Nextdoor pages were full of pure, unadulterated hatred for the homeless during the city’s homelessness debates and votes over the last few years, including the 2022 election.

                So yeah, I don’t think “they didn’t vote for Democrats even though they want to humanize the homelessness” is the gotcha you think it is.Report

                Reply

              27. No, what is happening is people becoming wise to the game, which is to play on the natural empathy of the unsuspecting in order to change terminology in such a way as to backdoor in substantive and at times quite major policy changes that were never adequately understood or debated. Even if this particular instance really is in good faith the time is nevertheless long since passed to say no to it.Report

                Reply

  17. Josh Marshall on Musk as Trump’s Trump: https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/trumps-trump

    “But none of those points are the critical ones. This is about Elon Musk.

    Trump has brought Musk into the central circle of power. He’s not only de facto Vice President. When was the last time you saw JD Vance? He’s practically co-president. Musk is erratic, volatile, impulsive, mercurial. He introduces a huge source of unpredictability and chaos into the presidency that for once Trump doesn’t control. See it clearly: Musk did this. Trump thrives on chaos, but his chaos. Not someone else’s chaos.

    Trump is following. He’s trying to pretend otherwise but he’s following. And unlike all of Trump’s other bad hires or hires he gets tired of he can’t just shitcan Musk like all the rest. Musk is worth hundreds of billions of dollars. He’s got a bigger megaphone. And he’s got his own brand. I’m pretty sure there will eventually be a really big and really ugly falling out between the two of them. But it will take a while to get there and the costs are potentially quite large for both of them.”Report

    Reply

    1. Personally, I am relieved that Hitler has been cut off at the knees. We’ll get some weird techno-futurist thing instead of Hitler.

      Unless Musk leaves.

      Then we’ll get Hitler again.

      The only question is whether Hitler is preferable.Report

      Reply

  18. Interesting story,

    https://news.yahoo.com/news/msnbc-viewers-still-haven-t-140249772.html

    By Claire Potter
    ‘“It’s a sort of odd conjunction of what cable news channels have offered, which is, ‘You can trust us — come be part of our community. You’re safe here. We will not only keep you informed, but we will keep you organized and energized to defeat your opponents,’” she said. “That’s what’s coming in, and … the audience is buying it, hook, line and sinker. And then when it doesn’t work out, they get angry.”’

    Is she right?Report

    Reply

  19. The dirty secrets are coming out.

    https://www.wsj.com/politics/biden-white-house-age-function-diminished-3906a839

    “To adapt the White House around the needs of a diminished leader, they told visitors to keep meetings focused. Interactions with senior Democratic lawmakers and some cabinet members—including powerful secretaries such as Defense’s Lloyd Austin and Treasury’s Janet Yellen—were infrequent or grew less frequent. Some legislative leaders had a hard time getting the president’s ear at key moments, including ahead of the U.S.’s disastrous pullout from Afghanistan.”

    They knew at Afghanistan that he was incompetent?!? Reminded me again why he was not article 25’d?Report

    Reply

  21. From the Guardian:

    The Montana supreme court upheld a landmark trial court decision last August in favor of 16 young people who said their health and futures were being jeopardized by climate change, which the state aggravates through its permitting of energy projects…. The 6-1 decision, the first of its kind by a US state supreme court, came in the first lawsuit to go to trial nationwide by young environmental activists challenging state and federal policies they say are exacerbating climate change.

    This is interesting to me because it happened in a conservative western state. I have trouble imagining the top courts in North Carolina or Florida — other states where the legislature has forbidden consideration of climate change — making the same ruling.Report

    Reply

    1. I suspends the debt ceiling through 2027, which will be plenty long enough to shove through more tax cuts. Now we will see if that, and the $100 BN disaster relief package (or the $10 BN Farm aid package) are enough to placate Dear Leader so all his people fall in line.Report

      Reply

          2. And it was rejected despite Trump’s backing and making it easier to get money from China, giving more profits to health insurers, and stripping 190 million from Pediatric Cancer research. As Kevin Drum notes:

            1.Democrats negotiate with Speaker Mike Johnson on a CR to keep the government open for another three months.
            2. After a bit of minor pressure from Elon Musk, Johnson reneges on the deal.
            3. The new deal is: F you. We get everything we want, you get nothing.Report

            Reply

  23. The federal CISA security agency reported yesterday that the PRC has burrowed deep enough into the telephone networks they can capture SMS text messages to/from highly-targeted individuals. The new guidance pointed to from that page suggests not using SMS in multi-factor authentication.

    The guidance also recommends using end-to-end encryption. I’m an old, so I can remember when the Dept of Defense and the intelligence community were fighting like hell to keep people from getting hold of strong end-to-end encryption algorithms.Report

    Reply

  24. President Biden is set to sign a bill blocking gender-affirming trans healthcare for children provided by TRICARE. (A reminder that military members basically can get no insurance besides TRICARE.)

