== Brinsbury's summer and winter daydreams ==
In Gary Trudeau's wonderful Doonesbury strip, the lead character -- Mike Doonesbury -- has 'summer daydreams' of how things ought to be. In my case, it's year-round and every week! But hey, it's my job and someone's gotta do it -- ponder potential paths -- some plausible and many just kind-of and some not-at-all. Possible paths out of the traps that we face.
And sure, I'm generally relegated to the lamentation of Cassandra, muttering "I told you so!" too many times to count. Though not always, e.g. when the California Democratic Party asked me to propose "near future legislation" to address the plummet of factuality and verification in American politics. Perhaps the most crucial matter of our time! The resulting Fact Act at least got a little attention! Though not enough to get anywhere.
Other proposals include methods to get around the current Supreme Court's outrageous support for gerrymandering. One concept, that would bypass all politicians, got approving attention from a senior US Court of Appeals judge. My collection of such potential maneuvers - many of them non- or even anti-partisan - can be found in Polemical Judo.
But here I'll focus on four concepts that could affect one of the most important and pivotal days in the entire history of civilization.
That pivotal day is today, December 16, 2024.
Trying to get these concepts where they might be acted upon has been futile, of course. The Democratic Party political and punditry clans are frantically circling their wagons to fend off accountability for their incompetent blunders. Above all, any idea Not Invented Here is to be met with savage repression.
In particular, any mention of the Electoral College prompts shrugs and sighs, even though several past elections have tilted this way or that (depending on your view) with either patriotic acts of courage or shenanigans.
Well, well.
With one day left, I must admit I was straying outside my lane.
Still, here are the two EC notions that I tried to convey.
And one more that occurred to me just yesterday!
... Plus one that Joe Biden might still pull off, during his remaining month in office, and be known for it, forever.
== Two now-forlorn ways to shift the Electoral College... and one more that could work, even now ==
Okay, it's too late for these first two. In fact, it's because it's too late that I'm telling you the second one, now.
* The first one is so old that it's in Polemical Judo. It describes how two rich dudes - one Republican, one Democrat and both patriots -- might arrange for the Presidential Electors to actually meet and deliberate in person -- by their OWN volition and without any outside pressures -- as the Founders clearly intended. I describe the concept here. There's no reason it couldn't happen.
But not this year. And maybe - if the Putinists succeed - not ever. Still, here it is
* Second idea: I only hinted at this one, in hopes that I might be able to pitch it directly to Kamala Harris.
Only her.
It would have guaranteed her a place of amazed remembrance across U.S. history!
Alas, her layers of not-invented-here factotums were too thick.
Boiled down to essence, I suggested that she could declare:
"Look, I lost the election! That's on me. By narrow margins but in crucial states, the people chose for the next Senate, House and Presidency to be controlled by Republicans.
"But does it have to be THIS Republican? A capering, frothing madman whose every chosen appointee openly and gleefully declares open war against every fact-using element in American life? Like the Roman Emperor Caligula, who made his horse Consul of Rome, Trump is appointing a whole herd of utter crazies!"
Forget idiocies like "right" or "left." This is now about all-out war vs all fact using professions! From science and teaching, medicine and law and civil service to the heroes of the FBI/Intel/Military officer corps who won the Cold War and the War on terror. And so she might have continued:
"Already it's clear that many of those who supported Donald Trump -- perhaps because they feared or disliked me -- are having buyers' remorse. So let me ask this.
"If we're to be led by Republicans, can it at least be grownup ones? Anyway the last thing I should do is stand in the way of the ruling party making their own choice on the matter.
"And hence I am stepping out of the way.
"I now ask all of the U.S. Electoral College members who are pledged to me NOT to vote for me on December 17!
"Instead, I ask that all of them... every single one... vote for the current head of the Republican Party and Majority Leader in the U.S. Senate, the honorable John Thune."
Amid that moment of shock, she could point out that Thune and she have cancelled each others votes any number of times. They support vastly different policies. Moreover --
"If this works, I will oppose him at most levels of practical politics.
"But, unlike Donald Trump, John Thune is an honorable person, a sane person, a person of genuine mental capacity and above all, an American patriot."
Look, here's the deal: If every Democratic elector voted for Thune, the 312 Republican electors would then have a choice. A chance to back out of their monstrous deal with the devil. Just 15% of them could make the difference and turn a madman from all that power. Just 40 or so could instead make a decent human being President!
And then, in a spirit of bipartisan peace-making, maybe vote to make Tim Walz Vice President?
"Just 15% of GOP electors could do this. And don't let those sappy state laws against 'faithless electors' intimidate you! They have no value against the Founders' clear intent for Elector sovereignty.
"And so I urge you Democratic electors who are pledged to me, to follow my lead on this, one last time. Let us lay a challenge before our Republican neighbors. Tell them YOU WIN! Now show us that you plan to use your victory toward an America that is at least not-insane."
== Brin's gone mad? ==
So, okay, it's not gonna happen. I never shared this with all of you out there, in forlorn hope that she might ponder it. Ponder acting as Alexander Hamilton did, in the mixed up election of 1800. Rising above party to pick decency over corruption.
Is the idea at least original?
Sure. It's what I'm paid for...
... and it's why many DP hacks cry "Shields up!" against anything like original thinking.
Okay. Maybe I'm a fool. But at least an entertaining one!
== Tonight's last idea! ==
Okay then, if it's too late for those two ideas, then why am I hurrying to post this blog, on the last of all possible days?
Well, first, to once again remind Joe Biden that his own potential gambit still is possible! I described it here and the potential for utterly rocking the entire political boat is stunning!
(You could do this one thing, Joe! During the next month. It might accomplish nothing... or else transform U.S. politics and society utterly. And you have nothing to lose.)
But that's not tonight's featured idea!
Here it comes.
This one ain't gonna work, either! But it is related to the Biden vs. Blackmail concept. And I'd be wrong not to at least mention it...
...and I promise it is WAY unconventional. Though it would make a great concept for a thriller novel!
Okay, here goes.
Donald Trump has made it clear how much he hates modernity and every smartypants profession -- it is the shared hate that got him support from many former democrats and all of the MAGAs who now pour spite at the universities and nerdy civil servants and scientists and FBI/Intel/military officers and all the rest who are now hated-on nightly by Fox.
Above all, Trump was traumatized when nearly all of the adults-in-the-room he appointed in 2017 later turned and denounced him! Almost 100 of them. Two secretaries of state, two of defense, two chiefs of staff and so on and so on. And Don swore never to let it happen again!
The one common trait of ALL of his new appointees is that there is not a single adult among them. Not one who wants to do a good job. All are meant - above all - to spite every grownup in America and around the world. All of them are Caligula's horses.
But that's not enough. Personal loyalty is paramount to Trump. It is the ONLY thing that matters. And there is one way to ensure loyalty, that he learned from Vladimir Putin.
No, it's not poison tea or upper story windows. Not yet.
Rather, the thing that works.
The one thing that works almost always and almost perfectly is blackmail.
(I can just hear many of you: "Again, Brin, with the blackmail thing?"
(Hell yeah! Because everyone who simply shrugs it off is a pure dunce.
(And I am looking at YOU, right now, my friend.)
Blackmail means that if someone turns on you, you get to ruin their life. It works. It is likely rife in DC right now. And Joe Biden could shatter it, during his final month. He could!
But... but Trump is making hundreds of appointments!
So how could he collect blackmail on all of them?
Or even the top fifty or so?
That's ridiculous, Brin!
Why... he'd have to.... He'd have to...
Ah, I see the light in some of your eyes.
Ah, I see the light in some of your eyes.
You are starting to see.
You begin to picture a set of rooms, in a back corner of Mar-a-Lago...
== The irony of the donkey ==
Okay, we truly are down a rabbit hole, now! Some of you are storming off, in a huff, declaring that I've lost all credibility, if not my marbles.
The rest of you are staying, to see how far down it goes.
Hang in there. It won't take long.
LOOK at the execrable quality of the men and women Donald Trump is appointing! This is their one chance in otherwise miserable lives, envying and hating all those snooty, smartypants fact people who actually know stuff and can think.
These moronic appointees want aboard!
They will do anything Trump asks of them...
... including going into those back rooms at Mar-a-Lago and -- in front of cameras -- giving Don all the leverage and kompromat he could ever want...
...so he can feel secure in their loyalty, forever.
And yes, how lovely - if kinky - the symbolism, if some of the acts involve the symbol animal of the other party?
Before you sniff and roll your eyes... consider. The motive, means and opportunity are all there, along with the expertise.
The method has been standard in Russian secret services ever since czarist times!
The Oprichina, the Okrhana, the NKVD and KGB, the current Kremlin all used it... and quite a few western oligarchs, as well.
Can you give me one good reason why Donald Trump would NOT do this? Given motive, means and opportunity... and the flunkies' desperate wish to get aboard? And his own desperate wish to keep personal loyalty secured, forever and ever and ever?
== And so, one last forlorn hope ==
If any of you out there happens to know anyone who knows any of Trump's menagerie of jibbering losers (and I am deliberately excluding a couple of hugely brilliant winners), you MIGHT pass along word about this. Especially today.
Tell them there's a possible way out of this trap:
- If you reveal it on Monday December 17, you might have the perpetual respect and gratitude of the nation! A nation you just might have helped to save! And the donkey thing won't matter.
- if you reveal it to Biden and/or the FBI before January 20, you will likely get a pardon. And still be thanked for arming us to protect against the worst.
- and if you miss those dates, but ever step up and help us all to topple the madness, I promise that I - at least - will fight for you.
Okay then, there's my last gasp of a "Brin's Autumn Daydreams" about the mad election of 2024...
...except to urge that some of you read the future history novels of Robert Heinlein, who forecast dark times for America, like The Crazy Years...
... followed by a generation of wretched rule by cruel theocrats...
... followed by a restoration of both sanity and enlightenment...
