Amid the all the hand-wringing, or wailing jeremiads, or triumphant op-eds out there, I’ll offer in this election post-mortem some perspectives that you’ll not see elsewhere.
But, before that - some flash bits.
First: a few have suggested Biden resign to make Kamala president for a month or so. Other than shifting Trump v.2.0’s number from 47 to 48, it would only bias 2028 unnecessarily, by locking her in as heir. Nah.
Third flash bit … how about some prediction cred? That Donald Trump has learned to never again appoint professionals or adults to office. Nearly all grownups from Trump v.1 (over 250 of them) eventually denounced him. (That one fact alone should have decided the election.) Sure enough, his announced cabinet appointments are almost all unqualified maniacs. But there’s a triple purpose to that – which I’ll describe at the end.
But that’s not what you came here for, today. You’ve been wallowing in election post-mortems, agonizing over how it could have come to this.
So, after that wallow in futility and clichés, would you like some fresh views that actually bear some relation to reality? Some may disturb you.
== So… um… W.T.H. just happened? ==
As VoteVets.org (Veterans dedicated to democracy and the rule of law) put it Wednesday: “Moving forward and regaining the initiative requires us to confront the results of this election with open eyes.”
Okay, for a start, it does no good to wail stuff like: “Americans chose a fascist dictatorship because trans kids are icky. And we hate the idea of a black woman being president.”
Um, not even close. Nor was Kamala Harris a ‘bad candidate’ (she was actually very good!) Nor was it because she ‘only had 107 days.’ Seriously? The campaign lasted forever!
Indeed, all over the globe (for the first time, ever), every governing party in a democracy lost vote share. So… maybe the Stupid-Ray Beamed By Aliens theory should be trotted back out? No, never mind that.
WTH actually happened?
Well, the demographics are clear. Major historically-Democratic groups simply did not show up, or else actively went to the GOP. While some Black men defected for reasons such as macho, they were mostly loyal, in the end.
But Hispanics far more crucially (and of both sexes) stayed home or switched sides. And will you drop the racist slander, claiming that they’re all sexist? The new president of Mexico is a woman, fer gosh sakes.
As for the trans thing, it was just one of so many hatred dog whistles. Useful to Fox and crappily/badly countered by the left. But it’s a side dish, compared to the Hispanic defection.
Plus the fact that even white women split more evenly than expected.
Then what happened?
TWO WORDS kind of sum it up! Two different one-word chants! Used repeatedly. One by each side.
For one side, that word was abortion.
Sure, the incredibly aggressive fascist putsch against Roe-v.-Wade and women’s Right-To-Choose was obscene and deserved to be deeply motivating.
Only then the Harris campaign transformed it from being a political gift by the Supreme Court into a liability. From being just one useful word into a million.
Abortion. Abortion. Abortion. Abortion. Abortion. Abortion. Abortion. Abortion. Abortion. Abortion. Abortion. Abortion. Abortion. Abortion. Abortion. Abortion! And… Abortion! (ad infinitum)
Dig it. All of the folks for whom that word was a deciding issue were already Kamala’s! Repeating it relentlessly and always - like an incantatory talisman - only made clear that hers would be a campaign exactly like Hillary Clinton’s -- led by and run by and aimed toward upper middle class white ladies.
(And please? I voted for both Harris & Clinton and worked hard for them, in 2016, and again in 2024. We’re discussing tactics, here! And getting angry when failed tactics are criticized is a sure sign of a bad general.)
Try asking outside that bell jar. After a while, each repetition (“abortion!!”) became tedious and hectoring to many.
Especially to Hispanics, who -- may I remind you -- are mostly Catholics?
Who are capable of diverging from church doctrine… but did they need to be reminded of that cognitive dissonance hourly?
…Hispanic citizens who also proved very receptive to the other side’s talisman word.
‘Immigration.’
This talisman worked to draw in support from fresh directions. Poll after poll show Hispanics want tighter borders! Yet, urban liberals refused to listen. Pompously finger-wagging that both Jesus and Deuteronomy preach kindness (they do!) toward the flood of refugees who are fleeing Trump ally elites in Honduras and Guatemala, they endlessly lectured and preached that the flood should ONLY be answered with kindness… and nothing but kindness.
… which is easy for you rich liberals to say. But Hispanic voters don’t want job competition. And your disapproval – calling them immoral when they shouted “No!” – helped to cement their shift.
== Immigration as a weapon vs. the West: It isn’t just America. ==
Did you ever wonder why right wing populism has surged in Europe? Quasi-Nazism burgeoned there – and here – for one reason above all. Because Putin & pals have been driving refugees across western borders for 30 years, knowing that it’ll result – perfectly – in a rightward swerve of politics.
You know this! It happened here. The tactic has now won Vladimir Putin the greatest victory of his life… that very likely saved his life!
But you, yes you, have been unable to see it and draw two correct conclusions.
First: you can’t have everything you want, not all at once. Politics requires prioritization. And hence when Obama and Biden built more border walls than Trump ever did, they ought to have bragged about it! And you should have bragged, too.
Again, you cannot do all the good things on your list without POWER! And now, sanctimoniously refusing to prioritize has given total power to…
Second: and here’s a potential sweet spot for you: Want to solve the immigration crisis in the best way, to benefit both us and the poor refugees?
Go after the Honduran/Guatemalan/Nicaraguan/Cuban/Venezuelan elites who are persecuting their own citizens and driving them – coordinated by Moscow - to flee to the U.S!
Um, duh? Joe could still do that in his remaining time. He could!
But a blind spot is a blind spot…
… and even now, YOU probably could not parse or paraphrase what I just said. About the possible win-win sweet spot. Go ahead and try. Bet you can’t even come close.
How much simpler to dismiss Brin as racist. And thus illustrate my point.
== More lessons learned… or not learned? ==
Polls showed that ECONOMICS were far more on peoples’ minds than abortion. In fact, in almost every meaningful category, the USA has, right now, the best economy in the whole world and one of the very best since WWII.
Oh sure, saying that was difficult for Democrats. It comes across as lectury, pedantic and tone deaf to those working class folks who have no rising 401K, but do have high grocery bills. Or to young families staring at skyrocketing housing prices. Meanwhile, everyone is so accustomed to a great labor market that unemployment is a forgotten issue,
But does that mean to give up?
In fact, Kamala tried to get across this difficult perception gap by promising to end gouging at supermarkets and pharmacies and bragging about lowered insulin costs. But all of that seems to admit we failed, till now. So, maybe accompany all that with ads showing all the bridges and other infrastructure being rebuilt, at last, and asking “Do you know someone working at fixing America this way? Ask THEM about it!”
I found the rebirth of US manufacturing - the biggest boom since WWII – to be especially effective.
As for housing costs, I never saw one attempt to blame it on real culprits - swarms of inheritance brats and their trusts who are snapping up houses right and left in cash purchases, free to ignore mortgage rates. I mean seriously?
Okay, I admit it’s hard to sell cynical working stiffs glued to Fox on the Good Economy. I won’t carp too much on that. Instead…
Of course, there’s so much anger around and someone is gonna receive it. So notice that the core Foxite campaign – pushed VASTLY more often than any message of racism or sexism – is to blame college folks with incited hatred of non-college folks.
As I’ll say again, Kamala could have started changing this by pointing over there (as FDR did) at the real class enemies. The oligarchs who benefited from 40+ years of supply side and suck like lampreys from the hardworking U.S. middle class… both college and non-college..
== The insult that they deeply resent… repeated over and over again ==
Not one Democratic pol has ever pointed out that racism and sexism, while important ingredients in parts of the Red polity, are not their core agenda!
Indeed, count how many of your friends and/or favorite pundits are ascribing this recent calamity to ‘embedded American racism and sexism!!”
Sure, those despicable traits exist and matter a lot. And it’s easy for me to downgrade them when my life is in no danger because of a busted tail-light.
Still, can you recognize an unhelpful mantra, when it is repeated way too much, crowding out all other thought?
As commentator Jamie Metzl put it: “There will be some people who awoke this morning telling themselves that the story of this election is primarily one of racism and misogyny. They are wrong.
“Make no mistake, our country still harbors unacceptable levels of both, but that is not the story of this election. That is not who we are as a nation. We are the same nation that elected Barack Obama twice and would have likely have elected Nikki Haley, had she been the Republican candidate. Very many women and minorities voted for Trump. We need to look deeper.”
Indeed, howling “You’re racist!” at our red neighbors was likely counterproductive. They turn and point at black faces on Fox… and at the now-boring normality of inter-racial marriages… and more recently at ‘normal gays’… and reply
“I don’t FEEL racist! I LIKE the good ones!”
None of that means racism is over! But except for a nasty-Nazi wing, they have largely shifted on a lot of things. What it does mean is that a vast majority of Republicans feel insulated from their racism.
it means that shrieking the R word over and over can be futile.
It only makes your neighbors dig in and call you the race-obsessed oppressor.
== The actual enemy ==
I mean, have you ever actually watched FOX and tallied their openly racist or even sexist crap… versus who it is they actually assail most often, and openly? Care for a side bet on this?
I’ve said it before and will pound this till you listen. While they downplay their own racism and sexism, what almost every MAGA Nuremberg Rally does feature is endless – and utterly open -- attacks upon nerds.
The fact professions. From journalism to science to civil service to law to medicine to the FBI and the US military officer corps.
And NO Democrat has ever addressed that, head on!
Ever, ever, ever and ever.
Instead of ever pointing this out, they assume that defending the fact professions will sound like smugness bragging.
But they’re wrong. And there are reasons why the all out assault on all fact-professions is the core agenda underlying everything Republican/MAGA/Putinist.
And someday – as I mention below – this will at last be admitted openly.
Alas, too late, as beginning on day one of Trump v2 there will commence an all-out terror campaign against that officer corps, against the FBI and especially the United States Civil Service. And science.
And when that happens, point proudly and tell your children: “I helped do that.”
== The giddy joy in Moscow ==
Oh, there are MAGAs who write to me – on social media etc. - taunting and gloating about all this. To which I reply:
“Enjoy your victory. Your pleasure is as a firefly glow, next to the giddy ecstasy in the Kremlin.”
A few comments furthering that.
a. Jill Stein deserves the Order of Lenin. She likely already has one in her secret Moscow luxury dacha.
b. Recall the Four Scenarios I projected, last Sunday? As I predicted in scenario 4. If Trump wins convincingly, he will surround himself with loyalists and this time no ‘adults in the room.’ No Kelly, Mattis, Esper, Milley, or even hacks with a brain, like Barr or Tillerson or Pence.
c. What no one else has mentioned - or will - is how this cuts all puppet strings to Trump. Nothing Putin has on him… no pee tape, or snuff film, or video with Epstein kids… will matter anymore. Nor will blackmail files on Cruz or many others. All – even Lindsey Graham – will have their “I could shoot someone on 5th Avenue” moment. And when that happens…
…there is a very real chance that Trump will feel liberated to tell Vlad to fuck himself. Or even take revenge on Putin for decades of puppetting control threats. I have repeatedly asked folks to learn from the wisdom of Hollywood! From the last ten minutes of CABARET. From Angela Lansbury’s soliloquy in the last half hour of THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE. From the oligarchs’ last resort in NETWORK.
But no. I am dreaming. Putin will retain control. Even if blackmail ceases to work, there’s flattery, which is far more important to DT than anything else in the world. And liberals insanely ignore that.
== How will America respond to this Confederate conquest? ==
One of you, in our lively comments section below, said:
“Trump is who we are and we are not the great people we used to be.”
Malarkey. As I described here today, midway through this phase of the ever-recurring Civil War, it seems the Union side’s generals keep firing in mistaken directions. But do not look at this as “America is irredeemable.”
View it as “America has once again been conquered by the entirely separate Confederacy, the recurring romantic-feudalist cult that now has its Russian and other foreign allies. Actual America is now occupied by that other entity."
But recall that it consists of almost all of the inhabitants of this land who know stuff. And if our mad cousins push too hard, mass resignations by the competent will only be the beginning.
And no, - even though we are the ones who know everything cyber, bio, medical, nano, nuclear and all that, it won’t come to any of that.
Watch instead – if they go after the civil service and officer corps - for the words GENERAL STRIKE. And let’s see how they do without (among 10,000 other taken-for-granted things) their ten day weather reports. Especially when the parts of North America that will be the very worst-hit by climate Acts of God will be the Southeast.
== Why are there zero 'adults' in the newest DT administration? ==
I promised to explain why Trump's announced cabinet appointments are almost all unqualified maniacs. There’s a triple purpose.
1. This will maximize flattery (what Trump lives for), but this time he's only chosen appointees who are blackmailed and controllable. In some cases, Russian assets now appointed atop U.S. intel and defense agencies.
2. Unlike all the 'adults' in Trump v.1, this time every single person named will join in the coming all-out war against the FBI, military officer corps and U.S. Civil Service.
3. Unlike all the 'adults' in Trump v.1 none of these will never denounce him in tell-all books.
== Side bits ==
Tariffs? Oh, dear oligarchs, try some wisdom from a surprising portion of Ferris Beuller’s Day Off!
John Cramer points out that Joe Biden, as part of the Great Big Infrastructure Rebuild, boosted access of poor and rural areas to high speed Internet... "There is evidence that better access to the many disinformation sites shifted many rural counties from pink to deep red."
Also Cramer: "Botched Trumpian responses made Covid far worse. (And the best way for you to begin using wager demands would ber to demand cash bets over DEATH RATES for the vaccinated vs. un-vaccinated.) "When COVID hit, Trump arranged to sign the big relief checks. Under Biden (who din't sign the checks) this tapered too soon. Strapped voters remembered the "good old days" when Trump sent checks and the grocery prices were lower." Hm, that seems a reach but...
