Do you feel welcome in the United States?
q: how often do you see a ghost's butt?
a: once in a boo moon
from #HamiltonNolan https://inthesetimes.com/article/donald-trump-elon-musk-election-2024-dumb ht @ryanlcooper
Text: The question of how our nation became so disgusted by the myth of politics- as-public-service that it happily embraced the apocalyptic politics-as-Squid Game we now face is one that can actually do us some good. That question, you see, is not about the dumb man himself, or his retinue of cretins, or the wearisome parade of sociopathic looting that our government is about to endure. It is instead about all the nice, respected, smart people who came before him, and how their justifications for the sociopathic looting of the past grew so transparent that they disappeared. Run a system without humane values long enough and people will crave for nothing more than to laugh while it burns. The only thing left now is to rebuild it better when the smoke clears.
you do suicide by police on the streets. you do suicide by secret police on social media.
the oath you took to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States was not an oath to protect and defend John Roberts' interpretation of it.
the oath you took to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States was not an oath to protect and defend John Roberts' interpretation of it.
@eARCwelder 😬 indeed.
i think we can agree that the nomination we all watched him withdraw from was rather young.
an irony of these times we're living through is it's failure of the Reagan Revolution that's about to put an end to the New Deal.
1) it's easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of the current system;
2) the current system is ending, soon. it is not sustainable, socially, politically, environmentally;
3) our dispreference for the end of the world (nuclear war) diminishes — our willingness to take risks with collective survival increases — as something similarly scary seems already baked in, a sunk cost. the end of the world seems less worse-than-the-alternatives than it used to seem.
@dpp thanks. i, um, really needed to be cheered today.
“there should never again be a Democratic nominee who doesn't host their own podcast. Let's start there.” @dave http://scripting.com/2024/11/21/143547.html
i think we have to concede that republican nannygates are spicier.
@buermann ask the popcorn sellers.
perhaps it was the wisdom of the American people to heighten the contradictions.
sometimes i worry that it is our inclination to insist upon competent fascists.
the richest man on the planet understands that you may suffer some hardship.
“the governor must fill any vacancies on the state’s top courts with appointees recommended by the political party of the departing judge. That will prevent Stein from appointing Democrats to fill future openings on the state Supreme Court, where Republicans hold a majority.”
They’re just not even pretending anymore. Except when Democrats threaten to do anything similar. Then it’s Radicals Destroying The Constitutional Order.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/11/20/north-carolina-legislature-governor-elections/
via #KevinDrum
@akkartik You can say a lot about Biden, but Biden 2020 was not cautious or scripted. Biden's whole career has been a fountain of gaffes. Biden would say bizarre shit (not-un-Trump-like) in 2020, from his record player spiel during the primary to telling people who annoyed him at diners not to vote for him, and almost starting physical altercations. You may think Biden's "Scranton Joe" persona authentic or a put-on, but it was always hanging out. 1/
@akkartik (Biden was accused of "hiding in his basement" in 2020, doing podcasts — PODCASTS — but not getting out during the pandemic. But when he interacted, he was scrappy, not scripted.) 2/
@akkartik I think it's true that Hillary was always going to have a hard time of it. As Kevin Drum put it, she was in fact an unusually honest politician, but the way she retained her honesty was by giving guarded rather than unqualified-and-therefore-imperfectly-accurate statements. 3/
@akkartik There's a tension between perceived straightforwardness (which requires keeping it simple, which may mean misportraying some edge cases) and legalistic accuracy, which requires either careful qualification or restraint. 4/
@akkartik Both Clinton (Hillary) and Harris put avoiding getting called on technical inaccuracies before "telling it straight" at cost of getting "gotcha-ed" on the ways straight missed some cases and so could be portrayed as lies. 5/
@akkartik There may well be a gendered component to this choice. I think it pretty likely that women have the experience of getting well-actually-ed and mansplained when giving simple, broadly right answer, but missing some edge cases. It may well be true that this kind of "technical inaccuracy" is perceived as more forgivable by men talking straight and tough, while professional women are expected to be perfect lawyers. 6/
@akkartik If we had it to do over again, of course Harris should go on Rogan, smoke some joints with him, just let it all hang out. We know how it works out when she's all restrained and disciplined. But there's no guarantee an open-book, telling-it-like-she-sees it Harris would have been any more beloved by voters. 7/
@akkartik If she were an open book, it could prove a book voters just don't like. (Though given that they thought openness redeemed open Trump's awfulness, you'd hope the mere awfulness might count for a lot.)
It could also be the case what works for an alpha male type just doesn't for a woman candidate, because sexism, and even the best version of a candid Harris couldn't win. I don't think so, but I don't want to think so. In any case, we can't know. /fin
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