Wednesday, January 31, 2024
Amazing Scenes From The Grand Old Party
What a party!
Teenagers who attended a boozy 17th birthday party that former GOP lieutenant governor candidate Clarice Schillinger hosted for her daughter last fall described on Monday a drunken scene to a Bucks County judge — including descriptions of Schillinger sitting on a boy’s lap and repeatedly taking shots of vodka during the party in her Doylestown home.
One teenager also testified that “Ms. Clarice” punched him in the chin as he left the house with other friends — their departures spurred by Schillinger’s boyfriend growing increasingly drunk and belligerent, allegedly assaulting another teen who testified.
Would It Not Be Simpler For The Government To Dissolve The People And Elect Another?
I'm just a dumb guy with a blog and it doesn't matter all that much what I say. Maybe it did a bit more, once! But more importantly there are people who are in charge of hundreds of millions of campaign resources trying to re-elect the guy who is currently the most powerful man in the world and the idea (from Brecht) in the title is not actually an option.
Excellent Arguments On Both Sides
Amazing stuff.
Speaker Mike Johnson’s spiritual journey reveals ties to Christian fundamentalists who support slavery. Johnson’s office won’t say where he stands on that issue.
Freak Show
Not that I want to give conservatives election advice, but if I did: stop being so fucking weird you losers.
"The Border Crisis"
Just another example in a series of Democrats and journalists conceding to the right wing framing of things. Lumping everything that might be wrong with our immigration system (things I might agree with and things I definitely don't!) into problems with the "border" imply that the issue is a security one, that somehow our defenses are being overwhelmed by the invading hordes.
We'll spend years talking about "defund the police" but can the people who get paid a lot to do this stuff actually get better at it?
We'll spend years talking about "defund the police" but can the people who get paid a lot to do this stuff actually get better at it?
Tuesday, January 30, 2024
AHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Oh no Elmo.
WASHINGTON, Jan 30 (Reuters) - A Delaware judge on Tuesday ruled in favor of the investor plaintiffs who challenged billionaire Elon Musk's $56 billion Tesla (TSLA.O), opens new tab pay package, a court filing showed.
"The plaintiff is entitled to rescission," the judge said in her ruling, directing parties to confer on a final form of order to implement her decision.
Seems Bad
Not sure how Boeing is going to keep selling these things, whether or not they should be flying. Who is going to buy?
Although airlines, regulators and Boeing maintain that the planes are safe after a federally approved inspection and maintenance process, critics argue that serious questions remain about the long-troubled Maxes. The Max 8 had two crashes in 2018 and 2019 that killed 346 people.
“I would absolutely not fly a Max airplane,” said Ed Pierson, a former Boeing senior manager. “I’ve worked in the factory where they were built, and I saw the pressure employees were under to rush the planes out the door. I tried to get them to shut down before the first crash.”
“I would tell my family to avoid the Max. I would tell everyone, really,” said Joe Jacobsen, a former engineer at Boeing and the Federal Aviation Administration.
Suck. On. This.
Inscrutable Middle Easterners.Just heard a member of Congress on NPR explaining that we need to hit Iran hard because “in that part of the world they respect strength,” in case you’re wondering if our foreign policy debates have gotten any less dumb in the last twenty years.
— Matt Duss (@mattduss) January 30, 2024
War President
Vote against the bad orange man because he won't do war good.
Some Democrats close to the president believe he has become unavoidably bogged down on foreign affairs — including trying to manage Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has frustrated the White House with his conduct of the war. Though Sunday’s attack will place further strain on Biden, his senior advisers believe that foreign policy presents an opportunity to show his decades of experience, which they believe they can contrast with Trump.Remember this, from October(!!):
The president’s political advisers are not oblivious to those dynamics. They are leery of appearing to politicize the Middle East crisis with the lives of American and Israeli hostages at stake, but in multiple conversations with key figures in Biden world, both on and off the record, it becomes clear they see the opportunity presented by an unexpected crisis to feature Biden’s strengths.
Inspiring Stuff
The Stephen Miller immigration plan and the Kushner-Netanyahu Middle East Peace Plan.
You can argue it's good policy (um, ok), you can argue it's smart politics, but you can't argue it's smart politics because people have a moral obligation to fight the bad orange man anyway and fuck'em if they don't. That's now how anything works!
The people who have the power to beat the bad orange man are the people in power!!!
Anyway, one of my very firm beliefs about politics is a version of Truman's "Give the voters a choice between a Republican and a Republican...". If you concede the issues that the other side have made their own are important, you have conceded that the other side is, in fact, correct, and that what they say is important is, in fact, important.
You can argue it's good policy (um, ok), you can argue it's smart politics, but you can't argue it's smart politics because people have a moral obligation to fight the bad orange man anyway and fuck'em if they don't. That's now how anything works!
The people who have the power to beat the bad orange man are the people in power!!!
Anyway, one of my very firm beliefs about politics is a version of Truman's "Give the voters a choice between a Republican and a Republican...". If you concede the issues that the other side have made their own are important, you have conceded that the other side is, in fact, correct, and that what they say is important is, in fact, important.
Immigration is especially fraught as there is no "solution" that will make the people who are mad about it stop being mad, or making the people who are screeching about it stop screeching about it. There is no rationality to anti-immigration rage, no wonky policy solution to address the discontent.
I think this is even more true than it was 15 years ago. The people enraged about immigration are mostly just conservative news viewers. You cannot satisfy them.
Sure Why Not
Musk first announced neuralink back when he was still believed to be real life Tony Stark (to many people). Offering false hope to people with degenerative conditions is, well, not nice. I don't know how many people he's going to kill, but I know how many people he's going to help over and above what existing technology offers (zero).
Elon Musk, Neuralink’s billionaire founder, said the first human received an implant from the brain-chip startup on Sunday and is recovering well, in a post on Twitter/X on Monday.
The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) had given the company clearance last year to conduct its first trial to test its implant on humans.
“Initial results show promising neuron spike detection,” Musk added.
Monday, January 29, 2024
Bad Apples
The problem (well, a problem) with bad actors and corruption is they push the good ones out. Cops can't run their drug dealing operation out of the evidence room if there are some do gooder cops trying to blow the whistle on them. Politicians can't be turning their offices and campaigns into friends and family lifetime jobs operations if some goo-goo politician in their own party goes on teevee and decries the practice.
So over time the good ones get stomped on and pushed out. They're a threat!
Or, quite often, "if you can't beat'em, join'em."
There are varying levels of what we can think of as "corruption." Some of it is illegal, some if it should be, and some if it is just not the behavior we would hope for. But the bad ones do indeed spoil the barrel eventually.
So over time the good ones get stomped on and pushed out. They're a threat!
Or, quite often, "if you can't beat'em, join'em."
There are varying levels of what we can think of as "corruption." Some of it is illegal, some if it should be, and some if it is just not the behavior we would hope for. But the bad ones do indeed spoil the barrel eventually.
Some Good Supremos
Huzzah.
The Pennsylvania Supreme Court on Monday issued a complex opinion on a case involving the funding of abortions by Medicaid, finding that the right to “reproductive autonomy” is fundamental.
But the justices sent the case back to Commonwealth Court, ordering it to resolve lingering constitutional issues.
The ruling found that the 1982 Abortion Control Act, which prohibited Medicaid from paying for an abortion, is “presumptively unconstitutional” based on sex discrimination.
