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Thought something actually happened over the weekend, besides Gaetz having an insane forehead, of course.
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Oct 3, 2022 08:48
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Musk comes off like one of those dumb teenagers getting into bitter internet flame wars over video games. Just a complete and total airhead with the absolute shallowest, most brainless, immature take on any issue a person could possibly have, which he feels the need to spout off about to everyone, with no real self-awareness, while at the same time being pathologically obsessed with people's opinion of him. One of the interesting aspects of the rise of social media is watching all these rich people getting pilloried for their clueless hot takes and then realizing in real time that no amount of money can sooth the wounds of public humiliation.
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Oct 30, 2022 20:35
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Staluigi posted:there's so many nice people in WV but even with them you can tell the place is tossing their brains around. It halves your willpower saving throws for insanity effects. If stephen king had grown up with familiarity to that region instead of coastal new england he would have written the King In Yellow, like the actual thing they reference in the book, and accidentally caused Dead Space to be real. The whole place is probably an Elder God burial ground they forgot to put one of those "nothing valued is here, it is best left shunned" messages on top of in case mammals ever evolved to the point of tunneling into the ground to harvest burnable rocks. Paula-Jean is not immune and you must forgive her occasional bursts into things like the Let Them Eat Ketchup speech. They're under a kind of a One Ring style effect, being compelled psychically to keep chipping away at the earthen prison beneath their feet. A post after my own heart. And agreed, red states not being the Springfield of Cosmic Horror is a huge missed opportunity.
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Nov 6, 2022 09:42
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Quorum posted:This is almost exactly the premise of the "Old Gods of Appalachia" podcast, which is pretty good. the_steve posted:100% agree. I love that podcast. Looks promising. Is there a particularly good episode recommended to jump in on or just start from the beginning?
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Nov 6, 2022 16:39
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R's are pretty pissed at Trump right now. Talking all kinds of poo poo about him. I wouldn't be surprised if Biden, DNC et al aren't particularly perturbed about Florida. Before tonight Trump would've swatted DeSantis like a fly. Now DeSantis has the clout, and the environment is much more favorable, for him to get in some real body blows against Trump before he hits the mat.
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Nov 9, 2022 10:05
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Sodomy Hussein posted:DeSantis lives safely in the Florida state media bubble, Trump shouldn't be afraid of him at all. Charlie loving Crist made DeSantis look like a constipated baby on the debate stage Crist still got blown out. As did Clinton after she clobbered Trump in debates. It's long been known that Debates don't shift opinions. It wouldn't be DeSantis' debate skills that would doom him, it'd be his questionable ability to generate Trump-level enthusiasm and his weird unlikable prick personality. It's also unknown if his 3rd World Iron fist dictator schtick will actually play on the national stage. Regardless, Trump clearly is afraid of him. And the Midterms aren't helping. But don't take my word for it. yronic heroism posted:Except they know for sure Biden can beat Trump and the risk is someone new beats Biden. But since Trump is almost certainly running, DeSantis would have to beat Trump in the primary (which apparently people seem to think is somewhat unlikely) if he were to face Biden. Which leaves us back at DeSantis just softening up Trump. But who knows, maybe we'll get a nightmare scenario and Trump and DeSantis will unite. Doubtful Trump's ego would allow it, but the Harris/DeSantis debates would be uniformly terrible.
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Nov 9, 2022 11:52
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BadOptics posted:This whole fiasco has further cemented the link in my brain between Elon and Chris Robert's of Star Citzen fame. Both just waving their arms around and throwing every "good idea" (to a 5 year old) at the wall. The one thing that really came through from the flood of Musk's text messages with other Big Tech leaders that we got access to through Twitter's lawsuit was that The Emperor has no clothes. Given that he is clearly a moron, crowdsourcing ideas for Twitter's development is probably one of the better ideas Musk has had, but it still won't save him.