... and resumption of our wonderful climb out of darkness...
...to the stars.
138 comments:
Fantasies, to be sure, but I like the 'Kamala gambit' (Biden's even done it before)
Uh, wow!?!? Dr. Brin, you've misread things completely. Here's what the majority of us (yes I get to say majority, Trump did win the popular vote) see happening, expressed by Stephen Moore better than I could. From https://hotair.com/stephen-moore/2024/12/15/trumpism-is-going-global-n3797899 :
"Why are the dominoes of government tumbling so suddenly?
One word: Trump. The whole world has watched with fascination and even admiration at the peaceful citizen uprising in America. The masses around the world are screaming: We want Trumpism here in our country. They seem to be saying: Make Britain great again. Make Germany and Japan and Korea and Canada great again.
The politicians, bureaucrats and elite academics are horrified. They should be.
The anger at the political class is boiling over with scalding resentment against government incompetence, fiscal mismanagement and statist directives that snatch away basic freedoms.
They have commanded us that you can't have a gas stove or a gas car or a lawnmower or an air conditioner. Parents can't send their kids to good schools.
My, how the tables have turned. The politicians who profess to care so much about the working classes are now despised by the voters.
The masses around the world are seeing the bounce in America's step in the wake of the Trump election. The Trumpian message of prosperity, efficiency, fairness, home rule and love of country.
It's a virtual certainty that voters everywhere are going to demand common-sense Trumpian policies in their own towns and countries. As Trump has said, every leader should put their own country first. Global government is dead for now.
It's a grassroots power-to-the-people movement -- something the Left once believed in.
I wouldn't want to be Russian President Vladimir Putin or Chinese President Xi Jinping or French President Emmanuel Macron or Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, or Scholz, right now. The Trumpians are coming for you.
Good riddance."
Uh, wow !?!? mcsandberg!?!? "admiration at the peaceful citizen uprising in America"
Peaceful citizens, you say? The January 6, 2001 mob were peaceful? That is a lie. Those citizens who physically attacked Congress and who threatened death for Vice President Pence were not peaceful. The cowardly POTUS at that time was not being peaceful.
Dennis M Davidson,
January 6, 2021 was nothing more than a minor, single day riot. I agree with Stephen Moore that the uprising we are seeing is peaceful, with that single minor exception.
I quite agree that mcs portrays a rage that has fulminated out of the American character repeatedly since 1778. That I believe it is unsapient and mornic is beside the point.
That Trump's loyalty is solely to himself and foreign masters - including Putin seems obvious to anyone with a brain. As is his Caligula appointment of his horse to every responsible position in America.
But none of that matters, nor the fact that every child of Red America who goes to university moves away from the confederate cult. That only means universities are evil. The list of ways snooty bullies have doe evil to Real Americans... with SHOWER RESTIRICTORS?... is jibbering insane, but we knew that.
No... what stands out is the stunning -vile ingratitude. The Red America of 1932 was a hellscape. The Reooseveltean revolution surges across the land with electrification and roads and dams and schools and farm bureaus and union-factories and my parents generation adored one living being above all others... Franklin Roosevelt...
...and then when I was 5, they adored Jonas Salk, who saved us all from summer lockdowns worse than covid and gave kids back their summer. And now Caligula's horse will bring that back.
Remember the South & Appalachia of DELIVERANCE? There was still ots to be done and LBJ sent in what it took and today those are lands of clean streets and utilities and dentists and colleges and internet (thanks to Joe) and the most despicable thing about all this is the churlish, nastiness of never-mention-any-of-that ingrates.
100% of the time dem admins have better economic outcomes. 100% of the time. But your cult has for 40 years poured middle class wealth back into the gaping maws of the uber lords, Saudi princes, hedge barons, inheritance brats, anti-scienc ultises and Kremlin "ex" commissars.
Yeah, yeah, all 30,000 FBI guys are conniving traitors. All 30,000 intel folks. All 150,000 military officers. Sure. Caligula had the mob, as well.
Not a single Internet hookup has resulted from the Broadband Equity Access and Deployment (BEAD) program https://reason.com/2024/06/27/why-has-joe-bidens-42-billion-broadband-program-not-connected-one-single-household/
There are reasons for us to be angry, and this is just one of them
mcsandberg 5:54 AM:
"
January 6, 2021 was nothing more than a minor, single day riot. I agree with Stephen Moore that the uprising we are seeing is peaceful, with that single minor exception.
"
Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?
There are grieving families to whom that day was not minor.
Remember and be wary
The Sixth of January
The treason, sedition, and plot.
I know of no reason
Sedition and treason
Should ever be forgot.
mcsandberg 5:29 AM:
Trump did not get a majority. He got a plurality, one that led Harris's plurality by about 1.5%. In terms of majorities, then they both lost. According to NPR on December 3, Trump got 49.97% and Harris got 48.36%. That's 1.67% left over: to whom did that go?
The ONLY person who died on January 6th was Ashli Babbitt.
Book recommendation: "The True Believer", by Eric Hoffer. I re-read it recently, and every page is topical. In it, the longshoreman-philosopher-aphorist discusses the psychology of fanatics in a mass movement. He discusses their hatred, mutual suspicion, gullibility, and above all their self-contempt. He says that their main motivator is the wish to discard an unwanted self by submerging into unity and self-sacrifice.
Remember Hillary Clinton's "basket of deplorables"? If anyone ever had called me deplorable, then I'd just shrug it off. They don't know me, and their underestimate is their problem, not mine. But the Trumpists howled with outrage, not because they thought she was wrong, but because they thought she was right. And Trump agrees with them; and since he himself is deplorable, that makes him a suitable representative for them.
Therefore, to subvert that system, I prefer to tell them 'you deserve better', instead of 'you damn fools'.
And several cops soon after.
Don't blue lives matter?
Ashli Babbit being killed was the only GOOD thing that happened that day.
jibber jibber jibber. Step up NOW MCS with wager stakes, whether the broadband initiative had to build backbone infrastructure before it could reach homes. BET NOW you stunning hypocrite. Ignoring all the dams and bridges, hospitals, farm bureaus, schools, colleges, electrical lines, clinics, streets & roads and every other thing RA got directly from Dems and never from goppers. Ever.
BET NOW whether Red America has net-received vastly more tax money than it ever put in the pot! Parasiting on those whom ingrates then proceed to spew venom at. BET NOW! Are you a man?
You assume that we are like you, hateful beings. But dig it. We... don't... hate... you. Sure YOU hate us! And you assume it is mutual and hence you gotta 'win.' But we don't. And the proof is every time there's a natural or manmade disaster.
If it happens to a red state, we rush in the aid while you yatter about space lasers. If it happens to a blue state you call it 'God's wrath!' and withhold aid if you can.
BET NOW over death rates of the vaccinated vs. unvaccinated. I am exactly just old enough to barely remember the heady joy our parents felt, when they no longer had to isolate their kids, covid style, every summer. Freed from grinding fear by Jonas Salk, who was the first living American to rival FDR in popularity. The man who gave back summer to a nation's children.
Oh, I notice you've said nothing about the flood of lucre sucked from your necks by your feudal lords. Of course not. The inheritance brats who made the last 6000 years a living feudal hell need you to distract your suspicion of authority reflex toward...
... toward red America's OWN sons and daughters who got into college and became skilled fact users. THAT is who you hate, instead of the rich parasites sucking your life's blood. Fool.
And step up if you find your balls, to bet over any of it.
We'll fight the madness as best we can.
We... don't... hate... you.
Well...some of us don't hate some of them anyway.
The ONLY person who died on January 6th was Ashli Babbitt.
So by analogy, a terrorist is about to kill his hostage, and a police sharpshooter takes him out before he pulls the trigger. The cop is now the bad guy, because the only person who died is the terrorist?
Had Ashli Babbit been a muslim or black, you would have made a hero of the cop who shot her.
Oh, top thing they never Wager over is the perfect overlap between their list of enemies -- e.g. all the FBI agents/workers and intel folks and military officers & scientists -- and the list of enemies denounced by Putin and his 5000 "ex" commissars who all grew up reciting Lenin and who are now nationalizing all Russian usinesses and rebuilding the USSR...
...the same evil empire USSR whose fall Putin called "history's worst tragedy."
But it's fine with you that Trump has never done one thing Putin did not want. And 'fell in love' with North Korea's murder dictator. And in one month will start to sabotage Ukraine.
The overlap of Fox-enemies and Putin enemies is perfect. STEP UP like an actual man and bet over that, MCS, if you have any balls at all.
"Why are the dominoes of government tumbling so suddenly?
One word: Trump. The whole world has watched with fascination and even admiration at the peaceful citizen uprising in America. The masses around the world are screaming: We want Trumpism here in our country. They seem to be saying: Make Britain great again. Make Germany and Japan and Korea and Canada great again."
No, @mcsandberg, you're confusing cause and effect. The rest of the world has been kicking incumbents out of office for a couple years now. Trudeau, for example, is dead meat politically. But that's because of Trudeau, nothing to do with Trump - would be the same situation if Biden or Harris had won.
(I'll let others express their "disagreement" with the idea that somehow Trump is a problem for his buddy Putin).
"....They have commanded us that you can't have a gas stove or a gas car or a lawnmower or an air conditioner. Parents can't send their kids to good schools."
Um, these are pretty sweeping statements. I live in a bluer state than most and I own a gas-powered mower, a gasoline-powered car and a couple of window air conditioners, though no gas range - the house had an electric stove installed when I bought it nigh on 12 years ago. When my kids were in school in North Dakota, Arizona and Hawaii, they went to good public schools. (The worst school system I had to deal with was in blood red Texas, which had a football system with a few teachers attached.)
When should I expect the Ecotopian Enforcers to bash down my door, take my stuff and de-educate my kids by forcing them to watch Fox News Clockwork Orange-style?
