Friday, November 30, 2018
Voter Fraud
State officials in North Carolina voted Friday to continue investigating fraud in the 9th Congressional District election, potentially delaying certification of the results for weeks and leaving open the possibility that a new election could be called.
...
The board is collecting sworn statements from voters in rural Bladen County, near the South Carolina border, who described people coming to their doors and urging them to hand over their absentee ballots, sometimes without filling them out. Others described receiving absentee ballots by mail that they had not requested. It is illegal to take someone else’s ballot and turn it in.
[Sam Jackson Voice] PROVE ME WRONG, MOTHERF*****S
Lol Nothing Matters
If You Control The Past
The still more serious problem that flows from both of these issues is that pundits who fail in these ways are hardly ever held to account, and thus self-serving, half-baked analyses keep showing up in op-ed pages and on cable news. For Bret Stephens, “accountability” takes the form of quiet changes to his column that leave its conclusions intact even as it gets more wrong with each update.
This is embarrassing even for James Bennet (editor), who apparently has no shame.
Scamming Black Kids, Scamming Elites
Hey, you know what the scandal is here? It's that HARVARD AND YALE AND PRINCETON AND BROWN AND DARTMOUTH AND STANFORD, in their hunt for the Perfect Black Miracle Student, got taken by this OBVIOUS FRAUD https://t.co/Yck3JeWSHk
— Will Stancil (@whstancil) November 30, 2018
Thinking Small
Thursday, November 29, 2018
Such Fun
Federal agents showed up unannounced at Chicago Alderman Ed Burke's City Hall office & his ward office, kicked everyone out, and papered over the windows Thursday morning.
— Polly Sigh (@dcpoll) November 29, 2018
Ed Burke was Trump’s lawyer on reducing his property taxes for Trump Tower Chicago. https://t.co/vOrpSR7UUS
What An Era
But my real point is that the Bush years were full of horrible crazy shit, also, too, even aside from the more obvious stuff. People don't remember because they weren't really exposed to most of it at the time. Even I've forgotten so much (thankfully).
A little flashback from everybody's favorite totebagging reasonable conservative, David Brooks.
My third guess is that the Bush haters will grow more vociferous as their numbers shrink. Even progress in Iraq will not dampen their anger, because as many people have noted, hatred of Bush and his corporate cronies is all that is left of their leftism. And this hatred is tribal, not ideological. And so they will still have their rallies, their alternative weeklies, and their Gore Vidal polemics. They will still have a huge influence over the Democratic party, perhaps even determining its next presidential nominee. But they will seem increasingly unattractive to most moderate and even many normally Democratic voters who never really adopted outrage as their dominant public emotion.
...
What lessons will they draw from the events of the past month? How will the fall of Saddam affect their voting patterns, their approach to the next global crisis? One way to think about this is to conduct a thought experiment. Invent a representative 20-year-old, Joey Tabula-Rasa, and try to imagine how he would have perceived the events of the past month.
...
WHEN JOEY LOOKS at the talking heads on TV, he begins to form judgments about this country's political divides. First, he sees the broad majority of people who support the war, who, it seems to him, deserve to be called the progressives. These people talk optimistically of spreading democracy and creating a new Middle East. They have a very confident approach to what America can achieve in the world. People in this political movement include Christopher Hitchens, Dennis Miller, Paul Wolfowitz, Joseph Lieberman, John McCain, Richard Holbrooke, Charles Krauthammer, the staff of Fox News, Bernard Lewis, and George Bush.
They still pull the first trick regularly now. Lefties are always irrational, always consumed by hatred. They just hate Trump because they are haters, and not for any reason. This was the drumbeat during the early Bush years. Liberals were just ANGRY so HULKANGRY they were silly not like the completely sensible rational people who responded to 9/11 by causing the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people who had nothing to do with it and 15+ years later still pat themselves on the back for their very sober reflections and very lucrative book tours about how they could have possibly gotten anything wrong.
That list of names in the last quoted paragraph... those are the liberals to David Brooks.
(via driftglass)
Racially Divisive
Wednesday, November 28, 2018
House of Lords
Gossip
We Can Pay You To Do That, Too
I get that the fat and happy corrupt sectors of our society will fight to the death to keep being fat and happy, but they can just lobby for subsidies to do nice things instead of subsidies to do evil? Lock in another government funded gravy train.
Participation Trophies
BERGEN COUNTY, NJ — It hasn't even opened yet, and already American Dream Meadowlands has won an award for its innovative approach to shopping and entertainment.
I suppose I could be underestimating the ability of children to get their parents to hand over the wallets to an indoor water park while spending lots of money on upscale retail as the kiddies slide, but... I don't think this is going to work.
Tuesday, November 27, 2018
I Look Up From My Vermouth On The Rocks
One of the problems that a lot of people like myself, we have very high levels of intelligence, but we're not necessarily such believers. You look at our air and our water and it's right now at a record clean. But when you look at China and you look at parts of Asia and when you look at South America, and when you look at many other places in this world, including Russia, including – just many other places — the air is incredibly dirty. And when you're talking about an atmosphere, oceans are very small. And it blows over and it sails over. I mean, we take thousands of tons of garbage off our beaches all the time that comes over from Asia. It just flows right down the Pacific, it flows, and we say where does this come from. And it takes many people to start off with.