Above all I reiterate, there is one thing that Joe Biden could do – right now – that would upset the DC apple cart, and (presumably) be very much not to the Trump-Putin party’s liking. Last week I laid out how Biden might still – even now - affect the USA and world. And human destiny.
== So, what lessons did we learn? And what does the future hold? ==
Geez, you’re asking me? My predictive score is way above average, but I truly thought a critical mass of Americans would reject an orange-painted, makeup-slathered raving-loony carnival barker. I was wrong about that…
… but it only shows how stoopid so many millions of sincerely generous and college -educated Americans are, for assuming they know who the gone-treasonously-mad right is oppressing.
Wake up, educated gals & guys and gays and every other variant under the sun. It’s not your diversity they are coming after. Nor the client races and genders you defend, many of whom just said ‘fuck off!’ to being protected by you.
The oligarchs and their minions have one enemy they aim to destroy.
It’s you.
207 comments:
1 – 200 of 207 Newer› Newest»The "Malefactors of great wealth" seem uninterested in running a successful economy, preferring dominance and having more than anyone else. IOW, channelling their inner alpha primate. They may eventually learn a harsh lesson, unfortunately at our expense.
So… maybe the Stupid-Ray Beamed By Aliens theory should be trotted back out? No, never mind that.
As you doubtless know, it was occasional contributor Stefan Jones who created the Illuminati card 'Orbital Mind Control Lasers'.
I would add a fourth point to Trump's appointment of the howlingly egregious: the prospective pleasure of watching the Senate (*his* Senate) bend the knee by confirming every. last. one.
One sentence stands out in Sarah Kendzior's latest article:
"That is the main thing they are after now: your empathy. They want you to hate each other so you don’t hate them first."
Love your fellow geeks.
Re: Pretorians:
How many USS or FBI agents have quit during the Trump I years?
Honest question.
But I assume only a few did. I assume, though, that...
a) Most of them lean right anyway
b) They are like any similar institution on the world, with something good apples, some bad ones, the rest trying to get along.
Expect them to be weaponized and maybe sinking into chaos, becoming a Gaetzstapo. Courage will be found in those who loose papers and call in sick.
Oh, and strike "It can't happen here" from your vocabulary.
You fell for the "Ds are bad at immigration!" lie too. There were no fewer than three attempted immigration control bills in the Senate during Biden's term, and you know what happened with that last fully-bipartisan one. Biden did quite a bit with the average daily cap on asylum admissions, and (though she wasn't border "czar") talking to exactly those Central and South American leaders about the forces behind migration was the border portfolio Biden handed Harris!
But "Ds are for open borders!" is easier to understand, even if it's a total lie. And even you seem to have bought it.
Dr Brin last comments:
That is the central enemy they are always always attacking and they are about to eviscerate the US military Officer corps and the civil service because perfectly nice and smart people like Larry Hart cannot, apparently, perceive where the battle front is.
Sorry, but then I'm back to asking, what to do about it? It's not like I haven't noticed that Project 2025 involves making the civil service into a collection of political stooges, or that he's going to fire and prosecute generals who won't carry out his unconstitutional orders. That was a reason to vote for and tell people to vote for Democrats instead.
It is THE battle front. Getting poor blacks and hispanics to SHARE that loathing of smartypants who Patronize, while trying to "protect' them, was brilliant and liberals do nothing to stop it.
This is where I keep losing you. Part of the reason we lost the vote, which in turn enables them to do all the bad stuff, is because we lost major pieces of our Democratic coalition, including the very ones you mention. Yet, every time I ask how we can win those people back to our side, you get all exasperated and shriek it's not about that.
Can you please complete this sentence? "The oligarchs are about to shred the officer corps and civil service, and they are able to do so because people like Larry Hart fail to do..." WHAT?
I thought he meant that the voters bought it.
Ok, I admit I posted that above before reading this new post.
So you've been saying, and are saying this:
The fact professions. From journalism to science to civil service to law to medicine to the FBI and the US military officer corps.
And NO Democrat has ever addressed that, head on!
Ever, ever, ever and ever.
Instead of ever pointing this out, they assume that defending the fact professions will sound like smugness bragging.
Yes, what you suggest does sound like sanctimonious bragging. If it's a bad strategy to tout the great economy when voters are not "feeling it", how can it be a good strategy to defend civil servants and the officer corps--the very nerds that those voters apparently already resent?
So, we should have tried to win votes against Trump because of what he'll do to the civil service rather than because he's a racist, sexist pig. Instead of pointing out his social failings, we should have been pointing out his attacks on nerds--the very nerds those voters already resent and despise? I don't see how that gains voters. Or is that not the point either?
There is a lot of after action analysis going on, which is in general a healthy thing. OGH's contribution covers a little new ground.....I must admit, I had not considered the millions of "migrants" heading to our southern border to be yet another nefarious Putin plot. Anyway. My take on the unequivocal (but not landslide) Trump win is that the D's failed on Message, Messenger, and fundamentally on the meaning of our formerly common language.
Part One, the messenger. I have no animus towards VP Harris. She did not create the political situation she found herself in. Oh, she's ambitious to be sure, nothing wrong with that. But she was not tested in multiple contested elections against worthy opponents. I don't put too much stock in the behind the scenes gossip of being a hard person to work for, and have no idea at all whether her campaign was being run by Harris herself, Biden loyalists or as some speculate, Obama hold overs. Matters not. A poor choice of VP with the excuse of being sleep deprived ( 3am phone call anyone?), skipping the Al Smith dinner and sending a high school quality video of an old SNL skit. Etc. She was just not as good a campaigner as Trump. Several other D's would have done better.
Part Two, the message. I think that rather than regard the 2016 election as an anomaly it makes more sense to regard 2020 as one. We were under the shadow of Covid, and normal life was not normal. Biden ran a campaign from his basement. And won. Emerging from that political cloudbank the victorious D's did what most short sighted victors do, drew the wrong conclusions. Identity politics works. The border wall, nay, an actual border, is bad. Everyone is ok with mail in/absentee ballots. Trying to explain these things to a skeptical public - heck, surveys indicate that even most D's approve of voter ID, and that Hispanic voters do not approve of a border you can cross with the tap of a phone screen and an insincere promise to turn up for a hearing at some point in the future - well, it would require a communicator more eloquent that Biden even on one of his increasingly rare "good days". The economy is "ok". Better for some than others. But what people see tend to be the Large and Micro pictures. A sloppy exit from Afghanistan. An apparently impaired President stumbling through a debate. And small silly things like a ban on plastic straws, or a .49 cent charge for a disposable coffee cup at the gas station in a poor neighborhood. Etc.
Part Three. Our Common Language? This is a theme I've tried to put forward in the past with limited success. But when apparently reasonable people don't agree with something that seems simple and straightforward you should probably make sure they understood you before calling them dim or dastardly. Undocumented Migrants sounds as if the dog ate their paperwork. Our Democracy actually should involve your standard bearer facing full scrutiny. Not (2020) having all his opposition step aside once he agrees to bow to identity politics regards his VP. Maybe there was no other way to cook the political sausage regards Biden's declining effectiveness as POTUS, but there should have been a plan in place for a lighting round open nomination process instead of just putting the out of her depth VP out there.
Anyway, these are just my thoughts. We won't agree in some areas but I think they have broad support. As to where we go from here? I'm old enough to remember a little of 1968. Assasinations, a sitting president not running for re-election, riots. It was not pretty, but there are some parallels to the current day. Humphrey, a good man, lost. Probably not his fault. And we ended up with Nixon. Nobody's idea of a good outcome. But then followed Jerry Ford and Jimmy Carter, two of the best men to hold the office in our times. They did the best they could in difficulty times. And we are all still here. Our democracy, our country, still up and running. We'll be ok.
I do wish Biden would stop doing things like authorizing Ukraine to launch advanced US missiles (with one assumes our tech/intel support) into the territory of our large, unhappy, nuclear armed adversary. If a Republican tried this you'd be howling. And I'd join ya.
So we do a surrender treaty with the tsar and a nanosecond after the treaty is signed, plans for the next round of hostilities move forward.
—
Hispanics are double-minded re immigration: they wish to keep undocumenteds out, yet want their kin south of the border to come in—legally or not.
Meta Observation:
Any nation that would elect someone like Trump twice is simply not worth saving.
What part of that are you all not getting?
This is what's worth saving.
Each evening, from December to December,
Before you drift to sleep upon your cot,
Think back on all the tales that you remember
Of Camelot.
Ask every person if he's heard the story,
And tell it strong and clear if he has not,
That once there was a fleeting wisp of glory
Called Camelot.
Camelot! Camelot!
Now say it out with pride and joy!
"Camelot! Camelot!"
Yes, Camelot, my boy!
Where once it never rained till after sundown,
By eight a.m. the morning fog had flown...
Don't let it be forgot
That once there was a spot
For one brief shining moment that was known
As Camelot.
One consolation, meager and bitter though it is.
https://www.electoral-vote.com/evp2024/Items/Nov18-4.html
U.S. Muslim Leaders are now shocked! Shocked! Donald Trump has nominated people who are planning to carry out the plans Trump shouted from the rooftops during his campaign. Many Muslims and their leaders voted for Donald Trump to stick it to Joe Biden, and then Kamala Harris, for the Biden administration's positions on Gaza. Raboul Chowdhury chaired the "Abandon Harris 2024 campaign" and co-founded "Muslims for Trump." Now that Trump won, they were hoping for a seat at the table.
Instead of listening to them, Trump is doing exactly what he promised to do during the campaign, namely egg Israel on.
...
The Muslim leaders are like the university students who protested the destruction in Gaza in the spring. They didn't like Joe Biden (and by implication, Kamala Harris), but didn't consider the fact that the alternative was 100x worse on the issue they cared about. Opposing someone you dislike is emotionally so much more satisfying that picking the lesser of two evils, but the end result may not be so satisfying. Welcome to politics.
"Courage my friends, 'tis not too late to build a better world."
- TC Douglas (once voted greatest Canadian in a CBC poll)
Der Oger: Most FBI guys probably used to lean right, like the military officers. That’s changed as Putin ordered MAGA to pour hate on both groups. DT will never forgive guys like Milley. I expect both clades of heroes to be purged.
I am done arguing with LH over all this. He flounders around the edges and apparently will never be persuaded to perceive what’s going on or what must be done. I wish him well. Go back to driving Hispanics, Blacks etc out of our coalition by patronizingly ‘protecting’ them while reinforcing MAGA by hurling “racist!” shrieks at them when most of them “don’t feel racist.” Agility is dead. Again, I am done even trying.
Tacitus I thank you for a well-expressed POV though again you cherry pick minutiae. Jeepers seriously you come at us with the ‘she didn’t do primaries’ BS? The primaries select delegates and the delegates voted unanimously. Everybody knew she’d appoint top humans and push good bills, You grasp at straws.
3am phone call? Oh… my…. Gawd. (1) It’s the appointments, who you surround yourself with, that matter above all… and you seriously prefer the madhouse clown show of monsters surrounding Trump over the vast team of grownups in office now, who would do most of the work at 3am? They are different species… and I mean that almost literally**
(2) SERIOUSLY? Comparing KH to DT answering a 3am phone call?…. Seriously? I mean, you are actually able to... my gorge rises at the thought that you can even compare...
I read all that you said, Tacitus… and while some is true, the utter minutiae of your cherrypicked excuses is something beyond all reckoning.
You scan about peering through a paper towel roll’s inner cardboard tube, desperately seeking ANY narrative to zoom onto, in order to avoid ever, ever recognizing that ALL of your old ID loyalties have gone utterly and totally and venomously treasonous-insane.
And you’ll do it again when the best of America… FBI agents and military officers and scientists and civil servants who took huge pay cuts in order to rebuild infrastructure and keep a complex civilization running are all raped and eviscerated. You'll peer through that tube to find excuses.
There is one hope for western civilization right now and it is for Ukraine to save us all.
But DP is worse: “Any nation that would elect someone like Trump twice is simply not worth saving. What part of that are you all not getting?”
Again, I like you man, but fuck off. I keep repeating WE ARE TWO NATIONS that have been at recurring Civil War for 240 years. This round, America was conquered and Washington taken by our mad cousins and phase nine may be violent. But try that metaphor instead. It is more accurate, makes more sense, and will make you seem less a shrugging jerk.
“Where once it never rained till after sundown,
By eight a.m. the morning fog had flown...”
A horrible liberty nightmare of meddling control. The light side of the Force in all of its oppressive glory.
------
** New Meme. SHOW redders pictures of Gaetz, MTG, Kimberly Gilfoyle, RFKJr... and orange face-painted Trump and demand that MAGAs explain how they can't see that these are masks covering lizard people?
Tactitus... even the last refuge of conservatism... "economics"... tilts utterly and totally in favor of dems. Your party is that of monopolists and foreign moguls. BET NOW whether dems are better re debt and deficits and manufacturing and every other metric. But again, I waste my time.
TC Douglas was born in Camelon, Scotland. That small (yet ancient) town has several (tenuous) legendary connections to Arthur's Camelot.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camelon
if you want to start down the rabbit hole. That region of Scotland is dominated by the river 'FORTH', which is a whole other rabbit hole...
Another massive, stinking whale of an elephant in the "how could this happen?" room is the fact that the US no longer has a free press. You know, the free press protected in the first amendment. All we have are outright right wing propaganda like FOXnews, HATEradio, TwitX, and the corporate press, and last but most important: approximately 7 interlinked corporations owned by oligarchs, many of the owners & investors are not even Americans.
Except for the despised "nerd" group, most Americans did not know the horrifying facts about Trump&Co, and his masters such as Putin.
Did any major TV network explain tariffs? Did they remind us about the Democratic immigration bills? Did they ever say "Vaccination is a miraculously wonderful invention, better than any rocket or iphone!" Were the factual stories about women allowed to die in agony in Texas and Florida stories splashed across the world on all the networks, 24 hours day-after-day?
