Fox News polls released Thursday show Biden narrowly beating Trump and narrowly losing to any of the other Republicans, at the national level. All within the margin of error. State-by-state polling isn't nearly good enough to take a 538-style forecast. And it's twelve and a half months until the general election.
But primary polling suggests Republicans are hellbent on re-nominating Trump despite this fact and Biden has beat Trump once already, and Trump is even less popular generally than Biden. Any Dem who is panicking right now is doing so without good reason.
No, it's not what he was on trial for (it was a murder that he admitted that could likely have been portrayed as self-defense). But because he didn't deny the murder, the prosecution focused on his lack of public expressions of emotion, most particularly when he didn't cry at his mother's funeral. This was used as evidence of his lack of remorse and compassion for other human beings. The result was where the defense attorney expected a light sentence, the court instead imposed a sentence of capital punishment. The distinct impression is that had the protagonist participated in the expected set of public emotions, he'd not have been sentenced to death.
It's great to see a lurker come out of the woodwork and join in the comments. Especially someone like you who really gets the spirit of the site. Glad to see you here!
RFKJr's vaccine denialism (you are too polite to call it "skepticism") has so overshadowed his prior liberal bona fides that while I know at least ten Trump-weary conservatives (most of them senior citizens) who have expressed attraction to him, but I know not a single liberal person who considers him with anything but contempt. He might be a Kennedy, but that doesn't mean Democrats will automatically like him.
I suggest you take it as a reminder to check in on yourself, because no one is immune to mental health challenges.
I suggest you take it as a reminder to check in on those around you, because it's not always clear when people are suffering and even if they aren't, expressing concern and empathy is a good thing.
I suggest you take it as a reminder to dissociate mental health challenges from stigma, because it's easy to dismiss those struggling with mental health issues as weak, incapable, or unreliable, but none of that is necessarily true.
I saw Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds this summer and enjoyed them very much. Noel only played one Oasis song, "Don't Look Back In Anger," and it was fun, but his other material was much better. And he has clearly learned to give a shit about the audience's experience. I recall a lot of people compared Oasis to the Beatles, which I never understood; this felt closer to a Beatles show (without all the screaming teenagers) than the original Fighting Gallagher Brothers Roadshow. I'd went to see Metric and Garbage, but was quite pleased with the High Flying Birds on the triple bill at the end of the show.
It was understood as early as 2015 that Trump wasn't a conservative. He's a nationalist in the classic European style. What he's revealed himself to be is authoritarian in his nationalism.
Policies don't matter to such a person. Nor does ideology. It is the cult of personality, the elevation of the leader above the law until he becomes the law, that is whole point. And he's been quite frank about it all along. He could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and his polling numbers wouldn't change. When you're famous you can just grab a woman's pussy and they let you ("they" being the media and the voters, not the victim of the sexual assault).
So it's no wonder that his supporters like Ms. Boebert see themselves as thus elevated and privileged. And it's no wonder that literally today we see pearl-clutching over loss of "decorum and standards" as the dress code in the Senate relaxes to accommodate John Fetterman's rather casual sartorial style -- from the same people who defended President Pussyhandler and tried to wave away that same President instigating violence against Congress in an effort to illegally remain in power on January 6, 2021.
These are not people engaged in the pursuit of power to advance some sort of an agenda based on ideology or some vision of how the world might be made better. They pursue power so they can do the things they want to do for their own benefit.
The "ideology" of MAGA was articulated in 1933 by the similarly authoritarian President of Peru, Oscar Benavides: "To my friends, everything, for my enemies, the law."
Huh. Remember when we met up in D.C. and we were all sort of disappointed we couldn't get into the Museum of African-American history? That line was wrapped, like, all the way around the building.
Also, this article is dated December of 2011. So it's been known for a dozen years now. But I was only Today Years Old when I learned that the orange juice is a lie.
Well, I was ready to make a nerdy joke over on Bluesky and then did a quick google to make sure I was getting the joke right and came across this, which apparently soft-opened three days ago:
Very sorry to learn of your divorce, Dark Matter. Mine hurt bad and it sounds like there's a very unpleasant situation going on motivating it. Not trying to inquire about the particulars of that, just noticing that it sounds very unhappy and offering up some empathy, the consolation of knowing your path has been trodden before, and the hopes that this journey eventually takes you and your family to a place of happiness.
This flyer might be a good way to start a food fight too. I find myself picking and choosing from its myriad bullet points about what's "white" and what's more culturally transcendent and what's just plain incorrect.
But of course just because one DEI trainer came up with this doesn't mean all DEI training teaches this content in this way.