Number two, if you go back and if you look at articles, they talked about global freezing, they talked about at some point the planets could have freez to death, then it’s going to die of heat exhaustion. There is movement in the atmosphere. There’s no question. As to whether or not it’s man-made and whether or not the effects that you’re talking about are there, I don’t see it — not nearly like it is. Do we want clean water? Absolutely. Do we want clean air to breathe? Absolutely. The fire in California, where I was, if you looked at the floor, the floor of the fire they have trees that were fallen, they did no forest management, no forest maintenance, and you can light — you can take a match like this and light a tree trunk when that thing is laying there for more than 14 or 15 months. And it’s a massive problem in California.
They Know Exactly Who They Are
Comrade Gritty For President
Fox Business host fears capitalism is in trouble because Americans will see companies "posting record earnings and ... firing people"
Charles Payne on GM firings and plant closures: "The American public is going to get hip to this and my fear is that they're going to end up electing, not a democratic socialist, just a straight-up socialist"
All you gotta do is throw a few scraps down on the peasants occasionally to keep the guillotines away, but this lot isn't even capable of doing that.
Vaporware
My pessimism about self-driving cars isn't that they can't work at all. Obviously they kinda work now! Neato! It's that working "90%" or "95%" or "99%" or frankly even "99.9%"... just isn't good enough.
Waymo has only weeks to meet its self-imposed deadline to launch a public taxi service using fully automated cars by the end of 2018. And right now, that deadline looks tough for the company to meet.
The Information has learned that within the past month or so, due to concerns about safety, the Alphabet company put so-called “safety drivers” back behind the wheel of its most advanced prototypes, ending a year-long period in which those people generally sat in the passenger or back seat.
The rest is behind the paywall, but even if they launch it's going to be in 60 square miles, which means a (if actually square) 7.45X7.45 mile square. And, hey, progress. Skynet wasn't built in a day. If it works! But..
I have other issues, too, such as the likely diversion of massive amounts of public money/infrastructure to these things and the fact that even if they work I suspect they'll have a lot of negative effects (and some positive ones, of course), but really...I just don't think they'll work well enough to be useful and certainly the idea that they're going to useful as a viable robotaxi business model in the foreseeable future seems to be insane to me.
Happy (sort of) to be wrong!
The Book of Faces
Once upon a time it was that cool new thing on the internet to find those high school friends you hadn't seen in 15 years. Then it was a decent way to keep up with what your friends were doing, maybe even arrange to meet for a drink or a show or whatever. And then...? I don't even know what it's good for now. You don't need facebook to find people on the internet now, if you really want to, and THE ALGORITHM and all the other shit on that website, which still has the worst user interface on the internet, meant that it stopped being useful for really anything. Once upon a time you could post something like "hey, anyone want to grab a coffee later" and your friends would see it. Now no matter what I do I can't make it just show me posts by people in a timely fashion.
Set up a group message, add a bunch of family members to it, send them a pic of your kids now and then. No need for facebook.
Our Sister Network
Former Environmental Protection Agency administrator Scott Pruitt was clearly taken aback last year when occasional Fox & Friends fill-in host Ed Henry grilled him about a number of ethical scandals facing his administration.
And Pruitt had a good reason to be surprised. In past interviews with President Trump’s favorite cable news show, the then-EPA chief’s team chose the topics for interviews, and knew the questions in advance.
Monday, November 26, 2018
Pivot To Self-Driving
The Detroit-based automaker said it would not be allocating any production to Oshawa Assembly in Ontario, Lordstown Assembly in Ohio and Detroit-Hamtramck Assembly in Michigan after December 2019. It will also stop allocating production at propulsion plants in White Marsh, Md., and Warren, Mich., after December 2019.
These changes are part of GM’s efforts to focus its resources on self-driving and electric vehicles, as well as more efficient trucks, crossovers and SUVs, the company said in a statement.
Aside from my skepticism about the technology actually, you know, working, I don't really get the race by everyone to develop the technology independently. If I was good at making cars I'd just buy the off the shelf technology when it became available and bolt it on (I know it isn't that simple). I haven't figured out how being FRIST makes anybody rich here. But what do I know?
Shut Up, Elon
One of the things that’s most irritating about politics in 2018 – and goodness me, aren’t there a lot of choices – is the utopianism that’s crept into the transport debate. There is an apparently endless supply of people who wouldn’t be seen dead on public transport, or using any other service labelled with the word “public”, if they can possibly help it, yet who have come to the conclusion that they are the people staid and dusty world of transport policy has been waiting for.