The US corporate media, all of them, supported Trump, hated all Democrats. People believe what they are told, especially by celebrity authorities on the news. I fervently agree with Dr. Brin's "anti-intellectual" opinion. Its common in the uneducated, and young people these days, especially those educated during Bush2's "no child left behind" garbage agenda, are morbidly ignorant.
. . . and racism is very powerful, as, apparently, misogyny.
Kathy, sorry, while we are allies and agree overall, we disagree on every specific you just said. Every single one. Did mass media fail us? Sure. But the vast majority HAVE called DT a liar for years and exposed every incredible travesty... and that just made Fox gigle because it drove the MAGAS deeper into the very very profitable echo chamber Nuremberg rallies.
"Were the factual stories about women allowed to die in agony in Texas and Florida stories splashed across the world on all the networks, 24 hours day-after-day?"
Yes, they were. along with howls of "Abortion! Abortion! Abortion! Abortion! Abortion! Abortion! Abortion! Abortion! Abortion! Abortion! Abortion! Abortion! Abortion! Abortion! Abortion! Abortion! and Abortion!" ad infinitum.
Alas, YOU exemplify what went wrong. You and exactly you. Sorry. You mean well and you are right about every policy. And utterly wrong in your diagnosis of what went wrong. All that you say is We shoulda DOUBLED DOWN on what did not work.
You have either not read or not understood one single thing that I said in the main posting.
But I wish you well and hope we can see better days together.
@Dr Brin,
You're continuing to tell me to stop doing things I already don't do. And no, commiserating with others here about the Republicans' deplorable characteristics isn't the same thing as shrieking at them that they're deplorable.
You may think you've already told me ad nauseum what needs to be done, but all I come away with is, "Only talk about war on the civil service." That may be the most important reason to oppose Trump, but it's not the kind of argument that would have won voters that we lost on Nov 5. IMHO, it would have turned people off every bit as much as talking about a good economy did. The truth is that the voters wanted change and weren't open to any kind of "stay the course" message.
I get that "Daddy is always wrong," which means I will simply continue to do what I would have done anyway, no matter what Lord Julius does (including making obscure references to Cerebus). I'll continue to post here about other things, because I appreciate this community, and do learn things from it.
Y'know, you just ranted at everyone here who continues to be interested enough in your opinion to keep visiting this site and told them to fuck off. That doesn't seem to be a great method of coalition building. Just sayin'. If absolutely no one gets what you think you're communicating, maybe "almost everyone" isn't the problem?
And:
“Where once it never rained till after sundown,
By eight a.m. the morning fog had flown...”
A horrible liberty nightmare of meddling control.
Now, you're just being ornery. The point is "If we're entering a dark age, keep the legend alive so that it might one day bear fruit again." It's not about weather control. I have to explain that?
"Now, I'm--whatayacall--half finished."
Y'know, I can only speak for myself, but I'll bet there are others who understood perfectly well how awful a new Trump administration would be, but simply didn't think it would happen. I mean, I always had that nagging, "It could turn out..." feeling in the back of my head, but it was a night terror that I could relegate to the part of the brain that goes, "We'll deal with that if we ever have to. Hopefully, we won't."
Many of us are now horrified that it has come to pass, and it's not because we didn't know how bad it would be until now. It's because we are just coming to terms with actually having to think about and plan for it. And none of the options look good (except hypnotically transporting myself to 1977 or seeking out the Infinity Stones, of course).
We're in a state of shock, and it hasn't worn off yet. Many, myself definitely included, are probably lashing out in self-defense, saying things that we wouldn't say in normal times. I love conversing with (most of) you here. Don't mistake utter confusion and despair for enmity.
Dr. Brin ignores the turnout in 2020 was very high across the board due to COVID restrictions regarding in-person gatherings.
Those restrictions led to much higher levels of absentee and early voting. The very same things that the GOP forbids in the states they control.
2020 did not have more engaged voters. 2020 did not have more enthusiasm.
2024 did not have legions of disappointed Democrats crossing party lines.
2024 just went back to the norm of GOP voter suppression. The House would be Democratic if SCOTUS had not allowed the new gerrymander in NC.
2020 was the anomaly, not 2016 and 2024.
It isn't the messaging, it is the mechanics of voting where the government doesn't want voters.
howls of "Abortion! Abortion! Abortion! Abortion! Abortion! Abortion! Abortion! Abortion! Abortion! Abortion! Abortion! Abortion!
And yet, abortion amendments passed in all but two states that had them on the ballot (Nebraska and Florida), even states which Trump won. So, even Trump many voters must have voted "yes" on abortion rights. Even in heavily Hispanic Arizona and Nevada.
There are broken links on the "Second flash bit" -- The links include the edit link, and might work for David, but for other folk it just redirects to something useless generic page instead of https://davidbrin.blogspot.com/2024/11/joe-mark-do-these-now-my-own-post.html
LH SO? Jesus are you truly unable to see how what you just said proved MY point?
"and told them to fuck off. That doesn't seem to be a great method of coalition building." Again and again Wrong. As YOU illustrate, no one changes their bad habits without shock-intervention. Bad outcomes can persuade some people to re-adjust their assumptions. But not liberals. Not most of them. They DOUBLE DOWN on what did not work.
And refuse to re-conceptualize tactics even in the face of overwhelming evidence of failure. While some of my rudeness may arise out of utter frustration, it is also the only thing left when every polite intevention has failed with a delusional loved-one.
Oh and King Arthur, like King Solomon, was a twit who did nothing NOTHING to ensure decent succession or consent of the governed or anything whatsoever to ensure that good times would last. Whatever his origins he became excuse-propaganda for feudalism.
I prefer Machiavelli. If my Republic falls, despite my desperate labors, I will fight from within the new despotism to shine some light.
thanks drf
Hello again. Stupid election pulled me back into this nonsense. What can I say, summer is over and I’m spending too much time indoors. Of course I didn’t vote, but I’ll give you a few observations just for fun.
Kamala Harris was a good candidate? LOL. She was so fake, so astroturfed, so scripted, so unable to sound like a real person, a literal “diversity hire”, unwilling to have unedited, free-form discussions in forums that might challenge her. She came across an empty suit PR lady who was way out of her depth but for some reason thought it was “her time” to be president. I guess not. Find somebody more qualified, somebody who won an actual democratic process instead of being selected, an experienced heavyweight who wasn’t so phony, and Democrats might have won the election. But who knows.
You may hate Trump, but he is surely the most amazing political phenomenon in American history. The whole story arc, the way just about everyone arrogantly dismissed him and mocked him in ‘16, wrote him off as finished after ‘20, threw everything they could at him to destroy him, up to and including bullets, which by some miracle he ducked by a fraction of an inch—followed by the “redemption” of winning and proving the entire expert class wrong again, being triumphantly welcomed at Madison Square Garden—it all starts to look rather mythological and metaphysical.
My take is that ordinary people watch all this and they root for him, because they see him as a flawed but real person, an underdog fighting an elite establishment that despises him, condescends to them and insists they know better than them about everything. When he humiliates them they vicariously feel like they are too. Liberal humiliations, tears and meltdowns are such good entertainment, dontcha know? Watch some of the video compilations of notable liberals predicting with *absolute confidence* that Trump won’t be president—politicians, pundits, analysts, celebrities, moguls—you name it (e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CKwRRBkSH5s ). What arrogant buffoons. If you don’t find it entertaining, maybe it will be educational. To be more successful, carefully observe how these people behave and do the opposite. But from the comments here, it sounds like many want to triple-down on the “How can these idiots not do what we want? They are such *ists and nerd-haters!”. Yeah, sorry, but you guys ain’t that smart.
I saw our host’s most recent predictions, the four scenarios, one of which absolutely won’t happen because Putin won’t allow it or something, but of course it’s the one that did happen. In our host’s world, MAGA is apparently taking marching orders from Putin and Ukraine is the last hope to save western civilization. LOOL. At this point are even regular posters starting to suspect that we’re dealing with a bit of a delusional crackpot?
Finally, the obvious common denominator of Trump’s administration is they’re fanatically pro-Israel; the kind of people who want to bomb Iran, ban criticism of Israel, etc. The specter of zio-fascism is one reason I’m not celebrating Trump’s win. I’m also not a fan of his environmental policies. Owning libs is fun and all, but now he actually has to produce results or it will be on him. I don’t think it matters that much though; the decline of the American empire is baked in, and it’s just a question of who gets blamed for it.
Not sure if I’ll stick around and chat much since this place tends to just repeat the same points by the same people year after year, and I’m not really into the American political circus, but maybe I’ll check in another four months or four years. Later.
Larry,
...abortion amendments passed...
Run the numbers in those states and ask what happened to the Democratic faction next.
What were Democrats ACTUALLY trying to accomplish there?
At what cost where those accomplishments purchased?
I think it was in 2012 when Obama won his second term that I watched many conservatives work though their 'lessons learned' discussions. A great many of them thought they'd failed to express their message well enough and intended to double down on being conservative in 2016. I want to put out the idea that their effort actually failed even though the GOP won the election.
In 2012, the GOP convention came close to be overrun by a populist who had people putting together a sneaky strategy to undermine the results of primaries. Ron Paul's folks were quietly putting their people in place in state delegations with a plan to rebel on the convention floor and vote for him. Came close to happening, but ultimately failed leaving them to nominate Romney who later on many decided wasn't conservative enough.
The plan for 2016 was to push a message that would have appealed to a smaller segment of Americans than the one they pushed in 2012. Remember how many candidates they went through in 2016? Their plan devised in 2012-3 from the failed election didn't even make it past their own primaries. Trump emerged and the best the 'planners' could do we bend their brains to believe he was the conservative they had wanted all along.
But no. Trump was another populist. Unlike Ron Paul, though, he didn't have to rig a convention floor fight. He had to prep for the never-Trump folks staging the inverse revolution in 2016 instead.
------
If Democrats double down on their failed 2024 effort, I predict they will generate their own populists who will take them over by 2028 or 2032. Don't double down. Comprehend how you f*cked up and fix it.
In 2016, I remember then-radio host Norman Goldman telling Bernie supporters that they would eventually have the numbers to take over the Democratic Party, but that they just weren't there yet.
Alfred Differ:
Comprehend how you f*cked up and fix it.
This will sound like snark, but I'm really asking.
Was running on the abortion issue a mistake, or a winning strategy? I mean, Harris lost the presidential election, but in many of the same states she lost, pro-choice ballot initiatives won. Dr Brin thinks that by hammering abortion, Democrats turned off Catholic voters, including Hispanics, and that makes sense in a vacuum. But protecting abortion rights won on the ballots in so many states, including states that went for Trump, including heavily Hispanic Arizona and Nevada. That suggests to me that whatever cost Harris's or Democrats voters was not abortion.
Didn't see this embedded reply until I looked back upwards.
LH SO? Jesus are you truly unable to see how what you just said proved MY point?
Yes, I am that stoopid that I don't see how Democrats underperforming the pro-abortion initiatives shows that the voters who voted pro-choice but anti-Harris were turned off by Democrats' support for abortion rights.
Argh. ProChoice won in ballot initiatives on its MERITS. It was going to happen anyway because those who cared about the issue swung left. But when a presidential campaign harped and harped and harped and harped on it, to the exclusion of almost anything else (except howling "racists! Sexists!") it bugged a lot of voters.
Carumba, not only does it help prove my point, there is no way that it even remotely logically COULD prove your point, Larry.
Yep. Joy Reid at MSNBC preferred Bernie.
But do they have the numbers yet? I don't think so. I don't think they will unless the other factions shrink leaving the Dems with less effective power AND the ability to choose candidates many see as from a more extreme wing. This isn't a wise political strategy.
Centralizing the abortion issue was a mistake. I get that many saw it as a lever to drive more people in to vote, but I think they missed the fact that the same lever would drive others away in significant numbers. In hindsight, they should have let the states deal with abortion and left it at that.
As yourself what was more important. Winning the abortion amendment in FL or winning the WH.
I've said it before that there is no consensus regarding what to do about abortion. ALL politicians should run from the subject because WE don't agree on some pretty fundamental rights.
It's not just abortion. Democrats are a coalition held together by old duct tape. There are a lot of topics where we don't agree with each other, but we can overlook them as long as no one is rubbing our noses in them.
For example, I can vote with Democrats even though I know a lot of my current allies would kill the golden goose underlying our market economy if they had sufficient power to do it. I just convince myself they don't actually have that power or the current ambition to do it.
???
Occam's Razor says they were turned off by something else that Democrats did. It's not like there aren't other suspects.
I think that a lot of people watched many states remove restrictions on abortion and realized it's not a federal issue anymore and were really bothered by a presidential campaign continuing to harp on it.
Harris hammering abortion ignored the fact that in most states abortion was a separate ballot measure - and not tied directly to the Presidential race at hand. Which left the economy, and especially inflation.
In his revised edition of "Stocks for the Long Run" Jeremy Siegel included a quick wrap up of the covid stimulus, in which he offered a useful tool to predict inflation: Increase in M2 minus increase in GDP. Two rounds of stimulus increased M2 12%. The economy actually grew - unevenly - 3% during covid, so 9% inflation was to be expected. The first package averted a depression/recession. The 2nd package contributed quite a bit to inflation. At the time Larry Summers saw this coming and warned Biden against passing it. He was excoriated by progressives who were living in Stephanie Kelton induced MMT fantasy land. To those living paycheck-to-paycheck without investible assets inflation functions as a brutally regressive tax. How Democrats cannot be extra sensitive to this amazes me. Inflation blew up on Biden's watch and fairly or not Harris caught the brunt of voter backlash. Future economic predictions of Trump's policies being inflationary couldn't compete with the lived past.
The good news is this doesn't represent an ideological shift right.