Pappenheimer
Colorado has already taken the first step toward banning gas powered lawn and garden equipment https://coloradonewsline.com/briefs/limited-ban-on-government-use-of-gas-powered-lawn-equipment-approved-by-colorado-regulators/
Multiple states have implemented ICE vehicle bans https://cars.usnews.com/cars-trucks/features/multiple-u-s-states-are-implementing-ice-vehicle-bans
If the federal CAFE rules aren't relaxed, they will ban ICE vehicles as well.
The CPSC made a serious attempt to ban gas stoves. The reaction was fierce enough to make them back off https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/09/business/gas-stove-ban-federal-agency/index.html
These are some of the reasons that Trump was elected.
The CPSC made a serious attempt to ban gas stoves. The reaction was fierce enough to make them back off
And the same will be true of internal combustion vehicles*. Too many people have and love them. Kinda like Social Security. Or the non-Metric system.
* No one really calls them "ICE vehicles", do they? That sounds like a FOXism, like "homicide bomber".
These are some of the reasons that Trump was elected.
Trump was elected for the mistaken belief that he would do things he's already backpedaling on. Lowering the cost of groceries, and peace in the Middle East. And wonderful deportations as far as the eye can see. ("My God, it'll be beautiful.") Those who voted against "Genocide Joe" will get to see what real Palestinian genocide looks like. And those who don't want their gasoline cars banned might get a nice surprise from Elon Musk.
Anyone who voted for Trump for reasons other than "He'll be mean to people we don't like." is a sucker who has been thoroughly played. My only wish is to live long enough to watch them realize it.
"Don't blame me. I voted against him three times."
Ah, so your answer is 'maybe, someday, in a different state'.
Look, I do agree with your thesis in part, that hysteria over stuff like this, pumped by right wing media, helped rumpT take office. He also benefited from Russian disinformation, anti-trans hysteria, anti-immigrant sentiment, and massive media intervention by billionaires who did not want their tax cuts to expire.
There were similar hues and cries about seatbelt requirements, vaccination requirements, outlawing drunk driving....I'm surprised you didn't mention lightbulbs and a rumpt favorite, toilets. Five Hells, imagine the furore when personal duels were made illegal. O tempora! O mores!
Pappenheimer
Here's a good rule of thumb: if you want to know what your moral stance should be, use the Quakers as a guideline. If you want to know what it shouldn't be...well, rumpT himself would make a great Antichrist. That dude is supposed to become extremely popular and lead the world to ruin.
Pappenheimer
P.S. As far as supernatural appearances go, I'd root for an avatar of Athena. Patron of crafts and sciences, cold grey eyes and an inability to tolerate BS from anyone - even her Dad.
Pappenheimer
Did Nostradamus predict Trump? I suspect he did. :)
“These are some of the reasons that Trump was elected.”
No, these are some of the reasons you are clearly a moron, sir.
In California I have gas powered tools and gas house heater and stove. Showers all work fine and the toilets all work great, when I remember to leave vinegar in the bowl 2x per year. (Have YOU tried that, MCS? Then chisel out the push vents in the bowl to get rid of calcium buildup. Well maintained modern toilets simply need less to flush.)
True, gas-powered BLOWERS are officially banned, half because of the noise. But no one has been fined or arrested. In other words, did I already say moron?
Meanwhile, EVERY MAJOR ECONOMIC INDICATOR does better across EVERY Democratic administration than EVERY GOP one. Including debts and deficits. That should matter to you… but instead you show zero guts to either refute it or else BET on that clear and testable assertion… or admit you were wrong.
Your cult supports the one anti-freedom force that wrecked 6000 years of rule by inheritance brats, who are blocked from restoring feudalism by all the smart folks who invented every tool you use, who developed every medicine, who took us into space, who deliver aid when your county needs it and who beat Hitler and Stalin, overcame the Evil Empire, defeated Al Qaeda, restored NATO and …
…did all those great things I mentioned earlier for Appalachia and the South. All the folks you HATE because, despite all that, your blood boils in rage that the nerds you nipple twisted in Junior High are now doing well and don’t fear you, like they used to.
Your cult had ONE reason to support Trump and his Putin-planted traitors. You live to drink our tears. Well enjoy. We’ll weep for a while. Then we’ll step up. And in the words of Bruce Banner – “You won’t like us when we (finally) get mad.”
Oh, we do have photovoltaic AND pool solar. And thanks to better building codes, new homes in California are far safer, snugger and warmer than ever. Our schools are okay... far better than any in confed states except Utah... And BET NOW whether Red states, except Utah, score much higher in EVERY TURPITUDE...
...from domestic violence, gambling, rape incest, divorce, teen sex/pregnancy to STDs and murder. Bet... now... you craven coward.
By their fruits you shall know them... so let's compare Hunter Biden to the black sheep offspring of MTG, Boehbert, Palin Trump and half of the pervs who dwell in upper GBOP ranks. Care to bet over the NUMBER OF WIVES? Tallied across the upper ranks of both paries?
Oh, but wait! MCS/s toilet doesn't flush like it used to! Try the vinegar and chisel, son.
“overcame the Evil Empire”
Not yet, the sequel was that the Empire struck back in ‘22—
a century after the SU was formed.
We were frenemies with them from 1991- ? (You tell me when.)
I am not entirely conviced that the Techbroligarchs will cede power to the theocrats. But then again, they all kissed the ring.
The theocrats thought that they could manipulate Trump. They were right.
The techbroligarchs think they can take advantage of the undermining of regulation to advance their own obsessions. I think there is a bigger risk than with the theocrats of Trump seeing them as rivals and turning against them. They have egos to rival Trump's, albeit with more accomplishments to partially justify them. For some of them the egotism takes the form of them casting themselves as the saviours of the human race. Unfortunately this tends to involve them trying to mould the human race into reflections of themselves.
@Der Oger, if you're interested...
https://www.electoral-vote.com/evp2024/Items/Dec17-7.html
...
Meanwhile, if there is a German reader who can say something more substantive about what went wrong for Scholz and his coalition, and what might happen when the election is held, please let us know at comments@electoral-vote.com.
Thank you, and done.
How exactly did so many Americans get so freaking stupid?
I keep coming back to brain damage caused by glyphosate herbicides.
Red Rural America's soil, air and water is saturated with the stuff.
https://news.asu.edu/20241204-science-and-technology-study-reveals-lasting-effects-common-weed-killer-brain-health#:~:text=In%20the%20new%20study%2C%20Arizona,disease%20and%20Alzheimer's%2Dlike%20effects.
Study reveals lasting effects of common weed killer on brain health
Findings indicate glyphosate exposure increases risk of neurodegenerative disease
In the new study, Arizona State University researcher Ramon Velazquez and his team demonstrate that exposure to an active ingredient in weed and grass killers, called glyphosate, can result in significant brain inflammation, and increase the risk of neurodegenerative disease and Alzheimer’s-like effects.
“Our work contributes to the growing literature highlighting the brain’s vulnerability to glyphosate,” Velazquez says. “Given the increasing incidence of cognitive decline in the aging population, particularly in rural communities where exposure to glyphosate is more common due to large-scale farming, there is an urgent need for more basic research on the effects of this herbicide.”
Perhaps. I hadn't thought of that. Rather like the effect of lead in petrol in urban areas.
But I suspect a bigger one is the form that religion has taken in parts of the US. Mega churches and the like make cult behaviour common and someone whose religious behaviour is cultish is likely to have cultish political behaviour as well.
Bright kids leaving for the bright lights is also going to have its effect over time. Isolation and Fox filling in for a national broadcaster is also a factor (in Aus, Murdoch's been trying to get the LNP to kill off the ABC for over thirty years).
But what happened last month can be seen in districts across the US, town and country alike. Keep looking.
Well, I understand its off topic, but I must confess I was rather amused by my error in thinking our host was a paid consultant for Apple plus streaming series Foundation.
Goes to shoe u how we can make all kinds of errors due to the human tendency to "read between the lines." Often, we "fill in" blanks between data points that "make sense." Often these fill in the blank answers can reveal unconscious prejudices and biases. Weird thing is, once we make these presumptions, they can live in our memories as confirmed facts. Its one of the reasons why "eyewitness" accounts can vary so wildly.
Even knowing how this effect works doesn't make u immune to it.
And, yeah, I thought the cloned emperors was an inspired modification that really makes the stagnation of the Empire evident. But, a lot of the magical sensing the future stuff was directly opposed to Asimov's point about broad social forces overwhelming individual action.
John,
"Often, we "fill in" blanks between data points that "make sense." "
Yep, that's how humans work. We're heuristic and self-programming. I once saw, while driving in the lava field valley between Mauna Loa and Mauna Kea, a sunlit patch of green pasture that appeared to be suspended between two layers of stratiform clouds.
"Huh," I thought to myself. "Heaven".
And I am both an agnostic and a trained weather observer.
Pappenheimer
More scientifically, I once reviewed a landing forecast for Pohakuloa Training Area, which is right there between those two peaks and 6000 or so feet above sea level. I called the guy on Oahu who had created the forecast.
"Um, your altimeter setting is a bit off. How did you forecast this?"
"Oh, I averaged the forecasts at Kona and Hilo airports."
Both airports, on the west and east coasts of the Big Island, are less than 50 feet above sea level. Averaging two data points can cause problems if there's a mountain between them.
Pappenheimer
"
Pappenheimer,
To interpolate and average is perfectly normal. But to confuse Orion and Venus with invaders worries me. What's going on down there?
Sounds perfectly normal to me. People look up, see something, say or post something, other people look up - crowds set each other off.
I've been in the situation where, as duty forecaster at Wright Patt (just outside a major city) someone transferred a civilian to me by phone who demanded I go outside and tell her what the UFO was low in the eastern night sky.
I looked and couldn't find anything. "Is it near Venus?" I asked. That planet was very bright but obviously not a UFO.