And the message they are keen to send is that the old ways of doing things is over: shiny new technologies are going to disrupt the transport sector, just as they disrupted the music industry or retail. Why bother investing in mass-transit, when autonomous vehicles (AV) and ride-hailing apps are about to take over the world? Why waste money on high speed rail, when Elon Musk’s exciting new hyperloop will be along any minute? Silicon Valley types ask these questions, even as they earnestly suggest some kind of fixed route, ride-sharing service based on vehicles larger than the private car, blissfully unaware that they’ve just re-invented the bus. Again.
Their Issues, Our Issues
The rewards to trying to run to the right of conservatives on issues like immigration are... at best, zero. Much likely negative. Oh, gee, why did our base not turn out they should just know "we" are better on immigration than team R despite our policies??? If hating immigrants is your thing, it really doesn't matter how many team D deports or how "hard" their policies are. You're gonna vote Republican.
I can't find it now for some reason but someone from the UK had a thread about New Labour's (Tony Blair) approach to immigration and refugee issues, which was explicitly to run to the right of the Tories on it. And they really did run to the right on it! So much that the Tories even *sounded* more pro-refugee and pro-immigration sometimes, whatever the specific policies were. Their reward for doing this in polls was to sink like a stone among people who were anti-immigrant. The other cost of talking up an issue is that you put that issue front and center. No matter how many internment camps for immigrants it opens, Labour will still be the pro-immigrant party, and all those internment camps on the news will make people really mad about immigrants and motivate them to vote Tory. The conservative party could explicitly make "open borders" their #1 priority going into election day, and voters would still "know" who the anti-immigrant party was. If you're putting the focus on "their" issues, you're losing.
Run with your brand, don't fight it. Especially when it's the right thing on the merits.
Sunday, November 25, 2018
Sure
Driverless cars are to be tested on the streets of London this week as part of a plan to deploy the UK's first completely autonomous fleet on British roads by Christmas.
Democrats Will Keep Losing (Quick Find Somewhere They Lost) If They Don't Hide The Scary Black Kids
After painful losses, Democrats in the South face a dilemma: Appeals to progressives cost them the rural white voters who often decide elections. https://t.co/grPeXLlhia
— NYT National News (@NYTNational) November 24, 2018
After this election, the NYT puts on the front page a story about how the one place in America they could still find to tell the story about how Real Americans hate Democrats.
It is true that the Democrats are unlikely to be popular and win everywhere and that a one party state at all levels of government in all states and locations is not in our forseeable future. The New York Times is on it!
And The Gritmas Season Has Arrived
Saturday, November 24, 2018
This Is Now A Problem Solvers Blog
If you are not a problems solvers blog commenter, go elsewhere. Here we're all about the solutions, baby.
Friday, November 23, 2018
Working Class Stiffs
All told, I’ve spent a good deal of the past two years talking with progressives about the broken relationship between elite white people and the white working class. (I use the term working class to refer to Americans with household incomes between the 30th and 80th percentiles. This group, which has median earnings of about $75,000 [ed: actually $70,000], is also commonly referred to as the “middle class.”
Okay then.
Thursday, November 22, 2018
Wednesday, November 21, 2018
I Can
TRUMP closes by saying this about Time Person of the Year: "I can't imagine anybody else other than Trump. Can you imagine anybody else other than Trump?
(thanks to reader rk)
and Gritty did his own.
— Gritty (@GrittyNHL) November 20, 2018
Tuesday, November 20, 2018
Amazon Cuomo
I do not think these defenses are quite what he thinks they are.
Aside from the corruption, I really think Amazon Cuomo truly believed that the people of the world (and New York!) would be so impressed that he won the Amazon lottery and he is confused by the criticism.
Somebody buy this man an internet.
We Fixed That
Stop Pretending
Just Not As Fun As It Used To Be
Weirdly it was his colleague, The Gibbers, who actually "wrote" (put his name on) The War On Christmas book. I never saw confirmation of this, but I always suspected that it was supposed to be a Papa Bear book but it was scheduled to come out not too long after his Mackris troubles so they switched the name.
Monday, November 19, 2018
I Guess They Scared The Caravan Away
The Pentagon is set to begin a drawdown of its 5,800 troops from the Southwest border as early as this week, the Army commander overseeing the mission told POLITICO today — even as the approaching caravan of refugees prompted U.S. customs officers to close a port of entry near Tijuana, Mexico.
The port of entry closing was just a stunt, too, of course.
Turkee Week
Deals Not On Offer
The first point is that these are not deals that are on the table. There's no poll we all get to take to decide whether free college or universal pre-K is the nice thing we're going to have this year.
The second point is that there's no reason to pit these things against each other. How about, um, both? As for tradeoffs, would you like to spend money on a plane that can't fly in the rain or free college??? I'll take option B.
There's always a better more progressive idea, always someone more in need. Implement good ideas when they do actually appear to be on the table. Work to getting other better ideas on the table, too..
The Racism Is Coming From Inside Your Neighbor's House
Short of putting on a hood and burning crosses, it's all good.
