I don't know about you, but my social media posts are full of metaphors and memes including the theme of touching hot stoves. Grabbing those stoves with both hands. Pulling off their underwear and then sitting on said hot stoves. Intentionally face-planting on the burners.
It's a change of pace from the FAFO and leopards-eating-faces memes, I guess.
As always, the people who realize that their own economic interests are being sacrificed to their own pain, and that they actually voted for this to happen to them, is quite small. There's a lot of silence where the "Wait, I didn't vote for this!" seems like it ought to be. We got some of it with people who had been promised different kinds of jobs and medical care and found those promises retracted.
Maybe we'll get more of it when red-hat-wearing parents find their special needs kids' IDEA plans disrupted. (Which I hope you all will join me in deploring should that actually happen. That's not a good place for schadenfreude to land.)
I credit it to the power of cognitive dissonance, the extend of the human mind's ability to rationalize the beneficence of one's own actions and statements.
First, when does responsibility for something shift from Biden to Trump? Is there some benchmark event that needs to occur? (Other than "the price of eggs falls below X.") Some objective amount of time? That's a serious question even if I admit that, yes, of course, making a fuss over the price of eggs is not a particularly serious indicator of Trump's performance.
Or, it seems, to realize that Governor Walz was entirely correct to label Trump a "bullshit artist," because experience is proving out that one after another, the promises Trump made were either not serious, beyond his ability to deliver, or (as we are likely to soon discover with just-announced-today tariffs on our two largest trading partners) counterproductive for their intended purposes.
America has chosen poorly and that has been graphically demonstrated daily for the past ten days and I expect will be so for the next 1,541. So hopefully in the future our voters will disregard your advice, and vote Democratic.
Trump & Co. are big on show, and getting media compliance for presenting things as a big show. The big ICE raids in Chicago, Newark, and Miami got a lot of publicity. And bigger numbers, but I think a lot less than might have been hoped for:
A nationwide immigration crackdown on Sunday resulted in the arrest of 956 people, the most since Donald Trump returned to power, according to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
A number of federal agencies with newly expanded detention powers were involved in the raids in a number of cities including Chicago, Newark and Miami.
Trump came to power after making mass deportations of undocumented immigrants a central campaign promise.
His predecessor Joe Biden carried out an average of 311 immigration deportations daily, according to ICE, mostly individuals who had committed crimes.
[¶]
The 956 reported arrests on Sunday follow 286 arrests on Saturday, 593 arrests on Friday and 538 arrests on Thursday.
During Joe Biden's four years in office he carried out 1.5 million deportations, according to figures by the Migration Policy Institute. Those numbers mirror the deportation numbers in Trump's first term.
I predict we're going to see roughly the same level of enforcement under Trump-47 that we saw under Biden-46, and it'll probably be about the same level of priority -- people who have committed crimes, which was already the #1 way to get ICE's attention under existing law, before this Laken Riley bill ever even got passed.
But we're going to see a big show being made of it. Because Trump is all about making a big show of things.
Consider that Donald Trump was sent to the White House to do two things:
1. Get immigration under control
2. Lower prices
I think 1. could be more accurately re-phrased in quite a few different ways of varying levels of cynicism. For instance, I don't think there's going to be a single Norwegian expat in danger of involuntary repatriation unless they commit a violent crime. But let's take that as written.
Today, Trump announced that he will expand the migrant detention facility at Guantanamo Bay to have a capacity of 30,000 detainees. We should note that there is already such a facility there and it is separate from the now-infamous very high security facility that has been used to hold prisoners captured in the war on terror. But this will still obviously require a LOT of money and staffing and maintenance, something that can't be done by executive order. I predict that this will sound pretty good to a lot of Republicans, raise loud alarm bells to those old enough to remember the phrase "concentration camp," and no one is going to stop to consider the likely multi-billion dollar cost because Republicans have proven quite willing to write checks on the public debt for stuff that they like.
On point #2, I think the salient commodity we kept talking about during the election campaign was eggs? Here's what's been happening with the price of eggs. "Oh, that's the bird flu!" Republicans will say. And yes, it sure is. And it was back when Biden was President, and y'all tried to blame the Vice President for it, so turnabout is fair play. Eggs have never been more expensive in American history than they are today, in either objective or inflation-adjusted dollars.
IIRC, I'd heard that Carson didn't vet any of Uecker's appearances on the Tonight Show. He didn't want to know the jokes beforehand so he could laugh along with everyone else.
