Friday, April 26, 2019
Turn The Machines Back On
Trading Places is one of the greatest movies ever made, and the callback to the Duke Brothers in "Coming to America" is the best callback ever.
discuss.
discuss.
Voters
I don't remember too much from grad school because all that advanced math that cluttered up my brain was replaced with mad shitposting skills, but one thing which always stuck with me was a certain paper I read at some point. It didn't stick with me enough that I remember the authors and title, of course, but the basic empirical result.
It was an old paper and who knows how robust and repeatable it was, but this was it:
A major determinant of the likelihood of school bond issues passing in local elections was if the voting population was white and older and the school aged population was less white. That made them less likely to pass, of course.
It was an old paper and who knows how robust and repeatable it was, but this was it:
A major determinant of the likelihood of school bond issues passing in local elections was if the voting population was white and older and the school aged population was less white. That made them less likely to pass, of course.
SHHHHHH
If you don't point out the flaws in a candidate, no one else will either.
This is a joke, but it is a little true. Mainstream journalists mostly attack Democrats from the right. You know, "THAT TIME JOE BIDEN WAS MEAN TO CREDIT CARD COMPANIES HE IS NOW DOOMED WITH OHIO CREDIT CARD MINERS." Only weirdos on the internet criticize them from the left.
This is a joke, but it is a little true. Mainstream journalists mostly attack Democrats from the right. You know, "THAT TIME JOE BIDEN WAS MEAN TO CREDIT CARD COMPANIES HE IS NOW DOOMED WITH OHIO CREDIT CARD MINERS." Only weirdos on the internet criticize them from the left.
Thursday, April 25, 2019
I Am So Sorry About This Thing That Made You Feel Bad Which I Was Maybe Witness To? Not Sure
I guess I have to leave this one open for discussion. Is Joe Biden leaking that he made a call to Anita Hill suggesting (not saying) that he apologized, opening the door for her to respond (which she did), that she did not consider it an apology, some grand strategery to appeal to the people inclined to hate Anita Hill or just because Biden has the maturity of an 8-year-old and can't fake an apology?
I apologize sincerely for everything bad you can think of that I did 25+ years ago. What an idiot I was then!
I apologize sincerely for everything bad you can think of that I did 25+ years ago. What an idiot I was then!
Sometimes I Do Bad Blog Posts
And I have just admitted more error than anyone working for the NYT ever does.
The Crime Of Being Black And Knowing Other Black People
Being a "former prosecutor" has long been part of the preferred resume for Democratic candidates. Gotta be tough like those GOP Daddies. Gotta be tougher than those GOP Daddies. In our new woke times I hope we put an end to this career path.
Cars Are Bad
Most of you need them for your daily lives but much of the world doesn't live this way (plenty of people have cars in other rich countries - and other countries generally - they just don't need them every time they want to buy a quart of milk or an apple or, god forbid, go have a beer). We live under the constraints we face and 70 years of building a society around cars isn't going to be unraveled quickly (narrator: or at all) but it's ridiculous that you can build a giant 60s space colony in the middle of nowhere with more parking space than office space and no legitimate connection to the public transit network and claim, seriously, that you have a green (the greenest!) building.
Wednesday, April 24, 2019
Fair, Balanced, and Blonde
Admittedly it's the kind of crack a liberal critic might make, but not for the same reason.
Not Bothsidesing
Both sides are not perfect, of course, but positing that there is corruption on "both sides" that serves to cover it all up is not suggesting it is of equal magnitude. But when, for example, the nominally Democratic DA of New York City seemingly teams up with the Republican now-Labor Secretary to cover up and minimize the child rape by a rich guy, and the story is perhaps not getting quite as much attention as it should, well..
For example.
For example.
Kompromat
Sometimes one wonders what the Republican party has on the Democrats.
Sort of a joke, but the more serious version is that corruption is bipartisan (certainly of the donor classes if not as much the electeds), and no one really wants peeking behind the curtain.
Sort of a joke, but the more serious version is that corruption is bipartisan (certainly of the donor classes if not as much the electeds), and no one really wants peeking behind the curtain.
We Tried To Tell You
Not that it's about *me* (as the little voice in my head screams MEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE), but it was a bit difficult in the early days of the Obama administration pointing out how badly they were fucking things up. And they did fuck things up and a lot of people suffered and all so Tim Geithner's pals could stay rich and so the Gods Of The Market could be pacified by the continued immiseration of the population. I haven't read Reed's book yet, but he's not the obvious person to play the role of critic.
That these supergeniuses didn't understand that "I lost my job and am losing my house" was more important than headlines about a fiscally conservative stimulus or lukewarm praise from David Brooks or some bullshit...
In the end, the stimulus would prove weaker than even Romer thought. Unemployment would remain over 9 percent until late in 2011. The unimpressive recovery surely contributed to the massive vote swing toward the Republicans in the 2010 midterm elections and their takeover of the House of Representatives; the slow hard march back to prosperity left many voters still bitter even in 2016. To the extent that the decision to ask for a smaller stimulus resulted from, as David Axelrod tells Hundt, “political judgments, not economic judgments,” it backfired. The Democrats gained no evident support for their demonstration of restraint in crafting a spending package, and their apparent ineptitude in fighting the recession weakened them when afterward they sought vital environmental and health care legislation.
That these supergeniuses didn't understand that "I lost my job and am losing my house" was more important than headlines about a fiscally conservative stimulus or lukewarm praise from David Brooks or some bullshit...
Our Special Knowledge
It's probably reasonable to say that the anti-vax movement started out on "The Left" though mostly that particular West Coast slice of "The Left" which is much more about attitude and personal lifestyle choices than actual politics, but since then it's metastasized and is largely a right wing nutter thing. I don't quite get it, though. Trying to read some of The Discourse among its adherents doesn't leave me very enlightened. It doesn't seem to be much deeper than vaccines are bad, and we special people know that, and therefore do not vaccinate our kids, and people who do vaccinate their kids are bad because reasons.
Yes once upon a time the supposed vaccine-autism link was the big thing...now I'm not even sure? It's still there, but it isn't the only thing.
Yes once upon a time the supposed vaccine-autism link was the big thing...now I'm not even sure? It's still there, but it isn't the only thing.
Tuesday, April 23, 2019
My President
He's very online just like us!
Half of conservative twitter is them whining because they think they are being oppressed somehow.
A significant portion of the meeting focused on Trump’s concerns that Twitter quietly, and deliberately, has limited or removed some of his followers, according to a person with direct knowledge of the conversation who requested anonymity because it was private. Trump said he had heard from fellow conservatives who had lost followers for unclear reasons as well.
Half of conservative twitter is them whining because they think they are being oppressed somehow.
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