Up Schitt's Creek
Sunday, November 18, 2018
Prime Minister Deals
While a UK withdrawal agreement dealing with citizens’ rights, the £39bn financial settlement and the Irish border have been agreed in principle, the political declaration on the future relationship is yet to be finalised. A seven-page declaration published last week is set to become a much heavier document after member states made a series of interventions in meetings with the European commission for additional text. One EU diplomat said: “It’s a Christmas tree and all the member states are putting their baubles on it.”
Gritty's Coming For You, Chester County
A district attorney in suburban Philadelphia called out the city's district attorney, Larry Krasner, on Friday for acting "like he cares more about criminals than their victims" in an apparent retort to a speech Krasner gave earlier in the day.
Chester County DA Thomas Hogan also side-swiped the entire city in a message posted on Facebook, warning "counties outside of Philadelphia" not to let "this blight spread, unless you want to end up like today's Philadelphia, riddled with violence and lawlessness."
I vote we build that wall to keep people from Chester County out.
Saturday, November 17, 2018
Saturday, Saturday
...Proud Boys are coming to town.
Gritty sign: “GET FUCKED FOREVER RACIST PROUD BOY TRASH” pic.twitter.com/A7wBIcHZqR
— Billy Penn (@billy_penn) November 17, 2018
Late Night Thread
The Swan of Tuonela, composed by Jean Sibelius. Tuonela is the land of the dead in Kalevala, the Finnish mythology.
Friday, November 16, 2018
Bored Now
European leaders have launched a campaign to sell the Brexit deal struck with Theresa May on a “take it or leave it” basis as EU ambassadors in Brussels collectively agreed it would be impossible to make major changes.
Putting aside the anxieties of some about the 585-page withdrawal text, the 27 member states collectively ruled out a redrafting of the agreement by either side during a meeting with Michael Barnier, the EU’s chief negotiator.
Barnier had told the EU ambassadors they should not engage in “bargaining”, despite the political situation in the UK. A number of British cabinet ministers are said to have chosen to stay in their posts purely to engineer a change in the agreement.
nah.
It Mostly Isn't The Lies
Trump regularly makes 20 to 30 false claims in his rally speeches. But if you watched a network news segment, read an Associated Press article or glanced at the front page of the newspaper in the city that hosted him, you’d typically have no idea that he was so wholly inaccurate.
If a car salesman told you 36 untrue things in 75 minutes, that would probably be the first thing you told your friends about your trip to the dealership. It should have been the first thing we all told our readers about Trump’s August rally in Wilkes-Barre, Pa.
Brexit Endgame
These resignations confirm a fundamental structural problem with the whole leave prospectus: it was a fantasy, and as such incompatible with the mundane fulfilment of ministerial responsibility. Raab has come to the same conclusion that David Davis and Boris Johnson reached earlier in the year: it is easier to be on the team that accuses the prime minister of failing to deliver majestic herds of unicorns than it is to be stuck with a portfolio that requires expertise in unicorn-breeding.
The only possible outcomes were ever basically: "Norway," "no Brexit," or "no deal," with "no deal" actually requiring lots of deals to prevent the island from plunging into the ocean. May's deal is, roughly, a Rube Goldberg version of Norway with some additional kick-the-canning thrown in.
All Over At 7:30 EST
"[I]n politics, intensity is not strategy. You have to be able to convert. The Resistance didn’t convert." - Bret Stephens, 11/8 pic.twitter.com/YqfFxao29j
— Osita Nwanevu (@OsitaNwanevu) November 16, 2018
Orange County, CA, is now all blue.
Thursday, November 15, 2018
Neat But Ultimately Not All That Useful
It'll be decades before autonomous cars are widespread on the roads -- and even then, they won't be able to drive themselves in certain conditions, the CEO of Waymo said Tuesday.
John Krafcik, head of the self-driving car unit of Google parent company Alphabet, said that though driverless cars are "truly here," they're not yet ubiquitous. And he doesn't think the industry will ever achieve the highest driving rating of being able to drive at any time of year in any weather and any condition.
Obviously even now they "work" to an extent that is quite impressive and neat! But the fantasy of robot uber taxis driving around, say, Philadelphia, has always been that. (If you read Tesla fan boy boards many of them believe Elon's gonna give them a software update in a few months that'll let them rent their existing cars out as robot taxis when they don't need them). Not gonna happen any time soon. Their utility will be so limited as to basically be gimmicky or as part of the general research project, with a few very niche applications that are much more about the neato factor than any sort of viable consumer/business model,
Apropos Of Nothing
Everything I do, I do it for you.
Brain Worms
This would be news to the WH political office, which repeatedly sent him to red-leaning House districts + put out memos on same !
— Jonathan Martin (@jmartNYT) November 15, 2018
“The only congressman I went for was Andy Barr and that was in Kentucky” https://t.co/6XaEFo5jUv
Wednesday, November 14, 2018
Lean All The Fucking Way In
While Mr. Zuckerberg conducted a public apology tour in the last year, Ms. Sandberg has overseen an aggressive lobbying campaign to combat Facebook’s critics, shift public anger toward rival companies and ward off damaging regulation. Facebook employed a Republican opposition-research firm to discredit activist protesters, in part by linking them to the liberal financier George Soros. It also tapped its business relationships, persuading a Jewish civil rights group to cast some criticism of the company as anti-Semitic.