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Nov 9, 2022 21:36
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Failed Imagineer posted:Like you think you're getting hosed by one Senator but they swap out halfway? Don't forget the flourish at the end when people ask what the name of the act is: "The
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Nov 13, 2022 16:55
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Main Paineframe posted:The article is largely about the GOP, blaming them for completely squandering a set of conditions that everyone expected to lead to a red wave. It's generally written as a "How the GOP blew it" piece. Here's an archive link as well. Speaking of which, if anyone's come across any other good post-midterms "deep dive" analysis articles, please post them. I imagine we'll be seeing a lot more of them come out next week. EDIT: Here's the Brookings panel. -Blackadder- fucked around with this message at 20:49 on Nov 13, 2022 |
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Nov 13, 2022 20:33
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There's some Mandela Effect on that Sinema quote:Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:It's from the book the "hiding behind my skirt" quote came from. Re-reading it, I just noticed she didn't actually claim anyone else told her they were opposed to parts of BBB, just that it was her "feeling" they were. Regardless, given the full spectrum of personalities and backgrounds in the party there are probably several members who aren't 100% behind every aspect of every piece of legislation, but that's very different than being a member who's willing to stand up and go against their ingroup when the entire rest of the caucus wants to move forward on something. Manchin and Sinema both did it for different reasons, but they also both had the kind of "rogue/outsider" personality type that would stand against their ingroup and smile while taking all that heat. Manchin is enough of a smug little prick, I think he actually gets off on being a fly in the ointment. -Blackadder- fucked around with this message at 21:42 on Nov 13, 2022 |
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Nov 13, 2022 21:37
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Old Surly posted:Is Trumpo for sure announcing tonight? Just started. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4wskZIFAHFY Trump posted:"America's comeback starts now." Looks like TRUMP is back on the menu, boys.
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Nov 16, 2022 03:11
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He's really going all in on grabbing the popular positions on hot issues...Trump posted:
* Be interesting to see how this one goes over. I feel like people like the convenience of easier voting with more options, but are just annoyed that elections drag out. -Blackadder- fucked around with this message at 04:11 on Nov 16, 2022 |
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Nov 16, 2022 04:08
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The Verge just dropped the final part in their 6 month investigation into two decades of life under the Department of Homeland Security and it's completely ridiculous. It's also really long, (but very pro read) so below are a few highlights.https://twitter.com/sarahjeong/status/1592923833677512704 quote:There was only one problem: BioWatch never functioned as intended. The devices were unreliable, causing numerous false positives. “It was really only capable of detecting large-scale attacks,” Albright explained, because of “how big a plume would have to be” for the sensors to pick it up. And the system was prohibitively slow: every 24 hours, someone had to retrieve a filter and then send it to a laboratory for testing, which might then take another 24 hours to discover a pathogen. quote:By 2019, the year after Americans heard audio of crying migrant children held in overcrowded cells, there were around 50,000 migrants detained in nearly 200 facilities across the United States on any given day. Many had arrived legally, had committed no crimes, and were waiting for asylum claims to be processed. The conditions at every facility holding an average of more than 50 people for more than 72 hours at a time, about 100 detention centers in total, have, for many years, been inspected and validated by a private company called The Nakamoto Group. quote:At other departments, reports from an inspector general’s office might get used by the congressional committees overseeing a given agency and its budget. But, as Hempowicz explained, “Almost every committee in Congress has jurisdiction over the Department of Homeland Security, and when almost everyone has jurisdiction, no one has jurisdiction.” -Blackadder- fucked around with this message at 07:34 on Nov 17, 2022 |
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Nov 16, 2022 23:34
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God, another two years of Trump is bad enough, but at least he's got stage presence. These guys are such talentless dull-witted amateurs it's going to be pure low-budget cringe.
