Commenter Archive

whether the club rules of someone else’s club are “correct” is meaningless to non-members.

I disagree.

I find heresies *EXCEPTIONALLY* meaningful, even for religions for which I am not a member.

You can learn much from heresies. (That's part of what makes them so virulent.)

Manicheanism dates to the 3rd Century A.D. so we're well past the books of Moses there.

Would it be enough to discuss Manichean beliefs regarding the resurrection of the dead?

Mani's emphasis on oral tradition versus Jewish emphasis on it?

What are you looking for? I can give you a somewhat scholarly answer depending on which part of Talmud we're going to be pointing at.

Despite how cool it would be if Christianity were the only religion with heresies, sadly, many religions have them.

Hell, there are even atheists who argue for the existence of heresies within atheism (though if you wanted to talk about post-protestantism, I'd probably concede the point even as the atheists refuse it).

But Mani took and twisted Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, Zoroastrianism, and probably some other stuff. Er, not "twisted". "Made his own". "Forged a new path".

In any case... Heresy ain't limited to Jesus Enthusiasts.

Saul, Manicheanism is a heresy.

Well, let's check the polls. Maybe there's some good news there that will make us all feel better.

CBS says... wait. This can't be right...

Big majorities of viewers liked the plans they heard on immigration, wasteful government spending and the conflict between Russia and Ukraine. A relatively smaller majority liked what they heard on tariffs.

I mean, we can easily dismiss the "76% of speech watchers approved" because people who would have disapproved were, instead, watching Daredevil: Born Again on Disney+.

Wait. CBS. That's the old people station. Murder She Wrote and Matlock and whatnot. Let's check CNN instead.

Ah, much better.

Roughly 7 in 10 speech-watchers said they had at least a somewhat positive reaction to Trump’s speech tonight, with a smaller 44% offering a very positive response. That’s lower than the 57% of viewers who rated Trump’s initial address to Congress very positively eight years ago, or the 51% who said the same of President Joe Biden’s initial address in 2021. It also comes just below the 48% “very positive” rating Trump saw for his 2018 State of the Union.

Good. Democrats don't have to change.

Well, Warren got pantsed last night. Might be time to shift to AOC.

Jane Coaston put it like this: The core of the base wants a leftist pro wrestler counter to Trumpler. He wants to put on a show? WE WILL GIVE HIM A SHOW!!!

And the majority of the moderates in the party still watch The West Wing every year and so they think that the solution is bipartisanship.

Speaking of polls, the WSJ reports that ABC is shutting down 538.

The ABC news magazine shows “20/20” and “Nightline” are consolidating into one unit, resulting in job cuts, the people said. ABC is also eliminating the political and data-driven news site 538, which had about 15 employees.

Well, it was a wrestling promo. He came out and said "These people aren't going to clap for *ANYTHING*" and pointed at the Dems and then gave the longest speech in human history in which he said stuff that the Democrats were never going to clap for, not in a million years.

He called his shot then made it.

It's like he read the first draft the speech writers gave him and told them to do it again except, this time, imagine the Democratic response to the speech... AND WRITE A SPEECH THAT WILL DESERVE THAT RESPONSE INSTEAD.

"Pocahontas" makes an appearance.

The great thing about opening with somebody getting tossed is that it effectively gives a layup to anybody inclined to play "whatabout".

He's doing a very good job of being hostile about 80-20 issues, 70-30 issues, and 52-48 issues. Even a 50%+1-50%-1 issue.

Some of the stuff like the McKinley/Denali thing or the Gulf of Mexico/America thing is silly and perhaps even petty but the comedy comes from being a president who changes it back. Can you imagine changing it back? Maybe you can imagine making McKinley Denali again (and perhaps even the Gulf of Mexico with a joke like "even the people who cheered the change didn't use the new name")... but he made English the Official Language of the US. Can you imagine a president getting rid of that?

It'd be easier to move the embassy back to Tel Aviv.

He's being downright hostile.

The Sergeant at Arms is restoring order!