How is this different from men? If you asked me what sex partner I had who was the very best, I'd pick someone who I had a fling but not a LTR with; she also had some unorthodox personal traits. (I'd guess she still does.)
See also: https://nypost.com/2012/11/25/nobody-marries-their-best-sex-ever/
I'm struck by the resonance between America Ferrera's role as Gloria in Barbie -- a middle-aged mother who struggles within the patriarchy and mourns the bitterness of her formerly-sweet daughter -- and her film debut in the wonderful Real Women Have Curves, where she played a young woman having to choose between a patriarchal life path and a more independent feminist path. It's ironic and a very deliberate choice of the writers of the earlier movie that the patriarchal path is urged by the young woman's mother, as a way of supporting the family and avoiding risk, where the feminist path is presented as something of an unknown but full of opportunity, and urged by the men in the protagonist's life. Barbie gives us an argument that even if a young woman chooses the feminist path, the patriarchy's ubiquity is still going to thwart all the promise and sap all the happiness that a path of greater independence offers.
The surrealistic mirror image of the patriarchy in Barbieland, in my opinion, was actually no better than the patriarchy itself and I found myself faulting the Barbies at the end for not crafting a better and more equitable solution for the Kens. But then again, Barbieland is animated by the power of the people in the Real World who play with the Barbie dolls, and as the OP points out, they tend to be basically uninterested in the affairs of the various Kens, which is perhaps not equitable from an adult perspective but we are talking about mostly little kids, after all.
I recall Gloria (America Ferrera's character in Barbie) making that exact complaint. Something to the effect of "A woman has to be everything to everyone all the time. She has to be a mother, and she's never a good enough mother. She has to be a career woman, and she is never good enough at her job. And if she does do what it takes to be good at her job, she isn't putting enough effort in to being a good mother. And if she somehow does both, she's letting her looks go, so she isn't pretty enough. And if she somehow does all of that she's so completely stressed out that she gets told she needs to smile more. It's literally impossible for her to win." I'm sure the phrasing of her speech was different than this, but I feel like I have the gist more or less right.
I mean, I agree that women having the option to pursue meaningful, well-paid careers is better than women not having that option. For sure. But the commentary encapsulated in Gloria's rant isn't so much about legal rights as it is about cultural expectations. And that's something that both men and women can work on shifting, but of course shifting cultural expectations is precisely what conservatism is fundamentally about about opposing (standing athwart history and shouting stop! and all that), and thus the alignment of our current discourse about sex, sexism, and gender roles.
Conspiring with who? The subordinates she's giving orders to? That isn't a conspiracy. It might be something else, but a conspiracy requires the conspirators to share a common intent to do a particular criminal thing.
No. I think the AG has done what is appropriate for a public official acting in that capacity to decline to defend the Constitutionality of something that the AG believes in good faith is not constitutional.
In my mind, for an Attorney General to decline to defend a procedurally valid act of the State, the action has to be unambiguously constitutional, and the AG has to be able to back up that opinion with substantial legal research. This looks a little thin on the research side but I can't say on the face of it that it's so thin that he reached this conclusion in bad faith.
I think the future will look a little bit different than the present from the perspective of electric vehicles. We can reasonably expect a larger fleet and the cars in that fleet to have longer range. Not so sure about some of the other bells and whistles and I am not versed enough in the technology to quantify what "longer range" means, although it seems to be the holy grail the engineers are working towards. Also don't know about recharge times.
But there will surely be a demand for that lithium. Balancing the interests of the tribes to control their lands and a reasonable level of environmental hygiene with the mining and use of the lithium strikes me as a big challenge. It could be done in good faith. Whether that will happen or not? I'm not sure history is on that side of things.
On “An Anxious Man’s Advice to Dems: Don’t Psych Yourself Out”
Fox News polls released Thursday show Biden narrowly beating Trump and narrowly losing to any of the other Republicans, at the national level. All within the margin of error. State-by-state polling isn't nearly good enough to take a 538-style forecast. And it's twelve and a half months until the general election.
But primary polling suggests Republicans are hellbent on re-nominating Trump despite this fact and Biden has beat Trump once already, and Trump is even less popular generally than Biden. Any Dem who is panicking right now is doing so without good reason.
There's work to do, that's all.
"
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11371.It_Can_t_Happen_Here
On “Brief Aside On Cancel Culture”
My imagination is quite enough, thank you.
"
You know, I never thought of that!