Putin's Message
Pelosi's people had plenty of time to say she misspoke when she said this:
It is quite likely some of our faves will be implicated!!!
But for them to call for a cease-fire is Mr. Putin's message, Mr. Putin's message. Make no mistake, this is directly connected to what he would like to see.And this is what they came up with:
In a comment to Rolling Stone, a spokesperson for Pelosi said, “As Speaker Pelosi said on CNN, we have to focus on stopping the suffering in Gaza, and she will continue demanding that all hostages be freed now. Speaker Pelosi has always supported and defended the right of all Americans to make their views known through peaceful protest. Informed by three decades on the House Intelligence Committee, Speaker Pelosi is acutely aware of how foreign adversaries meddle in American politics to sow division and impact our elections, and she wants to see further investigation ahead of the 2024 election.”"Calls for ceasefire are a Russian op" is indeed going around the elite Dem group chat, whether they believe it (likely) or because they find it useful (better? worse?), but that's their position.
It is quite likely some of our faves will be implicated!!!
Sunday, January 28, 2024
WINTER FUNDRAISING FINAL DAY!
Last chance to stop this blog from becoming a full time Russian op!
Thanks to all!
If you don't like paypal, there's also Patreon:
If you don't like paypal, there's also Patreon:
Or you can read for free!
Putin's Like Gluten, It Just Means Anything Bad
The point is less that Pelosi said it, and more that this is the kind of stuff going around the elite Dem group chat.
Red scare is back, baby!!!
The transcript is worse, in case you were wondering:With @DanaBashCNN on @CNNSOTU, Nancy Pelosi suggests some of the activists calling for a ceasefire are "connected to Russia."
— Eva McKend (@evamckend) January 28, 2024
Bash: You think some of these protests are Russian plants?
Pelosi: Some financing should be investigated and I want to ask the FBI to investigate that. pic.twitter.com/j2apqYhLKm
PELOSI: Well, let me just say this, because I have been the recipient of their, shall we say, exuberances, and it's as recently as in Seattle on Thursday, unfortunately wanted to disrupt our very exciting Democratic meeting there.**that's what the transcript says but it should be "suffering in Gaza."
They're in front of my house all the time. So I have a feeling for what feelings they have. But we have to think about what we're doing. And what we have to do is try to stop the suffering and gossip.** This is women and children. People don't have a place to go. So let's address that.
But for them to call for a cease-fire is Mr. Putin's message, Mr. Putin's message. Make no mistake, this is directly connected to what he would like to see. Same thing with Ukraine. It's about Putin's message. I think some of these -- some of these protesters are spontaneous and organic and sincere.
Some, I think, are connected to Russia. And I say that having looked at this for a long time now, as you know.
Red scare is back, baby!!!
Shamelessness Is The Unbeatable Superpower
A bit busy today - well trying to do a bit of actual Sunday Funday - but whether it is Trump or Elmo or even just numerous bad pundits who encourage horrific violence and catastrophes and then just move on to the next on - shamelessness really is the unbeatable superpower.
I think sometimes people get a bit annoyed when I dredge up the past, but lack of remembering is an important enabler of this superpower. Just as an example, Elmo promised a network of Robotaxis with existing vehicles by the end of 2020. Did that happen? Was that ever likely to happen? How much was Tesla's stock price pumped at a critical time by that?
And they will fall for it next time.
Saturday, January 27, 2024
WINTER FUNDRAISING DAY 6
Almost over!
Thanks to all!
If you don't like paypal, there's also Patreon:
If you don't like paypal, there's also Patreon:
Or you can read for free!
The Border Crisis
An important question is why Democrats tend to fall for this every time? What, exactly, is the crisis? Sure everything about our immigration system is a horrible mess, but not one which will be solved by trying to give into Republican demands. This is especially true because Republicans keep saying pretty clearly that they have no actual interest in solving any problems, even as defined by them, but instead just want to screech about it.
Time Keeps On Ticking
On top of everything else, it's clear (some) top Biden people thought the Gaza situation would somehow magically sort itself out after a few months.
I'm quite sure that, initially, it was believed that Israel would go kill a bunch of "bad guys" (bad enough, anyway!) and we'd all notch up another victory in the glorious War On Terror. That anyone worth listening to would have any objections at all was unfathomable. Only antisemites and dumb college students, and we can crush those.
Remember when Biden said this was all supposed to wrap by January, or maybe the end of January?
It's starvation and disease and death going forward, the only question is how much it gets reported. They can, of course, just tweet through it!!!
All that's left is telling the people who care about this that they are, for a revolving set of resons, wrong to care about it. Okay, might work!
I'm quite sure that, initially, it was believed that Israel would go kill a bunch of "bad guys" (bad enough, anyway!) and we'd all notch up another victory in the glorious War On Terror. That anyone worth listening to would have any objections at all was unfathomable. Only antisemites and dumb college students, and we can crush those.
Remember when Biden said this was all supposed to wrap by January, or maybe the end of January?
President Biden last week pressed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to scale down the Israeli military operation in Gaza, stressing he is not in it for a year of war, two U.S. officials told Axios.And now it's never going to end. There is no bringing it back to 10/5 except with a bunch of dead "bad guys" to celebrate.
It's starvation and disease and death going forward, the only question is how much it gets reported. They can, of course, just tweet through it!!!
All that's left is telling the people who care about this that they are, for a revolving set of resons, wrong to care about it. Okay, might work!
Friday, January 26, 2024
Just Tweet Through It
One thing I learned during the Obama administration was that nothing is a scandal unless people in the right positions declare it to be one. The most scandalous (to me) things of the Obama administration (not going to rehash them) were the things that mostly had bipartisan and press support.
If no one who matters cares, does it really matter?
If no one who matters cares, does it really matter?
WINTER FUNDRAISER DAY 5
It is time We rule, and by We, I mean the very fine Eschaton community.
Thanks to all!
If you don't like paypal, there's also Patreon:
Thanks to all!
If you don't like paypal, there's also Patreon:
Or you can read for free!
or the liberal oneThe We Rule Based International Order
International Law - its institutions and enforcement mechanisms - are way above my pay grade, but I suppose we get to see if Biden and the freaks in State behave exactly as we expect them to on behalf of the Kushner-Netanyahu-Bone Saw peace plan and the worst people America has produced.
Oh No Elmo
Tesla stock has been down before, but the thing is "everybody" knows it isn't a $580 billion company (or an $800 billion one a few months ago). Just floating on hype until it isn't anymore.
Musk's play for years has been to make up some bullshit (ROBOTAXIS!) to pump it up just a bit longer. The press still isn't as skeptical as they should be of whatever his latest nonsense is, but he's really just running out of fake ideas to peddle.
Musk's play for years has been to make up some bullshit (ROBOTAXIS!) to pump it up just a bit longer. The press still isn't as skeptical as they should be of whatever his latest nonsense is, but he's really just running out of fake ideas to peddle.
Thursday, January 25, 2024
Happy Hour
Have a few drinks and feel the warm glow of generosity!
If you don't like paypal, there's also Patreon:
If you don't like paypal, there's also Patreon:
Sure Why Not
There are a lot of things wrong with the current crop of Republicans, and one is that they all want to be stars of their own weird teevee shows!
On her third day as a congresswoman, as violent marauders overtook the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) came up with a bold plan: Get punched in the face.
...
But the anecdote is also one The Daily Beast heard as part of the reporting on a broader story on Mace’s strange ascent in Washington that has yet to be published.