Uecker, Vin Scully, and Harry Caray were the three biggest personalities in the announcer's booth for most of my life. There have been other famous announcers too, but those three guys were the kings. Every game, you could hear the enthusiasm, sincerity, kindness, fairness, love of the game, love of the players, and love of the fans. Baseball made them happy, and that helped us feel happy too.
Whatever the merits of contemporary announcers, I don't think anyone has quite filled their shoes just yet.
I pay next to zero attention to the ABA outside of the issue of law school accreditation. If the ABA rates a judicial nominee anything other than "highly qualified," then sometimes I look into why they did that.
I think there's some group rates on life insurance that are about competitive with what the California Bar Association, of which I am required to be a member, offers. So, image this, I pay more attention to the group I have to be a part of than the one I don't.
Okay, I think I see. This may be a key that opens up durable memories, which might lead to building true narrative skills, which might lead to true self-awareness. All of which would happen without a parallel formation of a durable moral code.
And that brings us back to the question of what DO you do with a powerful, self-aware being invested with desires but who lacks any substantial moral code to govern how they use the power they've been given? A dreadful question, indeed.
Hey fellas, play a game with me. Pretend I'm smart but kind of ignorant about AI, and explain to me why an AI knowing the time and basing its actions on the passage of time fills you with so much particular dread.
Isn't the play in that case "That person is a weirdo and he doesn't speak for us"? When some right wing edgelord says something indefensibly bigoted, that's what the regular Republicans do.
"You thin-skinned snowflakes" etc. is the play when some left-wing edgelord says something critical about a right-of-center-identified person and the response is an internet-wide grasp for pearls. Like when a lefty law professor says something along the lines of "The Constitution forbids the awarding of titles of nobility. Donald Trump can give his son the name 'Barron,' but he can't give his son the title of 'Baron'" and all the Trumpies fall over like they've been freshly blasted with tear gas and cry "LEAVE BARRON ALONE YOU MEANIES HE'S JUST A KID THE KIDS SHOULD BE OFF LIMITS!" in faux anguish and masturbatory outrage. That's when you play the "You're a bunch of damn snowflakes" card.
I already know the answer to the former, and I already know that I'm destined to be very disappointed if I approach it on that level.
So the "vulgar utilitarian level related to winning elections," politics being the art of the possible, is the practical way to approach that question.
Reading this over again, it's just the case that some far-lefty weirdo would inevitably say something that right wing propagandists would be able to nutpick and charge the mainstream Democratic party with and it would either stick or slide off and that's no different in 2026 than it is right now in 2025 nor any different than it will be in 2028. The problem is not the nifty round-number anniversary, the problem is that there are nuts to pick and broad brushes with which to tar and feather, and the sorts of people who will do this sort of thing don't need much of an excuse to do it.
That's not to say I don't care about the raping and the drinking. When John Tower, also a notorious drunk, got nominated for SecDef, the Senate rejected him.
Sadly, the Senate (like a lot of our institutions) really has yet to demonstrate that it takes rape seriously and it would be nice if it started.
The Department of Defense is the largest, most complex bureaucracy in the world. It has an annual budget of a trillion dollars. Hegseth has demonstrated an inability to successfully administer a charity, and when accused of personally running that charity into the ground failed to meaningfully defend himself. His resume certainly does not suggest any appreciable level of executive competence or achievements. He didn't even make LTC before leaving active military service. There is no reason to think he's going to be competent at the job he's been nominated to do.
Alas, I think people enjoy scolding one another, and the instinct to scold transcends ideology. Some but not all of the scolds complained of in the OP originate from somewhere that clocks left of political center, and yup, there's plenty of scolds left of center. There's plenty of scolding that comes from right of political center too, and it lands on its targets exactly the same.
I think health scolding is probably apolitical, but politics is doing its best to worm its way into health controversies.
Mutatis mundatis with "preaching." And at the end of the day, I'm not sure there's anything to be done about it.
Unfortunately, it appears we will never know what the goods were in the prosecutions' cases because they're all going to be buttoned down and effectively permanently hidden from the public's view in less than 240 hours.
On “Open Mic for the week of 2/3/2025”
I don't know about you, but my social media posts are full of metaphors and memes including the theme of touching hot stoves. Grabbing those stoves with both hands. Pulling off their underwear and then sitting on said hot stoves. Intentionally face-planting on the burners.
It's a change of pace from the FAFO and leopards-eating-faces memes, I guess.
As always, the people who realize that their own economic interests are being sacrificed to their own pain, and that they actually voted for this to happen to them, is quite small. There's a lot of silence where the "Wait, I didn't vote for this!" seems like it ought to be. We got some of it with people who had been promised different kinds of jobs and medical care and found those promises retracted.