Now we just need the Grand Marshall of the Supreme Court to start issuing subpoenas!

Florida's Attorney General, James Uthmeier, has opened a criminal investigation into the recently returned Tate brothers.

Yeah, but it wasn't about that. It was about the moderates getting together to write a playbook for next time.

Tracing Woodgrains had a barn burner criticizing the playbook:

I defended this from leftist dismissal. I would be remiss, however, not to criticize it myself.

The problem with this list is not that it's moderate. The problem is that it's midway between negative and fake. Tailgates and gun shows? You want Walz to run more pick-sixes?

The last thing Democrats need is more triangulation, more focus-grouping, more chasing the tails of half-imagined Real Americans with superficial gestures. The moderates pictured here identified half of the party's problem: passionate Dems are too far left for the country. This includes the small donors, it includes the large donors, it includes the online base, it certainly includes the non-Democrat leftists who scream that what the Dems really need is more leftism.

But there's a second half of the party's problem, and it's a half that most consultants, staffers, elected officials & party leaders can't speak to, because to speak to it would be to damn themselves: most "moderate" Democrats are fake. Kamala Harris was fake. Tim Walz was fake. Joe Biden was fakery piled upon fakery piled upon damnable fakery, and he and those close to him dragged the party to the depths while they covered up his mental decline.

The whole moderate wing of the party has committed to a vision of Electability that involves dancing around their true positions, maintaining a map of careful no-go zones and forbidden associations, and coloring precisely within focus-grouped lines before letting their progressive staffers run wild.

Who could honestly believe Harris's pandering to the center after 2020? Leftists will tell you going on stage with Liz Cheney was a bridge too far; moderates, meanwhile, can't help but notice that Cheney was trotted out without policy concessions or without serious integration, as a mascot to smile about shared love of Democracy. Please. Superficial pablum.

I've hurled plenty of invective at groups I don't identify with here, so I would be remiss not to hurl invective at my own: this is not, precisely, their fault. You cannot expect people to honestly represent ideas they don't truly believe. You can't expect them to work with people who don't want to work with them. You can't expect to sit on the outside hurling invective at a group until they bend to your preferences.

What's a winning Democratic message? It's not just "reject far-left purity testing"—though that's a good consideration! It's not just "reckon with past failures of governance and focus ruthlessly on building institutional competence"—though that, too, is welcome. The party needs people who combine the authenticity and passion of its progressive wing with the care towards the median American of its moderate wing. Specifically, it needs people who aren't trying to feel towards the positions of an imagined Median American when they speak, but people whose own Sanders-like authenticity truly resonates with the median.

It's worth keeping in mind, too, the space both to draw contrasts with MAGA and to learn from it. Trump is apathetic towards truth—be scrupulous about truth. Trump is corrupt and self-serving—root out corruption and crack down on self-serving politics. Trump is taking a burn-it-all-down approach, so focus on building it all well. So forth.

But he, like Sanders, is almost terrifyingly authentic about what he wants, and people are hungry for that. Don't run from it! When he brought people into his coalition, he made them and their supporters feel genuinely heard, handing DOGE off to Elon, the Department of Health to RFK, and the DNI role to Gabbard. On one clear level, that sucks—but on another, it builds genuine support from people who felt represented by someone other than Trump. Dems can learn from that. So forth.

So what should centrists do? Be loud, be passionate, and be willing to actually get involved. Show up. Join the Democratic Party, go to local meetings, speak to liberals, make your voices heard. Learn from the passion of progressives, and recognize that really caring about something, and showing up visibly and legibly for it, matters. Don't sit begging for people to listen to you and for a party that doesn't authentically believe in your goals to moderate. Figure out your positive vision, make it legible, and become both useful and visible enough that people don't want to ignore you—even where they disagree. A political party is a vehicle designed for the purpose of winning elections, and the Median Voter Theorem wins elections. Show up.

Liberals who have felt cowed both by progressives and by a perceived need to hold a consistent party line, too, have a role: stop being cowed. Stop tripping over yourself to prove yourself to people who see you as at best an impure version of them, and speak frankly from your own position. Don't pretend at moderation you don't feel; be frank about your own position while being visibly open to working, and working seriously, with people who are authentically more moderate than you are.