According to three sources who heard the comments firsthand, Mace used those exact words: She wanted to go “get punched in the face.”
“She literally begged us to let her leave the office and head to the floor so she could ‘get punched in the face’ and ‘get media attention,’” one former aide said, who shared the story on the condition of anonymity. “That’s word for word what she requested.”
Choose Your Fighters
A consistent view here at Eschaton the Blog is that powerful people have lots of power and people without power don't have much at all. This is more controversial than it should be.
Breakin' The Law
My former colleague, Peter Navarro, sentenced to 4 months for contempt of Congress.
The Ones You Most Expect
Lindsey squealing is hilarious.
“After fighting a four-month legal battle all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court to block his grand jury subpoena — and losing — South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham turned on a dime ‘and threw Trump under the bus,’ according to a source familiar with his testimony. According to secret grand jury testimony in Fulton County confirmed by the authors, Graham testified that if you told Trump ‘That Martians came and stole the election, he’d probably believe you.’
“He also suggested to the grand jurors that Trump cheated at golf. After Graham was finished testifying, he bumped into FANI WILLIS in a hallway and thanked her for the opportunity to tell his story. ‘That was so cathartic,’ he told Willis. ‘I feel so much better.’ Then, to the astonishment of one source who witnessed the scene, South Carolina’s senior senator hugged the Fulton County DA who was aggressively pursuing Trump. Willis’s reaction: ‘She was like “whatever, dude,”’ according to one witness of the strange encounter.”
God I want him to retire (or go to prison) because after all these years I can never remember if it's Lindsay or Lindsey.
WINTER FUNDRAISING DAY 4
If this doesn't work, I'm going to go on the conservative grift where I can earn millions doing slurs.
Thanks to all!
If you don't like paypal, there's also Patreon:
If you don't like paypal, there's also Patreon:
Or you can read for free!
or the liberal oneWell What Are You Going To Do About It?
I'm too lazy to look for it, but years ago there were some quotes from an Obama person observing/complaining about how the press handled the fact that Mitch McConnell refused to put Obama's Supremo nominee up to a vote. Instead of starting from the position that this was somehow wrong, or VIOLATED A NORM, they basically just wanted an answer to the question in title.
I thought this incident highlighted so much of the dynamic in DC. The Obama person had a valid complaint: the elite press does, as much as it claims not to, take "positions" on things, at times, by starting from the premise that an action is controversial, or not.
On the other hand, Republicans don't wait for the press to do this for them (even if they are often eager to). They go out there and start screeching about it. They don't expect the press to make the case for them, they understand the press will amplify any case they make themselves (usually). Or, if not, they'll screech about the next thing.
And, ultimately, it is a valid question. Obama was the president of the fucking United States. What's he going to do about it? I know the response of many is that there was nothing he could do. Well one thing he could have done is go out there and started screeching about it, instead of calmly and quietly nominating Garland and saying "oh, well, what can I do."
Maybe that wouldn't have been smart! I have no idea. But again, the press isn't going to do the screeching for them! Should they? Do they do the Republican's screeching for them? Maybe and often! But they aren't going to do it for Dems unprompted! We know this!
All this brings me to... well, Biden, what are you going to do about it?
I thought this incident highlighted so much of the dynamic in DC. The Obama person had a valid complaint: the elite press does, as much as it claims not to, take "positions" on things, at times, by starting from the premise that an action is controversial, or not.
On the other hand, Republicans don't wait for the press to do this for them (even if they are often eager to). They go out there and start screeching about it. They don't expect the press to make the case for them, they understand the press will amplify any case they make themselves (usually). Or, if not, they'll screech about the next thing.
And, ultimately, it is a valid question. Obama was the president of the fucking United States. What's he going to do about it? I know the response of many is that there was nothing he could do. Well one thing he could have done is go out there and started screeching about it, instead of calmly and quietly nominating Garland and saying "oh, well, what can I do."
Maybe that wouldn't have been smart! I have no idea. But again, the press isn't going to do the screeching for them! Should they? Do they do the Republican's screeching for them? Maybe and often! But they aren't going to do it for Dems unprompted! We know this!
All this brings me to... well, Biden, what are you going to do about it?
Governor Abbott signals potential defiance of Supreme Court’s border rulingThe papers of record are not yet, that I can find, covering this (at time of writing, 7:30am).
Governor Greg Abbott issued a “Statement on Texas’ Constitutional Right to Self-Defense,” following calls by numerous Republican lawmakers to resist the high court’s order, including three state representatives from Houston.
Wednesday, January 24, 2024
The Cost Of Doing Nothing
Mrs. A was showing me pictures of the flooding in San Diego and I joked (knowing nothing) that they proably could've spent $10,000 on something and had no problems. That's a huge exaggeration, of course, but it is true that they have had a YOLO attitude towards their drainage systems forever and well...
Two of the city’s 15 pump stations failed Monday, said Kris McFadden, the city’s deputy chief operating officer. Out of 200 segments of flood channels in San Diego, the city only has funding to do major maintenance on four of those each year, said Todd Snyder, director of the city’s stormwater department.Not picking on San Diego here. It's the type of thing that isn't a priority for a lot of cities. Philadelphia has a problem with clogged storm drains because they refuse to do widespread regular street cleaning.
Gloria said he thinks Monday’s storm would have overwhelmed any drainage system, but he also acknowledged that it is inadequate — something that he and other city officials attributed to a lack of funding and time-consuming bureaucratic processes such as permitting.
“It is fundamentally true that our stormwater system is not resourced correctly, and that’s a long-term thing that we have to probably talk to the voters about,” Gloria said.
Where Are The Trumpers
There are no out and proud pro-Trump columnists at the New York Times or (I think) The Washington Post. I'm not saying there should be. I don't think the opinion pages have an obligation to be anything, precisely. Still the model of offering the broad range of acceptable opinion is generally how both justify their choices - good and bad - and if the Republican Party itself is not acceptable, then perhaps they should make that a bit more clear, instead of essentially pushing (in both news and opinion) unreal representations of the Grand Old Party.
WINTER FUNDRAISING DAY 3
Your ungrateful kids don't deserve that inheritance, anyway.
Thanks to all!
If you don't like paypal, there's also Patreon:
If you don't like paypal, there's also Patreon:
Or you can read for free!
Sure
A friend sent me this to ask me if it was true:
She was very disappointed.
I would hope that big Michelle Obama fans would recognize how ridiculous this is on its face...
"Haha, no" was my texted response.NY POST: Michelle Obama may already be working on a 2024 White House bid
— John Ashbrook (@JohnAshbrook) January 24, 2024
“Mrs. Obama’s team has already sent a survey to heavy-duty donors asking how they’d feel about her as the candidate.” https://t.co/Rg902tmIg5
She was very disappointed.
I would hope that big Michelle Obama fans would recognize how ridiculous this is on its face...
High Out Of Their Minds
Not that we didn't notice.
The White House has its own pharmacy that, until recently, could perhaps best be described as a hot mess, according to a recent investigation report from the Department of Defense’s Office of the Inspector General.
For years, the White House Medical Unit, run by the White House Military Office, provided the full scope of pharmaceutical services to senior officials and staff—it stored, inventoried, prescribed, dispensed, and disposed of prescription medications, including opioids and sleep medications. However, it was not staffed by a licensed pharmacist or pharmacy support staff, nor was it credentialed by any outside agency.
...