Our critics are tools of THE JEWS and also they hate Jews.
As I Said
PM May says she has cabinet agreement
— Max Foster (@MaxFosterCNN) November 14, 2018
Maybe An Improvement Over Subsidizing Casinos
I Didn't Do It
But since the election last week, Mr. Trump has tweeted about the caravan exactly once — to issue a proclamation preventing those who cross the border illegally from applying for asylum in the United States. Fox News, which faithfully amplified Mr. Trump’s warnings about the migrants, has gone similarly quiet on the subject.
...
While the caravan has faded from television screens, the costs of Mr. Trump’s response to it have not. Nearly 6,000 active-duty troops remain deployed from the Gulf Coast to Southern California, where they are putting up tents and stringing concertina wire to face a ragtag band that is still not near the border.
Faded from the television screens. Damn you television screens!
Notably, The New York Times and The Washington Post have run a total of 115 news stories in their print editions mentioning the caravan over the last three weeks. Each paper has run at least one such story on its front page on nine of the last 10 days.
Tuesday, November 13, 2018
Pouty McPoutFace
But his mood apparently has changed as he has taken measure of the electoral backlash that voters delivered Nov. 6. With the certainty that the incoming Democratic House majority will go after his tax returns and investigate his actions, and the likelihood of additional indictments by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, Trump has retreated into a cocoon of bitterness and resentment, according to multiple administration sources.
Behind the scenes, they say, the president has lashed out at several aides, from junior press assistants to senior officials. “He’s furious,” said one administration official. “Most staffers are trying to avoid him.”
The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, painted a picture of a brooding president “trying to decide who to blame” for Republicans’ election losses, even as he publicly and implausibly continues to claim victory.
I know being a bit of dick (a lot of a dick) is what makes him popular with the MAGA crowd, but they're stupid and don't really care about policy. He can huff and puff all he wants on twitter as long as he stops doing things like putting babies in cages. I'm sure Chuck Schumer would happily play along as long as the Dems got thrown the occasional bone. They could have passed an Obamacare "repeal" which didn't really, said now it's "Trumpcare" and it's great, and had Chuck march out there to say he just couldn't beat the negotiating prowess of President Details and he just had no choice, thank you Mr. President may I have another.
There was that moment..I guess it was about a year ago... when there was talk that there could be some sort of compromise immigration legislation to preserve DACA. Chuck-N-Nancy went and had a talk, and obviously Chuck knows how to speak old man New York City, and Nancy knows how to flatter gross old men, and for a moment Donald actually seemed to be enjoying himself and ready to compromise. I might even correctly remember a smile. Then Fox and the White House MAGAs got to him and he went back to sulking and being a dick.
Democrats are forgiving totebaggers. He'd be at 50%+ popularity and probably presiding over a winning election if he had just dialed it down a little bit. Also, I even think, a little bit happier.
Nothing
Under the agreement, first announced by Amazon in a blog post, the company would receive performance-based direct incentives of $1.525 billion based on the company creating 25,000 jobs in Long Island City, most of which come from a state tax credit. “Amazon will receive these incentives over the next decade based on the incremental jobs it creates each year,” th[e] company wrote.
That's a minimum subsidy $ as there will be many other pots of money for them to puts their hands in.
What For
Pr0n
.@PaulaReidCBS reports: “I’ve spoken with many sources with knowledge of the Special Counsel investigation, and we do expect new indictments to be coming as soon as today.” pic.twitter.com/v7SJHR1r2g
— Norah O'Donnell🇺🇸 (@NorahODonnell) November 13, 2018
Low Housing Costs Are A Priority
But the one thing that stood in Amazon's spirit quest was that they were interested in more affordable housing costs. Places that could actually absorb those jobs.. So, you know, congratulations on putting your major white collar presence in [checks notes] Seattle, San Francisco, and now the DC area, and New York City.
Monday, November 12, 2018
Horrible And The Next One Will Be Worse
President Trump has decided to remove Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, and her departure from the administration is likely to occur in the coming weeks, if not sooner, according to five current and former White House officials.
And she probably heard about this right as I did!
The Stone Zone
BREAKING: Roger Stone pal Jerome Corsi tells my colleague @annaschecter that Mueller's investigators informed Corsi about a week ago he will be indicted for perjury. "When they have your emails and phone records...they're very good at the perjury trap," he says.
— Ken Dilanian (@KenDilanianNBC) November 12, 2018
Even If They Pretended To Care, Reporters Wouldn't Pretend To Believe Them
If every Democrat and hack fanned out over cable news to suppress outrage over Trump being too lazy to go to Arlington, journalists would just roll their eyes and treat it like the fake outrage that it was. That's what they should do when Republicans do it. And yet...