Maybe we'll get more of it when red-hat-wearing parents find their special needs kids' IDEA plans disrupted. (Which I hope you all will join me in deploring should that actually happen. That's not a good place for schadenfreude to land.)
I credit it to the power of cognitive dissonance, the extend of the human mind's ability to rationalize the beneficence of one's own actions and statements.
On “Trump’s Unforced Error”
First, when does responsibility for something shift from Biden to Trump? Is there some benchmark event that needs to occur? (Other than "the price of eggs falls below X.") Some objective amount of time? That's a serious question even if I admit that, yes, of course, making a fuss over the price of eggs is not a particularly serious indicator of Trump's performance.
Second, it's a fact that Trump said to voters, “When I win, I will immediately bring prices down, starting on Day One,” and the opposite has happened. Now, of course, you and I, being serious and judicious people, knew that was ridiculous bullshit all along. But I think you'll agree with me that there are a lot of people who are not so sophisticated as you or I, less able to separate the sober promises from the bullshit.
Or, it seems, to realize that Governor Walz was entirely correct to label Trump a "bullshit artist," because experience is proving out that one after another, the promises Trump made were either not serious, beyond his ability to deliver, or (as we are likely to soon discover with just-announced-today tariffs on our two largest trading partners) counterproductive for their intended purposes.
America has chosen poorly and that has been graphically demonstrated daily for the past ten days and I expect will be so for the next 1,541. So hopefully in the future our voters will disregard your advice, and vote Democratic.
"
Trump & Co. are big on show, and getting media compliance for presenting things as a big show. The big ICE raids in Chicago, Newark, and Miami got a lot of publicity. And bigger numbers, but I think a lot less than might have been hoped for:
Source: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cd6434dq7p1o
I predict we're going to see roughly the same level of enforcement under Trump-47 that we saw under Biden-46, and it'll probably be about the same level of priority -- people who have committed crimes, which was already the #1 way to get ICE's attention under existing law, before this Laken Riley bill ever even got passed.
But we're going to see a big show being made of it. Because Trump is all about making a big show of things.
"
Hey, if we have to meet out on the tennis court, hopefully there's enough space there for everyone with a complaint to gather up and talk it through.
"
Consider that Donald Trump was sent to the White House to do two things:
1. Get immigration under control
2. Lower prices
I think 1. could be more accurately re-phrased in quite a few different ways of varying levels of cynicism. For instance, I don't think there's going to be a single Norwegian expat in danger of involuntary repatriation unless they commit a violent crime. But let's take that as written.
Today, Trump announced that he will expand the migrant detention facility at Guantanamo Bay to have a capacity of 30,000 detainees. We should note that there is already such a facility there and it is separate from the now-infamous very high security facility that has been used to hold prisoners captured in the war on terror. But this will still obviously require a LOT of money and staffing and maintenance, something that can't be done by executive order. I predict that this will sound pretty good to a lot of Republicans, raise loud alarm bells to those old enough to remember the phrase "concentration camp," and no one is going to stop to consider the likely multi-billion dollar cost because Republicans have proven quite willing to write checks on the public debt for stuff that they like.
On point #2, I think the salient commodity we kept talking about during the election campaign was eggs? Here's what's been happening with the price of eggs. "Oh, that's the bird flu!" Republicans will say. And yes, it sure is. And it was back when Biden was President, and y'all tried to blame the Vice President for it, so turnabout is fair play. Eggs have never been more expensive in American history than they are today, in either objective or inflation-adjusted dollars.
On “Mister Baseball”
IIRC, I'd heard that Carson didn't vet any of Uecker's appearances on the Tonight Show. He didn't want to know the jokes beforehand so he could laugh along with everyone else.
Uecker, Vin Scully, and Harry Caray were the three biggest personalities in the announcer's booth for most of my life. There have been other famous announcers too, but those three guys were the kings. Every game, you could hear the enthusiasm, sincerity, kindness, fairness, love of the game, love of the players, and love of the fans. Baseball made them happy, and that helped us feel happy too.
Whatever the merits of contemporary announcers, I don't think anyone has quite filled their shoes just yet.
On “From TikTok To ERA, Biden Leaves Taxpayers A Mess”
1. I really wish the Equal Rights Amendment were a part of the Constitution.
2. Alas, it is not.
"
I pay next to zero attention to the ABA outside of the issue of law school accreditation. If the ABA rates a judicial nominee anything other than "highly qualified," then sometimes I look into why they did that.