Another White House pharmacy staff member gave clues as to what the staff was doing with those brand name prescriptions. The staffer told OIG investigators that ahead of overseas trips, the staff would prepare packets of controlled medications to be handed out to White House staff. "And those would typically be Ambien or Provigil and typically both, right. So we would normally make these packets of Ambien and Provigil, and a lot of times they’d be in like five tablets in a zip‑lock bag. And so traditionally, too, we would hand these out. . . . But a lot of times the senior staff would come by or their staff representatives . . . would come by the residence clinic to pick it up. And it was very much a, 'hey, I’m here to pick this up for Ms. X.' And the expectation was we just go ahead and pass it out."
Trusted News
Can't complain about people turning to dodgy alternative news sources when these are the respectable ones.
If it is important for people to turn to trusted news sources and politicians, then I would recommend yelling at the ones who are failing to be that, not faulting people for turning away.blowing up dozens of civilian homes (a war crime) for the purpose of annexing stolen land (also a war crime) is now “clearing a buffer zone” pic.twitter.com/uCuJxNeTCr
— Adam Johnson (@adamjohnsonCHI) January 24, 2024
Tuesday, January 23, 2024
Happy Hour
Have a few drinks and feel the warm glow of generosity!
If you don't like paypal, there's also Patreon:
If you don't like paypal, there's also Patreon:
Vessels
People who tried to explain that overturning Roe would lead to this were generally treated as insane extremists.
We knew it was never going to stop with Idaho.
Tennessee Republican Rep. Jason Zachary introduced a travel ban yesterday—legislation that would make it a Class C felony to take a minor out-of-state for abortion care. That means a friend, aunt or grandmother who helps a teenager get an abortion could be sent to prison for 15 years. In Oklahoma, state Sen. Nathan Dahm introduced a similar bill that would punish anyone who helps a teen obtain care with up to 5 years in prison.
Going To Have To Shut Them Down Until We Can Figure Out What's Going On
It makes perfect sense, actually, but there is an incongruence with the fact that the worst racist freaks in politics and punditry are Harvard/Yale grads AND there's been a several year media panic about WOKENESS taking over those institutions.
When those nice centrists are "worried" about the intolerance of youth elite institutions, what they're worried about is their own racism being rejected. Those places were supposedly "politically correct" back when all these bigots were growing up, but apparently not enough!
Elise Stefanik, Tom Cotton, Ted Cruz, ...
When those nice centrists are "worried" about the intolerance of youth elite institutions, what they're worried about is their own racism being rejected. Those places were supposedly "politically correct" back when all these bigots were growing up, but apparently not enough!
Elise Stefanik, Tom Cotton, Ted Cruz, ...
DIXVILLE NOTCH
Back when I was a young blogger, I think I believed too much that I had to follow the conventions of Real Political Reporting and pretend the silly rituals like the Dixville Notch midnight voting were worth embracing.
Nothing against silly fun, just the emphasis which suggests the silly fun is important, that this is the type of thing real Advanced Politics knowers pay attention to.
WINTER FUNDRAISER DAY 2
Blogging is actually a lot easier when Repulicans are in charge, not that I want them to be. Many fewer people calling me a shithead!
Thanks to all!
If you don't like paypal, there's also Patreon:
Thanks to all!
If you don't like paypal, there's also Patreon:
Or you can read for free!
We Must Do Something, This Is Something
When you rule out the obvious solutions, bombs are all you have left.
Also, most of what is happening in Gaza is not "fighting between Israel and Hamas." You don't have to be a TikTok kid to see that. Everyone sees that. Everyone describing it this way is lying.
How do you expect people to respond when the news is filled with bullshit and the supposed good guys - The Democrats! - are just full of shit constantly in precisely the same way?
You can keep yelling at them to ignore it all because of the Bad Orange Man, and keep suggesting they are somehow deviant to be concerned about the thing that leads the news almost every day, but do not be surprised when this does not work well!
This is what President JOE BIDEN and his team are working through right now, per NatSec Daily’s conversations with U.S. officials. Their current thinking: there’s no single thing that will pressure the militants to cease launching missiles. It will require a combination of factors over weeks — maybe months — including at least a slowdown in fighting between Israel and Hamas in Gaza.When someone advocating peace says, "the Houthis will stop this when Israel stops demolishing Gaza," this is portrayed as ridiculous terrorist-supporting nonsense which fails to acknowledge the TRUE motives of the Houthis. When the Biden administration says "we're gonna bomb the shit out of them and THEN ALSO a slowdown in fighting in Gaza might wrap this up" this is Wise, Sensible Grown Up Politics.
Also, most of what is happening in Gaza is not "fighting between Israel and Hamas." You don't have to be a TikTok kid to see that. Everyone sees that. Everyone describing it this way is lying.
How do you expect people to respond when the news is filled with bullshit and the supposed good guys - The Democrats! - are just full of shit constantly in precisely the same way?
You can keep yelling at them to ignore it all because of the Bad Orange Man, and keep suggesting they are somehow deviant to be concerned about the thing that leads the news almost every day, but do not be surprised when this does not work well!
When there's a big shit in the corner of the room, everyone smells it. The person who points it out is not causing the stink.
In October, the election was 13 months away. It's now over 9 months way.
Monday, January 22, 2024
Happy Hour
Have a few drinks and feel the warm glow of generosity!
If you don't like paypal, there's also Patreon:
If you don't like paypal, there's also Patreon:
Middlebrow Bullshitting
You know the skill. You can talk about the book you haven't read, but maybe you read a review of it. You have enough knowledge of current events, major authors, the latest films, pop history, and similar, that if these things come up at a party you can participate in the conversation.
It doesn't necessarily involve lying, or claiming expertise where you don't have it, but instead a keen sense of what you know, and how some of it fits together. More importantly, you have a sense of what you don't know so you don't put your foot in it.
Mars is the 4th planet, not the 5th. The red one. You know planets have different gravity strengths, but you can't quite remember if Mars has more or less, so you don't bring it up.
Dickens is an author, 19th century. Tale of Two Cities, Christmas Carol, not sure about the rest. Certainly not Moby Dick.
That kind of thing.
It's funny how our rich tech overlords - Elon Musk and the gang - just fail at this miserably. And they just keep tweeting it out.
It doesn't necessarily involve lying, or claiming expertise where you don't have it, but instead a keen sense of what you know, and how some of it fits together. More importantly, you have a sense of what you don't know so you don't put your foot in it.
Mars is the 4th planet, not the 5th. The red one. You know planets have different gravity strengths, but you can't quite remember if Mars has more or less, so you don't bring it up.
Dickens is an author, 19th century. Tale of Two Cities, Christmas Carol, not sure about the rest. Certainly not Moby Dick.
That kind of thing.
It's funny how our rich tech overlords - Elon Musk and the gang - just fail at this miserably. And they just keep tweeting it out.
A lot of it's just the normal right wing internet stuff like HITLER WAS A LEFTIST, ACTUALLY, and other assorted bits of nonsense history, but they fill their brains with that stuff instead of anything else.
Good Stuff
Go Dark Brandon.
The effort to expand access to contraception involves several measures. Federal agencies are issuing guidance that would make no-cost contraceptives more available under the Affordable Care Act and take similar actions to expand contraception access for federal employees. Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra also plans to send a letter to health insurers instructing them of their obligation to provide no-cost contraceptives, according to a memo the White House sent to reporters Sunday.
