Commenter Archive

See? Bluesky! Nary a cultist to be seen.

Looking at the Biden numbers, I'd say that they were in line back before Trump.

You'd be better off sticking with BlueSky and avoiding bias, then.

I didn't call him a cocaine addict. There were clips of Zelenskyy doing the Chuck Barris nose scratch thing while talking over the hour.

I googled "Zelenskyy cocaine" and got articles going back to 2022 from websites I didn't want to click on. My theory had nothing to do with those. The theory, instead, had to do with tiktoks that just put a compilation of all of the times Zelenskyy scratched his nose during the press conference.

Hey, maybe it's allergies! I spent yesterday sneezing and, even this morning, I woke up with itchy eyes and blowing my nose every 40 seconds. And I don't know that I've ever been in the same room as cocaine. (Weed? Yes. Cocaine? Not really my circle's thing.)

It was more of a commentary of the nose scratching thing and the being crabby enough to blow the deal up thing.

If we could repeal the Hatch Act, the states would have a *LOT* more elbow room.

I don't know what's breaking, quite honestly.

It feels like the whole Whigs going away.

But I don't know if the Whigs went away because they lost or if they went away because they won so completely that they were superfluous.

The price, of course.

We can always argue about the price.

Oh, I know this one! It's morally wrong!

To what extent should we insist on a moral president that does moral things all the moral time?

(Note: This is a trick question.)

Harry Enten is the host of CNN's "Margin of Error" podcast. He ran the numbers on the Ukraine/Russia thing and:

-Trump's net approval on Russia/Ukraine (+2) is far more positive than Biden's was by the end (-22).
-The share (31% to 50%) who want a compromise in the war is way up
-The share who say Russia is an enemy is way down (64% to 34%).

Not that democracy is any way to resolve moral questions, but this is a pretty tough row to hoe.

Polls, polls, polls. Here's 538 and here's RCP.

My examples were all Blue cities in Blue states. The LA fires were bad enough that Karen Bass is doing an investigation trying to find who let her go to Ghana. Sheng Thao was recalled. So was London Breed. Gavin Himself was on the short list for 2028.

I don't know if he'll be on it again in 2026 but he sure as hell ain't on it now.

Export tariffs? That's insane. That'll get reversed within moments. There isn't a single constituent for that. Not one.

Pam Bondi tweeted a few hours ago. It was about the Boston incident where an alleged off-duty police officer allegedly shot a guy allegedly trying to allegedly stab a couple of alleged people in an alleged Chik-fil-A. After the incident, the mayor went on camera and, among other things, gave her condolences to the alleged knife-involved individual's family.

This was one of those things that resulted in a lot of polarization.

Some folks thought that it was 100% appropriate to offer condolences to the relatives of the guy who was allegedly shot by the alleged off-duty cop. Others thought that the speech should have been more of a "allegedly fool around, genuinely find out" speech.

Pam Bondi's tweet indicated sympathies for the latter position. "This DOJ will NEVER apologize for taking down dangerous criminals and getting them off our streets. Thank you to the brave law enforcement officer in Boston who stepped up to protect those in need."

The responses did not tend toward the "Yeah! Go Boston Cops!" position.

Instead, they overwhelmingly asked the question "WHERE ARE MY FREAKIN' FILES, PAM?!?!?"

I don't know how long it will last, but I believe that Pam Bondi will find her twitter unusable for feedback give and take kinda reasons until, at least, she comes out and says what the heck happened, what she and Kash talked about, and where in the heck the files are.

Well, I am pleased to do my part here to harm Trump.

I think that the FBI should release the files.

What the heck, Kash?
What the heck, Bondi?

I'm going to need a list of five things you did last week.

Part of it, I think, is that Pure Blue City Governance is...

Well, let's pretend I wrote a paragraph here talking about how Trump is Hitler and, not only that, worse than Hitler. The American People? Worse than the 1930s Germans. All of them. Even the ones who oppose Trump are complicit. That's how bad Trump is.

Okay, with that out of the way, part of it, I think, is that Pure Blue City Governance is not great, Bob.

You don't have to be a Republican to be upset with London Breed, Karen Bass, or Gavin Newsom. California has problems that you absolutely positively cannot blame on Republicans.

You don't have to be a Republican to think that Brandon Johnson sucks. Chicago has problems that you absolutely positively cannot blame on Republicans.

NYC? How many NYC problems are due to Republicans? Eric Adams has problems that might result in Hochul tossing him on his keister but they ain't Republican problems and replacing him with a pure Blue mayor ain't gonna fix NYC's problems either.

If Blue Governance was a model of perfection that could allow its enthusiasts to cackle at how envied Blue State residents are, that'd be one thing. But it ain't.

Zeynep Tufekci reports:

Ralph Baric and Ian Lipkin in the NYT raising the alarm on a new Cell paper where Wuhan Institute of Virology scientists experiment on ANOTHER coronavirus that can infect humans under grossly inadequate biosafety precautions.

I just want to point out that if the virus came from the wet market, we don't have any evidence that this institute has had any leaks in the past.

Some argue that Trump is this.

convince voters that their ideas are better on the issues that voters care about

Thinking about this.

Part of the problem is that "convince" isn't really in the toolkit anymore. "Hey, I have some arguments for you and some counter-counter-arguments for the most common counter-arguments" is a really sweet attitude to have!

I agree that it's a better play than "no one could possibly disagree with me in good faith" which, for some reason, gained ascendancy among the faithful. "I'm not going to do your research for you." It's like acknowledging that there are reasonable questions is acknowledging that there are reasonable other positions and once you do that you've already lost.

