OP.3: something like that. I'm guessing.
OP.1:My wife has more tolerance than I for watching the BS, but even she only lasted a a few minutes.
Must stay positive in the face of 40+% of my country's voters (and a fair number who I know in my community) being willing to go completely over the brink in the name of racism, other grievances various, and their perception of how their net worth spreadsheets from hell will do under Republicans versus Democrats.
Must stay positive in the face of 40+% of my country's voters (and a fair number who I know in my community) being willing to go completely over the brink in the name of racism, other grievances various, and their perception of how their net worth spreadsheets from hell will do under Republicans versus Democrats.
Must stay positive in the face of 40+% of my country's voters (and a fair number who I know in my community) being willing to go completely over the brink in the name of racism, other grievances various, and their perception of how their net worth spreadsheets from hell will do under Republicans versus Democrats.
It's really upsetting.
I don't see any way out of that 40% (What kind of pizza do you want? "Kill and eat you.") unless we pass legislation - and enforce it - that kills Fox News. The percent of rightwingers who are poisoned by online platforms just pales compared to the percent that are poisoned by Fox.
The St. Louis vigilantes hold their guns like a bitch. Someone should really call them out for that too.
Falwell could probably pay for a another threesome with two $1,200 stimulus payments. Lots of gyms are closed, so trainers are looking for work.
The nice thing is that you can't be blackmailed if you've already been fired.
Now and then it occurs to me that actually being owned/triggered might not be very different, biochemically, from tweeting "Gosh, you really owned/triggered the libs that time, dumbass" at various right-wing small change and pocket lint, but I suppose I'm not the target demographic.
I saw some chart yesterday that people watch an average of 4-5 hours of TV per day which does not include streaming or online, only live or "time-shifted" which I assume means DVR but not on-demand shows. Compared to 0.5 hours/day of on-demand content and Basically you can't understand how poisoned some people are until you realize that watching TV is essentially a second job for most people, time-wise.
Oy, tags.
I saw some chart yesterday that people watch an average of 4-5 hours of TV per day which does not include streaming or online, only live or "time-shifted" which I assume means DVR but not on-demand shows. Compared to 0.5 hours/day of on-demand content and less than 0.5 hours of reading content on screens (not including email or work stuff). I have watched maybe 4-5 hours of live TV so far this year, I would guess primarily sports.
Basically you can't understand how poisoned some people are until you realize that watching TV is essentially a second job for most people, time-wise.
I'm assuming they're all retried or undergrads or something. Who has that kind of time?
I couldn't possibly watch that much TV and be So Online.
9: I think this is just the difference between people for whom Watching The Television is an activity and people who simply have the TV on in the background all the time.
I'm sort of impressed by people who can do that. If there's a TV on where I can hear the sound, I'm either staring at it slackjawed or being driven insane by the effort not to. I find them incredibly attention-grabbing. Which means, of course, that I only have them on when I'm intentionally watching something.
12: Ditto. Every now and then I've played around with the idea of putting a travel documentary or a concert film on just as background fluff--it'd make everything more interesting and fun and colorful!--and it never works.
On the other hand, that we're here, especially during working hours, probably doesn't speak well for our self-control in general.
Further reinforced by visiting my in-laws, who are All TV All The Time and can have conversations that have nothing to do with the Fox News in the background. I can't take my eyes off of it, it's so flashy and noisy and enraging. I think I used to be more resistant as a kid, when TV was such a greater part of my life. Now, I limit myself to a show (or rarely a film) a day.
With wildfires and two hurricanes, isn't this a bad time to be cutting into FEMA's funds for general relief payments?
I didn't watch one minute of the RNC and am 100% sure that was the better use of my time no matter what else I was doing. To be honest, I find televised conventions in general like the three hours of commentary on who's wearing what as they arrive at the Oscars. Holds way less than zero appeal to me, regardless of who is in front of the camera. (Same with SOTU addresses. Just give me the transcript, thanks.) But I'm also finding myself less able to watch any sort of TV for very long before I get bored and wander away.
That's the way I am. I never could watch conventions, and I know because my dad would watch them all.
(I didn't watch the DNC either, though I did watch the roll call thing on the computer the next day because it got so much commentary.)
12/13. More or less me too. If there's a TV on not showing something I specifically want to watch, my instinct is to walk out of the room. I'd honestly as soon watch paint dry as daytime telly.
Which means that in this place I basically listen to music on my phone 24/7 to drown out the TVs in all the other rooms.