The federal health department also announced a new team dedicated to enforcing its interpretation of a law, known as the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, or EMTALA, which the Biden administration has said requires hospitals to provide emergency abortions nationwide, including in the 21 states where the procedure is limited or banned.
Can't Park
This is Europe, but the need to restripe parking lots isn't limited to Europe.
New cars in the EU and UK have grown 1cm wider every two years, the Guardian can reveal, driven by large luxury SUVs whose sales show no sign of slowing.Typical US off street spots are quite a bit wider than 180cm, but larger cars are more likely to encroach on the actual roadway from on street spots.
...
New cars have become so bloated that half of them are too wide to fit in parking spaces designed to the minimum on-street standards in many countries, the report found. The average width of a new car in the EU and UK passed 180cm in the first half of 2023, having grown an average of 0.5cm each year since 2001.
Lunch
Or support the site for free, simply by buying stuff you would have bought anyway! (Ad, I get a commission).
ELECTION YEAR WINTER FUNDRAISING WEEK
Can't believe we're already here again. Every other year is an "election year" in our crazed system but of course the big ones are every four years. Even when I was a young blogger in the Bush era it seemed like 4 years was an eternity, but now 4 years seems to pass every 5 months or so.
Pitch is the same as always: this blog is what it is but if you get some amusement out of it, have extra money, and especially if you give money to similar things because they're paywalled, consider giving a bit to help keep my blogs mighty and strong.
I don't fault people for putting up paywalls, but everyone talks nostalgically about the old blog era (killed by various things), and it can't return as long as everything is paywalled.
Roughly speaking, revenue has been pretty constant in nominal terms for years. But we know how Dark Brandon caused the inflation! So not so much in real terms.
Thanks to all!
If you don't like paypal, there's also Patreon:
Or you can read for free!
The Good Republicans
The reporter/pundit early promotion of Meatball Ron happened because they desperately wanted notTrump to appeal to Trump voters. Basically they bet on "a guy just like Trump but without all the violence and crimeing" to prove that the fine real Americans they have spent 8 years conducting deep anthropological studies about and telling us to hug at Thanksgiving wouldn't support THAT Donald Trump.
And lol of course they would.
And lol of course they would.
8 years later they still mostly don't describe Trump supporters as they are, much as they pretended the TEA PARTY was actually about taxes and small government. The people whose job it is to explain things to you have spent decades pretending to believe things are other than they are.
Meatball Ron
We here at Eschaton The Blog have long made fun of the press for promoting Ron DeSantis. There are a lot of hilarious headlines on pieces and columns, but I decided to go re-read a couple to see if they are as funny as the headlines make them seem now.
A stellar entry is Frank Bruni's:
Reading the column, the peril mostly seems to be "being wrong about Ron's chances." Bruni claims he doesn't like DeSantis, but exactly who is this column directed at? It isn't written for Republican primary voters, convincing them Ron is bad, but instead it's about how Ron could beat Trump, so don't write him off!!!
A stellar entry is Frank Bruni's:
The hilarious bit is Bruni's central point, which is that, contrary to the views of other nattering nabobs, Ron's incredible discipline in just taking Trump's insults and never criticizing him is Smart, Akshually.
How'd that work out?
Bruni links to another piece by Nate Cohn, which informs us that Ron is incredibly popular and that this is absolutely unprecedented for someone like him at that stage. Yah, Nate, he had a couple of years of fawning press coverage setting him up. It's a complete mystery how that happened.
In this narrow but important respect, Mr. DeSantis has a lot more in common with Barack Obama or Ronald Reagan than Mr. Walker or the other promising first-time candidates who did not live up to high hopes in recent years, like Kamala Harris, Rick Perry or the retired general Wesley Clark....There’s no need to speculate about whether Mr. DeSantis is the “next” Reagan or Obama. Not even Mr. Obama and Mr. Reagan were clearly Obama or Reagan at this stage. And Mr. Reagan and Mr. Obama differ from Mr. DeSantis in the very same way that he’s purportedly similar to Mr. Walker, as both Mr. Obama and Mr. Reagan rose to prominence by commanding the national stage in famous speeches during their party’s campaigns in 1964 and 2004.
How did Ron rise to such prominence without any good reason at all? Unknowable.
The unwillingness of the press to admit that they are actors - powerful actors - in these dramas is maddening.
Sunday, January 21, 2024
Who Radicalized You, Ron DeSantis Staffers
Repent and all will be forgiven.
“We’re going to win Iowa,” DeSantis declared on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Dec. 2.
But in the week before the all-important caucuses, Scott Wagner, the recently installed head of the super PAC, was doing something that aides found puzzling: He was literally doing a puzzle.
In the headquarters of Never Back Down in West Des Moines, Iowa, Wagner was, according to some of his staff, spending a significant amount of time in the precious final few days constructing a peaceful 1,000-piece jigsaw puzzle of a landscape.
Click through for the picture. Amazing stuff.
My brief google search tells me Wagner is a "college buddy" of DeSantis. Another fine graduate of Yale University.
And Meatball Ron is dropping out.
What's Missing, Nick
There's an obvious deliberate hole in this piece from Nick Confessore about the motley crew of racist bigots in the "anti-DEI" campaign. None of this works without prominent media members catapulting the propaganda, and it therefore defies belief that in all of the unearthed documents and correspondence, there is nothing about media strategy or "like-minded allies" who happen to be Nick's colleagues and bosses, or other journalists, editors, pundits, and media personalities.
He's just erased them. As I said, none of this works without journalists, so where are they?
He's just erased them. As I said, none of this works without journalists, so where are they?
Cars Are Expensive
Not a new insight, but so many people can't imagine a built environment without them so it is unfathomable that in some places the cost is an option.
Honestly I don't know how one-car-per-adult households manage. It's a huge expense!
A new report finds that, when transportation costs are factored in, Texas’s biggest metros aren’t the bargain they often claim to be.Can always quibble with the precise numbers, and apples-to-apples comparisons on housing are impossible, but the general point is that it costs several hundred dollars per month to own a car and it's a big cost saving if you don't have to have one!
Honestly I don't know how one-car-per-adult households manage. It's a huge expense!
Good Ideas
My very short opinion about election year 2024 is:
You have to have terminal DC Dem brain to think something like that is going to excite people! And terminally online Dem brain to think you can get people excited about it by yelling at them!
- You can't keep pretending that the thing happening on the front pages isn't happening, or that somehow people are wrong for caring about it [why are you so obsessed with Israel??? say people writing their 700th piece about Israel]
- You can't expect people to get excited about modest improvements, even if they are improvements. One can accept the very real constraints of our political system - even, perhaps, understand them - while also wondering why it is the apparent outer limit of what Biden wants.
This is the apotheosis of "do good things - but only for the needy - but only for the DESERVING NEEDY who are therefore not all that needy" and thinking it is both smart policy and politics. Student loan debt forgiveness for people who solve an impossible puzzle.
Saturday, January 20, 2024
All Timer
This, from the NYT editorial board, is definitely in the Hall Of Shame (see what I did there???) of stupid punditry. 
They aren't smart people.
Ignore The Smell In The Corner
Just keep the party going as planned.
New - Biden advisers brainstorm 2024 policy pitch, w/ 3 key messages emerging:
— Jeff Stein (@JStein_WaPo) January 20, 2024
1/ Biden reined in prescription drug prices & wants to do more vs Big Pharma
2/ Biden is taxing corporations & wants billionaire tax
3/ Crack down on price gouging/junk feedhttps://t.co/1CwRiGNv0K
Surprising
Top splash at CNN when I took the screenshot.