ActBlue
The heart of the problem, McConnell said at the event at party headquarters on Capitol Hill, is ActBlue. The Democratic fundraising tool funneled over $700 million in small donations to House and Senate candidates over the course of the 2018 campaign. The GOP leader said Republicans were getting swamped in the hunt for online givers and that he’d charged his political team with coming up with a solution to enable them to compete in 2020.
I'm too lazy to find them all, but there was Rightroots, Slatecard, Big Red Tent, RedStormPac, ActRight...
Parliamentary Crisis
Senior cabinet ministers led by Brexit secretary Dominic Raab will tell Theresa May that the current deal on offer from the EU is unacceptable and she should prepare for the UK to leave with no deal if she cannot secure further concessions.
In a significant raising of the pressure on May from inside her own cabinet, the group of senior ministers will make clear to the prime minister that they could not support a deal that breaches their two red lines.
No one seems to come to terms with the idea that "no deal" will have to involve... lots of deals.
Maybe Someone Should Ask Trump About This
Love the Vets.
The Department of Veterans Affairs is suffering from a series of information technology glitches that has caused GI Bill benefit payments covering education and housing to be delayed or — in the case of Roundtree — never be delivered.
"I’m about to lose everything that I own and become homeless," Roundtree said. "I don’t want to be that veteran on the street begging for change because I haven’t received what I was promised."
A Stiff Breeze
So does +40ish Dem House seats say an immense amount about the country that +25ish wouldn't have? Not so much. Sure the more the better, but I don't think the it changes what the think pieces should be all that much. Tells us something about trends in specific states and districts, but no so much about the soul of the country.
Counting Votes, How Does It Work
Sunday, November 11, 2018
High School History Modern American History, 2040
It barely exists now.
Those of us who did our own small (very small) part trying to stop it remember how it was the most important conflict since Normandy.
And then...
Democrats Only Win In Places They Win
Saturday, November 10, 2018
Dentistry
But they were discussing a hero dentist who while I think I caught her address I am not sure of so I can't advertise (near the Italian Market in Philly if anyone wants to share). (From what I heard) she offers a cheapish xray and cleaning, and prioritizes what you need. Like "you need 12 cavities filled but I really need to do these 2."
That people can't afford dentistry, which is probably more important than regular medical checkups, is why america is great.
The Suffering of Others
The Little Things
I sorta thought little things could be slipped into legislation without anybody noticing. Not super important things, perhaps, but they add up. It didn't happen.
Friday, November 09, 2018
Pareene Is A Big Boy Now
With Democrats about to control the House of Representatives again, I have been thinking about that last majority: what it achieved, what it was too cautious to attempt and what that caution actually bought. Because we may be asking the same questions about the next Democratic majority sooner than we think. The lesson of the careful restraint that Democrats showed the last time they controlled either chamber of Congress — and of the Republican ferocity since then — is simple: Your job is not to win power and then maintain it. Your job is to win power and then use it, with the knowledge that you won’t have it forever or even, most likely, for very long at all.
Why Aren't All The Votes Counted By Peggy Noonan's Happy Hour Time?
I Could Be Anything
I really don't get how obviously stupid people think they can run this country.
Math
A subway train can easily handle 1000 people (easily, this is a very low number). You can run a train every 3 minutes, easy.
Senate Miracles
Thursday, November 08, 2018
Racism
I have lived many places in our great dumb country. Racism is an extreme feature everywhere. North, South, East, West, whatever. It isn't a competition. This country is fucking racist. The details differ.
How the details differ is actually fascinating! Minorities manage to learn how to navigate that racism in one place and then find it intolerable in another place.
I am a dumb white guy so I can find it fascinating! But also it is bad and universal.
Fear
Her mother was... scared. Like scared of everything. Whether that was diagnosable anxiety disorder I have no idea. I never met her. But fear was... her defining feature.
I have no idea how you live in rural Ohio and fear black people from Philadelphia, but basically that was it.
Gun Fetish
We Can Be Heroes Just For One Day
Wednesday, November 07, 2018
Funny Things To Tell 2004 Me
If I Back That The Chamber Will Go After Me
Anyway, the story is: I asked a certain senator (hint he might be losing re-election) why he didn't get on board with a minimum wage increase ballot measure increase. I don't remember if it was something that was actually on the ballot, or if I was suggesting it as something to increase turnout (this was.. I dunno... 2006? I guess). He responded that with the quote in the title. And he didn't mean that the Chamber of Commerce would attack him about increasing the minimum wage, because that was popular! He meant that the Chamber would run ads accusing him of all sorts of unpopular things. It wasn't the issue, it was the money that the issue would unleash against him.
This is a real thing that politicians have to deal with, but there's a difference between "this is an unpopular issue with voters" and "this is an unpopular issue with people with lots of money" and often our dumb discourse does not adequately point out this difference.
Good stuff
"Louisiana votes to eliminate Jim Crow jury law with Amendment 2: The law made Louisiana one of two states that allowed a non-unanimous jury in felony trials."