    Well, technically, it says ‘medical interventions for the treatment of gender dysphoria that could result in sterilization may not be provided to a child under the age of 18’, but anti-trans liars often lie that blockers and hormones do exactly that (There is no evidence that blockers do that _at all_, and a few years of hormones generally do not.), and ‘could’ is wide enough for the Trump administration to drive a bus through.Report

    Reply

  26. President Musk, mastermind of the upcoming shutdown, has just announced his support for Alternative for Germany, the far-right would be N##i PartyReport

    Reply

    1. You mean people aligned with Hitler support Nazis?

      Why did no one warn us that this might happen!

      (I also heard that Vance is impressed by Pierre Poilievre, who has the same first name as Pierre Laval, the leader of Vichy France!!!)Report

      Reply

      1. …what an incredibly weird comment. It’s impossible for you to honestly mean it, as you have spent weeks harping about how a comparison between Trump and Hitler is absurd, and yet there’s not any other way to take it.

        And I will, again, point you that you are the first to mention Hitler, a thing to do to try to make arguments into Reductio ad Hitlerum. Saul, very correctly, merely pointed out that AfG was a hairbreath from the Na.zi party…about as legally close as parties are allowed in Germany, in fact, and is under investigation by Germany for being an extremist group, and could actually be barred from participating in elections.

        Hell, AfG was kicked out of Identity and Democracy, which is a European-level far-right political ‘party’ (Well, group of national parties, that team up together for EU Parliment elections), which _they themselves_ had helped found back in 2019, because they attended an extremist meeting in 2023 with ‘Identitarians’ (Aka, the pan-Euporean version of neo-Na.zis), and the Identity and Democracy group is trying to be very, very clear that they are not Na.zis.

        Now, that’s Germany. Here in the US, we don’t stop Na.zis, at least not native born ones (We did revoke some naturalized citizenships from Germanys during WWII and arrest those guys.) from running for office. (The only party we’ve done that with is the Communist Party.) So I’m sure some people will have a problem with Germany’s actions there, or possibly barring a political party from running for office (Unless they are filthy communists) but that doesn’t really change their determination that ‘Hey, these people and group ideology are a very very close to Na.zis’. Like, we can assume that Germany can identify Na.zis, right? As can the rest of Europe?Report

        Reply

        1. If they ban AfD it will only make their ongoing political crisis worse. The popular rebellion over there is a natural outgrowth of how unserious Germany’s leadership has been over the last 15-20 years. Instead of thinking ahead they doubled down on Russian energy, the Chinese export market, and outsourcing their defense to the US. Then they flooded the country with refugees and other irregular immigrants from countries and cultures hostile to their own. Both of the big mainstream parties have their fingerprints all over it and neither has done a credible pivot. So AfD sucks but their ascension so far has been through normal democratic politics and is therefore perfectly legitimate. The way to defeat them is for the mainstream parties to get their heads out of their asses and prove they can do a better job running the country.Report

          Reply

          1. I have no idea why pointing out that Na.zis were elected legitimately is relevant to this discussion.

            Yeah, they often are.

            But, hey, good job blaming immigrants, you’ll fit right in. Not with Germany in general, there was a huge outrage when the AfD was found to be trying to plan to deport a bunch of these refugees and other no-sufficiently-German people, but you really just need a time machine to solve that problem. Just set it far enough back.

            What has actually happened in Germany is that the AfD managed to make a very small backlash to the refugee situation, but revelations of just how Na.zi-ish the AfD has resulted in a backlash against them and a defeat at the polls.

            What is going to probably happen is that the major parties are going to moderate a bit on just how many refugees they accept and try to get other countries to accept more instead.Report

            Reply

            1. A small backlash? If the election were held today they would be the 2nd biggest party in the Bundestag. Every effort to suppress them, rather than defeat them, has only expanded their appeal. It’s a serious problem that the type of politics you’re proposing is completely incapable of dealing with. That’s in large part because constantly accusing everyone that disagrees on immigration policy (or whatever else) of being evil has rendered those that do without any credibility. Fewer and fewer people take that kind of talk seriously. That isn’t blaming ‘immigrants.’ It’s holding politicians responsible for the foolhardy belief that requests for asylum by foreigners supersede the views of citizens in a democracy. That’s not just idiotic, it’s in direct conflict with the way the government works.Report

              Reply

        2. And I will, again, point you that you are the first to mention Hitler,

          You sure about that? Maybe reread Saul’s comment.

          Oh… you did.