Still running it hours later (I first snipped the screenshot late night)
The Israeli military has desecrated at least 16 cemeteries in its ground offensive in Gaza, a CNN investigation has found, leaving gravestones ruined, soil upturned, and, in some cases, bodies unearthed.
Friday, January 19, 2024
They're All Like That
How do they even differentiate between varying levels of malignant narcissism?
Among the negative reports about Mace’s conduct was an examination of a 98-page handbook authored by Mace that included guidance to staff that she only be served room temperature water and that she be pulled from constituent meetings that lasted longer than 3 minutes, along with booking quotas for appearances on cable news outlets. Her colleagues have privately called her a narcissist, complained about the repeated discrepancies between her public statements and private reversals, and critiqued her for a perceived lack of a moral compass.
Brain Geniuses
'Tis the season of yelling at Lefties for being unhappy but I would suggest yelling at the people in charge.
...The Aristocrats!
Several Democrats — including House Armed Services Committee ranking member Adam Smith (D-Wash.), House Homeland Security Committee ranking member Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) and border Rep. Vicente Gonzalez (D-Texas) — said yesterday that if Johnson puts the Senate deal on the floor, some in their party would likely step in to make sure he holds on as speaker."Defense" Democrats want to pass a Republican-approved immigration/asylum/"border" crackdown and will save the absolute freak Christian Nationalist Johnson in order to do so. Gotta keep the $ flowing!
“Our job is not to save Johnson, but I think it would be a mighty pity, if he did the right thing … for us not to support him,” Thompson said. “Up to this point, he’s been a fairly honest broker.”
...The Aristocrats!
Sure Why Not
Vegas should be a transit/pedestrian paradise, as should any "resort" town, but they are violently against it.
Las Vegas seems to be on a roll with bad ideas lately. There’s the whole debacle that was the 2023 Formula 1 Las Vegas Grand Prix. There’s a new ordinance that could land you in jail for up to six months and hit you with a $1,000 fine if you block pedestrian walkways. And now Vegas officials are doubling down on considering Elon Musk’s Boring Company tunnels a viable public transportation option.
The Las Vegas Review-Journal reports that both Clark County and Las Vegas city officials have approved the sale of 1.8 acres of land near the University of Nevada Las Vegas to a mysterious affiliate of The Boring Company only known as Object Dash. These mystery buyers have been purchasing tiny spots of land in various spots across the city for over a year now: late last year, another mysterious affiliate buyer called Open Dash purchased 1.4 acres for $3.7 million in the city’s Chinatown for a Loop station. In Summer 2022, 2.2 acres of land across from the Mandala Bay casino on the Vegas Strip was sold to a buyer who “wished to remain anonymous,” and some suspect that was Object Dash as well.
Win?
I'm not necessarily faulting the Ukraine response, but what exactly is the win?
Again my point is not to fault the Ukraine response, just to be a puzzled about the definition of "win" here.
How Biden’s Immigration Fight Threatens His Biggest Foreign Policy WinI think "getting everyone to agree with the thing all serious people agree with" is the win according to this, whether or not it achieves its stated goals.
The debate over immigration in the United States is spilling over into other parts of President Biden’s agenda, particularly the war in Ukraine.
Again my point is not to fault the Ukraine response, just to be a puzzled about the definition of "win" here.
Where's The Plane, Boss
The country's interest in maintaining a dominant plane manufacturer has been the justification for a lot of policy decisions, and this is where they led.
The Boeing near-disaster is the culmination of decades of outsourcing and backsliding on quality, which has poisoned the reputation of a once-proud company. “What used to be a duopoly has become two-thirds Airbus, one-third Boeing,” said one industry analyst to The New York Times. “A lot of people, whether investors, financiers or customers, are looking at Airbus and seeing a company run by competent people… The contrast with Boeing is fairly profound.” As a result, we have really one company making nearly all the new planes in the world.What is good for Boeing's executives and shareholders does not align perfectly with what is good for America.
Casting Doubt
Is this really informing your readers, NYT? (From whatever morning email they send me)
They don't want to do these things! No one has any intention of doing these things, including these ghouls who work for Biden (and Biden).
Also - this is the plan!!! Christ.
They don't want to do these things! No one has any intention of doing these things, including these ghouls who work for Biden (and Biden).
Thursday, January 18, 2024
Have Some Self-Respect, PAL
Better send more money and weapons.
RAFAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Thursday he has told the United States that he opposes the establishment of a Palestinian state as part of any postwar scenario, underscoring the deep divisions between the close allies three months into Israel’s assault on Gaza.McGurk, Blinken, and Sullivan will be rich forever with this on their CVs.
More Farts To Sniff
Perlstein:
The Timesman replied with such passion that his voice squeaked: “It is the market speaking!”
His next point he managed to deliver more calmly: “The market spoke in 2010. And they gave the Republicans a majority. Everyone knew in 2010 what the Republicans stood for, and they won.” But to my ears, it landed with a screech.
In the book I’m working on now, I write of how Republicans nationalized that election around the message of the Tea Party movement. Hundreds of articles reported uncritically—“just writing what’s going on”—what adherents said “Tea” stood for, literally: The letters T, E, and A were an acronym for “taxed enough already.” No newspapers, ever, bothered to interject that that made little more sense than the claim, habitually flagged as false in news reports now, that Donald Trump won the 2020 election.
Time
I find it interesting watching shows/movies either produced in or meant to take place in specific years over the past 25 years or so. It's pretty easy to pick up on exactly when they are meant to take place, and when there are some technological anachronisms, based on TV/monitor screens and cell phones.
Something I'm watching now takes places in that period when smart phones existed but most people didn't have them. It's actually a clever moment to place things. You have the benefits of current technology, mostly, without it being omnipresent and dominating our lives entirely. Get to have it both ways, as a writer. The tech is there, but you can put it aside when inconvenient.
I'm sure the deeper past has some similar clues I don't pick up on quite as easily because I didn't live through the time period, but they seem a bit more like "that Ford model came out in 1954." Suggestive, but not things which mattered all that much.
Something I'm watching now takes places in that period when smart phones existed but most people didn't have them. It's actually a clever moment to place things. You have the benefits of current technology, mostly, without it being omnipresent and dominating our lives entirely. Get to have it both ways, as a writer. The tech is there, but you can put it aside when inconvenient.
I'm sure the deeper past has some similar clues I don't pick up on quite as easily because I didn't live through the time period, but they seem a bit more like "that Ford model came out in 1954." Suggestive, but not things which mattered all that much.
Coding And Automated Bureaucracy
Hardly the imminent arrival of the singularity.
The education stuff is just going to be an endless series of plagiarism bots being flagged by plagiarism detection software as plagiarism (good luck, parents, all your kids are getting in trouble!)
And, hey, I guess no one needs to learn to code anymore! Bye STEM, we hardly knew you.
The healthcare example is filling out insurance paperwork. There's something funny about inventing an elaborate bureaucracy and then automating it. Computer spits out the form, another computer fills it in automatically. Then another computer can reject treatment!Anyone can ask ChatGPT to answer a question or perform a task. But the popular chatbot is particularly useful for workers in three specific industries, according to OpenAI CEO Sam Altman."Coding is probably the single area from a productivity gain we're most excited about today. It's massively deployed and at scaled usage, at this point," Altman said during a recent episode of "Unconfuse Me," a podcast hosted by Bill Gates. "Healthcare and education are two things that are coming up that curve that we're very excited about, too."