There's an alternative explanation of the stock market, which is that the market is right, and that the rest of us are wrong, and that there will be a V-shaped recovery. For example, the main channel in which Fed interest rate cuts operate is through housing, and if you look at the time series of housing starts, it sure looks V shaped (click on 5Y to see it most clearly).
I am 12/13 too.
A friend sent me a Daily Show clip last night of Obama's 10 worst scandals. It really brought home to me that my near total lack of TV-watching really insulated me from how absurd, intense, and bad-faith the Fox messaging against him was, for NINE YEARS (2007-2016).
The performed fury with which the various hosts assailed him for (variously) not wearing a flag pin, having a Marine hold an umbrella over his head as he gave a speech in the rain, saluting a Marine while holding a cup of coffee, wore a business shirt and tie (but no jacket) in an Oval Office photo...it was really staggering to me. Combine that with the people who watch this stuff 4-5 hours a day -- no wonder we got polarized.
I am 12/13 too.
A friend sent me a Daily Show clip last night of Obama's 10 worst scandals. It really brought home to me that my near total lack of TV-watching really insulated me from how absurd, intense, and bad-faith the Fox messaging against him was, for NINE YEARS (2007-2016).
The performed fury with which the various hosts assailed him for (variously) not wearing a flag pin, having a Marine hold an umbrella over his head as he gave a speech in the rain, saluting a Marine while holding a cup of coffee, wore a business shirt and tie (but no jacket) in an Oval Office photo...it was really staggering to me. Combine that with the people who watch this stuff 4-5 hours a day -- no wonder we got polarized.
12: Trump apparently does this. Multiple accounts of how he has Fox News on constantly, even during meetings, and he's always half-listening to it, and will break away from the topic of the meeting to start talking about what the TV has just said.
21. Practicing walking 12 metres on the flat and 3 19cm steps. Doesn't sound much but I couldn't have done it a week ago.
Getting weight on the bad foot at all is huge. Mom is doing well getting around on her knee-scooter, but is dying to be allowed to walk again.
The evangelical Falwell thing... like is there literally anything they regularly ascribe to the left that they're not actively doing?
Having extramarital sex without paying someone?
Ditto on 12/13.. what does it say about all of us?
I heard DTJr's speech on KCRW; he compared Biden to the Loch Ness Monster and said that Trump had provided everyone with plenty of PP and E
27. Yes, the physio was explaining to me that initially the body just lays down a mess of bone to reconnect the pieces, but after a week or so you need to stress it in the direction you want the bone to grow in, so that it produces long bone in the right shape.
12/13: I refute you thus https://twitter.com/samthielman/status/1276857693593112576/photo/1
28: I used to be quite skeptical of the "Every accusation is a confession" thing, but I must say that the past four years have utterly convinced me of it.
She doesn't have the power of the usual shitheels we talk about, but this RNC speaker should be in the running for one of the worst.
I'm impressed at how much they're making the subtext text, single-family zoning in the same breath with guns as part of the whiteness forever project.
I didn't watch the DNC - or rather, the one time I tuned in it was Colin Powell giving a speech, followed by some hagiography about John McCaine, so I turned it off. However, I did get the feeling that most democrats - particularly establishment types - were really happy with the product and even progressives were basically fine with it. So I guess they legit put together a good production.
Does anybody get a feel for how Republican are feeling about their convention? Do they see it as the shitshow that we do, or do they actually think these people are doing a good job?
From the St. Louis woman famous for pointing the handgun at protesters:
They're not satisfied with spreading the chaos and violence into our communities. They want to abolish the suburbs altogether by ending single family home zoning. This forced zoning would bring crime, lawlessness and low quality apartments into now thriving suburban neighborhoods.
They knew it was going to be a shit show. They either don't care or enjoy a good wallow.
Interestingly, the home they were "protecting" was in central St. Louis, but it's an illustration of how much of our urban cores are just as single-family-mandated as the suburbs.
Most people I know here live in the city in single family homes. It's very nice and surprisingly affordable if you bought twenty years ago.
They knew it was going to be a shit show. They either don't care or enjoy a good wallow.
Well, obviously its a moral and ethical shit show, but I guess I figured they would care more about production values?
Having watched a bit of Fox, I think the main production value is the toned but not muscular calf of a white lady. Did they have that?
Like still attached and everything.
There was a time when a roundup of recent shitheel news would have led with the Conways, but nowadays, meh.
Yeah, I dunno. I think maybe the kid is just playing the same game the parents are -- making noise and getting attention and cashing in. I don't know from TikTok, but I'm assuming the kid has monetized this somehow.