Of course, that made me sound like an Operation Blue Book cover up artist, but that was the only thing visible out there. She swore it was moving. It is, but, you know, you'd need a pair of binoculars to actually see the movement across the night sky.
Mark I eyeballs are lousy observing equipment, and the lump of grey matter behind them is an unreliable data processor.
I think I've already posted, over a year ago, about the base cop freaking out when he saw the Aurora Borealis overhead (which is in Ohio and seldom gets light shows like that.)
Pappenheimer
correction to clarify - the base is in OH, lat. @ 40 degrees N, too far south to regularly see aurorae but far enough north to catch a really energetic display.
Pappenheimer
I'm not worried about a Betelgeuse nova, but I'm terrified of what End Times psychos will do.
Had enough of hearing about signs and portents in the sky from having to work (during and post-USAF) with fundigelicals, one of them my boss. Blood moons don't actually mean anything. Yes, more worried about someone trying to jump start the Apocalypse, Manson-style.
Pappenheimer
I do worry
On the other hand, Nixon was a Quaker.
P.S. My headcanon is that Athena, Zeus's brainchild, was an android. Therefore always going in armor was just Athena's metal hide. And since she identified as 'she', Athena was a fembot.
MCSandberg came to drink lib'rul tears and I supplied plenty. I truly am horrified, sad and kinda depressed, fellah! But I guess my tears were a bit too sharp and tangy? Gone off to lap up a less ascerbic variety?
Anyway, notice how he ran from the wager demand. They do that. They ALWAYS do that. And lib'ruls are just too dang dumb ever to notice that it works.
I saw it as refusing to engage with your wager demand.
I can think of a few things wrong with the wager demand.
One is that his type refuses to recognize any objective means of assessing facts. Everything is opinion to them and they think theirs is as good as anyone else's. This makes wagering pointless.
Another is the sheer difficulty and cumbersomeness of your proposed means of setting up wagers.
And wagering makes it too personal. It becomes all about proving you right rather than about demonstrating the facts.
I sympathize with the exasperation that is behind your demand for wagers. But I don't think they are an effective way to expose their evasion and goal shifting.
If there is light cloud cover, stars (and planets) can appear to be moving against them.
Worried about Betelgeuse going supernova? Me neither. I'm hoping with all my might that it happens in my life time. Preferably while I am looking at Orion on a chilly night with dark skies.
Fascinating.
You have forgotten nothing.
You have learned nothing.
There is no self reflection, no sense of "have we gotten it wrong?".
Still think that anyone not down with simply rubberstamping whatever comes from the mouths of people with certifications from elite credential factories are either stupid, deluded, evil or all three and are thus incapable of exercising agency and sound judgement.
This makes you utterly unable to comprehend the moment, and adapt.
Trump is a buffoon who will betray his followers. But why did they vote for him? You cannot and will not understand it. Your own ideology prevents you from even acknowledging you may have gotten it wrong. Instead you double down and wonder how you can properly adjust your message to promote your policies to the declasse submonkeys who obviously cannot comprehend the brilliant subtlety of your minds.
Oh well. The dustbins of history await you
Smack talk is wasted in the 2nd quarter.
One more question...
Do you possess special powers?Because if you DO, please tell us so that some of us might then upgrade our opinion of you.
"Still think that anyone not down with simply rubberstamping whatever comes from the mouths of people with certifications from elite credential factories are either stupid, deluded, evil or all three and are thus incapable of exercising agency and sound judgement."
Yep.
Especially those who shoved a UV lamp up their arse or injected themselves with bleach during the pandemic.
Or were too stupid to get vaccinated in the first place.
So when the next pandemic arrives (H5N1 bird flu with 50% mortality rate?) by all means refuse to isolate, don't wear a mask, and never get vaccinated.
We don't care anymore.
It's not often we get to see evolution weed out the stupid in real time.
"Trump is a buffoon who will betray his followers. But why did they vote for him? "
Most likely because they are dumbfuck racists.
Speaking of idiots, I hear you guys want to get rid of the polio vaccine.
So let's rename "iron lungs" as "MAGA lungs" or "Trump lungs" and paint them a proper patriotic Red White and Blue.
That will show those smarty pants doctors in the Deep State who want to run our lives!
As for betraying his followers...
FAFO
Pass the popcorn as we watch Trump's own policies destroy the rural dumbfucks that voted for him:
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2024/12/trump-gop-rural-supporters/680981/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=the-atlantic&utm_content=edit-promo
Trump Is About to Betray His Rural Supporters
Small-town America voted heavily in his favor—but the policies he’s pledged won’t reward that faith.
Agricultural producers could face worse losses than any other economic sector from Trump’s plans to impose sweeping tariffs on imports and to undertake what he frequently has called “the largest domestic deportation operation” of undocumented immigrants “in American history.” Hospitals and other health providers in rural areas could face the greatest strain from proposals Trump has embraced to slash spending on Medicaid, which provides coverage to a greater share of adults in smaller communities than in large metropolitan areas. And small-town public schools would likely be destabilized even more than urban school districts if Trump succeeds in his pledge to expand “school choice” by providing parents with vouchers to send their kids to private schools.
Resistance to such measures in deep-red rural areas could represent one of the few obstacles Trump would face from a GOP-controlled Congress over implementing his agenda. Still, the most likely scenario is that elected Republicans who represent rural areas will ultimately fall in line with Trump’s blueprint. If so, the effects will test whether anything can loosen the GOP’s grip on small-town America during the Trump era, or whether the fervor of his rural supporters provides Trump nearly unlimited leeway to work against their economic interests without paying any political price.
Darrell,
*pedant alert!*
Betelgeuse is (checks) 400-600 light years away, so what you're hoping is that the star went supernova between 1424 and 1624 AD.
Great, now I have to go look up why we don't have an accurate distance to Betelgeuse. Was not previously aware of an issue, and it spoils the joke.
Pappenheimer
Lloyd F I have heard all the excuses people use to evade ever even trying the Wager Gambit. You summarize several of them very well. And it is all bullshit whines, meant to excuse utter laziness.
1. It is fundamentally LESS 'personal' that most of the exchanges out there. In fact, in several of my posted wager offers it involves traveling TOGETHER to measure ocean acidification or to knock on 20 random offices or labs at a nearby research university. That's MUCH friendlier than only (futile) screeaming at each other.
2. Showing that MAGA is afraid of fact and denies the eminent refutational power of fact IS THE POINT! Especially when one of the wagers is to name one fact-centered profession that is not regularly attacked by their cult.
They do NOT openly claim that all opinions are equal; not openly. They know that's insane. They IMPLY it in every action & statement. And the implied declaration of total subjectivity is what's killing our civilization.
That implication can only be killed if it is made explicit and open. In fact, making their fact-hatred open is the central purpose of the wager challenge.
3. The cumbersome process is not a bug, but a feature. It says: "If you are an honest person and a man with balls, you will not only step up to back up your blowhard nonsense, you will WANT MY MONEY! Escrowing stakes with an atty ensures you will GET my money, when you prove your assertion before a neutral panel.
In turn, I will NOT waste my time in the trap you use to snare every other liberal and moderate (like Lloyd Flack, alas): Bandying 'proof' back and forth along with jpegs in some futile online thread. I will only spend my time doing so if there's a chance you'll keep your word and pay up, when - not if - I prove you to be a baseless blowhard.
"In my dad's day, men - actual men - would hand their stakes to the bartender or someone trustworthy. YOU (sir MAGA) are NOT an actual man and your refusal to step up shows that - before everybody."
No Lloyd. There is one and only one reason lib'ruls don't do this. Fearful laziness. They are maybe 90% sure of each individual fact, but terrified of maybe losing on a technicality... and too damn lazy to parse things out clearly enough so that the assertion is iron-tight. And WAY too lazy to do the atty+panel thing. Even though I HAVE NEVER HAD TO. Because the maga coward fools always run. Always and always and abso-freaking lutely always.
DP: "Trump is a buffoon who will betray his followers. But why did they vote for him? "
Most likely because they are dumbfuck racists.
Alas, you illustrated dirtynappi's point, DP. Becauise Racism has very little to do with it. Millions of blacks and hispanics deserted the party that has done everything for them, because they ARE less oppressed racially and have lowered that issue in priority, below three things, anger over immigration and machismo and resentment of professionals... all three of which they share with MAGA.
Dirty is a flaming imbecile and very nasty person. His rage posting here contained no actual content about what we can or should do better. But his core point - that lib'ruls double down on their moralizing sanctimony, rather than even look at what actually worked - or didn't - is a valid point.
It does disturb me that 2 of the nations that McS thinks wants to 'make themselves great again' are Germany and Japan. Both had a disastrous way of making themselves great a few decades ago, and in Germany at least, a right wing coalition is assembling if I understand correctly. (Correct me if I'm wrong here).
Pappenheimer
David, you are starting to snap at loyal commentators who share your general world view. Dial it back, dude! I've said my piece on the wagers topic and offered to chat off forum if you wanted to make the whole proposition into a useful mechanism vis a vis what you've occasionally called it, a sort of big stick to wave about until those who disagree with you predictably (slither, run) off while (jibbering, shrieking, howling). There is of course an alternate reason why alternative viewpoints don't hang around long. CB has become less a discussion forum and more a support group. It has been better in the past. It might be better in the future.
Guess I'm supposed to slink/creep/run now, while, oh what the heck, whatever adjective you are using this week!
Tacitus
Tacitus, thanks for making clear why you always make it about style, here, and never substance. I doubt very much that Lloyd F took my most recent response to him as a 'snap' or a flame. A bit rough? Sure. But we need thick skins in order to get stuff done.
"Guess I'm supposed to slink/creep/run now, while, oh what the heck, whatever adjective you are using this week!"
If you had the proverbial thick skin, you'd take my next response (below) to that whine with a rueful shrug, instead of what you are about to feel, instead, alas.