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Nov 17, 2022 18:35
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She made the smart play here, going out on a high note and keeping her word. It's difficult to overstate how much Pelosi has been Kobe for the Democrats. She'll be sorely missed. There's a lot of naivety from people who think having the correct opinions on the issues means you can just walk in and do that job, but that's exactly how you take a juggernaut trifecta and end your big talk GOP revenge fantasy with an embarrassing wet fart tax cut and jack poo poo else. Nothing matters if you can't wrangle people and get things done. Hakeem Jeffries has a lot of support, and a good rep for this position, but frankly it's incredibly irritating to have someone from New York coming into this right now. I wouldn't trust NY Dems to do my laundry at this point. If you're going to be a shithead moderate at least try to actually be good at it. None of that may be related to his Congressional operation but after that embarrassing dumpster fire performance in New York it's gonna take some evidence to see if he can fill Pelosi's shoes. For anyone who wants to read more about how Hakeem Jeffries might do as a Pelosi replacement, this article has some good background. He's been prepping for this for a while, and already has his own whip operation in place so he'll probably end up being fine. https://twitter.com/jmart/status/1593295607480950784 -Blackadder- fucked around with this message at 20:45 on Nov 17, 2022 |
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Nov 17, 2022 20:34
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It's hard to convey how rabid the core of Rightwing gun owners are about their guns, I think the only thing they love even more is racism. Still, there's a ton of R voters that aren't gun owners and don't really care that much so it kind of feels like the insane pro-gun crowd could potentially go the same way as the Religious Right if the winds shifted. When the video game industry was the target of public backlash for their graphic content back in the 90's, they swiftly introduced self-regulation at which point people largely left them alone. A technologically sophisticated enough buyer screening + gun tracking/monitoring system could conceivably satisfy all parties. But gun owners stupidly don't want anything they see as an infringement. And unlike other government legislation that is ineffective or not up to the task it's implemented for, it's pretty obvious that gun laws aren't working if you have a mass shooting every other day. It's always been [un]surprising how tactlessly self-centered the gun industry/gun owners are when every time their's a mass shooting their first response is "I wonder how this is going to impede my rights." You'd think they'd be proactive about resolving this issue on their own terms so that they can ensure they end up with favorable terms. But it would seem the public pressure just isn't there. Which is really kind of amazing in this day and age. If a classroom full of 3rd graders getting Mozambique'd isn't enough to start a nation wide Witch Hunt of rabid parents and create a level of public shaming of gun owners tantamount to registered sex offenders then the real question becomes, what is it really going to take? The answer, by now, should of course be obvious. Just tell people that guns are making their kids feel bad about America's history of racism. -Blackadder- fucked around with this message at 21:21 on Nov 23, 2022 |
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Nov 23, 2022 20:57
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Charlz Guybon posted:Is this all Dobbs scrambling things in a Red state that also swings heavily pro-choice, or is it something else at work? The missing context here (referenced in the midterms thread) is essentially "Alaska =/= the lower 48". Alaska is basically the state-wide version of "Local Politics" aka people care about party affiliation substantially less than in other states. Who you are and what you do for people is far more important. The above may seem wild, but when you consider that:
Source: Used to live in Anchorage.
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Nov 26, 2022 23:24
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Main Paineframe posted:That's certainly an issue, but those types tend to be more of a problem in the House than in the Senate, so I don't think it's at a level where it would seriously drive us into crisis just yet. This is a pretty good "Conservative principles meet the real world" story. Always amazing watching Rightwingers pounce on the third rail over and over. Reminds me of something I came across recently; how much they love to cosplay intellectuals. True believers like MTG and Lauren "I'm tired of this separation of church and state junk" Boebert don't even know what day it is. They'll absolutely turn the nuclear football missile key with a hallelujah and big fat grin, if they ever have the numbers. On the other hand relying on Taliban Capital to pull our asses out of the fire with Vanilla ISIS is also probably a situation we should try harder not to be in.