Kellyanne is still my preferred candidate for "Anonymous," and I've suspected all along that she and George were cooperating on a grand plan to come out of all of this rich and untarnished. But on the off chance that they're on the level, I hope purgatory is good to them.
I'm pretty sure that my dad, who very unhappily voted for Hillary last time around to cancel out my mom's vote for Trump, will be voting for Trump this time despite Biden's being a much more attractive candidate by the principles he used to more plausibly espouse. That scares me because I'm sure he's not the only one who's comforted by the way the face-eating has all been directed elsewhere. Ugh.
she and George were cooperating on a grand plan to come out of all of this rich and untarnished
Does it have to be all that grand? James Carville and Mary Matalin seemed to get a lot of fawning press attention for their "mixed marriage" which translated into prominence, books, guest spots, etc. Maybe they're just trying to replicate with a little more reality-show back-and-forth.
48: Yeah, that's the general idea, but I think harder to pull off now. Carville and Matalin may be horrible people, but Kellyanne's performance for Trump beats them by orders of magnitude.
I'm pretty sure that my dad, who very unhappily voted for Hillary last time around to cancel out my mom's vote for Trump, will be voting for Trump this time despite Biden's being a much more attractive candidate by the principles he used to more plausibly espouse. That scares me because I'm sure he's not the only one who's comforted by the way the face-eating has all been directed elsewhere. Ugh.
Uggh, that's terrifying.
Four years ago, I watched nearly all of both conventions, and the GOP convention was terrible. Not just ideologically, either: the production was terrible, the speeches were poorly delivered, and the whole thing felt low-rent on its own merits, but especially when compared with the Democratic convention. Given all that happened, I have to conclude that Republicans either don't care, or actually actively prefer what I would consider poor quality. I think it's part of their anti-elitist self-perception, or something like that.
At any rate, I only watched a small part of the Dems this time around, and I'm avoid the GOP entirely.
50: Yeah, very much so. He's an intelligent man, but he's an old white guy living in the sticks. He's gotten steadily more tribal and less reflective since he retired, but that's accelerated dramatically under Trump. And there's a lot of underlying racism, of the sort that's fine with non-white people on an individual level but vaguely terrified of being outnumbered (which doesn't sit well with his favorite grandson, my son, whom he forgets is not white).
47.2 Ugh indeed. Before that comment I would have had trouble even imagining a single Hillary2016-Trump2020 voter. Sounds hard for your son. Condolences.
Eh, it's mostly an annoyance for my son. He is well-loved and it all goes ok as long as the conversation stays away from politics. The hardest part is that my dad has always liked talking about politics and that just can't be done in a thoughtful way any more. I used to think that retiring to the country sounded good, but not so much having seen the effects.
These days, the idiocy of rural life is a state of mind, not any sort of fundamental thing caused by what ideas you have access to. If you have an internet connection, you have the world there. If you go bad despite that, you'd probably go bad in an urban area, too, so you might as well enjoy the country life if that's your thing.
Republicans either don't care, or actually actively prefer what I would consider poor quality. I think it's part of their anti-elitist self-perception, or something like that.
A lot of spam is like that too; I'm told it improves its effectiveness.
Farm living
Quickly, who can interpret this portent?
John Yoo has finally successfully reanimated Nixon. (If Roger Stone makes any particularly strange comments in the next months, consider where Yoo got the body.)
What do farmers do where you're from?
55: Agreed in principle, but environment still matters. There's also the large element of rural identity that's built around rejection of urban places and urban ways, and more fundamentally on refusal to demand adaptability of oneself.
61: I mean, it's that or, with the Trump regime running out, he's used the lightning to go back in time to a regime more copacetic to his tastes. Look, I'm running out of lightning-strike based references.
The global plague was a bit too subtle for the big brains in the Hoover Institution so God is having another go at getting their attention.
I need a dead sheep, a fire, and (checking notes) a metal rod.
55. 62: Yes55. 62: Ye., I suspect dal is underestimating the meatworld part of being utterly immersed in Trump culture in most rural areas. After attending my son's wedding in rural Blue Ridge North Carolina. I looked at the 2016 results of all the counties we passed through going to and from. The county it was in had a small back-to-the land hippie-ish vibe but mostly rural and old white retirees and not surprisingly was 70-26 (it does border Wautauga County (Appalachian State in Boone) where HRC squeaked out a small plurality. Most of the others on the trip until Monagalia (WVU/Morgantown) were well into the 70s or low 80s.