The education stuff is just going to be an endless series of plagiarism bots being flagged by plagiarism detection software as plagiarism (good luck, parents, all your kids are getting in trouble!)
And, hey, I guess no one needs to learn to code anymore! Bye STEM, we hardly knew you.
Words
Definitions, and antisemitism in all forms, certainly matter, but 20 years from now when people ask, "what were you doing during the ethnic cleansing of Gaza," there are a lot of people whose answer is going to be, "I was arguing with people online about the precise meaning of genocide."
If that's you, you're a bad person, and what you're doing isn't a mystery.
If that's you, you're a bad person, and what you're doing isn't a mystery.
Wednesday, January 17, 2024
Still True
Support for the Iraq war over 20 years ago is still best predictor of what an asshole you are.
The ones who supported it and then bailed at the last second don't escape this!
Fart Sniffing Journalists
Rick Perlstein:
At which his interlocutor doubled down on the smug.
“For the same reason we don’t call Trump ‘racist.’ It’s more powerful to say what something is than to offer a label on it that is going to be debated, you know, and distract from the reporting that goes into it.”
Sharlet: “Who is debating Trump’s racism right now?”
Mr. Times: “You can say something is ‘racist.’ You can say something is a racist thing. But putting a label on someone is distorting from the reporting that we do. And the reporting is much harder. And much more powerful than the writing”—what he implied was the only thing Sharlet did, perhaps in an armchair in a book-lined study, smoking a pipe, mongering labels. “And people are welcome to label things however they want, but there’s frankly nobody else doing the reporting that we do.”
Sharlet: “I’m going to disagree with you there.”
Which was when the things that came out of the Timesman’s mouth started getting ugly and weird. His counterargument: “That’s what ten million people are subscribing to The New York Times for … And not to like sound too high and mighty, but the market has spoken, and they like what we’re doing.”
"Regular"
Or you could elect a Speaker at the first possible moment and then change the rules to lock it in.
The MAGA caucus set things up so they can depose their Speaker easily. That isn't normal but there's no reason not to exploit it.
Even with the shifting numbers, it is hard to see the Republican membership falling below that of Democrats, though it is possible that on some days, more Democrats than Republicans could be on the floor and voting because of illness or any number of other reasons. Democrats say that if that were to become a regular occurrence, they would not hesitate to capitalize on the situation.I am no expert on House procedure, but if you can do it if it becomes "regular" you probably can do it at any opportunity.
“We’d elect a speaker,” Mr. Hoyer said.
The MAGA caucus set things up so they can depose their Speaker easily. That isn't normal but there's no reason not to exploit it.
Meatball Ron, Uber Wonk
One thing political reporters are trained to do (other reporters cover this stuff) is to blot out all comprehension of the consequences of policies, in favor of theater criticism and "optics."
What followed was an agonizing 13 weeks of carrying a baby she knew would die and worrying about her own health. It left Dorbert with severe anxiety and depression for the first time in her life.Bonus thanks to all the centrist dipshits who mocked phrases like "abortion is healthcare" and people pointing out that exceptions to bans are not real.
Florida law allows abortions after 15 weeks if two doctors confirm the diagnosis of a fatal fetal abnormality in writing, but doctors in Florida and states with similar laws have been hesitant to terminate such pregnancies for fear someone will question whether the abnormality was truly fatal. The penalties for violating the law are severe: Doctors can go to prison and face heavy fines and legal fees.
Nobody Who Went To Yale Could Be Bad
Hamas is ruining Jake's retirement plan (endless noshow jobs at "Think Tanks" on the Saudi dime).
Lol.
It was brilliant! It was supposed to work! If not for those meddling Palestinians!
The entire point of the Kushner-Netanyahu-Biden Middle East Peace Plan was that it completely sidelined the Palestinian issue. Just the worst fucking people in the world.MORE: “It was our judgment that that was going to be the most viable pathway to make progress on what had been an intractable problem and going for another round of direct negotiations wasn't going to do it.”
— Alex Ward (@alexbward) January 16, 2024
Said this “indirect way…most likely to generate this result.”
Lol.
Probably I'm being too cynical about Jake. It's not about his retirement plans, it's about a bunch of lesser pig people blowing up his cunning plans and making him look like an idiot. YOU DO NOT MAKE JAKE SULLIVAN LOOK LIKE AN IDIOT. He will burn the world down in response.
Being online forever has showed me that elite overachievers have their brains completely broken by the mildest bit of criticism, and they will take it all down with their sputtering egos.
It was brilliant! It was supposed to work! If not for those meddling Palestinians!
Morning
Sadly, Vivek and I have had to part company. Apparently he assumed there were several 0s after the 5 in my offer of "$5 per post."
Tuesday, January 16, 2024
The Worst People
One constant during the Trump administration was that the people who worked for him spent most of their time texting reporters, trashing each other. One obvious takeaway is: of course reporters loved this fucking guy! Just text message after text message of "scoops" and book contract fodder.
The other is that these are horrible people who only know horrible people. This is normal behavior to them!
Strange existence.
The other is that these are horrible people who only know horrible people. This is normal behavior to them!
Strange existence.
Self
I am no expert, but my view of retail managers and executives is "cutting labor costs" is the one thing they are empowered to do and they will do it any way they can no matter how expensive or counterproductive it is.
As with almost all customer service automation, it's one thing to have it be an option, and it's quite another to have it be essentially the only option by making human workers difficult or impossible to access.
Many retail companies have invested millions – if not billions – of dollars in self-checkout technology, which Andrews says was first developed during the 1980s, and started appearing in stores in the 1990s. They're not exactly cheap to get into stores: some experts estimate a four-kiosk system can run six figures.There are a lot of issues here: purchase and maintenance costs are high, theft (deliberate and inadvertent) is an obvious problem, customers are not trained scanners so they will be slow and need help, liquor and other "secure" items (local laws apply) require staff, the scanning systems themselves are finnicky especially when fraud prevention measures are increased, etc.
Despite the cost to install them, many retailers are reversing course on the tech. Target, for instance, is restricting the number of items self-checkout customers can purchase at one time. Walmart has removed some self-checkout kiosks in certain stores to deter theft. In the UK, supermarket chain Booths has also cut down on the number of self-service kiosks in its stores, as customers say they're slow and unreliable.
As with almost all customer service automation, it's one thing to have it be an option, and it's quite another to have it be essentially the only option by making human workers difficult or impossible to access.
WHY DON'T YOU UNDERSTAND THE APPEAL OF TRUMP, LIBS????
We're going to be getting these pieces more and more, as if we haven't had them almost nonstop for 9 years now. I think "we" get Trump's appeal more than the people who have been pushing Ron and Haley as viable alternatives.
The point of these pieces is that libs should sympathize with these people. They mostly aren't even pitched as electoral advice to Dems (except to chastize Dem politicians for supposedly being mean to these voters - no evidence provided), but are instead just versions of the annual "love your conservative relatives at Thanksgiving" pieces. Hug a Trump voter! The one who wants to put you in camps.
I have no idea why this is important to these people, who certainly only know "professional" Trumpers, the Republicans in their social circles, not actual Trump voters.