"
No, it's not what he was on trial for (it was a murder that he admitted that could likely have been portrayed as self-defense). But because he didn't deny the murder, the prosecution focused on his lack of public expressions of emotion, most particularly when he didn't cry at his mother's funeral. This was used as evidence of his lack of remorse and compassion for other human beings. The result was where the defense attorney expected a light sentence, the court instead imposed a sentence of capital punishment. The distinct impression is that had the protagonist participated in the expected set of public emotions, he'd not have been sentenced to death.
On “Open Mic for the week of 10/9/2023”
It's great to see a lurker come out of the woodwork and join in the comments. Especially someone like you who really gets the spirit of the site. Glad to see you here!
On “Can RFK Jr Actually Help Joe Biden?”
RFKJr's vaccine denialism (you are too polite to call it "skepticism") has so overshadowed his prior liberal bona fides that while I know at least ten Trump-weary conservatives (most of them senior citizens) who have expressed attraction to him, but I know not a single liberal person who considers him with anything but contempt. He might be a Kennedy, but that doesn't mean Democrats will automatically like him.
On “Open Mic for the week of 10/9/2023”
Today (11 October 2023) is World Mental Health Day.
I suggest you take it as a reminder to check in on yourself, because no one is immune to mental health challenges.
I suggest you take it as a reminder to check in on those around you, because it's not always clear when people are suffering and even if they aren't, expressing concern and empathy is a good thing.
I suggest you take it as a reminder to dissociate mental health challenges from stigma, because it's easy to dismiss those struggling with mental health issues as weak, incapable, or unreliable, but none of that is necessarily true.
On “Breaking Down the Band: Oasis, Radiohead, and Pearl Jam”
I saw Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds this summer and enjoyed them very much. Noel only played one Oasis song, "Don't Look Back In Anger," and it was fun, but his other material was much better. And he has clearly learned to give a shit about the audience's experience. I recall a lot of people compared Oasis to the Beatles, which I never understood; this felt closer to a Beatles show (without all the screaming teenagers) than the original Fighting Gallagher Brothers Roadshow. I'd went to see Metric and Garbage, but was quite pleased with the High Flying Birds on the triple bill at the end of the show.
On “Open Mic for the week of 9/18/2023”
Florida man insists Portland burned to the ground in 2020, not yet rebuilt.
I'd better get that claim on my homeowners' insurance started, then.
On “MAGA Isn’t Serious… or Conservative”
Yeah, clearly my blood pressure was too low. Welp, THAT problem got solved!
"
It was understood as early as 2015 that Trump wasn't a conservative. He's a nationalist in the classic European style. What he's revealed himself to be is authoritarian in his nationalism.
Policies don't matter to such a person. Nor does ideology. It is the cult of personality, the elevation of the leader above the law until he becomes the law, that is whole point. And he's been quite frank about it all along. He could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and his polling numbers wouldn't change. When you're famous you can just grab a woman's pussy and they let you ("they" being the media and the voters, not the victim of the sexual assault).
So it's no wonder that his supporters like Ms. Boebert see themselves as thus elevated and privileged. And it's no wonder that literally today we see pearl-clutching over loss of "decorum and standards" as the dress code in the Senate relaxes to accommodate John Fetterman's rather casual sartorial style -- from the same people who defended President Pussyhandler and tried to wave away that same President instigating violence against Congress in an effort to illegally remain in power on January 6, 2021.
These are not people engaged in the pursuit of power to advance some sort of an agenda based on ideology or some vision of how the world might be made better. They pursue power so they can do the things they want to do for their own benefit.
The "ideology" of MAGA was articulated in 1933 by the similarly authoritarian President of Peru, Oscar Benavides: "To my friends, everything, for my enemies, the law."
On “Open Mic for the week of 9/18/2023”
Huh. Remember when we met up in D.C. and we were all sort of disappointed we couldn't get into the Museum of African-American history? That line was wrapped, like, all the way around the building.
I wonder if we'd have been given this flyer.
"
Also, this article is dated December of 2011. So it's been known for a dozen years now. But I was only Today Years Old when I learned that the orange juice is a lie.
"
Well, I was ready to make a nerdy joke over on Bluesky and then did a quick google to make sure I was getting the joke right and came across this, which apparently soft-opened three days ago:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2518960/Wizardry_Proving_Grounds_of_the_Mad_Overlord/
It ain't Starfield or Baldur's Gate but it is remarkable that it exists at all.
On “Barbie, Motherhood, and the Political Climate”
Very sorry to learn of your divorce, Dark Matter. Mine hurt bad and it sounds like there's a very unpleasant situation going on motivating it. Not trying to inquire about the particulars of that, just noticing that it sounds very unhappy and offering up some empathy, the consolation of knowing your path has been trodden before, and the hopes that this journey eventually takes you and your family to a place of happiness.