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Nov 28, 2022 18:17
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DeadlyMuffin posted:You're talking past each other: Amazing how much of politics is just this. Additionally amazing how much of politics is just the Leftwing having extended debates (often over minutiae) with itself, while the entire Rightwing aren't even remotely engaged in these kinds of discussions in any way, and basically just sit around cosplaying Bond villains. Reminds me of that moment a few years back when everyone realized that we get a lot of deep dive think pieces into the minds of rural Conservative/Trump voters and the MSM trying to deconstruct the motivations of coal miners in fly over states but you rarely see RWM doing a mirror version of any of that. I remember someone (maybe a goon) describing it best as something like, "[Conservatives] seek no new insights", or something along those lines that really kind of speaks to the fundamental differences in the way the two groups perceive the world. -Blackadder- fucked around with this message at 23:40 on Nov 30, 2022 |
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Nov 30, 2022 22:33
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Interesting how the GOP is responding to the potential strike. Though it ultimately seems to be along the usual lines according to the House votes. Out of curiosity, what exactly are the complete and total (including indirect and far reaching) impacts a strike would have? Like what are the full implications here? Is it just another group of corporate execs getting smacked in the pocketbook and inevitably having to humble themselves by tossing a few crumbs to the proles or is it like "who wants to see what happens if we don't raise the debt ceiling [Joker grin]?" -Blackadder- fucked around with this message at 01:44 on Dec 1, 2022 |
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Dec 1, 2022 01:32
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Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:Warnock and Murphy were both out. On the Republican side, both NC Senators and one of the MS Senators were both out. Senate rules still not allowing for democracy tele-medicine? Feels like this was worth hopping on a plane.
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Dec 1, 2022 23:35
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I'm amazed so many R's voted for the extra sick days in the Senate. I saw Hawley's name, so I'm assuming that they're mostly from the burgeoning nativist/white nationalist/Tucker Carlson faction of the GOP. How many more D votes did we need for the sick days? Twitter's going off on Manchin right now. He was the only D in the senate to vote against it. But is primarying him even a realistic solution, as in do we have anyone on the bench in WV that could do it and not just hand the seat to a Republican in the general? Charlz Guybon posted:Three is so many? For our wonderfully bipartisan friends across the aisle? Yeah. Though, I doubt we would have seen those votes if they would have made the difference. -Blackadder- fucked around with this message at 05:23 on Dec 2, 2022 |
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Dec 2, 2022 05:14
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So if what happened was the anti-labor move, then what would have been the pro-labor move by Congress here? It sounds like they should've put up a single bill that includes the sick days. How would that move have likely played out? Did we have the votes for it to pass or would we have been watching Manchin pull a Slim Pickins at the end of Dr. Strangelove?
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Dec 2, 2022 19:58
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Nucleic Acids posted:Congress could have just not acted. This seems to be the prevailing line of thought. So assuming Congress doesn't act, most suggest this most likely leads to a strike. Disregarding for the moment other concerns a potential strike might lead to, would it have been likely to result in the railworkers getting their sick days? Or potentially an even better result, if the strike caused such damaging ripple effects in the economy; not just economic, but people suffering from lack of essentials (endanger water supplies, important chemicals, etc) might people then recognize the need for that particular job to be nationalized to protect nationalist interests? In other words an argument for localized accelerationism. Would a strike have been likely to impose enough pain on the larger national population that it leads to the railroads being nationalized? -Blackadder- fucked around with this message at 22:31 on Dec 2, 2022 |
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Dec 2, 2022 22:29
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In the event that, for whatever reason, Biden in 2024 becomes untenable, who do we replace him with?
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Dec 3, 2022 01:25
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How close were the races we lost? Did we still get the usual blow outs in red areas or were they a lot closer than usual? For example, Boebert's was quite the squeaker wasn't? Either way, with the major exceptions of New York and Florida, people should feel pretty good, all things considered. We had favorable headwinds to do well in the last two elections but this one was the real test and it seems like the Dem electorate may have finally decided that they like winning elections. No sign the Conservative SC is going anywhere and it'll be either Trump or DeSantis in 2024 so there'll be plenty of kerosine to keep the fires going for now. The next test, after 2024, will be to see if everyone goes back to sleep once Trump finally goes away and if people will fall for it when we inevitably get another R running the Bush/Youngkin "Compassionate Conservative" con.