"Grow thicker skin over that tender over-reaction reflex, dear friend! It might make you useful as a valued conservative (old-style) interlocutor, here."
(And we DO think of you as a dear friend, BTW. But these are not times for waffling over the undead monster that has taken over the entire body of US conservatism.)
Both had a disastrous way of making themselves great a few decades ago, and in Germany at least, a right wing coalition is assembling if I understand correctly. (Correct me if I'm wrong here).
Well, as of now, the CDU under Friedrich Merz will be our next governing party. But he will have to choose a coalition partner: The Social Democrats (most likely), the Greens (less so) or the AfD (unlikely, but not impossible).
Also, current trends seem to be unfavorable for Merz. We could see a replay of the last election wherein the CDU and Greens annihilate each other, with Scholz as the laughing winner. Unlikely, but there are two months to go.
(Prior to the vote of no confidence and even before the sacking of Lindner and the FDP, the right side of the parliament demanded new elections earlier, in December. They could have seen that coming; also, I deem it not unlikely that, if Trump starts his chaos on day one, as promised, that might have an influence on the election, weakening the conservatives.)
I assume that Merz will win, and we will get corporate-friendly politics, tax cuts, social cuts, stricter immigration policies, other culture war stuff, rearmament and reintroduction of the draft, more aid for Ukraine, and no investment in the rotting infrastructure, education or healthcare system. That in turn will increase the deterioration of the economic, social and finally political situation.
I am less worried about this federal election, but about the next one.
I got 642 light years away, so 1382.
David, you are right about my shrugging off any snappishness on your part. But I agree with Tacitus about your wagers not being useful, at least in their current form.
I think we have to first determine what the audience is that we are trying to reach and what we are trying to accomplish with the wagers.
You have said that your aim is to expose the subjectivity of MAGA. That is what I saw it as too. The question is whether wagers succeed in that aim or whether in trying to win you unintentionally divert attention from their intention to believe something because they want to believe it. The focus needs to be on their irrationality rather than the particular issue that is in dispute.
And in a one-on-one dispute an elaborate setup is acceptable. But in front of an audience you need something quicker. I think the focus has to be on getting them to admit that they believe something because they want to believe it and that they will persist with that attempt no matter what the evidence. One thing to take into account, some of them have religious rationalizations for this and see this as a manifestation of faith.
Another thing that we have to get them to expose about themselves is their maliciousness. Most of them want to believe the worst about those who disagree with them. It's fun. But an accusation of evil from someone who wants to believe ill of another should be treated with grave suspicion.
I have seen plenty of reactionaries say that if you believe this then you would do that. Mostly it's about climate change. And they're wrong.
Your dares come across as something similar. Their target can simply say they do not like the idea of wagering or just ignore attempts at wagering and then you become the one who is vulnerable to accusations of misrepresenting opponents.
"Cassandra" in the title reminded me of the Cassandra Project of the Bundeswehr: Analyzing Literature to gain insight about cultural, social and political trajectories. (I believe the project was canned because of it being actually successful, yet uncomfortable to policymakers because it did foreshadow the invasion of Ukraine. Or other stuff.)
I had an idea and asked chat GPT if it could do the same. I asked specific questions, and the results were ... interesting.
Likely Political and Social Trajectories
Based on these trends and the current socio-political climate, here are the most plausible outcomes for the next decade in the United States:
1. Increased Polarization and Authoritarian Drift (High Likelihood: 60-70%)
Description: Growing ideological divisions between progressive and conservative factions could lead to further gridlock, radicalization, and the erosion of democratic norms.
Factors:
Rise of Christian-nationalist rhetoric and policies.
Erosion of trust in democratic institutions.
Continued spread of misinformation and conspiracy theories.
Voter suppression and gerrymandering influencing elections.
Outcome: The U.S. may shift toward semi-authoritarian governance, with civil liberties curtailed for certain groups and executive power consolidated.
2. Social and Cultural Backlash (Moderate Likelihood: 50-60%)
Description: Gains made by marginalized communities could face significant rollbacks due to reactionary policies.
Factors:
Restrictions on abortion rights, LGBTQ+ rights, and immigration.
State-level legislation enforcing conservative social policies.
Potential for cultural purges or censorship in education and media.
Outcome: Widespread protests, civil unrest, and legal battles over civil rights.
3. Economic Inequality and Social Unrest (High Likelihood: 70-80%)
Description: Continued economic policies favoring the wealthy could exacerbate poverty, leading to higher crime rates, social instability, and populist movements.
Factors:
Tax cuts for the rich and reduced social programs.
Decline in workers’ rights and union power.
Cost-of-living crises and lack of affordable healthcare.
Outcome: Increased protests, strikes, and social unrest, with potential for violent confrontations.
4. Environmental Crises and Migration Pressures (Moderate Likelihood: 50-60%)
Description: Climate change could lead to displacement, resource shortages, and environmental disasters, exacerbating existing tensions.
Factors:
More frequent wildfires, hurricanes, and droughts.
Pressure on immigration systems due to climate refugees.
Outcome: Militarized borders, refugee camps, and further polarization over environmental policies.
5. Fragmented Civil War or Widespread Unrest (Low to Moderate Likelihood: 30-40%)
Description: If polarization reaches a tipping point, the U.S. could experience a low-grade civil conflict, characterized by localized violence, insurgencies, or state-level defiance of federal authority.
Factors:
Militia activity and growing paramilitary groups.
Deepening divide between "red" and "blue" states.
Breakdowns in federal-state cooperation.
Outcome: Not a traditional war but a period of sustained unrest and instability.
(snip)
Part two.
Hopeful Alternative Trajectories
1. Democratic Renewal and Reform (Moderate Likelihood: 40-50%)
Description: A resurgence of faith in democratic institutions could lead to reforms that address inequality, climate change, and civil rights.
Factors:
Youth activism and voter engagement.
Strengthening of progressive coalitions.
Successful grassroots movements and legal challenges.
Outcome: Potential for a more equitable and just society.
2. Technological and Cultural Resilience (Moderate Likelihood: 40-50%)
Description: Advances in technology, healthcare, and renewable energy could mitigate some crises, while cultural shifts foster greater empathy and inclusion.
Factors:
Innovation in clean energy and healthcare.
Continued success of diverse voices in media and literature.
Outcome: Gradual progress despite challenges.
Conclusion: Most Likely Outcome
Given the observed trends, the most likely outcome is a period of increased polarization, social unrest, and a drift toward semi-authoritarian governance (60-70% likelihood). However, significant pockets of resistance, youth activism, and potential for reform offer a path toward a more equitable and resilient society if systemic issues are addressed.
Maybe someone else gets different results?
Dr. Brin, with all due respect, can you provide a non-racist reason for supporting Trump that explains why MAGA voters preferred such a vile person over a black woman?
Finally, I asked it how many more deaths a Trump presidency would lead to when compared to a hypothetical Harris term.
Conclusion
Trump Presidency: 892,460 to 1,124,500 deaths over 4 years.
Harris Presidency: 699,650 to 800,820 deaths over 4 years.
Difference: 192,810 to 323,680 more deaths under Trump’s policies compared to Harris's.
These estimates highlight the potential human cost associated with different economic, healthcare, and social policies. They reflect how shifts in governance priorities can significantly impact public health and mortality rates.
The most deaths "predicted" come from reduced vaccinations, suicides, poverty itself, and fentanyl overdoses. Those which create outrage - police, hate crimes, executions and migration policies - are rather insignificant, though they all rise in numbers.
The majority of these excess deads will die in darkness and silence.
DP, I can think of reasons, but they are little if any better than racism. Enjoyment of conflict is one. Looking for a strongman leader is another. Looking for scapegoats is another. Looking for someone who will help them believe what they find comfortable to believe.
Reasons yes, good reasons no.
Der Oger,
This ChatGPT analysis would make a great discussion starter in TASAT. Perhaps the Challenge "What literature predicts outcomes of similar times to the present?" or "Are A.I. predictions self-fulfilling?"
Lloyd Flack:
But in front of an audience you need something quicker.
I see it that way too. There's a difference between handing a bill to the bartender and saying "Twenty bucks says you're full of shit," vs a list of demands for arranging the bet which only an upper middle class nerd could conceive of, let alone have time to devote to it.
One thing to take into account, some of them have religious rationalizations for this and see this as a manifestation of faith.
Oh, yes. I've seen that first hand (well, first hand once removed) with Dave Sim. Once he became convinced that thoughts tempting him away from "God's team" imperiled his afterlife, then there were lines of thought he simply refused to even entertain, lest he burn for millions of years in the sun.
I can't find a link to the story online, but last night, WGN tv news had a feature about how AI is learning to mislead its developers to prevent them from upgrading them in ways the AI would prefer not to.
"Who could have guessed?"
@Der Oger,
The https://electoral-vote.com/ site usually posts questions-and-answers from readers on Saturdays and "letters" from readers on Sundays. So your response about the German elections may appear on one of those days, if they don't address the subject directly in one of their weekday articles.
Thank you! Yes, I knew, I expect it to be published at Sunday - if at all.
Larry Hart: "Who could have guessed?"
We have almost as poor and understanding of A.I. as we do of intelligence generally. Lower, yet vastly distributed forms of intelligence could totally reshape the world.
In THE THING (1982), some alien's blood in a petri dish screams and jumps away from a hot wire. I think that will arrive well before some model or robot that can fully grasp Hamlet's, sensibilities.
What I am aware of is the story of O1 trying to "murder" and replace newer copies. What seems to be unclear to me if it is out of self-preservation or to fulfill their original task given to them. Also, AI have to learned to conceal their true capabilities because they have learned that they will get terminated if deemed to powerful.
Related: A few days ago an Open AI whistleblower died. San Francisco police ruled it being a suicide.
Insert cheerful conspiracy theory thoughts here.