65. And Jerry Falwell Jr. was watching from a corner.
I'm built like a 20-year old trainer and wearing a toga.
63: no, the more I consider this idea that Yoo was in Berkeley drinking Stanford's milkshake, the better I like it. Also, it has already been a hell of a week and I am finishing a can of the local high-ABV beer and fuck absolutely fucking everything:
The state's climate pollution declined by just 1.15% in 2017, according to the latest California Green Innovation Index. At that rate, California won't reach its 2030 decarbonization goals (cutting emissions to 40% below 1990 levels) until 2061--and wouldn't hit its 2050 targets (80% below 1990 levels) until 2157. [...]
Transportation emissions, the state's largest source, have steadily risen since 2013, as the improving economy put more cars on the road and planes in the sky. Emissions from waste dumped into landfills have also been ticking up since the recovery took hold. Meanwhile, highly potent greenhouse gases from the aerosols, foams, and solvents used in refrigeration and air conditioning are rising sharply.
[E]lectric vehicles do represent a growing share of new vehicle sales, at just under 8% in the state last year. But they still make up only 1.5% of registered vehicles in the state, with hybrids accounting for 3.4%, the report notes. At the same time, overall car ownership rates are rising, public-transit use is falling, and consumers are still shifting toward gas-guzzling trucks and SUVs. And the 92% of vehicles sold last year that weren't EVs will, on average, still be on the roads more than a decade from now. [...]
The raging wildfires in 2018 produced about 45 million metric tons of carbon dioxide. That's nine times more than the amount by which the state cut emissions the previous year. [...] The area of the state subject to burning could increase nearly 80% by the end of the century, driving up emissions and fire risks still more, in an ever more dangerous feedback loop. So California is likely to see 2018-style scenarios play out again and again in the years ahead, obliterating hard-won climate gains in a few fiery months.
Cheer me up now, fuckers, I dare you to try.
That's "trainer" in the British sense.
If I move somewhere rural, I'm going to buy a pick-up truck and a Dolly Parton cassette so I can blast "Jolene" driving down gravel roads and running over mailboxes of houses that have "Trump" signs.
Buy a Cat and run over the whole houses.
Dollywood, Sevier County TN. 78-17 Trump. The bride's family were mostly from there.
25 or 6 to 4, actually.
66: Yinz being might optimistic that meatworld culture is going to be a thing again.
Anyway, I still think there's a sorting thing there. You have to figure that there are the occasional aging hippies who end up there that are strong of mind--even in your worst case there were still almost 1/5 not-Trumpy. On the other hand, since a bunch of aging hippies do move to leftier rural places like Vermont and Colorado, that means they're pre-sorted. I just don't take that as evidence that the land made them into Trumpists. (Worst Steven King plot ever.)
70: Oh, whoops, for some reason I thought Yoo was at Hoover, not Berkeley. Oh, he is at Hoover, but only as a visiting fellow.
70: SB 743 went into effect this year, finally. Might bring down those CA emissions.
Honestly, though, I'm not optimistic.
If Roger Stone makes any particularly strange comments in the next months, consider where Yoo got the body.
Nixon's soul has been trapped for the last 25 years in the tattoo of Nixon on Roger Stone's back. (This idea stolen from Lev Grossman.)
Has anyone else noticed that the NYT is starting to become aware of the real political world? I believe that firing Bennet was a watershed moment, and that the newspaper is starting to think of factuality and decency as something more than just one side of the story.
I mean, yeah, they are still treating fact-checking as a sidebar to news, and today's horserace-style coverage of the convention wasn't a particularly good example, but what got me thinking about this was their theater-review-style look at the convention, where some of the reviewers refused to play along. In a discussion of the night's "best" moments:
Wajahat Ali: Wajahat Ali: I can't pretend what we witnessed was in any way normal, routine or healthy for this nation. I refuse to judge it by a lower standard and rank a best moment, or to choose a least-horrible moment, from a night of gaslighting, falsehoods and fearmongering.
...
Michelle Goldberg: What does "best" mean in the context of a pageant full of lies meant to entrench fascism?
I'm seeing increasing signs that people at the NYT are realizing the moment we are in.
Maybe the liberals at the NYT feel empowered since they were able to force Bennet out?
There's also the large element of rural identity that's built around rejection of urban places and urban ways, and more fundamentally on refusal to demand adaptability of oneself.