One thought on the border - we do have a process, convoluted, that some immigrants do attempt to follow. Allowing what is effectively "line-jumping" undermines these processes and whatever reforms we can think up.
Comparing election results for 2020, and 2024, two things seem clear to me:
1. the turnout was about the same: very few people stayed at home.
2. swings to Trump were everywhere and, in places, *massive*. (+7% and greater in... the Bay area!?!?). Again, even in local instances, there seems to be little change in turnout.
The overall conclusion is that Trump's message resonated with more people than did Harris', and were actually attractive. As to how such a (to me) patently awful, self-destructive set of policies managed that is going to take a lot more analysis and conversation than you'll find in one place.
The weirdly inspirational thing about the current situation is that the fossil-fueled oligarchy that has been underwriting the lunacy is about to have its lunch stolen, and they know it.
I wish I could convey in typing how you just provided the tension-relieving bout of laughter that I realize I've needed for the past two days. Thanks, dude. Seriously.
mcsandberg chiming in to agree with our host. Yeah, that'll show me! Glad to bring peace to the family and all.
In psychohistory models (like mine at at least), the biggest influencing forces are interpersonal/societal/zeitgeist stuff. As in Conway's Game of Life, it's the neighbouring cells that determine outcomes and actions. The Rational Actors theory was pretty much swept into the dust bin on Nov 5.
@WilliamG, what you say about inflation makes sense, but since inflation was a worldwide phenomenon, how can it be attributable specifically to a Biden spending bill? And is it not true that we in the United States had more of a soft landing than most of the industrialized world?
One thought on the border - we do have a process, convoluted, that some immigrants do attempt to follow. Allowing what is effectively "line-jumping" undermines these processes and whatever reforms we can think up.
The gay Mexican-American Trumpist whose Chicago Tribune op-ed was discussed a few days ago made that very point. It sounded satirical at first blush, but I can understand the feeling from a certain point of view. Basically, the perceived Biden/Harris open border plan bothers him because it treats new illegal aliens better than the country treated his mother when she came here illegally.
Many want Apocalypse Later; that is to say, after they’re gone, if the world should also be gone it won’t bother them all that terribly much.
They care about their people, yet after they are dead they have no control. Trump replied to a question re economics that
“I won’t be here”—a summation of a common disinterest in the fate of the world after one has departed the scene.
Talk to religionists: they will express very similar sentiments to “I won’t be here.”
“I’ve lived my life.”
“I have taken care of my people.”
“Prophecies must be fulfilled.”
“The world must be punished for its iniquities”...
in most states abortion was a separate ballot measure - and not tied directly to the Presidential race at hand.
Except that Republicans are trying to pass a national ban, and evangelical groups are pushing to have a fertilized egg declared a full citizen. So while protecting a woman's access to pregnancy-related health care might be currently up to the states, it matters a great deal who is elected to congress and the presidency.
Sorry, but of all the myriad issues that pundits and Bill Maher and actual voters claim doomed Kamala Harris's election--pronouns and "Latinx", and immigration, and inflation, and talking about a good economy during inflation, and she didn't give press conferences, and Gaza!, and warmongering in Ukraine, and "woke"--of all the negatives, it seemed to me that the abortion issue was the one on which the voters did support them.
It blows my mind that that issue is being swift-boated into the thing that specifically lost Democrats the election.
I suppose that, as a Chicago Tribune subscriber, I can provide the service of access to that gay Mexican-American Trumpist op-ed. Unfortunately, there's probably a paywall, but I'll quote the section (it's hardly the entire thing) where he speaks to his opposition as a Latino. He mentions a lot of issues there, none of which is abortion.
https://www.chicagotribune.com/2024/11/13/opinion-democrats-latino-voters-donald-trump/
...
Which leads us to Latinos. Democrats, we are not Latinx or Latine; we are Latinos and Latinas. Stop trying to change our language and our culture. The Biden-Harris administration’s disastrous handling of the southern border was one of the major issues for most Americans. Americans in Chicago and around the U.S. watched how veterans and other homeless and needy citizens suffered as local governments spent billions for newly arrived migrants. Americans saw Trump secure the border without any congressional approval.
Seeing my undocumented family members, who have been in the U.S. for more than 20 years, work, pay taxes and buy their own homes with zero benefits, then watching millions of new migrants skip the line with government-funded help, only enflamed me and other Latinos like me. When my mother came to America as a single mother of two, she did not get any benefits. This election became personal. It was about my family!
My concerns go beyond just immigration. I am a U.S.-born Mexican American. We are the youngest demographic in the U.S. What matters to me and many Latinos like me are obtaining jobs, paying for the costs of living, buying a home, growing and helping our families, and making sure the American Dream is attainable and still alive. Over the last four years, all of that has become harder. If you think it hasn’t or haven’t felt it, consider yourself blessed. This situation clearly upset many other Latinos who broke from generational loyalty to Democrats.
...
>
Hmph. People who think like that always did so. I don't see it as the basis of a sudden conversion
Resentment and jealousy can be a strong motivator. This argument is so petty and zero sum (and the 'suck it up, sunshine' mindset is *not* limited to Latinos!) May as well argue that African immigrants should undergo a generation of two of menial service before they're deemed 'worthy' of citizenship.Those twenty years the writer' claims his family had to endure is a sunk cost. Why should later people have to incur it as well? Might as well argue that conditions should not improve.
... hmmm.
No one has said it was a sudden conversion.
If you visit any house of worship you will meet some who think that because they are expiring, so too is the world—sooner rather than later. Albeit it, naturally, they wish to put the End of themselves, and the Earth, off for as long as possible.
Trying to imagine someone I know saying, "My relatives were gassed at Auschwitz. Why should these young Jews get a free pass?" I can't really see it.
Centralizing the abortion issue was a mistake. I get that many saw it as a lever to drive more people in to vote, but I think they missed the fact that the same lever would drive others away in significant numbers.
The earlier votes in Kansas and Ohio probably made it look like a winning issue. And the fact that the expected red wave of 2022 didn't happen, seemingly because of the backlash to Dobbs.
In hindsight, they should have let the states deal with abortion and left it at that.
The Republicans are saying that they won't leave it at that, so we really can't.
As yourself what was more important. Winning the abortion amendment in FL or winning the WH.
Suppose you are a woman in Florida afraid of getting pregnant because you may be prosecuted for a miscarriage or left to die of an ectopic pregnancy. I can't say which is more important to her, but she certainly would want her bases covered that one might be accomplished in case the other is not.
I think many of the abortion protection initiatives were grass roots efforts. They weren't just about driving up Democratic votes. They were about protecting oneself from the damage that Republicans might do. The national Democrats may have tried to make hay out of them, but they didn't necessarily start the fire.
It's an extreme formulation of the writer's argument, but the logical conclusion (and a plea to consider the end consequences).
Still, I can see how someone going through harder times would be resentful of seeing someone else getting assistance.
It's easy to point out that Trump's deranged program is going to make things even worse for them (eg tax cuts lead to service cuts), but that's assuming that someone doing it tough has the energy to look further beyond next week and further up Maslowe's hierarchy.
Tony Fisk just mentioned "Maslow's Hierarchy"
And it dawned on me
THAT could be the problem
The USA has an awfully threadbare safety net -
Far too many of your people are right down on the bottom of the Hierarchy - worried about the basics - food, safety and shelter
These are the people who vote for "populists"
The solution is to move those people off the bottom rung
This unfortunately is NOT a quick fix
OGH's talk about "nerd hatred" is also important
But IMHO the key is in building security for the American worker
@Tony Fisk, I'm not dismissing the writer's point. It was one I hadn't considered before, but I can see a subset of voters thinking that way. I quoted the article in order to mention that that argument was out there.
And in the immediate context, to show that the writer, for all his Democrat-hatred, didn't mention abortion as a reason.
duncan cairncross:
Tony Fisk just mentioned "Maslow's Hierarchy"...
The solution is to move those people off the bottom rung...
But IMHO the key is in building security for the American worker
It's been evident for decades that people who poll as "The country is moving in the wrong direction" are feeling that anxiety.
In those same decades, pre-Trump, it's been Republicans insisting that anything resembling a safety net is "socialism" and must therefore be avoided. Democrats fail to address it when they buy into the Republican framing and think they have to be Republican-lite. But Republicans are the ones who insist on the framing.
Voting for Republicans because of economic insecurity is like... well, like voting for Republicans because you don't approve of support for Israel. Obviously, people do do both things, but they're not going to get the result they're after.
The bottom two rungs of Maslow's Hierarchy (sustenance and safety) are almost entirely local. This answers Dem's vexation about why voters ignore their Kerry-esque pontifications. It also goes some way towards explaining tribalism, often wrongly labeled as racism.
COVID took John Conway from us. We'll be totaling the losses for 'generations' (pardon the pun).
Tony Fisk said...
"Comparing election results for 2020, and 2024, two things seem clear to me:
1. the turnout was about the same: very few people stayed at home.
2. swings to Trump were everywhere and, in places, *massive*. (+7% and greater in... the Bay area!?!?). Again, even in local instances, there seems to be little change in turnout."
I don't quite see it like that. There was a bit over 5 million fewer total votes in 2024. Not drastically less, but significant.
Trump did make gains in some demographics, but massive? If that is so then he lost people in other demographics, because he only received about 2.3 million more votes in 2024 than he did in 2020.
The real killer for Harris was that she received nearly 7.4 million fewer votes than Biden did in 2020. That makes it seem pretty clear to me that the real problem is not that Trump got some of the Democratic voters to vote for him but that way too many democratic voters decided not to vote in this election.
@Larry Hart
Inflation depends on a country's money supply versus it's growth. So while it may have occurred globally that's really due to the size of the US economy and it's effect on everyone else. We have the biggest levers, so yes Biden made a mistake. It should also be noted that the lever to cause inflation - in this case direct stimulus - is much more potent than the lever to stop it. Banks effectively create money when they issue loans. (The fact a lot of loans around the world are also denominated in dollars makes US monetary policy globally important.) Raising interest rates eventually drives demand for loans down and causes loans coming due to exceed loans being issued - but this can take a while. This is why Greenspan, Bernacki, etc were always focused on jumping on inflation quickly - it is hard to contain. You are right that overall the US did well -Dems should have pushed employment numbers much harder! - but I would respectfully submit that the blue collar base the Democrats are losing has very local concerns - they don't seem to care, or may not have the time/energy to care about global events like other economies, Ukraine, etc.
@Larry Hart
Also raising interest rates to contain inflation can also cause GDP to decline if done incorrectly - too fast or too much. The Fed really does have a tough job!
BTW, whatever happened to J.D. Vance? Is he being kept at an undisclosed location?
Cherchez la Thiel.
WilliamG:
Inflation depends on a country's money supply versus it's growth.
True inflation, yes. But I see other considerations at work for the price increases we endured in and around 2021. Supply chain disruptions due to COVID caused the prices for lumber to rise (Remember when Republicans planned to run on lumber prices). If that was because of inflation, then those prices wouldn't have retreated. Gas and other energy prices responded to Russia's war in Ukraine and perceived instability in the Middle East. People put stickers of Joe Biden going "I did that," on gas pumps when gas was over $6 a gallon, but no one is doing so when I just bought gas for $2.85 last week. Eggs were scarce because of chickens being destroyed on account of bird flu. In all of these cases, prices recovered when the extraordinary circumstances were normalized.
To me, shocks to the world economy being responsible for temporary price shocks worldwide is more plausible than do attempts to explain that stimulus from an American president caused inflation in Europe and Asia.
Not to mention that administrations of both parties have been blowing up the deficit this entire century, but it's only considered a problem when the president is a Democrat.
@Larry Hart
@Larry Hart
I agree with pretty much everything you point out with one exception - I think you underestimate how much of the world's business is conducted in US dollars.
Did inflation really lose the election? That's the reason friends and relatives who voted for Trump are giving me. I can see their point - but only up to a point. I'm afraid we're all going to be very sorry for their decisions.
The use of US supplied weapons in Gaza has been given as an excuse for not voting, and the timing of the Hamas attack suggests a Putin plot to increase his chances to again play the game of empires on an easier level. Unfortunately, it worked. Will the accelerated delivery and reduced restrictions to Ukraine goad "Neo-Tsar" Vlad into something even "Drumph!" can't ignore?
I suspect the price increases in question were overwhelmingly the work of republican voters, though done for"Mammonite" reasons IOW, for a shitload of money.
For all the talk of the immigration issue, very rarely do I read an analysis of the fundamental hypocrisy that is at its foundation: that the business interests want cheap labor, and most of the people who shriek about about borders would shriek even louder about the economic consequences of suddenly removing all the people who were hired under the table. Consider this blatant hypocrisy from FL last year:
https://www.newsweek.com/republicans-urge-immigrants-stay-florida-fearing-new-laws-impact-1804640
Or here in Houston, where the horrific murder of a 12 year old girl by 2 undocumented Venezuelans was hyped up by the GOP, but they somehow always left out the fact that the these 2 men had jobs, and there were no consequences for whoever had knowingly hired them outside of the law. The prospect of employment is a major pull factor contributing to our immigration problem, but penalties for illegal employment on the employers are few, far between, and lack sufficient teeth. The politicians give lots of lip service to “law and order” but they haven’t been serious about actual enforcement.
I hear there’s a similar dynamic of hypocrisy in Europe with their migrant crises.
WilliamG:
I think you underestimate how much of the world's business is conducted in US dollars.
Maybe. But the timing of the price spikes and the recovery therefrom in lumber, gas, and eggs tells me a different story from "Government stimulus fueled inflation." There might be some of that at work also, which is why grocery prices are up a bit, but people were primed to think of inflation because of those huge (transient) spikes.
Did inflation really lose the election? That's the reason friends and relatives who voted for Trump are giving me.
I think some use inflation as an excuse so as not to admit the real reason they prefer Trump to Democrats.