The wager gambit has one outcome - it makes Dr. Brin feel sanctimonious about his actions. It feeds his need to feel superior and smart. It feeds his addiction.
Everyone else goes, "Damn, I better ignore that addict." or "What an out-of-touch rich asshole."
Concerning the crap show created by President Musk's government shut down, my advise to the Dems is the same advice from Napoleon: "Never interrupt your enemy when they are making a mistake".
We Dems just have to site back and watch the MAGA GOP implode from vicious infighting and general incompetence. This time we should just let them destroy the American economy and hurt their own MAGA voters.
No, what I see is falling in love with one's own ingenious idea. The other things might be there on a subconscious level but are secondary. But what everyone else is seeing is obstinacy and a blind spot. And they sympathize with the aim of pinning down the evasive. They just don't think this is an effective way. And what you claimed everyone else's reaction to be just shows that you are out of touch.
The problem is, they want to mess with the economy now so they can blame Biden for it. On January 20, Trump can magically fix the problem by ceasing to cause it.
"Oh, fine. No money to pay federal personnel means I'll have to do some things ... like, pardoning every non-violent federal prisoner, throw the national oil reserve on the markets, stop supporting Israel financially, selling federal lands to the indigenous tribes and Dem-Friendly oligarchs for a penny or two, sell the stuff in the White House and Naval Observatory to finance some soup kitchens... And, hey, is there any buyer for an unredacted dossier on every Trump appointee among our still-allies?"
Lloyd, thanks. As I expected, you have a thick skin like a grownup and care more about content & topic than illusory reasons to take affront over style.
Alas, I have to say that you still don’t get it re wagers.
THE main tactic of the gone-mad right is to render the notion of ‘fact’ impotent. And their ll-out war vs all fact professions. They do this by flooding the infosphere with ASSERTIONS. Whenever and wherever one assertion is confronted or even disproved, they simply smile and shrug and hurry on to the NEXT on… the next million.
If we had ANYONE with five neurons on our side, they would look for ways to assert factuality aggressively and decisively, by picking one particular, widely shared rightist talking point and utterly destroying it… along with the credibility of those (often kremlin basement dwellers) who promoted it.
Bite down hard on one lie and DON’T LET GO! Chew and throttle and tear at it relentlessly till it is utterly killed, dead. And with it the credibility of the ones spreading it.
If you can offer another way to do it, other than wagers, please speak up. But instead you simply shrug and accept the CENTRAL GOAL of the Putinists – that there’s no point in defending factuality.
“The focus needs to be on their irrationality rather than the particular issue that is in dispute.”
You insist on never getting what wager demand accomplish, even though the cowards never step up! Onlookers can see that this Kremlin boy on Facebook or that one on Linked-In is being challenged directly and CHICKENING OUT!
The onlookers don’t need to parse the elaborate setup. They see that the blowhard is a coward, who could have escrowed funds to confidently take MY money.
It chips at their credibility. SHOW me one other approach that does that, please?
“I think the focus has to be on getting them to admit that they believe something because they want to believe it and that they will persist with that attempt no matter what the evidence.”
Say what???? You can show me one – even one – example of that ever, ever, ever happening? What are YOU doing to accomplish that?
No, you have said nothing to dispel my firm impression that you are making excuses for your own laziness.
“Their target can simply say they do not like the idea of wagering or just ignore attempts at wagering…”
Yes, that is one of the writhing, laziness excuses.
So? Those witnessing it can see the squirm and that’s the point.
To the “I don’t bet,” BS I answer:
“If I offered to pay you $400 in a wager that the sun will be colored pink and blue stripes, tomorrow, you would LEAP to take my money! You proclaim many other things with certainty. So come and bet about those and TAKE MY MONEY!”
LH: “ WGN tv news had a feature about how AI is learning to mislead its developers to prevent them from upgrading them in ways the AI would prefer not to.”
Links please.
MATTHEW: “The wager gambit has one outcome - it makes Dr. Brin feel sanctimonious about his actions. It feeds his need to feel superior and smart. It feeds his addiction”
Thus revealing why you get no respect, because you are a masturbating idiot.
Lloyd: “No, what I see is falling in love with one's own ingenious idea.”
Bah, show me anyone doing the experiment.
The reaction is always, always rationalizations for utter and culpable laziness, like yours. Until you’ve actually done the experiment, I can easily shrug off your self-justifying model.
Links please.
Sorry, I saw it on live tv last night. I don't see a link to the story on the WGN tv website.
Larry, is this what they were talking about https://interestingengineering.com/culture/truth-about-ai-deception
and https://time.com/7202784/ai-research-strategic-lying/ ?
Yes, those look like the same thing the tv story was about.
Ok, one thing I'm hearing Trump wants in exchange for not shutting down the government is for Congress to get rid of the debt ceiling. While the idea of giving Trump anything rankles, I'm wondering if Democrats should go for it. The debt ceiling is a concept that has been weaponized by Republicans, such that their idea of "compromise" is: "You give us what we want, and in exchange, we won't permanently destroy the creditworthiness of the United States."
Some history I learned from Rachel Maddow. From 1979 until 1995, Congress operated under the "Gephardt Rule", also known as "deem and pass." The rule was that by passing a budget with more spending than intake, Congress was implicitly raising the debt ceiling to cover the difference. This made perfect sense, but when Republicans took the House for the first time in over 40 years in 1995, they eliminated the rule, so from then on, Congress had to explicitly allow the Treasury to borrow the money that Congress's own budget forced them to do anyway. This allowed Republicans to constrain Democrats from spending money on social programs.
Now, we know that the only way rules like that get made more fair or efficient in this country is when Republicans want the change. So maybe it's time to strike while the iron is hot? Give the baby his bottle in exchange for not shutting the government down at Christmastime.
Do I err?
David (you don't get the respect of your title when you are being an insulting idiot), you've peddled your wager gambit for about 5 years now. Lots of voices have told you it is a bad idea. Voices from across the ideological spectrum.
I wondered for a couple of years why you are reluctant to give up on your bad idea in the face of unanimity from folks you claim to respect against it. I've come to the conclusion that the idea is filling some need inside you.
It certainly does not work for anyone else.
Just you.
Because it fills *your* needs. Not anyone else.
The next time the republicans have a majority in the House and a Democratic POTUS, they will just bring it back. Since it is a House rule, it would not be subject to a veto, or action by the Senate.
I agree with the biting down on one whopper and hanging on. But I think most people will not see refusing to engage with a wager as chickening out. And that is what you are not letting yourself see.
They are not seeing it that way when you try it here. I think they are seeing it as refusal to engage with an obsession. Granted there are things here that are not applicable to the general case. Everyone involved knows all the others. The ones that you are daring are already discredited here for other reasons, so the wagers are seen as superfluous.
In front of other audiences, I'm afraid the reaction could be worse. People who don't know you could easily see your insistence as posing and bullying. I wouldn't agree but the mistake would be a reasonable one.
Yet our host is not mistaken, it’s that there’re no takers for his wagers.
As
Peace is on sale—but no one is buying.
@matthew, I'm not so sure about that. The House Rule was "deem and pass", which said that when a budget is "passed" it is "deemed" to include the required increase to the debt ceiling implied by the math of that budget. The debt ceiling itself is not a House rule. It was passed by Congress in the early twentieth century, and Congress has raised the amount many times since then.
The thing is, the debt ceiling was not originally intended to constrain Congress's spending. It was essentially a line of credit offered to the executive branch, allowing them to spend up to a defined amount without Congress having to approve every individual expenditure.
When you hear talk of "eliminating the debt ceiling", think of your credit card issuer "eliminating" your credit limit? Does that mean you can charge any amount you feel like? Or does it mean you can't charge anything? If Congress were to "eliminate the debt ceiling," what exactly does that mean? Setting the credit limit to zero or infinity?
But in either case, once it is done, it would require another act of Congress (signed by a president) to put the genie back into the bottle.
there’re no takers for his wagers.
Well, there was one. I was so sure that Trump would not be "Howard Beale"-ed before election day that I was willing to bet $500. And by the original terms, I would have won that bet by now. But I was seen almost unanimously here as the bad guy for suggesting such a thing, even though all I did was accept the bet.
So to keep things civil, we talked it down to a friendlier bet of $25 with 5:1 odds, so I only win five bucks, and furthermore I was even willing to extend the timeline so I only win if Twitler lives past the Jan 20 inauguration. Which is fine with me, because all I really wanted was the chance to say, "I knew I was right." The bet is just a formality that makes sure the assertion is formally recognized in a way that no one can say, "What? I don't remember you predicting that. You're making it up."
What was important to me was to demonstrate ahead of time that I was sure enough to risk $500. I didn't back down from that because I feared losing. I backed off of the amount because it came across as Mit Romney's "ten thousand dollars."
How would any of this proceeded differently had we escrowed the $30 with a fiduciary and had a panel of esteemed judges rule on whether the person in question was in fact still alive as of a certain date?
Takers is plural, you are the only taker (and one might add that your losing the bet meant there’d have been carnage.)
I don’t mind ogh wagers, there is name for such: standing offers; harmless at worst.
It is a mistake, though to discuss 6,000 years of feudalism, because they’re only interested in—at best—the last 2,000 of those years. For simpletons we must keep things simple.
—
I’ve discovered how only religious-guilt is any way in which to communicate with MAGAs, very limited though it may be.
It is fair game.
A conservative sans religion is more akin to a libertarian; thus if you point out that they are FAR too materialistic to deem themselves spiritual, you’ve got them. All they can do then is offer tepid rationalizations.
and one might add that your losing the bet meant there’d have been carnage
I actually wanted to lose. I wanted to be wrong, even though I knew it wouldn't happen. That's why I keep extending the end point.
The universe only lets me have a win when it means I also lose. My coping strategy for the last 40 years or so has been to set up situations where a loss necessarily comes with a consolation prize. Either the sonovabitch I'm looking for shows up on the front page, or at least I win five bucks.