"In Historic Move, Florida Approves Automatically Restoring Voting Rights To Felons: The move, reversing a Jim Crow-era policy, is one of the most significant expansions of the franchise in modern times."
I confess that I wanted to see this: "Democrat Ned Lamont Wins Connecticut Governor's Race," although I really have no idea how he will govern. Never gonna forgive Lieberman, though.
I also was cheered to see that Kobach lost despite all his election fraud. But Kemp's more effective use of election fraud won for him, sadly.
Look, I've been infuriated for a couple of decades now over the complete lack of movement the Democratic leadership has shown on going after voter suppression and election fraud. We all know who is doing it and we all know it is not a conspiracy theory that some pretty unlikely election results are the outcome, but the Kobachs and Kemps belong in jail, not in office. It should be a federal crime to interfere with an eligible voter's right to vote.
And It All Falls Apart
The Caravan Of Doom
Benghazighazi
Those are the rules.
Not Bad
Tuesday, November 06, 2018
A Very Fine House
Money Well Spent
Results Thread The First
Whatever Happens This Election Proves Me Right About Everything
They'll also provide a caricature of the supposed lefty view of things, which is that lefties want every candidate everywhere to get their orders from some Brooklyn Marxist Collective or something.
And there are enough people running for office that you'll basically be able to tell any story you want to! Lefty candidate X lost, proof that the lefties are wrong! Corporate Dem Y lost, proof that the lefties are right!
I don't speak for the Online Left. I never did and now I am old and The Kids Today have taken over with their Snapchats or whatever, but the real Online Left critique of the Democrats was never that they need to run commies in every district. It went something more like this:
Policy and rhetoric aren't entirely separable, but...
On policy: A lot of what DC thinks is "centrist" had no relationship to what the median voter actually likes and polls prove that some very lefty things are actually popular! Not all very lefty things! It is true that politicians who run on certain very lefty things can cause problems for themselves even when those things are very popular because not pissing off the money people makes them less likely to spend massive amounts of money to oppose you. Most people like minimum wage increases but the people who will run $10 million in ads against you about other things do not. Pundits do not explain this wrinkle.
On rhetoric: Everybody "knows" Democrats are going to raise your taxes, force you into a gay marriage, mandate that you have an abortion, take away your car, give all your money to black people, bus in caravans of doom from Central America, surrender to ISIS, etc. Mushy middle types also like "A politician who knows what he believes and knows what he stands for." You can't really run from the caricature of Democrats, and if you do you sound like someone who won't stand up for his own side in argument. Not a good look. Better to embrace it and make it sound good. Maybe not the take away your car one! That'll really make people mad. Explain that, yes, you're going to give rich people's money to black people but also white people! Free health care for the poors and the not so poors! Also, running against your party ("I'm a different kind of Democrat!") works for one politician, it doesn't work if half your candidates are doing it.
tl;dr: some, not all, lefty policies are actually quite popular! Sound like you believe what you're saying and that everybody can have nice things instead of hoping "not quite as evil as the other guys" works. If people want evil they're gonna vote for the evil party. It isn't a secret which one it is.
My Boring Vote
Below Deck
Working for President Donald Trump has never been easy, but his staffers can expect a whole new level of mayhem if Democrats win control of the House on Tuesday.
Democratic control of even one chamber of Congress would unleash an onslaught of hearings, subpoenas and document demands as lawmakers investigate everything from the president’s personal tax returns to his controversial policies on immigration, health care and the environment.
The Golden Age Of Movie Access
Physical media had the first sale doctrine going for it. When that goes, unless some sort of mandatory licensing scheme becomes law, finding old movies/tv is going to be... increasingly hard.
Oh, hey, today is election day.
Long Lines
There is no reason for long lines at polling places. Just add more of them.
Monday, November 05, 2018
Confidence
Not feeling that confidence this time around.
We Can All Agree That Incivility Is Bad
But the other is that they can seize onto noncontroversial platitudes like "civility is good." Nobody powerful is going to disagree with that, however they behave themselves in public or private. Poor Sarah Sanders!
Whatever they think privately, they can't publicly get upset about babies being in cages or any other decidedly uncivil policies that this or any administration enacts. That would be taking sides, or partisan, or having an (air quotes) "opinion." Giving a shit, even.
In practice, this means that the powerful can always get away with punching down... especially way way down... but punching up unleashes the civility defense force.
Seems a bit backwards to me, but I'm just an uncivil blogger.
SCOOP MUST CREDIT ATRIOS
Hard To Beat A Foe That Doesn't Give A Shit
But this year, the Chinese have all but stopped buying. The largest market for one of America’s largest exports has shut its doors. The Chinese government imposed a tariff on American soybeans in response to the Trump administration’s tariffs on Chinese goods. The latest federal data, through mid-October, shows American soybean sales to China have declined by 94 percent from last year’s harvest.
One can have troubles with our general free trade regime, and especially the elite discourse and unwavering Friedmanesque faith in globollocks, and also get that President Deals isn't going to "win" any trade wars.