Doubtless, there are also some who really voted to show dissatisfaction with the cost of living. If that's their real issue, then those people will be disappointed with what they voted for. I refer again to that gay Mexican-American's op-ed. "What matters to me and many Latinos like me are obtaining jobs, paying for the costs of living, buying a home, growing and helping our families, and making sure the American Dream is attainable and still alive. Over the last four years, all of that has become harder." Well, in case he hasn't noticed, that's been going on steadily since the 1980s. And the contributions to that--free trade, anti-unionism, crony capitalism--have been mostly driven by Republicans. Or at least by Democrats who felt like the only way to win votes was to accept Republican framing.
Trump's election will not help them on inflation any more than it will help the Abandon-Biden Arabs on Gaza. People are rightly engaged over their pet issues, but they then do the exact thing that will make it worse.
Actually, MCS glancingly is sort of rightKind of disgustingly. But that's part of it.
US had the lowest inflation in the industrial world while the Infrastructure Act etc spurred the greatest boom in US manufacturing since WWII, achieving what 40+ years of 'supply side' voodoo promised and never once delivered. And THAT message coulda worked.
US had the lowest inflation in the industrial world while the Infrastructure Act etc spurred the greatest boom in US manufacturing since WWII, achieving what 40+ years of 'supply side' voodoo promised and never once delivered. And THAT message coulda worked.
agreed. The very notion of agility or political 'judo' is anathema for the standard DP consultants, who reject any idea Not Invented Here.
I so hate the new Blogger system's refusal to put you back at the end of the comments thread and make you do THREE to FIVE actions in order to go back there.
US had the lowest inflation in the industrial world while the Infrastructure Act etc spurred the greatest boom in US manufacturing since WWII, achieving what 40+ years of 'supply side' voodoo promised and never once delivered. And THAT message coulda worked.
The absence of that suggests a fear of alienating the donor community.
“Some learn by observing others, some have to pee on the electric fence for themselves.” I expect lots of sparks will fly.
Less than 4 hours to launch. Both DT & Musk have gone down to Starbase to mug for the cameras. Crap, I hope they don't jinx it.
Nah Tim. Just liberal stoopidity
This is my theory on the people who voted to protect abortion rights at the state level, but didn't vote for Harris at the top of the ticket:
The DEMS said "abortion, abortion, abortion". The GOP said "states rights". So lots of people act as if the state level protections will be sufficient to protect them, so used other reasons to to determine the top of the ticket
As for the message at the top of the ticket, there wasn't enough empathy from the DEMS for the people who struggled. DT certainly got points for empathy, even he doesn't have any plans to improve things.
Empathy is apparently like sincerity in that "If you can fake that, you've got it made."
"Just liberal stoopidity"? I think there's also media stockholders with visions of tax cuts dancing in their heads... possibly with the old bedtime stories of class traitor Roosevelt they took with their Mother's milk.
This wasn't a decision by the voters, it was a decision by Congress and POTUS not to continue the emergency voting measures put in place to handle COVID. We are seeing a reversion to the mean of 2016, not a repudiation of Democratic values or candidates. We see less voters because we make it harder (again) to vote. This is a voter-supression story and not a voter enthusiasm story.
Anyone that thinks $2000 in federal money caused the inflation is smoking crack.
Inflation was caused first by the COVID effects to the supply chain, and when companies noticed that their profits went up they took it as a green light to scrape a much larger share of profits than before COVID. All the corporate quarterly reports BRAGGED about this.
And that message was pushed relentlessly by the Harris campaign, but was never heard in the mass media reports. The "liberal press" buried the message, not the Harris campaign. "Things are getting better because of the democrats" was utter missing from reporting, not from the messaging.
Now ask yourself who benefited from the message not getting to the audience.
prop load underway
No booster catch. Early guesses include tower damage during launch and/or a wonky turbine on one booster raptor.
Trump does a photo shoot at McDonalds, and they have an e-coli outbreak.
Trump does a photo shoot at Elon Musk's launch, and it fizzles.
One more time has to be enemy action. :)
Trump might not care much what occurs, as long as he is King of the Mountain. He thinks:
“I’ve lived my life”
“I’ve done my bit”
“I’ve looked after my people”
“It’s been a full life”
The median age for demise is c. 80; he won’t be too unhappy if the world should end roughly around the time he does.
He is a solipsist.
I concur with Matthew: I certainly saw the economic message being pushed hard by Harris and Biden on Twitter (however, I was following them, and have a crap filter on hard...)
The message might have been a little general for people looking at the weekly bills.
Trump sees failure as unforgiveable. Is this where Musk gets ousted?
"I feel your pain. It feels... good."
It's been suggested before that successful predators do develop empathy with their prey, the better to know how to predict them.
Sympathy allows prey to remove painful thorns from predatory paws, because... ouchie!
Trump may have the former (I'm not convinced). He has absolutely none of the latter.
Tim H I suppose that parses.But very few make enough distinctions among TYPES of aristocracy. Just as the recurring US Civil War featured versions of confederate MAGAs - lumpen proletariate - eagerly hating snooty urban-educated, on behalf of ing or slavers or Rubert Murdoch & Putin... there are lumpen aristocrats who are comfortably rich but not members of the Illuminati. A major Liberal mistake is not to drive a wedge there, too.
that's "(K)ing or slavers...
These days, when people talk about "empathy", they almost always really mean sympathy. That's what you've got it made if you can fake it.
"We've known for centuries that 'oxygen' is a misnomer, but what can you do?"
Coming soon: claims that the 34-times felon committed voter fraud. Millions of missing votes, bullet ballot weirdness, Trump's strange promise of no need to vote. These claims will surface as soon as the pain of Trump's demented policies bite. We've been told not to say it, but that's Michelle Obama's failed strategy of 'if they go low then we go high'. The correct game-theory strategy is 'if they go low then we go lower'.
Claiming voter fraud isn't necessarily true - though I wouldn't put it past him - but it will save national face.
LH: So not only has he Mule powers, he's also got a reverse Midas touch. When he made his deal with the devil, he failed to check the small print.
I think that anyone looking for the cause of failure is making a mistake. You had a robust system with unaddressed problems that finally had more things go wrong than it could resist. If several things had been done differently you would have survived this time. But unless underlying problems were addressed you would have had a failure sooner or later.
There are two separate things that have to be done. One is ask, what tactics are needed to defeat the fascists this time? The second is what changes in the institutions and the values of your country are needed to prevent the return of the fascists or other tools of the oligarchs and to check the oligarchs.
The main failure of the opponents of fascism was complacency. Not on the part of all but on the part of too many. The Biden administration tried to return to normal before the threat had been dealt with. And the biggest failure was in the Department of Justice.
A miracle he ducked and was shot in the ear? Or a demonic sort of luck, c.f. the Wolfschanze 1944?
At any rate, can you provide any evidence that Trump’s escape from assassination was a miracle? Anyone can post any hypothesis here: ETs saved Trump in July.
Harpies...
Dr Brin does something that he's never done before:
He attempts to escape the progressive information bubble and admits that he 'might have been wrong' about some aspects of our recent election, all while making some mostly true points about the US economy, the current housing crisis and unrestricted immigration.
The USA does have, "right now, the best economy in the whole world", but only if you lack a long term memory, as the 2023 US growth rate was an anemic 1.5% (aka 'the best in the world right now'), as compared to the much healthier 10% US growth rate of the 1980s.
There's also the current US housing shortage, one exacerbated by the unhoused 10 to 12 million migrants that the Biden Administration ushered in over the last 3 years -- on top of another 20+ million previously existent migrants -- adding up to a massive 30+ million migrant burden on an already threadbare US welfare, law enforcement, healthcare & educational safety net.
True, the inflation rate has technically 'decreased', but it's inarguable that US food & commodity prices have never been higher, and this is also why the reactionary right rises in both the US & EU, and all the 'Messaging Adjustments' in the world won't address these very real & growing problems.
The common man is not half so stupid as you believe him to be, and he now knows that further attempts at 'messaging' are just more lies told by certain shameless liars that he would happily murder if sufficiently provoked, down to the last man, regardless of their intellectual & nerdy pretensions.
Diversity is Strength; Genitalia aren't Real; Deviance is Normal; Obedience is Liberty; and Resource Confiscation isn't Theft.
These lies must & will end, the sooner the better.
Best
_________
As a case in point, the State of California (which currently has the second highest petrol prices in the USA) has scheduled a 35% price & tax increase in just 6 weeks under the insane belief that the California consumer will celebrate this new tax with obedience.
California (which just voted 40% red & 60% blue) will turn 'red' by the next election, or perhaps it will burn much much sooner, as soon as the California consumer realizes how badly he's been played by his own self-interested managerial class.
You are a medical practitioner. You should know that sexes are fuzzy categories. We have to treat those who do not neatly fit into two big categories with decency. And transsexuality is probably a neurological form of being intersexed. Right now they are scapegoats for the right, a marginalized group that bullies have chosen to attack.
Remember those deportation concentration camps ?
Well they are gonna be deepintheheartof Texas. Yee-hah!
https://www.newsweek.com/texas-offers-donald-trump-huge-ranch-mass-deportation-plan-1988766
Texas Offers Donald Trump Huge Ranch for Mass Deportation Plan
Texas Land Commissioner Dawn Buckingham has offered President-elect Donald Trump the use of a 1,402-acre ranch in Starr County, on the U.S.-Mexico border, for the construction of deportation facilities.
Auschwitz-Birkenau camp was only 346 acres
But then everything's bigger in Texas, including the concentration camps.
@locumranch - Man I want some of your 1980s instead of the one I lived through
I the reality the rest of this blogger forum lived through, real GDP growth in the 1980s was 3.1% (less than the 1970s and the 1990s).
https://www.crestmontresearch.com/docs/Economy-GDP-R-By-Decade.pdf
In our reality, Republicans won the 1980, 84, and 88 elections, and focused on breaking unions and tax cuts for the rich. What happened differently in yours? Did Carter invade Iran, and win a second term, and use cheap oil to allow the US to focus on building those solar-power satellites that Scientific American was always writing about, driving exponential growth from free energy?
On another topic ... one of Dr. Brin's thesis's from _Existence_ is that marketplaces of ideas can be designed where people with insight and expertise can have their ideas amplified while loud posts from those with no knowledge can be
This week's blog comments provide a nice juxtaposition of posts ... we have WilliamG's posting going into some depth on how fiscal policy coming out of covid impacted the money supply and ultimately inflation.
And on the other side of the coin we have a post that states that "it's inarguable that US food & commodity prices have never been higher" ... which is both completely true, and completely meaningless*.
Inflation is almost always a positive number - which means that each year, all prices go up (and that means that, unless there's some massive increase in supply, food and commodity prices also go up).
The only time in last hundred years that wasn't true (other than a blip in 1950 due to massive positive supply/demand shock (GIs moving from army to factories + government cutting wartime spending)), were during the recession of 1920/21, and the great depression.
*If what locumranch meant was that the rate of inflation has never been higher - then its not a meaningless statement, just wrong. The rate of inflation, in the Bidden years (3-7%) was far less than the rate during Reagan's presidency (3-13%), or during Nixon or Carter's administrations.
If he HAD been assassinated, would you have considered it a miracle that the assassin managed the kill-shot from such a distance?
@C-Plus,
Without reading the original post (sober for 13 months now), I'd have to guess that the "true and meaningless" interpretation is what was meant. Sure, the price of a movie ticket or a comic book has never been higher in all of history. That statement was also a true statement during Trump's term, or Obama's, or W's, etc, etc. Volatile commodities like gas have prices that fluctuate in both directions, but inflation itself--higher prices reflecting a less-valuable dollar--goes in only one direction except in very rare circumstances in which ordinary people are worse off than they are during mild inflation.
Silly question: what if Latin American countries don't want and will not accept deportees from the USA?
What do we do then?
Thanks C-Plus. I really don't have time for a jibberer who is too cowardly to offer atty -escrowed wager stakes over fundemental, directly fact-checkable assertions.
One thing I have found bizarre. UNEMPLOYMENT used to be the absolute fundamental economic-political issue. It's been so great under the Dems' boom in restored US manufacturing and infrastructure repair that - alas - the lower middle class who benefitted now take it for granted. Like increased wages that translate into what matters, actual purchasing power.
Interesting assessment of Russia's nukes.
Russia's SLBMs, tactical nukes, and road-mobile ICBMs work best and are probably the easiest to maintain. I predict that they work at rates comparable to NATO and China.
I predict that 20-50% of Russia's silo-based ICBMs don't work. There were eyewitness accounts back in the early 1990s of Russian silos flooding with water, although those eyewitness accounts are 30+ years old. That combined with limited money and high corruption means that a huge chunk of them either don't work or aren't as effective and reliable.
75-90% of Russia's nukes in storage don't work. Most of them are literally waiting to be disarmed.
This means that at minimum, around 2/3 of Russia's total nuclear arsenal is not working.
But which 2/3?
Granted, three nukes are enough to wreck your country and ruin your day, it's awfully hard for the Russians to plan an actual strategic integrated operating plan (SIOP) for fighting WWIII when odds are any individual warhead won't work, or worse blow up when launching.
Has anyone seen how jacked the 70 year old RFK Jr. is without his shirt on?
Can anyone explain how this anti-vaxxer manages to get so ripped without massive injections of HGH and steroids?
Fun fact, all flatearthers are transphobes.
The US spends about $75 billion a year on its nuclear arsenal. Russia spends about $10 billion. The Russian total military budget is about $145 billion.
Completely orthogonal to the serious discussions on this board, I just finished a novel which had a rather slow start (in my opinion). I was considering putting it down and starting another when I saw this blub on the back cover:
"Voyage with him, and you'll see such sights, hear, taste, touch, and smell such strangeness, you'll never think the same again." -- David Brin
Naturally I was obliged to finish it then.