I think there's some group rates on life insurance that are about competitive with what the California Bar Association, of which I am required to be a member, offers. So, image this, I pay more attention to the group I have to be a part of than the one I don't.
On “Short Status Report on the Abilities of AI”
Eppur, si muove.
"
Okay, I think I see. This may be a key that opens up durable memories, which might lead to building true narrative skills, which might lead to true self-awareness. All of which would happen without a parallel formation of a durable moral code.
And that brings us back to the question of what DO you do with a powerful, self-aware being invested with desires but who lacks any substantial moral code to govern how they use the power they've been given? A dreadful question, indeed.
On “The Shakedown”
No no no no no no no no no no
I was talking about TRUMP
On “Short Status Report on the Abilities of AI”
Hey fellas, play a game with me. Pretend I'm smart but kind of ignorant about AI, and explain to me why an AI knowing the time and basing its actions on the passage of time fills you with so much particular dread.
On “The Shakedown”
Man Trump looks awful in that picture of him, Johnson, and Musk. Balding like Gerald Ford.
On “Trump’s Ace in the Hole”
They're playing at the Roseland Theater here in Portland next week, on a double bill with up-and-comer gothrockers Denethor's Tomatoes.
"
Isn't the play in that case "That person is a weirdo and he doesn't speak for us"? When some right wing edgelord says something indefensibly bigoted, that's what the regular Republicans do.
"You thin-skinned snowflakes" etc. is the play when some left-wing edgelord says something critical about a right-of-center-identified person and the response is an internet-wide grasp for pearls. Like when a lefty law professor says something along the lines of "The Constitution forbids the awarding of titles of nobility. Donald Trump can give his son the name 'Barron,' but he can't give his son the title of 'Baron'" and all the Trumpies fall over like they've been freshly blasted with tear gas and cry "LEAVE BARRON ALONE YOU MEANIES HE'S JUST A KID THE KIDS SHOULD BE OFF LIMITS!" in faux anguish and masturbatory outrage. That's when you play the "You're a bunch of damn snowflakes" card.
"
Sorry, that's ambiguous, or maybe it's that I've lost the thread here. From whom does that expletive come, at whom is it directed?
"
I'd be interested in the latter.
I already know the answer to the former, and I already know that I'm destined to be very disappointed if I approach it on that level.
So the "vulgar utilitarian level related to winning elections," politics being the art of the possible, is the practical way to approach that question.
"
Reading this over again, it's just the case that some far-lefty weirdo would inevitably say something that right wing propagandists would be able to nutpick and charge the mainstream Democratic party with and it would either stick or slide off and that's no different in 2026 than it is right now in 2025 nor any different than it will be in 2028. The problem is not the nifty round-number anniversary, the problem is that there are nuts to pick and broad brushes with which to tar and feather, and the sorts of people who will do this sort of thing don't need much of an excuse to do it.
On “No Fighting In the War Room: Pete Hegseth Confirmation Hearing Livestream Edition”
That's not to say I don't care about the raping and the drinking. When John Tower, also a notorious drunk, got nominated for SecDef, the Senate rejected him.
Sadly, the Senate (like a lot of our institutions) really has yet to demonstrate that it takes rape seriously and it would be nice if it started.
"
The Department of Defense is the largest, most complex bureaucracy in the world. It has an annual budget of a trillion dollars. Hegseth has demonstrated an inability to successfully administer a charity, and when accused of personally running that charity into the ground failed to meaningfully defend himself. His resume certainly does not suggest any appreciable level of executive competence or achievements. He didn't even make LTC before leaving active military service. There is no reason to think he's going to be competent at the job he's been nominated to do.
On “Short Status Report on the Abilities of AI”
I decided I didn't want to give it my cell phone number.
On “A Society of Shame Attached to Everything”
Alas, I think people enjoy scolding one another, and the instinct to scold transcends ideology. Some but not all of the scolds complained of in the OP originate from somewhere that clocks left of political center, and yup, there's plenty of scolds left of center. There's plenty of scolding that comes from right of political center too, and it lands on its targets exactly the same.
I think health scolding is probably apolitical, but politics is doing its best to worm its way into health controversies.
Mutatis mundatis with "preaching." And at the end of the day, I'm not sure there's anything to be done about it.
"
LOL
On “Trump Sentenced to Unconditional Discharge in NY Criminal Case”
Unfortunately, it appears we will never know what the goods were in the prosecutions' cases because they're all going to be buttoned down and effectively permanently hidden from the public's view in less than 240 hours.
"
Si, lo parlo! Anche se mi chiamo Norvegese, sono Italiano da parte di madre.