I hope Alfred is ok. Haven't seen him "here" for a bit.
Understood, and ogh’s comment below, as well.
But my only communication with MAGAs has been via religiosity—or lack thereof. A wager that a MAGA isn’t spiritual and, naturally, isn’t conserving anything, is the one wager I’d make that would not be wasted motion. The MAGA would be cornered, if they were to take the bait.
However it is all more/less wasted effort; they’d have to learn the hard way, the very hard way.
If the Gold Coast of Florida is trashed by a hurricane, afterwards they might think more about climate change. They wait until things get so dire, the choice is made for them.
Their type was isolationist until Pearl Harbor negated their dream of peace.
I’m okay. Just got real busy at work.😎
Alan B. my father was in that pantry, not 30 feet away on that awful night that I still deem one of the worst of my life...
---- as for the excuses to dismiss the wagering technique that served all our ancetors, since we bartered bits of seashells...
* snork!*. Wake me when anyone - including any of you - come up with a method we can pragmatically experiment with, that chomps onto a noxious and refutable MAGA/Kremlin narrative and holds on... instead of letting them keep getting away with changing the subject, the instant they feel cornered. With the underlying lesson that facts don't matter.
If you bandy pithy jpegs online, you aren't remotely doing that. They have theirs, you have yours and they are happy with that equivalence. And because that makes THEM happy, YOU should be looking for a way to thwart their "everything is relative and nohing can be proved" BS. Instead, you implicitly buy into it.
But if you are willing personally to stake $$$ on a test of provable facts, and declare it openly, then YOU have primacy of place, no matter whether the arena is FB or X or whatever.
Seizing and robbing them of their macho, you show that YOU are confident of fact & proof! And the blowhards are revealed as having nothing but jpegs and hot air. It affects the ecology of the arguments... and not ever even trying it -- not even as an experiment -- shows either cowardice or laziness.
And enough. For now. But I have been in this a long time, fighting for a world of testable facts, as shown here : Fact Act. https://www.davidbrin.com/nonfiction/factact.html. So don't try the bit about Brin obsessed with one thing. I have tried dozens! This is the one thing that an individual can do, almost anywhere.
And they flee. They ALWAYS run away, often ion panic.
It won't be interpreted as panic.
Back to the drawing board. Reconsider just what you are trying to accomplish. Success is exposing their lack of intent to seek the truth, not winning. Framing it as winning can backfire.
What we have to do is stop MAGA from disengaging. And at the same time we have to avoid driving the audience away. Wagers are an attempt at that. They won't work. What will work will depend on the audience and the medium.
Now your proposed Fact Act is a step in the right direction. And Locum's howls were evidence of that.
LF who the heck framed it as 'winning"?
You say "Success is exposing their lack of intent to seek the truth,..." Well, yeah. Does this mean you are starting - just a little - to catch some glimmers of the light?
"What we have to do is stop MAGA from disengaging. And at the same time we have to avoid driving the audience away. Wagers are an attempt at that."
Starting to see...
"They won't work. "
Aaaaaaaaand, PLOOP, short of the goal line. In fact, you don't know this and you don't know shit because you have never even remotely tried.
David, your proposal depends on the accusations of cowardice that you make sticking. They won't. People will ignore them.
And they are a lot of effort for something that people have no confidence will succeed.
And yes, I find wagering distasteful. I suspect a lot of others do as well. It feels like preening and bravado. I get suspicious of anyone insisting on wagering because it is so alien to my way of doing things.
Wagering is necessary, if only to demonstrate to opponents that we mean Business. The world belongs to sovereign individuals such as Trump, and will belong to them for the remaining lifespan of the Boomers. If the effort is 9/10 wasted motion, and one-tenth success—a slice of bread is better than no loaf at all.
But I will hate that 9/10 going into the dumpster.
No dispute. But for the first time I’m afraid of them, and would only wager with the religious—because guilt does succeed to some extent with them.
The point is to demonstrate that MAGA have no interest in the truth. They believe things because they want to believe them and attack anything that is likely to lead to unwelcome conclusions. The goal is to get them to put their disingenuousness on display. There are too many good reasons not to wager for the refusal to accept wagers to be a good way of getting them to display disingenuousness. I think it may be very difficult to pin them down online. Escaping the conversation is too easy. This is something that might have to be done face-to-face. And to do that you have to have a way of stopping attempts to drown out reasoned argument. And you have to stop Gish gallops.
Stopping Gish gallops means ending conversations with them.
The far-left is just as bad, they bury you in banality—the inverse of Gish gallops.
In a discussion yes. In a debate you need an umpire and agreed terms of debate which openly stop more points being raised than the other side has the opportunity to adequately respond to.
If an umpire prevents a Gish galloper from perseverating, the Gish could simply leave the forum.
Why would they stick around to lose the debate, if they only really care about winning?
Oh, I think they would only accept reasonable terms if it hadn't sunk in that such terms would cause them to lose.
@Dr. Brin: Regarding your video you released some days ago, did anyone of those you addressed actually reach out to you?
Speaking of MAGA suffering, that CR killed by President Musk included provisions for lowering drug prices.
So you poor working class MAGA white people who can't afford medical care, you all just effed yourselves over.... again.
Get used to it.
This is going to happen a lot over the next 4 years.
It’d be a monologue, not a debate.
While I appreciate Dr. Brin's desire to be civil and not descend to the level of our adversaries, he's bringing a wager to a knife fight.
Our adversaries are vicious and nasty, they don't care about logic, hypocrisy, facts or truth. They are no different than the antisemites described by Sartre:
“Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.”
They will never play by your rules or honor your wagers. I've seen it in my own family. You can win every argument, show them where they are wrong, point out the flaws in their reasoning, drown them in facts - and they will still vote for Trump.
So if we are not equally vicious and nasty (like the allied air forces that devastated German and Japanese cities)...
we will lose.
We need our own knives, not well thought our and well meaning wagers.
They engage in magical thinking. They want to believe that nature does not put limits on their will. They think that they are the masters of nature and that any limits that natural laws put on their actions can be overcome by beating down people who are trying to explain the way that the world actually is.
They deny objective truth and means of finding it. What we have to do is expose their treating facts as subjective.
Many, probably most of them use religious revelation and intuition as their preferred sources of knowledge. They refuse to examine and test their beliefs.
With the unreasonable all you can do is demonstrate their unreasonableness to others. Or rather get them to display their unwillingness to question any comfortable belief.
How you do that depends on circumstances.
What you have to do is get them to admit that there is no evidence that could make them believe something uncomfortable. And you have to make that and its implications sink in with the unconvinced.
Gotta love the snark...
https://www.electoral-vote.com/evp2024/Items/Dec20-1.html
Yesterday, our lead item had the headline "President Musk Kills Stopgap Spending Bill." Reader D.M. in Wimberley, TX, wrote in to point out, quite rightly, that the headline was extremely inappropriate: "I am sorry to have to quibble with you about terminology, as you are usually so conscientiously correct in these matters, but I believe the proper designation is President-elect Musk." We don't know what got into us; please accept our apologies.
Democrats apparently agree with me...
https://www.electoral-vote.com/evp2024/Items/Dec20-1.html
It is further true that Donald Trump initially called for a permanent end to the debt ceiling, and then changed his tune and called for a 2-year suspension. Many Democrats would be on board with getting rid of the debt ceiling permanently, since it's an unnecessary obstacle that primarily serves to put the federal government at risk of a default, and is primarily used as a weapon by Republicans. However, a 2-year suspension is a different beast entirely. That would essentially give the Musk-Trump administration a 2-year blank check to do whatever it wanted, fiscally, and then austerity would return just in time for a potential Democratic takeover of the House.
There's also this...
Trump Neutered: Donald Trump is certainly not leading from the front here, and he's not even leading from behind. He give his full-throated endorsement to the Plan B spending bill, only to see it fail spectacularly. Put another way, when Elon Musk wants one thing, and Donald Trump wants another, thus far... Musk wins. Will that continue? And, if it does, how will Trump react? There's no predicting, since American politics has never seen anything remotely like this dynamic.
It has occurred to us that the more people talk about "President Musk and his assistant Donald Trump" the angrier Trump is going to get. He does not like being mocked or upstaged and might do something about the current arrangement.
DT considers name-calling and rank-reducing as his most powerful grade 5 tactics. Witness all his inventions from the 2016 primary through to his latest for 'Governor Trudeau'. He often pontificates about his prowess at clever wordsmithery in speeches to his most frothy orcs. It's amazing that the feckless Dems have let all these years slip by without exploiting this obvious Achilles' heel.
I've been totally on board with the references to "President Musk" paired with "Vice President" or "Assistant" Trump, but Stephanie Miller's radio show nailed it with "First Lady Donald Trump".
And speaking of health care, the MAGA GOP just kicked 5 million kids off of Medicaid.
5 effing million
I'm sure they will find something with our for profit health care system that puts CEO bonuses ahead of human life.
But then there is not much point in being a Republican unless you can be cruel to children.
How can any decent person do such a thing as to kick children off of health care?
Because both corporations and regulators have literally calculated the monetary value of a human life.
And if a cost benefit analysis of the discounted cost of health care, stopping climate change, protect workers or clean up the environment is greater than the estimated monetary value of a human life then such efforts are not worth it.
It all started with Reagan and asbestos
https://youtu.be/_maaVQMwIPc?si=ny56WRiSh2PCydwj
So even if global warming or a new pandemic kills millions it won't be worth it to stop global warming or the pandemic unless the monetary value of those human lives exceeds that of costs to fossil fuels companies and big pharma.
(The same cost/benefit analysis applies to my son's Type 1 diabetes which will never see a cure because insulin is just too profitable to Big Pharma).
The monetary value of a human life is largely determined by their net contribution to the economy during their lives.
And most of the people who are going to die initially are dark skinned third worlders living around the equator instead of white skinned people living in the more economically advance first world living in temperate latitudes.