It turned out to be a pretty good book. Thanks for the recommendation, Dr. Brin. Although I don't think I've changed my thinking that much... :)
https://www.threads.net/@stonekettle
Big shoutout today to all the people, Left and Right, currently on my TV and socials crying about how they just didn't think it would be THIS bad.
Congratulations on finally waking from your decades long coma.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12476264/
True to his name, Lloyd_F self-identifies as a shameless promoter of left-wing antiscientific misinformation, as the above NIH link clearly demonstrates that "the true prevalence of intersex (transgenderism) is seen to be about 0.018%, almost 100 times lower than Fausto-Sterling's estimate of 1.7%".
This is yet another example of the Left's reliance on the 'Big Lie technique', as our resident Flack insists that the statistically insignificant occurrence of the intersex birth category somehow 'proves' the insane ideological assertion that "Deviance is Normal".
That the Left routinely rejects mathematically-derived terms like 'norm', 'normal' and 'normality' -- along with other commonly used terms like 'woman' -- this is enough to prove that we are being addressed by disingenuous liars, double-dealers & con artists.
This is also why the UNEMPLOYMENT marker no longer serves as a credible economic indicator, as this term has been 'redefined' so often as to be rendered entirely useless, as current official stats claim a record-low US unemployment rate of ** 4.1% **, while the actual percentage of non-participating US 'working age' males now approaches ** 30% **.
By the very act of lying to us so often, this is the wherefore & why the Common Man no longer believes anything that our so-called experts & eggheads have to say.
Best
______
Addendum:
I know the following information will difficult for the typical soy-fed couch potato to accept, especially those who choose to define themselves by their intellects & abstract value systems, but RFK Jr gets his big physical muscles by engaging in actual physical exercise (which causes muscle hypertrophy), eliminating excess body fat (which is the source of endogenous male estrogens) & avoiding soy products (which are a source of exogenous estrogen).
Is RFK Jr so ripped because he drinks his own piss, or was that Dr. Oz? It's so easy to get confused.
Blah blah. L is back to raving without even the 5% discursive content he was offering for a while. Dig it fellow. You... are... not... well.
The Russian total military budget is about $145 billion.
Before or after the generals and oligarchs took their share?
RFK Jr. admits Testosterone Replacement Therapy use, which is considered similar to steroid use by the medical community. He denies true steroid use, but his unlawful steroid abuse was mentioned in his divorce case.
So will he replace fluoride with steroids in the water?
Vladimir Putin? Same.
You are aware that statistical significance is a measure of certainty and has nothing to do with importance. I am uncertain what the true proportion of people intersexed are or within that the proportion of transsexuals. I do know that it is wrong to use them as punching bags as MAGA is doing.
That was from a quick search. Another search quoting former foreign minister Andrei Kozyrev claims a fifth of the last 20 years budget.
Empower our precious bodily fluids?
Tony Fisk:
I certainly saw the economic message being pushed hard by Harris and Biden on Twitter ...
The message might have been a little general for people looking at the weekly bills.
Yeah, well Republicans have been telling me for decades that it's not the government's responsibility to interfere in the free market, and that losers are just part of Darwin's plan, or some such.
I'm realizing now that the Republicans' getting Democrats to accept the Rs' framing is only half of their insidious strategy. They make sure the Republican framing is accepted by all, and then get the Democrats to take the blame within that framework.
Thus, Democrats are now considered the ones responsible for outsourcing and offshoring and corporate greed, not to mention warmongering.
Gotta give credit where credit is due. Republicans are very good at being very bad.
Gotta give credit where credit is due. Republicans are very good at being very bad.
I suppose it is some form of natural selection. If being a gas-lighting, sexist, racist, corrupt narcissist is what brings you power, more decent people will disappear, and soon there is a competition between vile people.
Larry Hart:
"I think some use inflation as an excuse so as not to admit the real reason they prefer Trump to Democrats."
Yeah - that's the most depressing part for me personally, I've intentionally dropped a couple of 20+ year friends who were pretty clearly looking for cover to be racists and let some comments slip after a few drinks. Sad, but don't need them in my life and not looking back.
Matthew:
"Anyone that thinks $2000 in federal money caused the inflation is smoking crack."
The stimulus - 5 trillion total according to the NYT -was much larger than the $2000 check per household - more on the order of $38,000 per household. Was it needed? I think round one did a lot of immediate good. I think round two saw some of the corporate profiteering you mentioned and other shenanigans. I think the infrastructure project is great - unfortunately for Biden/Harris this involves a large initial outlay with benefits realized over years - Biden certainly didn't get enough credit for it now and may not ever.
Just trying to understand reasons Trump won by so much. I don't expect to agree with or like the reasons - I don't think there were any valid reasons to vote for Trump - including inflation - although this one at least has more logic than most. The 2nd stimulus (900 million) I think we could have done without.
And I can't speak for O'bama's Treasuray Secretary Larry Summers, but I'm not smoking crack!
Up at the Top o' the Thread I put forward a few concepts that I think represented part of the thinking of the electorate. The responses in general have been thoughtful. Not always concurring, but I learn from different perspectives. Sometimes I find them a bit out of focus, but if I mentally squint and pay attention I can see the picture reasonably well.
As to the question of whether lessons have been learned, well, perhaps. But when OGH tosses out :
"FBI agents and military officers and scientists and civil servants who took huge pay cuts in order to rebuild infrastructure and keep a complex civilization running are all raped and eviscerated. "
I do wonder. Yes, it is hyperbole. Yes, it is written with a passionate belief. But my points on message, messenger and common language still stand. People who have been around CB for donkey years recognize the actual meaning. Casual visitors will wonder what the hell that's all about.
Tacitus
Well I'm sure he will find a job at Fox News:
https://www.cnbc.com/2024/11/21/trump-ag-pick-matt-gaetz-says-hes-withdrawing.html
Trump AG pick Matt Gaetz says he’s withdrawing
Good News: This failure to get an AG approved makes Trump a lame duck even before he is inaugurated.
Bad News: The ethics report will never see the light of day.
WIlliamG
Just trying to understand reasons Trump won by so much. I don't expect to agree with or like the reasons -
First of all, as the numbers still come rolling in, the size of Trump's win wasn't all that. Last I heard, he has less than 50% of the popular vote, and will only have beaten Harris by one or two million. I don't expect any states to flip or for Harris to catch up in popular vote, but the idea that Trump has a mandate from some sort of landslide is just Republican framing.
They also claimed a mandate for W when he lost the popular vote, won Florida by less than a thousand votes, and had an equally-divided Senate.
The Republican motto might as well be, "We tricked you into voting for us. Now, fuck off!"
I don't think there were any valid reasons to vote for Trump - including inflation - although this one at least has more logic than most.
Inflation is a reason for wanting something different. However, we were already heading in the right direction, and the economy had stabilized well before Biden dropped out.
Trump's stated policies would make inflation worse, not better. In a perversion of Stonekettle's observation, voters apparently don't mind the inflation they ascribe to Democrats. They just want Republicans to be responsible for it.
The 2nd stimulus (900 million) I think we could have done without.
Voters aren't angry about the stimulus*. In fact, they credit Trump for the checks with his name on them and probably don't remember that Biden was president for the second round.
More than the individual checks, I thought it was important to pay businesses to keep paying their employees so that those employees were still there when the economy recovered. Also so the employees didn't lose health coverage.
* "Stimulus" in that context is another term that bugs me because that's not what the word means. Once again, I guess, "We've known for centuries that 'oxygen' is a misnomer, but what can you do?"
Kathy, I have seen more articles in the last week about the negative effect of Trumps proposed policies. from tariffs, to the need for immigrant labor than I ever saw during the election. It is like they were scared to publish these well written and researched pieces during the election.
Tacitus is trying and his POV is appreciated. Even though it boils down to "Forget about substance and facts; it is appearances that matter."
"while the actual percentage of non-participating US 'working age' males now approaches ** 30% **."
- so why do think that the two statistics are closely related? There are students, early retirees, prisoners and disabled in that non-participating category. The population is getting on average older (so two of those categories can definitely be expected to increase) and there is now a demand for skilled workers and a reluctance by many businesses to train workers at their expense. You know to show a detailed breakdown of that statistic (and to verify its accuracy) to show that it is in fact meaningful.
And yet, this part seems to be spot-on:
You'll peer through that tube to find excuses.
Do Trump's actual proposals for top appointments not give you pause? Could Kamala's or Hillary's have possibly been as bad for the future of our country?
Dr. Brin argues that I am 'not (mentally) well' and I concede that this allegation may be true if only in terms of our host's unrealistic & idealistic belief system, as I too was once subject to various unrealistic & idealistic delusions until 'enlightened' by empiric observation, the scientific method & my lived experience.
One only need to turn on the morning news to prove the unreal nature of so many popular contemporary fictions.
First, the impartial nature of the Rule-of-Law: Muslim ICC prosecutor formally charges prominent Israeli Jews with 'Crimes against Humanity'.
That sounds awfully 'impartial', don't it? Plus we know it's 'impartial' because the same Muslim (in all fairness) issued the same charges against a deceased Muslim agitator, too, who will most certainly be prosecuted in the hereafter.
Second, the US legal principle of 'Due Process' and 'Innocent until Proven Guilty': Trump's cabinet picks are all potential rapists.
Based on NO physical evidence, NO due process, NO charges filed & the only evidence being unsubstantiated memories from the long long ago which are suddenly 'recovered' after money changes hands. Prominent Dems trot out this hoary whorey chestnut quite regularly, as in the case of the Duke lacrosse team & almost every male SCOTUS confirmation hearing in recent history.
Third, our heroically impartial US Intelligence Service: Multiple US Intelligence operatives resign in the wake of Trump's election, and -- late breaking -- FBI Director Wray & HSS Mayorkas refuse to testify before Congress today !!!
But... But.... the 'impartial Rule-of-Law' and the US legal principle of 'Due Process' and 'Innocent until Proven Guilty'. Prominent Dems have long argued that only the 'guilty' fear the impartial Rule-of-Law & Due Process, while the innocent would never 'resign' or flee from unjust prosecution, so (by their own argument) it follows that these fleeing Intelligence operatives are obviously obviously guilty.
I write this as I watch reports of Matt Gaetz's recent nomination to high government office being withdrawn due to similar unsubstantiated allegations, and I find this especially ironic since these partisan paragons of virtue will soon to be subject to the same impartial jurisprudence.
Today's News will be even funnier after Trump appoints Matt Gaetz to the DOJ Attorney General position as a RECESS APPOINTMENT without any vetting by any nominating process whatsoever.
It will be glorious.
Best
That aged well. Ha ha!
Did Elon the Great say Gaetz had a "big brain" because lefties were mean to him?
Maybe because it fits inside that huge forehead?
Kendzior was answering some reader questions earlier this week. This was her take on Gaetz:
"Trump might dump Gaetz because he wants someone more experienced as AG, unless Gaetz is a conduit to that very person. You have to remember Trump thinks of the AG as his personal attorney, and Gaetz lacks experience, unless you count committing crimes as experience. In terms of Congress approving Trump’s picks— yes, I expect them to be approved. The more AIPAC money a nominee receives, the more likely the approval. This is why I think Gaetz may not make it."
Prescient, although I do wonder why Trump would have picked Gaetz in the first place if he values his 'personal attorney' (but note the 'conduit'). I think it was a case of seeing how far he can push the Senate.
Some other interesting remarks there.
"Maybe because it fits inside that huge forehead?" We need to spread the meme of which politician faces are clearly barely-plausibly humanoid MASKS that conceal lizard men. Jumping jiminy they are all republicans.
There's just ONE reason DT dumped Gaetz. He was doing what DT wants most... infuriating sane-smart America. Job done! But DT realized that Gaetz guaranteed Senate goppers would not consent to adjourn and let DT's appointments through on recess, without confirmation hearings. With Gaetz gone, we must count on John Thune to get enough goppers who aren't blackmailed to keep the Senate in session. And thus have FBI checks and hearings on them all.
THAT is why Gaetz had to go.
We need to spread the meme of which politician faces are clearly barely-plausibly humanoid MASKS that conceal lizard men.
We-ell, I have come to be leery of anyone whose smile simply reveals the upper dentures. Crocodilean.
To David's observation: "Forget about substance and facts; it is appearances that matter." In the realm of politics there is more truth to this than either of us would like.
And Larry, sorry I missed your point. Do Trumps proposed cabinet appointments "give me pause"? Yes, some do. I did not weigh in on Gaetz because I saw him as a symbolic pick rather than someone who would be confirmed. The Senate did its job. It will do so again on some others. I'm conflicted on Kennedy. He's about equal parts crazy and insightful. Senator Tacitus would probably vote no, but let him have his day on the Senate floor. Also not a fan of Recess appointments, but there seem to be a number of current officials jumping ship. Leaving a post open and nominally run by a deputy is not ideal. We've had a situation here in Chedderland where the leg and the gov have been grumbling for years and have for instance left the Department of Natural Resources without a defined boss. Mostly about deer hunting regulations. That is a serious stuff here. Opening Day tomorrow, time to don the blaze orange....
“ I'm conflicted on Kennedy. He's about equal parts crazy and insightful.”
You’re “conflicted” on someone who is dead wrong on vaccines, a breakthrough that has prevented millions and millions of early deaths? That’s not all of his crazy, but that alone ought to be more than enough to say “hell no!” immediately.
Gabbard and Hegseth should be just as obvious hell nos, but the amount of spine in the Senate is seriously deficient.
...barely-plausibly humanoid MASKS that conceal lizard men
Aliens who are after our women, and white women at that. That might turn their voters around.
Tacitus:
Leaving a post open and nominally run by a deputy is not ideal. We've had a situation here in Chedderland where the leg and the gov have been grumbling for years and have for instance left the Department of Natural Resources without a defined boss.