Sunday, November 04, 2018
A Time To Compromise
If the Dems do actually take the House (or even the Senate!) the usual press calls for them to compromise with Republicans, which involves giving the Republicans as much baby cage money as they ask for, will return. Because those are the rules.
Saturday, November 03, 2018
The Real Racists
But in our topsy-turvy world of objective journalism, you can't be seen as taking sides against people in power, so almost by definition they can't be racist (or at least you can't call them racists).
Complete Mystery How To Make Voting Easy
Anyway this doesn't require some sort of advanced technology or massive overhaul to your voting system. Just. More. Polling Places. The stories of "long lines" are not heartwarming stories of democracy in action, any more than kids selling lemonade to pay for their mom's cancer treatment are heartwarming stories of American family and compassion. They're stories of policy failure.
Your Liberal Media
For the 10th time in the last 11 days, the New York Times and Washington Post have put the caravan of migrants -- currently weeks away in southern Mexico and dwindling -- on their front pages. https://t.co/Frn76NYVNP pic.twitter.com/soDS6geyhp
— Matthew Gertz (@MattGertz) November 3, 2018
Friday, November 02, 2018
Gonna Have To Ban Cars Until We Figure Out What's Going On
NEW YORK (AP) — Alec Baldwin has been arrested for allegedly punching someone during a dispute over a New York City parking spot.
— Zeke Miller (@ZekeJMiller) November 2, 2018
Sunday Bobbleheads
The conservative line, which the shows implicitly acknowledge in the way they book the shows, is that all the "journalists" are liberals and the conservatives are necessary to provide balance. Journalists who participate on these shows, whatever is in their hearts, do not like to be tarred with an ideological label, and should object to the fact that "liberal" is being stamped on their foreheads every week. That's what they are telling their audience when they allow themselves be a part of this theater.
And whatever their actual ideological leanings, their "neutral" pose means they cannot respond in kind to conservative advocates and hacks who appear on the show. Nerf gun versus actual gun, at most.
If everybody involved believes these journalists are liberals they should be identified and self-identify as such. If not, they shouldn't allow themselves to be "balanced" by conservatives.
But, as I said, I was on this beat for years and nobody gives a shit.
Well Okay Then
But even within the Trumpian worldview of trade, this makes no sense.
WH CEA Chair Hassett, echoing Trump, says trade war with China is mostly hurting them not us
— John Harwood (@JohnJHarwood) November 2, 2018
explains that American consumers can easily buy substitutes for all the generic Chinese manufactured goods from alternative sellers like Malaysia
I do not think decreasing our trade deficit with China while increasing our trade deficit with Malaysia...reduces our trade deficit.
Elite Journalism Is Filled With Racist White Supremacists
They don't like the ugly in the mirror, but it has long been ugly to the rest of us.
Obviously She Was A Crack Ho Like All Black Women
ATLANTA — President Trump disparaged Stacey Abrams, the Democratic nominee for governor of Georgia, in ambiguous and unusually personal terms on Thursday, warning that “her past” left her “not qualified to be the governor.”
The president loves his Yale Law grads. Abrams is a Yale Law grad.
Whatever Happens On Election Day, Rest Assured America Remains A Center Right Country
Thursday, November 01, 2018
Stop That
California regulators, it turns out, take a dim view of Tesla Motors’ Autopilot — not the self-steering system itself, but the name.
In draft regulations released late Friday, the state Department of Motor Vehicles said car companies should not use the terms “self-driving,” “automated” or “auto-pilot” in advertising unless their cars are capable of driving themselves without human passengers paying attention.
For Palo Alto’s Tesla, that could pose a problem.
Musk likes to suggest regulators are getting in his way instead of acknowledging the reality that his fantasy technology doesn't (yet?) work. A reasonable if not fully educated buyer would conclude that the cars require less driver attention than they do.
Two Futures
Give This Man A Ticket
I was not sure when I would use this feature... till today. @elonmusk @tesla pic.twitter.com/bC6rFt2SuW
— D Shawn Kennedy (@rarelyserious) October 31, 2018
And, yeah, sure Elon.
For those unfamiliar, this uses Tesla Autopark/Summon. Slightly smarter version hopefully ready soon. By next year, a Tesla should be able to drive around a parking lot, find an empty spot, read signs to confirm it’s valid & park.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 31, 2018
Driving around a parking lot (especially a garage) and finding a parking spot is one of the tasks that sounds easy to people but is actually really really hard! I do think people who drive a lot have internalized some of the basic tasks so much that they don't know which ones are straightforward for humans but probably not for machines. I, a rare driver, know that cruising around a parking lot is complicated!!!
The Show As Written
Anthropology And Sociology
It's also present in all the "real America" and "Trump voters still like Trump" stories. Or really any time someone from the New York Times gets off the lower half of the island. It's one of the maddening things about those stories. Who are they for? Nobody is interested in them - neither the subjects nor the audience of the newspaper - and nobody is placated by them. They're condescending.