The point of these pieces is that libs should sympathize with these people. They mostly aren't even pitched as electoral advice to Dems (except to chastize Dem politicians for supposedly being mean to these voters - no evidence provided), but are instead just versions of the annual "love your conservative relatives at Thanksgiving" pieces. Hug a Trump voter! The one who wants to put you in camps.
I have no idea why this is important to these people, who certainly only know "professional" Trumpers, the Republicans in their social circles, not actual Trump voters.
What We Need Is A Strong Republican Party
This is a consensus elite view - including that of many in the Democratic party. It is true that one party rule is bad, the results of which you can see in supposedly "blue" cities and states where governance is less than ideal and quite often hardly "blue." But propping up the current crew isn't going to achieve that.
At best there are 15 or so Republican senators - and essentially no House members - who wouldn't burn everything down for Donald Trump or someone as bad as Donald Trump. There's nothing to prop up.
At best there are 15 or so Republican senators - and essentially no House members - who wouldn't burn everything down for Donald Trump or someone as bad as Donald Trump. There's nothing to prop up.
Surprising
Maybe a conservative justice has a transgender niece or something.
BREAKING: The Supreme Court declined to review a federal court ruling in favor of a transgender student challenging a discriminatory restroom policy at an Indiana public school.
— ACLU (@ACLU) January 16, 2024
A lower court’s ruling remains in place requiring the school to treat trans students equally.
Number Two
The only funny outcome of the Republican primary will be Trump spurning Haley as his Veep.
Ramaswamy is gone, on to the next grift (a very lucrative one, I am sure).
I know at some level none of this is funny, but we take our laughs where we can get them.
Ramaswamy is gone, on to the next grift (a very lucrative one, I am sure).
Monday, January 15, 2024
What Am I Doing Here
I started this silly blog for various reasons, but one was the unreality of everything in the runup to the Iraq war. That could at least be a little "fun" under a Republican administration.
Ban TikTok
I would say I didn’t approve if asked. The Professional Democrats will intetpret it how they want (how best to keep their consultanting dollars flowing).
BIDEN/TRUMP -- A Biden/Trump general election, if that's the outcome of the primary season, would represent a battle of markedly unpopular candidates. Among all adults, Biden's approval rating is just 33% in this poll, worse than Trump's low as president (36%) and the lowest since George W. Bush from 2006-2008. Fifty-eight percent disapprove of Biden's work.
#Notalldemocrats of course but there are lots of people whose job is "politics" with an eye towards "beach" and they keep winning as long as no one blames them for the losses.
The arc of their careers is long and it bends towards getting rich.
Yes I'm a bit cynical today but I see how the actual good people in politics tend to get stomped, while the amoral weirdos thrive, just a bit too often.
Seems Bad
I don't know Ahmed, but accusing a journalist of just fabricating a quote (not that the quote is wrong, or he get played by a source, but that he just made it up) is a big deal!
We can discuss whether Watson is freelancing or if this is coming from the bosses.20 hours after my deadline—now my story has been read by >150k people—WH has sent comment. Spox Adrienne Watson: "This story is not true. Quotes attributed to US officials are made up."
— Akbar Shahid Ahmed (@AkbarSAhmed) January 13, 2024
Watson played no role in my interviews.
My quotes are real. Biden team again echoing Trump. https://t.co/cQLVJgnnSK
Well he has a funny name so you can say anything about him.Earlier in the day, a contact told me a US official they contacted about my story said I lack credibility & am seen as an extremist.
— Akbar Shahid Ahmed (@AkbarSAhmed) January 13, 2024
Such smear tactics in response to scrutiny & journalism are scary—and reflective of the Trump-style thinking Biden is selling himself as opposing.
Sunday, January 14, 2024
Did I Say That Out Loud
Monstrous and stupid people.
“If this really goes bad, we want to be able to point to our past statements,” a senior U.S. official said. The official said the administration is particularly worried about a narrative taking hold that Biden supports all Israeli military actions and that U.S.-provided weapons have been used to kill Palestinian civilians, many of them women and children. The Defense Department has said the U.S. is not putting any limits or restrictions on the weapons it’s providing Israel.
The Greatest Tragedy Is Maybe The Left Was Correct
The thing these ghouls are least able to handle.
U.S. officials are now growing increasingly concerned that Israel won't meet its timetable to transition to low-intensity operations in Gaza by the end of January, based on where things stand in Gaza, particularly in the southern city of Khan Younis.It'll be difficult, but Biden will manage somehow.
If Israel doesn't significantly scale down its operations in Gaza — which U.S. officials have been pressing for in hopes of reducing Palestinian casualties — it will likely become increasingly difficult for Biden to maintain the same level of support for Israel's military campaign.
Help My Profession Is Dying
I wasn't really joking about this - Dave Weigel has been posting pictures of events where reporters outnumber normal people. Dave's one of the tiny number of political reporters who actually does talk to voters - even listens to them! - and doesn't have the memory of a goldfish, but most of his colleagues just go to hang out with each other and get some quotes to slot into their prewrites.
The Chickenshit Club
The DOJ really needs to confront this stuff.
BROWNSVILLE, Texas (AP) — The U.S. Homeland Security Department said Saturday that Texas denied federal agents access to a stretch of border when they were trying to rescue three migrants who drowned.
Saturday, January 13, 2024
A Little Levity
A Florida county removes my books 📚 "Killing Jesus" and "Killing Reagan" from school libraries. Preposterous! We are investigating and are seeking comment from @GovRonDeSantis. This will not stand. Updates on https://t.co/rryWmyXe7C.
— Bill O'Reilly (@BillOReilly) January 12, 2024
Cold
The 13,000 reporters (87% of people still working in journalism) sent to cover the Iowa caucuses aren't going to have much fun!
V
Again I recommend taking a break from yelling at the deluded TikTok teens of the imagination and start yelling at the demented serial killer freaks in power.
“It misses the point,” one U.S. official said of the plan. Another said that McGurk has laid out his vision in a top-secret document shared in some circles of the Washington national security establishment — a plan that envisions Biden traveling to the region in the coming months on “a victory tour” to claim credit for an Israel-Saudi deal as an answer to Gaza’s pain. The document references a preliminary deal called “the Jerusalem-Jeddah Pact,” the official told HuffPost.
Friday, January 12, 2024
Less Popular Than Syphillis
Not among people who matter!
The least popular governor in New Jersey history says he doesn’t care what people think of him because he’s not running for office.Gov. Chris Christie, whose approval rating landed at a record-low of 15 percent in a recent Quinnipiac University Poll, said such polls meant nothing to him when he was at record highs and they mean even less to him now as he heads into his final six months in office.
How refreshing! A politician who doesn't care what the voters think! Christie left office with those poll numbers, and was promptly given a job at ABC News, because of his popularity.
What About All The Good Things Biden Is Doing
It isn't annoying lefties ensuring other things dominate news coverage at the moment.
If you want Biden to beat the bad orange man, then I would suggest yelling at Biden's people is the best course of action at the moment. They are the ones currently compounding disasters. Complete psychos running foreign policy!
Kick That RINO To The Curb
Why not
Speaker Mike Johnson says spending deal with Schumer remains in place despite pressure from hardliners to walk away
Am I An Expert?
No, but I'm pretty sure choosing "don't bomb" is right about 90% of the time, while the supposed experts choose it 100% of the time. Being a dumbass is useful, sometimes.
Of course I'm not eyeing a bunch of barely show jobs on defense contractor boards, or advocating for Human Rights from the perch of a Think Tank funded by the worst regimes/interests in the world.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)