Filling a vacant post when congress is not available is what recess appointments are actually for. Congress pretending to always be in session so that they can obstruct any appointment to an open position is not what Hamilton et al intended.
That's a different thing from Trump wanting congress to recuse itself entirely from the regular process of vetting an incoming cabinet.
Flypusher. Insufficient time for a better answer on vaccines, but in general the older they are the longer track record they have and the essentially irrefutable evidence of benefit. Tetanus, smallpox, diphteria, polio, etc. There have been miscues with some more recent ones. Human Lyme vacc and the early versions of rotavirus had unacceptable side effects turn up. Some have had fair questions that I deem answered. See MMR and autism. A few have long but variable records. Influenza vaccine some years hits the target squarely, others not so much. The closest analog to Covid vacc might be the swine flu vacc of the 70's. Noble effort. Responding to a potential pandemic. Did cause Guillian Barre in some situations. I feel that the most recent vaccine....Covid....has not had full study. It's new technology and it been political and probably publication poison to suggest that in some recipients (young healthy and at miniscule covid risk) the potential for side effects outweighs the direct benefit. A complex subject. One in which free inquiry should be favored by all who believe in science over either crackpot nonsense or PC dogma. I don't consider Kennedy an ideal person to lead this charge, but he probably deserves his day on the Senate hot seat to prove or disprove this. I have btw "had my shots" and have a bit of background in such matters.
That most of you assume that Matt Gaetz to be permanently neutralized by rumour & innuendo, I direct your attention to the complete failure of the Anti-Trump 'Russian Collusion' debacle, proof-positive that the delusional optimist utilizes the same failed tactics over & over but expects a different outcome.
Of course, I've come to expect such inanity from those who insist that the statistical analysis of data provides "a measure of certainty (but) has nothing to do with (the) importance" or validity of the scientific method.
Perhaps this is the reason why many of you appear incapable of learning from your mistakes?
You make the same egregious error when it comes to vaccine development & other scientific advances, as you continue to assume that any designated advance must be error-free & therefore better than what came before, as illustrated by the 1998 Anthrax Vaccine disaster & the disastrous initial release of Thalidomide.
You can read all about these two hubristic catastrophes at the links below:
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC1447151/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21507989/
I do find you unconditional faith in the COVID vaccine to be admirable however, I encourage you all to run out & get additional boosters of a largely untested & experimental vaccine because medical science has shown itself to be INCAPABLE OF ERROR, as documented above.
Best
______
As a practicing physician, I was routinely encouraged to prescribe the 'newest' & 'bestest' medicines to my patients and, off the top of my head, I can name at least a half dozen modern miracles that were summarily pulled from the market after causing unanticipated (fatal) side effects; hence my cynicism when it comes to 'new & better', and this is the reason why I argue that being a 'late adopter' is the only prudent path forward.
I feel that the most recent vaccine....Covid....has not had full study. It's new technology and it been political and probably publication poison to suggest that in some recipients (young healthy and at miniscule covid risk) the potential for side effects outweighs the direct benefit.
At this point in history, I don't think COVID vaccines are mandatory anywhere, even here in blue Illinois. I currently work for a hospital chain, and even they don't require COVID vaccines the way they do with the annual flu shot.
It's important to remember what life was like in most of 2020, before vaccines or less-deadly mutations. The point of lockdowns, and then vaccinations when available, was about keeping the spread manageable enough that hospitals weren't overwhelmed.
Now that a bout of COVID doesn't mean being on a ventilator for weeks, or that everyone in your line of site will also come down with an untreatable, deadly disease,it makes more sense to leave the choice of vaccination or not up to the individual. In fact, if MAGAts want to literally die on that hill, I'm ok with it.
I don't consider Kennedy an ideal person to lead this charge, but he probably deserves his day on the Senate hot seat to prove or disprove this.
Well, that's not what the Republican Senate will do. They'll either bow to Trump's will or resist. Either way, it won't be on the merits of what Kennedy actually believes or doesn't believe about vaccination. It will be about the symbolic meaning of a Kennedy nomination.
When I heard Homan's name, and I saw his bullet head, I thought, "The E.T.s aren't even *trying."* His stated deport-gramma scheme confirms my theory.
Immunity from all prosecution is the privilege of the mad king only. For all others, sex crimes qualify only as blackmail material, which both mad king and Senate vertebrates (if any) can use.
Bill Maher said that he has had no vaccines, and three bouts of covid, so his natural immunity works. Say what?! I've had several vaccines and boosters, and no covid. Whose immunity works better?
Immunity from all prosecution is also the privilege that we afford to all our vaccine producers. But, oversights like this are to be expected from those who elevate anecdote to the level of scientific evidence & think that natural immunity is inferior to the vaccine-induced variety.
That blew my mind as well. He actually said, to justify not getting vaccinated, "I've had COVID three times, so I should have natural immunity by now." Seemingly not recognizing the irony implicit in that statement.
I too have never had Covid (or if I did, I was totally asymptomatic). I may be one of the dodgers, because I very rarely get sick, from anything. So yes, I am blessed with a robust immune system, but all the more reason to give it every advantage; in this case a detailed molecular dossier on a virus that it’s likely to encounter. I’ve had 6 of the mRNA vaccines, and suffered nothing worse than one day of feeling low energy. According to the anti-vax conspiracy nutters, shouldn’t I have dropped dead by now?
The argument for giving Trump latitude to appoint whoever he wants to whatever department he wants, no matter how unqualified or dangerous that nominee is, amounts to "The American people knew what they were electing." In other words, even though Trump lied through his teeth (about, for example, opposing a national abortion ban, or not knowing anything about Project 2025), the voters all know that he lies about everything, and it was obvious which side of the fence he was really on, so that's what they voted for.
https://www.electoral-vote.com/evp2024/Items/Nov22-2.html
Donald Trump knows absolutely nothing about Project 2025. After all, he said so many times on the campaign trail, and he certainly wouldn't lie about a thing like that, right? In a remarkable coincidence, however, he has reportedly selected Russ Vought, the main architect of Project 2025, to be Director of the Office of Management and Budget. If Trump tries to use Schedule F to replace nonpartisan government employees with loyalists, then that would be a job for... the Director of the Office of Management and Budget. So many coincidences!
Tacitus has confirmed that facts matter much less than perception. Well, certainly that is the Orwellian aim of the gone-mad right. Then this: “The Senate did its job. It will do so again on some others.”
On what basis can you possibly say this? Trump has ONE goal right now above all others. For the Republicans in the Senate to agree to adjourn, so that Trump’s appointments can all get in through the ‘recess appointment” loophole, without any FBI background checks or hearings.
Gaetz was SO obscene that even the blatantly blackmailed super-putinist wing of Senate GOPpers were indicating an unwillingness to adjourn. So Gaetz had to go.
I am optimistic that Thune and a couple of other decent – even if far-right – Senators will block this maneuver. But let’s lay it out, dear Tacitus.
IF THE PULL THE RECESS APPOINTMENT ADJOURNMENT TRICK will that – at long last – make you admit that it’s time to switch sides and join America, in this flagrant case of treasonous civil war?
I am asking you to declare a red line in advance, at long last.
As for locum, is he still yammering here? zzzzzzzzzz. not even glancing.
JB is entrenching the CHIPS Act by finalizing the deal with TSMC. This also provides a huge boost to AZ's economy, despite it going red. This is what a patriotic President looks like.
Locum, that is a misrepresentation of what I wrote. You changed my words. I referred to the importance of a conclusion and did not write anything about the validity of the scientific method. I am a statistician and know the terminology of my profession. If you have enough data small effects can be highly statistically significant. And if you look at too many effects at once some will be significant purely by chance.
I think your misrepresentation of my words was sloppiness coming from your looking for ways to attack what I wrote without trying to understand it. The alternative possibilities are worse.
I also have a background in biology, so I know that biological categories such as sex are fuzzy. All genital structures fond in one sex are found in the other, just developed and arranged differently.
And finally, I know people with gender dysphoria and those who are otherwise intersexed. A close friend has a very unusual form of these difficulties. Largely through her I know plenty of other people with gender dysphoria. Their problems are real and I am very aware of the oppression that they face. And I do not leap into framing issues as ones of oppression and have beenj very critical of much of the left for doing just that.
Republican presidents double down on helping Red America... and Democratic presidents double down on helping Red America. And democrats are too stupid ever to actually say so.
Oh, wait. I forgot that Tacitus is smart. He already canceled out the Recess Adjournment Loophole Trick, pre-rationalizing that rushing every obscenely unqualified DT appointee into office without any background checks or hearings or advice and consent is worth doing, lest... lest... the DEPUTIES run things for a month or so! Horrors! Even though that is exactly what the civil servants do during every transitions and have for 240 years. Constitutional originalists can be so... original.
No no, my friend. That is a red line. Like the hundreds you have ignored so far, desperately clinging to loyalty to the gone-utterly-mad.
And don't imagine for a minute that we don't recall what state you live in, where just a few respected fellows like you could have helped to prevent this.
Lloyd Flack:
Locum, that is a misrepresentation of what I wrote. You changed my words.
He does that.
I think your misrepresentation of my words was sloppiness coming from your looking for ways to attack what I wrote without trying to understand it. The alternative possibilities are worse.
No, it's the worse one.
David, you are misrepresenting or misunderstanding my sentiments.
Tacitus redux:
Leaving a post open and nominally run by a deputy is not ideal
Then the onus is on Trump to actually nominate a qualified candidate, not on congress to confirm an unacceptable one.
Immunity as a result of an infection is different from that resulting from a vaccine. As far as I know it tends to be weaker against the vaccines precise target strain but stronger against non target strains. And I can see why this is likely to happen.
And of course, it is dangerous to get your immunity as a result of an infection. Much to dangerous for me.
For the New Zealanders among us (who probably already saw this)...
https://youtu.be/N__OF41CqoY?si=ncdpMGvV44dIdwfp
Māori MPs perform haka and disrupt NZ parliament debate on treaty rights changes
Yes, Republicans claimed a mandate for Bush Jr after 2000. But did the fact that he lost the popular vote hinder his administration? Nope. In our system there's really no such thing as a mandate, there's only who holds the reins of power. We saw that again with Trump 1, we're about to see that even more with Trump 2.
"Leaving a post open and nominally run by a deputy is not ideal."
Perfect wriggle room, intelligently crafted. A rationalized excuse for the utterly appalling notion of a recess adjournment stunt to evade scrutiny and background checks and hearings and questionings... without it being an actual excuse that can be held accountable, when the monsters turn out - after all - to be monsters.
Please explain how I misunderstand, sir. The recess adjournment stunt is not an incremental ratcheting or "they all do it" move that Susan Collins always calls "regrettable." It is BINARY. It happens all the way or it doesn't.
And if it does, the treason is total, explicit, volcanically lava-pure. Any decent American would call it an utter red line and get other Bushite Republicans to agree *in advance,* so that we can get on with joining forces to save the Republic.
Mind you, I give 60% odds that John Thune and a couple of gutsy others will stand up, at last and refuse the outrageous gambit. At which point HALF of Trump's appointees will drop out, replaced by marginally/surficially less visibly outrageous choices. Allowing Bushites to continue their frog-in-boiling-water torpor, letting them continue to view themselves...
...as actual Americans.
For our host and fellow writers, from Kurt Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle :
"I'm thinking of calling a general strike of all writers until mankind finally comes to its senses. Would you support it?"
"Do writers have a right to strike? That would be like the police or the firemen walking out."
"Or the college professors."
"Or the college professors," I agreed. I shook my head. "No, I don't think my conscience would let me support a strike like that. When a man becomes a writer, he takes on a sacred obligation to produce beauty and enlightenment and comfort at top speed."
"I can't help thinking what a real shaking up it would give people, if all of a sudden, there were no new books, new plays, new histories, new poems..."
"And how proud would you be when people started dying like flies?" I demanded.
"They'd die more like mad dogs, I think--snarling and snapping at each other and biting their own tails."
I turned to Castle the elder. "Sir, how does a man die when he's denied the consolation of literature?"
"In one of two ways," he said, "petrescence of the heart or atrophy of the nervous system."
"Neither one very pleasant, I expect," I suggested.
"No," said Castle the elder. "For the love of God, both of you, please keep writing!"
I saw that. A magnificent display of utter disdain and resistance in a traditional format, peaceful yet defiant.
Tacitus,
Leaving a post open and nominally run by a deputy is not ideal.
Mmm. When that deputy is from the civilian staff, you'll probably get someone mostly interested in preserving their career. In other words, they'll 'make do' and the agency will muddle along. Most of the time, that's not such a bad thing.
Mostly about deer hunting regulations.
Heh. Yah.
More important than the AG or CIA or FBI I suppose. Deer hunting hits closer to home. 8)
———
There is at least one cabinet post where I shall agree that it is better to fill the post than have the deputy act. DoD is supposed to treat the President as Commander in Chief, but it is really SecDef who does a lot of the signing of policy. DoD freezes up a bit with no valid SecDef. They don't flex as well to changing conditions.
It is worse, though, when SecDef is a clown. They have to isolate him in order to fulfill their oaths properly and that is VERY NOT ideal. Worse than having no SecDef because it creates precedents for DoD acting unilaterally.
I work as a DoD contractor. The chain of authority is quite important as it matters in what is and isn't a legal order.
Keep in mind how Trump was probably mainly paying off a debt to his faithful servant Gaetz; and thumbing his nose at us.
Do you imagine Trump thought that Gaetz had a chance of being confirmed? It was a chess move:
nominate someone who won’t be confirmed, and after the turkey drops his bid for the post, the succeeding nominee appears so much worthier by comparison, it’s a win for the president-elect.
The president-elect still has two months to study the chessboard.