And that's fine as a seasoning among the people who show up all the time. But as the main part of the meal? It's a recipe for just waiting for the other guy to screw up and show up to win the election in the vacuum created.

I do think "maybe we shouldn't make Republican ads for them? At least on 80-20 issues?" isn't a *BAD* play.

I'd love to see the right lessons.

Twitter had several observations on this but the ones I thought were interesting touched on:

Look at Zelenskyy's relationship with his nose. It's downright Zizekian. One theory I saw said that Trump, a hardcore teetotal kinda guy, knows enough about cocaine to have timed Zelenskyy's come-down with this meeting and so he knew that Zelenskyy would blow it up.

Another talked about Trump's use of the phrase "you don't have any cards" and how that idiom doesn't translate well. Trump was saying something much like "you've got a crappy hand that you don't want to have called" and Zelenskyy heard "you haven't been dealt into the game". The phrase that would have made sense to Zelenskyy would be something like "you don't have any trump cards" (no pun intended) and that would have caused a lot less static.

The messaging needs to be, shall we say, massaged. The arguments for why we need to be sending Ukraine more aid are not as obvious as the ones making these arguments seem to think and many have been undercut by previous arguments.

Putin is Hitler? I thought Trump was Hitler. Is the argument that Trump should be like FDR and not Hitler? Because FDR would *NEVER* hand over eastern Europe to Russia?

"It is in the US's best interest that Russia lose. This isn't about Ukraine at all. Ukraine is just a cat's paw." This strikes me as a pretty good argument insofar as it seems to involve telling the truth and having some shared reality to draw upon. A heck of a lot better than the moral one that seems to rely on moral claims that are, shall we say, not universally shared.

Politico had a funny report yesterday:

On Friday, the DNC’s X account posted a 32-point list of “WHAT DEMOCRATS DID IN FEBRUARY,” seemingly mimicking Elon Musk’s five-things email tactic. It included such relatively small-bore items as “Democrat Ken Jenkins won a special election for Westchester County Executive, soundly defeating his Trump-backed opponent.”

By yesterday afternoon, the post had been so roundly mocked and ratioed that DNC chief marketing officer Shelby Cole felt compelled to respond that the “template always used to bang for us,” before conceding “the internet thinks we are morons this time.”

Here, you can check out the tweet yourself.

It is a wall of text and it's easy to imagine a bunch of folks saying some variant of "I ain't reading all that" or merely posting a "leftist memes" post that mocks the whole "wall of text" thing.

But I can totally understand taking Musk's "name five things you did last week" email and turning it into an opportunity to brag. Five things? HERE'S FIVE SQUARED!!!!

I found the various quotes to be interesting. A couple of people suggested not making a wall but making it more visually pleasing. I laughed at the Dr. Bronner's joke.

The juicy part of the Politico article isn't the response to the tweet from the Democrats (which, seriously, I see what they were going for) but this part here:

In early February, a group of moderate Democratic consultants, campaign staffers, elected officials and party leaders gathered in Loudoun County, Virginia, for a day-and-a-half retreat where they plotted their party’s comeback.

The gathering — organized by Third Way, the centrist Democratic think tank, and operated by Chatham House Rules — resulted in five pages of takeaways, a document Playbook obtained from one of the participants. (Not all attendees endorsed each point.)

The Playbook. You know the thing where sometimes political parties have an autopsy and say "what should we do different next time?" after they lose a pretty disappointing election? Well, this was that and this was that from the moderate wing.

The article mentions five pretty interesting bullet points:

The party should “embrace patriotism, community, and traditional American imagery”;

Democrats should “ban far-left candidate questionnaires and refuse to participate in forums that create ideological purity tests” and “move away from the dominance of small-dollar donors whose preferences may not align with the broader electorate”;

They should “push back against far-left staffers and groups that exert a disproportionate influence on policy and messaging” ;

Candidates should “get out of elite circles and into real communities (e.g., tailgates, gun shows, local restaurants, churches)”; and

The party needs to “own the failures of Democratic governance in large cities and commit to improving local government.”

See? The moderate wing. I'm sure that the green wing would have had bullet points that talk about the need to embrace degrowth and the abortion wing would have had bullet points that talk about the right of women to control their own sexual destinies, the moderates talk about stuff like "maybe we shouldn't have the nutty lefties ask candidates to say stuff on camera that will show up in Republican ads?" and, of course, push back against far-left staffers. As if we can get the squishy moderates to show up at 6 in the morning on a Tuesday to work for snacks.

All that to say: The dems are trying to figure stuff out for the next election. Which is good.

Of course, maybe it's all wasted effort when you acknowledge how they're going up against the Republicans who are, by all accounts, imploding.

You just need to figure out how to best package it. "Federalism!" or something like that might gain a foothold somewhere.

But they should make it explicit that only blue states can do it. Not red ones. Red ones will probably reinstitute segregation in schools or something like that.

What we do not believe is that the FBI has any real evidence, or that they are going to release it if they do.

Then Pam Bondi and Kash Patel are in a real pickle! They've demanded transparency and they've demanded to see the "real" evidence and they've done so publicly!

It seems like a good way to embarrass the new guys is to keep bringing this up and make them either pony up (which they can't do) or say why they can't pony up (which would effectively create similar problems).

We are simply enjoying watching the right eat itself alive because they believed _Trump_ was going to do this, and have to try to come up with nonsense justifications as to why Trump isn’t doing extremely obvious things, which he should have already done years ago, like try to track down Acosta’s claim.

Would you say that calling for the release of this stuff from the people who said that they'd release it would do harm to Trump, then?

Wow. Seems like a somewhat straightforward and easy way to harm Trump.

Seems like a great bipartisan opportunity!

What could possibly go wrong?