On “Open Mic for the week of 9/18/2023”
This flyer might be a good way to start a food fight too. I find myself picking and choosing from its myriad bullet points about what's "white" and what's more culturally transcendent and what's just plain incorrect.
But of course just because one DEI trainer came up with this doesn't mean all DEI training teaches this content in this way.
On “Barbie, Motherhood, and the Political Climate”
How is this different from men? If you asked me what sex partner I had who was the very best, I'd pick someone who I had a fling but not a LTR with; she also had some unorthodox personal traits. (I'd guess she still does.)
See also: https://nypost.com/2012/11/25/nobody-marries-their-best-sex-ever/
"
I'm struck by the resonance between America Ferrera's role as Gloria in Barbie -- a middle-aged mother who struggles within the patriarchy and mourns the bitterness of her formerly-sweet daughter -- and her film debut in the wonderful Real Women Have Curves, where she played a young woman having to choose between a patriarchal life path and a more independent feminist path. It's ironic and a very deliberate choice of the writers of the earlier movie that the patriarchal path is urged by the young woman's mother, as a way of supporting the family and avoiding risk, where the feminist path is presented as something of an unknown but full of opportunity, and urged by the men in the protagonist's life. Barbie gives us an argument that even if a young woman chooses the feminist path, the patriarchy's ubiquity is still going to thwart all the promise and sap all the happiness that a path of greater independence offers.
The surrealistic mirror image of the patriarchy in Barbieland, in my opinion, was actually no better than the patriarchy itself and I found myself faulting the Barbies at the end for not crafting a better and more equitable solution for the Kens. But then again, Barbieland is animated by the power of the people in the Real World who play with the Barbie dolls, and as the OP points out, they tend to be basically uninterested in the affairs of the various Kens, which is perhaps not equitable from an adult perspective but we are talking about mostly little kids, after all.
"
I recall Gloria (America Ferrera's character in Barbie) making that exact complaint. Something to the effect of "A woman has to be everything to everyone all the time. She has to be a mother, and she's never a good enough mother. She has to be a career woman, and she is never good enough at her job. And if she does do what it takes to be good at her job, she isn't putting enough effort in to being a good mother. And if she somehow does both, she's letting her looks go, so she isn't pretty enough. And if she somehow does all of that she's so completely stressed out that she gets told she needs to smile more. It's literally impossible for her to win." I'm sure the phrasing of her speech was different than this, but I feel like I have the gist more or less right.
I mean, I agree that women having the option to pursue meaningful, well-paid careers is better than women not having that option. For sure. But the commentary encapsulated in Gloria's rant isn't so much about legal rights as it is about cultural expectations. And that's something that both men and women can work on shifting, but of course shifting cultural expectations is precisely what conservatism is fundamentally about about opposing (standing athwart history and shouting stop! and all that), and thus the alignment of our current discourse about sex, sexism, and gender roles.
On “Open Mic for the week of 9/11/2023”
yet.
"
Well, arguably in her power.
Turns out it was a losing argument (as most of us here, you and I both, predicted).
On “Can She Do That? New Mexico Governor Suspends Gun Carry Laws”
Conspiring with who? The subordinates she's giving orders to? That isn't a conspiracy. It might be something else, but a conspiracy requires the conspirators to share a common intent to do a particular criminal thing.
"
No. I think the AG has done what is appropriate for a public official acting in that capacity to decline to defend the Constitutionality of something that the AG believes in good faith is not constitutional.
In my mind, for an Attorney General to decline to defend a procedurally valid act of the State, the action has to be unambiguously constitutional, and the AG has to be able to back up that opinion with substantial legal research. This looks a little thin on the research side but I can't say on the face of it that it's so thin that he reached this conclusion in bad faith.
On “Open Mic for the week of 9/11/2023”
I think the future will look a little bit different than the present from the perspective of electric vehicles. We can reasonably expect a larger fleet and the cars in that fleet to have longer range. Not so sure about some of the other bells and whistles and I am not versed enough in the technology to quantify what "longer range" means, although it seems to be the holy grail the engineers are working towards. Also don't know about recharge times.
But there will surely be a demand for that lithium. Balancing the interests of the tribes to control their lands and a reasonable level of environmental hygiene with the mining and use of the lithium strikes me as a big challenge. It could be done in good faith. Whether that will happen or not? I'm not sure history is on that side of things.