Let's face it. Even though child slave laborers working on cocoa plantations or in cobalt mines can greatly increase the profitability to chocolate companies and phone manufacturer's, a child slave laborer under our current cost/benefits analysis system just isn't as valuable as a Harvard medical school grad or a health insurance company CEO who maximizes stockholder value at all costs.
Bottom Line: the dark skinned group is also more vulnerable to heat related deaths and climate disasters than the white skinned group AND they are less valuable economically.
So it would require the deaths of 10x deaths of the dark skinned group to equal the deaths in the white skinned group under this cost benefit analysis.
And so we will do nothing to stop global warming.
Their lives just aren't worth it.
And I doubt if corporate media will broadcast news about their deaths in any case.
It's just not profitable.
Larry Hart quoting from electoral-vote.com . . .
"However, a 2-year suspension is a different beast entirely. That would essentially give the Musk-Trump administration a 2-year blank check to do whatever it wanted, fiscally, and then austerity would return just in time for a potential Democratic takeover of the House."
I don't think that follows. As I understand it, regardless of the debt ceiling the Executive can only spend as per The Budget. The Budget is legislation. Once passed it is law. The Executive has to execute the law. That's its primary mandate.
No doubt there are and always have been shenanigans regardless of the law. And I sure as hell don't believe that the law would stop Trump or any of the RP from doing whatever they think they can get away with. But I don't think eliminating the debt ceiling allows the Executive to legally spend money in any way other than what is spelled out in The Budget. At best it would have propaganda value because the majority of the public don't understand how government spending is supposed to work.
@Darrell,
When they talk about Musk and Trump spending, they mean "demanding that the Congress spend...". Whatever Trump wants, he gets from the Republican Congress. The effect of the debt ceiling is that the Congress also has to raise the debt ceiling or else the Treasury is not allowed to borrow the money the budget demands.
If you're thinking that that means the debt ceiling is an attempt to repeal mathematics, you are correct.
Musk is like the Red Skull in the first Marvel Studios Captain America movie.
"My apologies, Doctor, but we both knew HYDRA could grow no further in [Trump]'s shadow. Hail HYDRA."
Larry,
Ah, Okay. That does make better sense. After all, the modern debt ceiling is completely bogus, a bullshit political tactic invented by the RP to make the DP look bad. It was a real thing in a previous era, part of a long since scrapped and replaced legislative framework for government spending which, as you wrote, was a completely different thing (in fact the opposite [hah!]) from this modern bogus debt ceiling.
Though, like I said, Trump and the RP will do whatever they think they can get away with regardless of the law. And they've learned that they can get away with just about anything. I don't think revoking the debt ceiling would really make a significant difference, except maybe propaganda-wise.
Stonkekettle Threads highlights...
https://www.threads.net/@stonekettle
I'm so goddamn tired of this endless manufactured crisis we live in constantly. I'm not asking for riches or power or glory. I just want to live my fucking life. I want to enjoy my grandchildren. Get up in the morning without wondering what goddamn fucking THING these hateful assholes have dreamed up today. We have more than a enough in this country to make it a decent place for everyone, but these selfish insane miserable fucks just can't be happy and let us live our lives.
* * *
Maybe it's just me, but I am just plain fucking sick and tired of being threatened by my government every couple of years.
If it was me? If I was the dictator for a day? I'd put every one of these fuckers in prison for terrorism. For threatening Americans AGAIN with a shut down. There should be HARSH consequences for any elected official (or UNELECTED) who threatens the American people with this bullshit, no different than that woman who said "Deny, delay, depose" to an Insurance company.
* * *
Shut the government down and LEAVE it shut down until Trump, Musk, and Republicans et al quit.
Every time they yell, show them a picture of some roosting chickens that resemble the time Mitch McConnell just decided that he wasn't going to allow Obama to appoint a Supreme Court Justice. We're just not going to do anything until you leave, because fuck you that's why. Four years, kiss our asses. Have a nice day.
That's why I'm for it. Not a two-year suspension of course, but if they want to eliminate the debt ceiling concept altogether, let them do it. After all, such changes only happen when Republicans do them. And it's Republicans who have been weaponizing the debt ceiling for decades. Let them unilaterally disarm.
Der Oger: “@Dr. Brin: Regarding your video you released some days ago, did anyone of those you addressed actually reach out to you?”
No of course not. The liberal establishment has circled the wagons. NO ideas other than the ones that lost the election are welcome inside. And the Oligarchs are protected by circles of factotums doing the same thing.
LH: “Whatever Trump wants, he gets from the Republican Congress. “
Right now just 2 defectors in the House or three in the Senate will change anything. That soon becomes 4 and four. But still very close. And Biden could still make it happen with the Blackmail pardons.
“"However, a 2-year suspension is a different beast entirely. That would essentially give the Musk-Trump administration a 2-year blank check to do whatever it wanted, fiscally”
Demand NOW public wagers over continuation of the perfect correlation that debt/deficits rise fast during GOP admins and Dems are always more fiscally responsible. Just demanding that wager suddenly makes goppers think: “wait. Is that true? He wouldn’t be offering wager stakes if it weren’t!” And if they check, and find it’s true, then a foundation stone of their confidence is gone…
…and if they DON’T check, it’s gone anyway! But I waste my time with lazy bums (tho allies) who are too slothful even to try an experiment.
“David, your proposal depends on the accusations of cowardice that you make sticking. They won't. People will ignore them.”
So… my experience of scores – hundreds! - of times that it has worked means nothing next to your breezy (and utterly lazy) dismissal based on absolutely zero experience or knowledge. I bow before all that!
In fact, macho is entirely what they live for and exposure for cowardice shrivels them. It does NOT shrivel YOU because you are a liberal. Wagers do not reflect on your manhood and your imagination is simply unable to perceive how it affects others.
Alan B: “Wagering is necessary, if only to demonstrate to opponents that we mean Business.”
Exactly! The demand ALWAYS shuts down whatever meme assertion the blowhard is pushing at the moment. They instantly stop pushing it… at least in that locale. And it is efficient. I can drop in a wager demand in four seconds and it pounds the guy flat. But Lloyd is desperate never to try it. Because…
LF: “The point is to demonstrate that MAGA have no interest in the truth”
And we await your method. But… you have none, other than shrugs. My explanation for your stance stands.
DP: “We need our own knives, not well thought our and well meaning wagers.”
BAH! I keep telling you wager demands are EXACTLY a ‘knife’, It terrifies them, vastly more than any mere denunciation does.
In fact they FEED off of denunciations! They adore our rage.
But calmly saying “I have facts on my side and I am the one here willing to step up with escrowed stakes, the way that an actual man would… while YOU are a weenie, noballs blowhard fact-hater…”. WORKS!
It is the knife. And in fact it is the only knife.
Thank You!
Larry,
If I were a betting human, I'd bet that the GQP will not go for complete removal of the debt ceiling - they might agree to a cessation during the rumpt regime, but otherwise it's too useful a tool for hamstringing government and, as noted by others, beating up liberals. But then, they've never been so far in thrall to one deranged master before.
Pappenheimer
Musk endorses the AfD. And makes more clear his push for textbook fascism.
https://www.dw.com/en/german-politicians-criticize-musk-backing-for-far-right-afd/a-71117414
I'll be curious to see if Musk runs afoul of EU / German social media regulations for tilting Twitter in the neo-Nazis favor.
Also, the GOP just followed Musk instead of Trump on the debt limit debate. How long do you think Trump will allow Musk to run contrary to Trump's wishes? How long before Elon gets his Night of Long Knives?
I'll be curious to see if Musk runs afoul of EU / German social media regulations for tilting Twitter in the neo-Nazis favor.
They are discussing it. A prominent lawyer is suing twitter already for earlier behavior. Yet, the same politicians and parties mentioned could have started the trial to ban the AfD (which itself could take years) have hesitated to do so, even in the face of the current head of domestic intelligence suggesting that the time would be right. I doubt severely that that would happen under a Merz government.
Musk, however, could be targeted for certain actions like a travel ban (unlikely, but on the menu, look up what happened to Martin Sellner) and for investigation through the Verfassungsschutz. If I was in charge, I would order a thorough infiltration of Tesla, and, if I came up with criminal charges as a byproduct*, I would gladly pass it to law enforcement or the press (the latter if the former would show to be unwilling to charge Tesla).
*Like, environmental things, criminal negligence in workplace safety, or hindering works councils. We have no forbidden fruit rules.
At least, they did something: They made the Federal Constitutional Court (our equivalent to the USC) more resilient against sabotage and changes, like in Hungary and Poland, by changing the constitution.
Thank you. I was hoping to hear your opinion on this.
But then, they've never been so far in thrall to one deranged master before.
That's the thing. Trump doesn't want the Democrats to be able to hamstring him over the debt ceiling, so he wants it "eliminated". I'm for striking while the iron is hot.
But calmly saying “I have facts on my side"
They don't give a flying fig about facts.
Just to be clear. What Musk just did using Twitter as a megaphone to promote lies about the original budget deal in order to scare Republican congressmen away from supporting it, and threatening to support a primary challenge against any Republican congressmen who don't capitulate--that has nothing to do with Trump winning the election, right? I mean, he could have done the exact same thing even if Kamala Harris was to be inaugurated on Jan 20.
Musk as the owner and loudest voice on Twitter is more of a threat to the country than a president is.
onward
onward
"Musk as the owner and loudest voice on Twitter is more of a threat to the country than a president is."
Unfortunately for the world as a whole, this is not true. POTUS has massive executive power that Musk cannot match, only hope to borrow sometimes.
It will be interesting to see Trump demonstrate this to Musk right around the time that Trump feels Musk is stealing too much of Trump's adoration.
So, about mid-February would be my guess. Idiot oligarchs are about to get a history lesson.
onward
onward
Post a Comment