          Saul, very correctly, merely pointed out that AfG was a hairbreath from the Na.zi party…about as legally close as parties are allowed in Germany, in fact, and is under investigation by Germany for being an extremist group, and could actually be barred from participating in elections.

          So you think that it’s perfectly natural to bring up the Nazis, but bringing up Hitler is a bridge too far?

          Well, I wish you the best in your policing of the language.Report

          Reply

          1. No, I’m pointing out that you find ‘Trump is Hitler’ more absurd than ‘These people are Na.zis’, so you keep rewriting what people say into ‘Trump is Hitler’.

            No one is Hitler. No one will ever be Hitler except Hitler. People cannot be other people, and there will always be some way comparisons between two people do not work.

            Na.zism is, however, an _ideology_, and like all political ideologies is has various implementations, some of which _currently exist in the world_ and people follow. These people include the AfD, and they include Elon Musk, and they include a lot of other people in rather prominent positions on the right. (We _already had_ this discussion about Sebastian Gorka, who is, again, wearing fake medals meant to honor Na.zi Hungarian collaborators issued by ‘Historical Vitézi
            Rend’, a Neo-Na.zi group!)

            This is why you keep rewriting references, so you do not have to recognize the _actual Na.zis_ running around. You can pretend everyone is just making crazy over-the-top claims that someone is actually Hitler.

            Even when we’re not even talking about Trump! We were talking about Elon Musk, an ‘advisor’ to the President-Elect, openly supporting a neo-Na.zi political party. Do you have anything _actually_ to say about that? Does that not seem like a problem?Report

            Reply

            1. I suppose we could blame the townspeople for not showing up the umpteenth time the shepherd boy cried wolf.

              Wolves *ARE* bad.

              Hey, the AfD are Nazis, you say? Well, the worst thing would be for them to gain power, I guess.Report

              Reply

              3. Oh for goodness sakes guys. We’re talking about immigration policy. That’s well within the realm of topics that a democracy can and must be able to debate. And anyone who really thinks it isn’t needs to ask themselves some hard questions about which side they’re actually on in the democracy versus not democracy debate.Report

                Reply

              4. This is, like, right after Germany had its own October 7th from its own immigrant residents.

                Does this become a reason to argue against immigration in Germany or is that, seriously, something *COMPLETELY* different and only a Nazi would make the comparison?Report

                Reply

              5. I don’t know if that’s an entirely apples to apples comparison but it doesn’t matter. The point is I don’t see how people can consider themselves defenders of the liberal order if their version of the overton window is so narrow it precludes debate on major matters of public policy. I mean, if your vision of politics is one where the same people who all agree on everything are perpetually empowered and dissenters face state backed censure and/or prosecution then uh… newsflash… you probably aren’t who you think you are.Report

                Reply

  27. For those who care, when appropriations lapse tonight, 809K federal civil servants will be furloughed and can not legally work or be paid. I’m in this first group. 617K will be required to work, but will not be paid until any furlough ends. Interestingly, 774K will be working and will be paid. The WaPo has a breakdown by Agency of which is which:

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/interactive/2023/which-federal-employees-work-furloughed-government-shutdown/Report

    Reply

      1. Yes, passed after the last furlough. Doesn’t change the impacts from having people not work however – including Congressional staff.

        And even if you are going to be back paid, why is it appropriate for feds to be forced to work with no pay coming in simply because Congress can’t do it’s job? Those folks include our weather forecasters, and a bunch of law enforcement personnel.Report

        Reply

  29. One of the things taken out of the Continuing Resolution was money for Pediatric Cancer research.

    Today, in the rare unanimous consent vote, the Senate Passed the Gabriella Miller Act which provides 12.6 million a year for 5 years for Pediatric Cancer research. The Senate passed a bill identical to one passed in the House. It now goes to Biden for signature.Report

    Reply

    2. The local paper referenced this work, partially paid for by the feds, this morning. Some of the phase 3 trial was done at the children’s hospital in Denver. A new treatment protocol raised the cure rate for some forms of childhood leukemia from 87% to 96%, even among those deemed high relapse risks.Report

      Reply

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Related Stories

US Department of Education Announces that it is Restarting Loan Collection

Jaybird April 22, 2025 17

Open Mic for the Week of 4/21/2025

Jaybird April 21, 2025 98

SCOTUS Temporarily Halts Trump Administration Removal of Venezuelans

OT Editors April 19, 2025

You may have missed

golf

There are Times when Murder Seems Justifiable

Clare Briggs April 24, 2025
postnailclip

Weekend Plans Post: Caffeine Rituals

Jaybird April 24, 2025
ratedr

Less Than a Decade Prior to the MPAA

Clare Briggs April 23, 2025 2
catcher

Movie of a Fan Playing the Game

Clare Briggs April 22, 2025