Looks like there is a plan to replace the upper military echelons with rumpt loyalists, toadies and Gen. Flynn-style theofascists, and the incoming SecDef is all in favor. Stuff like this makes historians nervous. Just because it can't be done through normal channels doesn't mean it can't be done - and I don't trust even the current 'Supreme' Ct to rule against it to if it comes to them. (If there's a chance to put even more Heritage barrow-wights on the court, this admin will have even less meaningful opposition.)
Pappenheimer
P.S. some of my customers seem to be expecting grocery prices to drop magically starting 1/6/25. If the rumpt White House announces it'll be lowering the price of chocolate bars from $3 to $4, will they applaud? I almost think that a mort of them will....
Let's recall, shall we? There was a time when cabinet nominees needed a 60 vote threshold. It tended to discourage the more partisan picks. And....in 2013 when Obama was Pres and the Dems held the Senate, Harry Reid changed Senate rules to allow a simple majority vote. A bad idea, but one that was felt to be necessary due to opposition party obstruction. Mind you there is a line between careful deliberation and Resistance. Various parliamentary gimmicks can appear to keep Congress in session and so forth. But, thanks Harry Reid, the game is now persuading a certain number of Republican Senators to tell the President "no". This is the system working. Not as well as it used to work pre-Harry Reid, but Thune, Collins, Murkowski et all do show more independence than say, nominal independents who caucus with the Dems. BTW, who I vote for is my own business unless I chose to discuss it, but I don't mind sharing that I did vote for Senator Baldwin. A close race. You may thank me if you wish.
The 60-vote threshold is not in the Constitution. It tended to discourage partisan picks, but in the Harry Reid/Mitch McConnell era, it was used to obstruct any picks. Back in the elder Bush's day, Jesse Jackson opposed any pick that Bush made on the grounds that Bush made them. While I understood the point, I knew at the time that you just can't do that. Guess I was wrong.
Would you have agreed that President Obama had the power to unilaterally recess Congress and then make recess appointments? Or is that one of those powers that only Republicans are allowed?
And Susan Collins takes Republican promises at their word and then votes the party line. She's "independent" because she feels concerned afterwards.
But yes, thank you for Tammy Baldwin.
@Alan Brooks,
While I'm not dismissing your argument out of hand, I don't believe that Trump plays chess that well.
He might have expected to install Gaetz by a recess appointment. Or he might have been using a "Call a donkey a horse" strategy, whereby Senators have to prove their loyalty by voting for the ridiculous things he insists upon. Or yes, Gaetz might have been a "give back" that Senators could vote against and then approve some less-deplorable-but-still candidates for other positions.
Gator:
Yes, Republicans claimed a mandate for Bush Jr after 2000. But did the fact that he lost the popular vote hinder his administration?
Not right away, but it did prevent him from privatizing Social Security. W claimed that the support for the Iraq War translated to a mandate for his economic policies. That didn't work out well for him, as it helped give us a Democratic House in 2006.
That sort of thing prevented Trump and McConnell from repealing the ACA too, and helped restore Nancy Pelosi to the speakership.
In our system there's really no such thing as a mandate, there's only who holds the reins of power.
As a binary choice, sure. But there is such thing as pressure from voters not to take things too far in a direction they don't approve of. There's also the underlying claim/threat that with approval that strong, the winners won't lose significant support by doing the things they were (ostensibly) elected for.
Trump is trying to claim that an overwhelming majority of Americans voted in favor of Project 2025 and mass deportations, even though he really won on inflation and bullying. He's also trying to convince Republican congresspeople that they had better go along because that's what "the American people" wanted. It helps our side to show that despite the Electoral College, more Americans were against his policies than for them.
Since the reply in sub thread button is currently misbehaving:
“Flypusher. Insufficient time for a better answer on vaccines, but in general the older they are the longer track record they have and the essentially irrefutable evidence of benefit. Tetanus, smallpox, diphtheria, polio, etc.”
I don’t see RFK Jr making a distinction between older vaccines and newer vaccines here. As far as I’ve seen/heard he’s talking about letting people opt out of all types of vaccines, and I shouldn’t have to tell you how herd immunity works. For example measles is not some trifling matter in children, they risk long term bad effects: deafness, brain damage, and immunity system impairment. Polio struck terror in my parents’ generation. Vaccines in a way are a victim of their own success; people forget just how bad these preventable diseases can be.
“Covid....has not had full study. It's new technology “
How new do you think it is? There’s about 3 decades worth of research on mRNA vaccines, and pre-Covid they were used in veterinary applications. For example, there is an mRNA vaccine against rabies that works very well. Granted we already have an existing rabies vaccine that is downright miraculous, but I see that as an important proof of concept, that the technology can work. Using this type of vaccine in humans on such a widespread scale is the new wrinkle, and yes it will need continuing studies, but I think it will be a valuable tool in the medical tool box, because of its capacity to rapidly respond to new viral mutations. We were pretty damn lucky that it took so long to have a major global pandemic, given how interconnected the world is, and it would be foolish to assume that the next pandemic is decades or a century away. Keep an eye on the bird flu.
“I don't consider Kennedy an ideal person to lead this charge, but he probably deserves his day on the Senate hot seat to prove or disprove this.”
The very fact that this guy was nominated is Trump testing red lines in the Senate, as opposed to actually working for the benefit of the American people. If the Senate is actually committed to doing its job, then that hot seat will be scorching, all the dire ramifications of his anti-vax lunacy will be publicly aired in all their goriest details, and his nomination will be overwhelmingly rejected. It ought to be a unanimous “NO!” but idiots like Tuberville prioritize sucking up to mad king Donny.
Alan Brooks:
The median age for demise is c. 80; he won’t be too unhappy if the world should end roughly around the time he does.
He is a solipsist.
According to Cat's Cradle, the Vonnegut book I just re-read, that could make him a Bokononinist.
"How much longer can I go on being an atheist?"
Red Line is a term that has cropped up a couple of times. It has an interesting origin. Evidently in the aftermath of WW I some oil companies were divvying up the Ottoman Empire. Presumably with minimal input from the Otts. Reaching an impasse a guy just took a red marker, drew a bit line and said "There". I do understand the more recent meaning of it.
Larry there are lots of cultural norms not written into the Constitution. They are by virtue of this easier to trample on but this often ends up badly. See Supreme Court packing among other recent bad ideas.
COMPLETELY off topic, found a theory in the book I'm reading on the human catastrophe that was the Little Ice Age that suggests very strong El Nino / La Nina patterns, by pooling the water of the Pacific on the East or West sides of the Ring of Fire, can trigger volcanic eruptions and earthquakes due to the extra water mass exerting pressure below it. (Think of the Pacific as a very large bathtub, with water sloshing from one side to the other - it's known that 'sea level' can vary significantly this way.)
Pappenheimer
P.S. the main point of the book is that during times of high stress, such as failed harvests, humans go to war with each other and rebel against their aristocracy. Some of the details, such as the Bosporus freezing over one winter, are fascinating.
Putin might want to drag the world down with him, a world in flames. Maybe though, at the last hour, a Brutus would stab him.
DO let us recall then.
That 60 vote threshold worked well for the days when Senators understood their role in the process and wanted to negotiate well enough to prevent extremes. By 2013, though, that is NOT what the parties in the Senate were doing. Obama had won re-election and the Senate GOP was intent on undermining his ability to do anything.
This is one of those checks and balances things. The Senate tried checking the Executive, but it was a minority in the Senate that tried. An amazing thing happened when the majority in the Senate decided that what was being tried was a step too far... and changed the rules to deal with it.
If the next Senate GOP majority truly believes this should not have happened, they can fix it. They can give the Dem minority the power their own team lost under Reid. I'll take high odds bets on whether they will.
------
Changing the rules back then WAS a bad idea, but it was in response to an even worse idea. The Senate has a duty to perform and the minority party at the time made a power grab.
Choices have Consequences.
Packing was another power grab. Bad idea. We mostly all agree. (I could see an argument for having as many sitting judges as we have districts, but there is no way in Hell I want Trump appointing them.)
Checks and Balances must continue, but in a way that ensures the government continues to function.
Oy, Tacitus. For most of the 60+ confirmation era, a president was able to negotiate – even horse-trade – for a few votes needed for his nominee. It was true as late as Gingrich who, for all of his fiery, right wingism, was there TO negotiate and to pass legislation needed by the country… and hence we got Welfare Reform and the Budget Act and the Clinton Surpluses.
How many times must I point out that radicalization of the GOP via gerrymandering led to the 1996 putsch in which Newt was jettisoned without a thank you and replaced by Dennis “rapist-of-boys” Hastert, whose “Hastert Rule” has ever since declared political execution for any Republican who – ever again – actually negotiates with Democrats. Resulting in the most tightly disciplined party and politburo America has ever seen. (And some of the laziest, worst Congresses in US history. Only once in the last 20 years has there been a session that passed needed legislation that directly resulted in major benefits for the nation.)
How effective is Hastert-Discipline? Even “deeply concerned” Sens. Collins and Murkowsky get back in line at the slightest warning look from Trump or from Trump’s Potemkin puppeteer. No hypocrisy is too great. As when McConnell refused even to meet with Obama nominees more than 13 months before the next election… but hurried to confirm Trump’s final appointments one month before Biden took office. Anyone who (giggling) makes excuses for that myriad-repeated travesty is not an American but a Putin-boy.
“But, thanks Harry Reid, the game is now persuading a certain number of Republican Senators to tell the President "no".”
You keep doing this! In order to avert your eyes from the utter calumny we face… a jabbering lunatic and putative KGB asset ‘appointing’ a tsunami of horrors and a party going along with a stunt to prevent background checks and hearings – every single time you choose to blame Democrats because of … PROCEDURES. “It’s your fault you were raped, miss. You shouldn’t have switched from heels to sneakers. You ran faster but the perp wanted those Jordans too!”
The experiment on mRNA vaccines has been run. we’ve tested them out the wazoo. Unless something happens at the sperm and gene level. And folks are looking there, too.
“Maybe though, at the last hour, a Brutus would stab him.” That’s VP’s obsession. He spends most of every day on it.
Pappenheimer interesting.
I'm sure that I would suitably shamed & impressed by our resident Flack's expert invocation of credentialism, except for the following:
(1) His apparent inability to grasp the mathematical & statistical significance of the terms like 'norm', 'normal' & their opposites;
(2) His misuse of statistical terms that connote 'abnormality' and 'deviance', only to misrepresent them as synonyms for some new & arbitrary 'normal'; and
(3) His inane argument that "Immunity as a result of an infection is different from that resulting from a vaccine" which only proves his utter ignorance of immunological science.
Words have meaning, people!!!
That modern society is willing to tolerate statistically aberrant behaviours like 'transgenderism', 'gender dysphoria' and 'homosexuality' does not magically transform their statistical aberrance into some new anti-mathematical 'normal'.
I must therefore conclude that the West is now doomed, as statistical proofs are willfully ignored by the lying liars who prefer wishful thinking & unicorn farts over harsh reality.
So, pay no attention to 'The Stats behind the Curtain' because the 'Great, Progressive & Powerful Oz' has spoken.
We have learned NOTHING from recent history.
Best
You have just demonstrated once again your willingness to misrepresent what I said and your unwillingness to try to understand it.
That a condition is unusual does not mean that we should engage in cruelty and oppression against those with that condition. Decency is required. You are just demonstrating how much you want to score points against political opponents. This is not good for your credibility.
And you do realize that you are using 'norm' in two completely different senses and claiming that they are the same. One sense is as a measure of central tendency. The other is as customary behaviour. Equivocation is not a valid basis for an argument.
And the public claims of immunologists was that the immunity from vaccines was likely to be more focused and less broad than that from an infection. That seemed plausible since vaccines are designed to create strong responses against particular strains.
@Lloyd Flack: I sometimes think that Camp Doctor Guy is just a sock puppet of OGH, for entertainment and education. A carefully crafted illusion, with segments taken from the Nuremberg Doctor trials, the Project Ultra MK documents and the St. Petersburg Troll Factory Manuals.
"...during times of high stress, such as failed harvests, humans go to war with each other and rebel against their aristocracy."
Maybe not so off topic as all that? Are we in a high stress global situation? A lot of folks are acting like it, but the people who voted rumpT aren't generally physically hungry.
Pappenheimer
Hmm!
I believe they have been fed enough misinformation to think their lifestyles and culture are in imminent danger of collapse unless they support the dollar-store Caligula and his minions.
Yes. All the women dying now in parking lots in front of hospitals, or having to carry the childs of rape and incest to term will certainly agree that packing the courts would have been totally evil./s
I was thinking along those lines recently. One reason so many Americans are so dissatisfied with their lives might be (to coin a term), "expectation inflation". We have giant flat screen color tv, home sound systems that make you feel like you're at a game or concert, food prepared and delivered by others, cars that one can live in that run on (yes, still) relatively cheap gasoline, computers, cell-phones, video games, relatively easy travel, and that's not to mention the conveniences of earlier generations--clean water, heat, refrigeration, washing machines--personal wealth that kings of a few centuries ago would envy.
And yet, we can't stop coveting what someone else has, and then complaining that we could have so much more if it just weren't for those immigrants or uppity minorities or Democrats.
I wouldn't go that far as to blame our host, but I wouldn't be surprised if the entity in question were playing a part and refusing to break character.
You have just demonstrated once again your willingness to misrepresent what I said and your unwillingness to try to understand it.
That and the outright slander was what made me finally decide to swear him off. Literally. For those who weren't here, I took a solemn vow before this group and God (if He's listening) to refrain from reading his posts for at least 1000 days. That was back in October of last year. And despite not being religious, I don't take my solemn vows lightly.
Could be. I ran into someone like that on another blog. When I exposed him for making bad faith arguments intended to cause a fight between posters on the blog and posters on an unrelated blog he was kicked out.
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