As for progressives—look, it's not false consciousness. Your positions are not actually overwhelmingly more popular than everyone else's; the American public is genuinely split between Republican priorities and Democratic ones. Ask David Shor. But, as one example, health care reform - done right - is genuinely unifying. If you can combine reformist fervor with technocratic competence and deliver a health plan that works, people will want at least that part of what you're selling. Take an issue-by-issue approach, really seriously look at where you align with the public, and be ready to work with moderates rather than seeing them as less-than.

The future of the Democratic Party is not and should not be a future of focus-grouped fake moderation. It should be a wrestling match, one where people who authentically and seriously stand for divergent visions publicly work towards a shared goal of building something that won't just defeat the MAGA movement but will crush it. Do I want a technocratic centrist vision to come out on top? Of course. Everyone thinks their own faction is the best. But more essential than that is to at least have honest champions within the party, people who don't feel like they're just pandering to centrists to win elections--to have what everyone wants: a seat at the table.

It's not that this list is wrong, then. It's that it lacks sovl. It's full of "don't do this" and "don't do that," full of cargo-cult, focus-grouped moderation. You don't need platitudes about patriotism and gun shows. You need people who can credibly show how and why they love America, who can honestly fight for a positive vision they believe in, and who are ready to work with whoever is willing to work with them to achieve those visions.

Democrats don't need focus-grouped party lines. They need pragmatic authenticity. There's a clear road available to them, but they need the will to take it.

I would have gone for "Maharaja".

He didn't type that. He was busy yelling and throwing things.

His assistant was probably wearing a suit when he typed that, though.

From my perspective, I do think that there should have been a lot more transparency in the firings. Hell, even something like Hegseth saying "I went out to lunch with each one of these guys and these six and I agreed that they'd be happier at Raytheon."

But hearing that it's merely bigotry is much better than the worry that it was fascism.

Pour encourager les autres.

Wasted? How dare you! Saddam was worse than Hitler!

Volodymyr Zelenskyy has tweeted:

I would like to reiterate Ukraine’s commitment to peace.

None of us wants an endless war. Ukraine is ready to come to the negotiating table as soon as possible to bring lasting peace closer. Nobody wants peace more than Ukrainians. My team and I stand ready to work under President Trump’s strong leadership to get a peace that lasts.

We are ready to work fast to end the war, and the first stages could be the release of prisoners and truce in the sky — ban on missiles, long-ranged drones, bombs on energy and other civilian infrastructure — and truce in the sea immediately, if Russia will do the same. Then we want to move very fast through all next stages and to work with the US to agree a strong final deal.

We do really value how much America has done to help Ukraine maintain its sovereignty and independence. And we remember the moment when things changed when President Trump provided Ukraine with Javelins. We are grateful for this.

Our meeting in Washington, at the White House on Friday, did not go the way it was supposed to be. It is regrettable that it happened this way. It is time to make things right. We would like future cooperation and communication to be constructive.

Regarding the agreement on minerals and security, Ukraine is ready to sign it in any time and in any convenient format. We see this agreement as a step toward greater security and solid security guarantees, and I truly hope it will work effectively.

The Economist had this back in 2009...

I know that the photographers *LOVED* giving Obama a halo in shots...

So it looks like she went on Hannity and explained that *NOW* she has a new and improved bunch of files that she and the FBI are now digging through and she's waiting on Kash Patel's report on why these files were withheld last time.

Jam tomorrow. Jam Yesterday.

BREAKING: Attorney General Pam Bondi says a "truckload" of Jeffrey Epstein files arrived on Friday, says FBI Director Kash Patel is looking through them now.

"We got them all Friday at 8AM. Thousands of pages of documents. I have the FBI going through them."

"It's now in the… pic.twitter.com/rxABwmO5p2

— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) March 4, 2025

See? Bluesky! Nary a cultist to be seen.