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Dec 3, 2022 18:04
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Sir Lemming posted:I am genuinely stunned, in the most hilarious way. I'm not sure how political satire as a genre even exists in the post-Trump era. This announcement is just soul crushing darkness. Trump sucked all the comedy out of the planet's atmosphere like Mega Maid in Spaceballs by going door-to-door and making sure everyone knew that all the jokes were not only real but awkwardly on the nose to the point of pure, unrelenting cringe.
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Dec 15, 2022 19:49
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Politics being made up of people who don't experience the feeling of shame really explains a lot about the state of things.
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Jan 1, 2023 00:06
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Having spent some years in Michigan I followed the MI-3 Republican House primary race pretty closely. MI-3 was the race where the DCCC's campaign strategy caught the most home team flack and there was a massive slapfight about it on twitter at the time. Peter Meijer was the 1 term incumbent Republican defending against a MAGA candidate named John Gibbs that Trump had sent after him. Meijer was the only Freshman House Republican to vote to impeach Trump for Jan 6. The Atlantic did a massive deep dive profile on Meijer, it's extremely pro-read even just for the inside Jan 6 perspective. It also has some hilarious stuff about McCarthy somehow managing to be even more garbage at leadership than you'd expect him to be. https://twitter.com/AnnaCBross/status/1468215418536050701 quote:Freshman orientation was a blur of propaganda and innuendo and state-sanctioned conspiracy mongering. Meijer watched, from a hotel lounge, as the president’s lawyers Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell held a deranged press conference at the headquarters of the Republican National Committee. New members listened to powerful lawmakers leveling accusations that had no apparent basis in fact. They compared the crazed voicemails they were getting from friends and family members and swapped stories of the intimidation they were subjected to by voters demanding that they overturn the presidential-election result. quote:Meijer remembers straining to hear Nancy Pelosi giving a speech through a thick mask. He remembers raiding a refrigerator in the office of Kevin Brady, the ranking Republican on the committee, and drinking a beer to pass the time. And he remembers walking into a small side room and encountering two House Republican colleagues. “They were discussing the Twenty-Fifth Amendment—talking about phone calls they made to the White House, encouraging officials to invoke the Twenty-Fifth Amendment,” Meijer says. “Neither of them voted for impeachment a week later.” quote:That entire day—the vote, as much as the attack—had caught Meijer unprepared. His party’s leadership had provided no guidance to its members, leaving everyone to navigate a squall of rumor and disinformation in one-man lifeboats. quote:“Of the 10, I’ve got the most respect for Peter—because he was brand-new,” Kinzinger, one of the GOP’s anti-Trump ringleaders, told me. “There were other freshmen who talked a big game, but the pressure got to them. Honestly, on the day before the vote, I thought we’d have 25 with us. Then it fell apart; I’m surprised we wound up with 10. But what I recognized with Peter, during our conversations, was that he never talked about the political implications. And that was rare. If someone brought up the political implications, that was a good indicator that they weren’t going to vote with us. But the people who never brought it up, I knew they would follow through. And Peter was one of them.” quote:Later, over beers at a nearby pub, I reminded Meijer of his burden in the aftermath of the impeachment vote: He and the other nine dissenters were supposed to be “the hope” for their party’s future. He had just spoken to a group of soon-to-be voters whose notions of Republicanism were formed by red hats and angry chants and crazed tweets. Meijer had just looked the party’s future in the eye and acted as though all of that was normal. “How do you explain to George,” I asked, “the difference between the Republican Party that fills his imagination and that scares him, versus the Republican Party that you want to represent?” And here's a great excerpt from an interview Meijer did with Newsweek. quote:NEWSWEEK: You've been in Congress about a year and a half. What is your assessment of that experience so far? And are you optimistic about the direction politics is going? -Blackadder- fucked around with this message at 04:51 on Jan 1, 2023 |
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Jan 1, 2023 04:46
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