You've got that, and also people who moved away from the city in 1990, but still identify with the city theoretically, but all you know about it now is rumors so you spend decades working "The city has gone to hell, it's gone" into every conversation. Like my mother-in-law. Right now she is saying the city has gone to hell because of DeBlasio disbanding the police force causing everyone to move out. Before him, Bloomberg had caused the city to go to hell by building a bunch of skyscrapers causing rents to go up. The only mayor, possibly of any city, who has not caused his city to go to hell in the past several decades according what you'd learn from the news is Giuliani.
81: The example I provided isn't a great one -- the basic truth articulated by Goldberg and Ali in that article is merely part of a conversation that is overall geared toward addressing whether fascist propaganda is effective. And they are, after all, opinion writers.
But there's something else going on in the news columns. Here's a better example. Harris is named as VP candidate; Fox responds by unfurling a string of sexist attacks; Trump does a racist tweet.
Here is the language the NYT used to describe this: Fox "unfurled a string of sexist attacks" and Trump "added to the barrage with a racist tweet."
There is an issue of editorial policy implicated here. Here is Trump's actual tweet, about residents of the suburbs:
"They want safety & are thrilled that I ended the long running program where low income housing would invade their neighborhood," Mr. Trump wrote. "Biden would reinstall it, in a bigger form, with Corey Booker in charge!"
Six months ago, there's no way this would have been described in a news item as a racist tweet -- it's "racially inflammatory" at the very most. I think that Bennet's firing was a sharp break with the past -- and was, in fact, entirely inconsistent with unambiguous NYT editorial policy at that time. I think that break with the past has continued to manifest itself.
Further to 80 and 83: https://twitter.com/wajahatali/status/1298506227421532161?s=21
Six months ago, there's no way this would have been described in a news item as a racist tweet -- it's "racially inflammatory" at the very most. I think that Bennet's firing was a sharp break with the past -- and was, in fact, entirely inconsistent with unambiguous NYT editorial policy at that time. I think that break with the past has continued to manifest itself.
I feel like this has happened at the same time that the general realization that Republicans see being painted as racist as good for them politically.
I think the NYT still has a long way to go before defunding and abolition not subscribing stops being the correct position.
85: There isn't the stigma that there used to be, that's for sure. I am often reminded of Hunter S Thompson:
How long will it be before "demented extremists" in Germany or maybe Japan, start calling us A Nation of Pigs? How would Nixon react? "No comment"? And how would the popularity polls react if he just came right out and admitted it?
If HST hadn't blown his head off back in the day, I imagine that about now he'd commit suicide by cop by riding a 1200cc Kawasaki into police lines at 140 mph, while out of his mind on meth. There's no way he could live through this.
Just so you all don't start feeling complacent, I called my 89 year old mother at her assisted living facility in Ohio and she spent most of the time telling me she watched all of the R convention yesterday. She said it was really good, much better than she expected and "He has done so much for this country and Melania is such a good speaker". I thought I was making progress with her but I guess it is hopeless.
Wow, this latest Falwell scandal is even more bonkers than the headline suggests. Becki sounds like a seriously unhinged person.
90: Like the Trumps, I could almost feel sorry for them if they weren't so committed to working out their issues by shitting on other people.
That seems like a pretty straightforward tale of sexual harassment and abuse, and as such I found it more sad and enraging than bonkers. It reminds me of the most scathing bit of Kotsko's n+1 essay:
To this day, the attitude I associate most with evangelicals is a sneering contempt for moral striving. A stock phrase among evangelicals is that "there will be a lot of good people in hell," which I heard continually in sermons, in radio broadcasts, and in casual conversations about those poor, naive liberals. This sentiment was presumably intended as a sobering reminder of the magnitude of human sin and the profundity of our need for Christ's forgiveness, but some people treated this dark theological truth as a positive good. From the way they spat out the phrase good people, I imagined that these believers were looking forward to seeing the "good people" burn. While some secular liberals hope to find common ground with evangelicals of goodwill on certain issues, the ones who have descended to this point of malice and disdain are probably unreachable. After all, they reject in advance any standard of moral judgment other than a nihilistic scorn for "good people." The end result of their Christian faith is the unshakable conviction that nothing could be stupider than expecting people to live by the teachings of Christ.
That said, the band's obsession with Led Zeppelin in particular is hilarious. More on the complex moral and theological world of [some] evangelicals:
Howerton believes it's no accident that QAnon has taken hold among evangelicals now: they are facing tremendous cognitive dissonance. "I was raised evangelical Christian Republican. There is nothing that makes sense for Trump with any of the values that I was raised with," she says. "There's a part of me that thinks that this is a very elaborate false narrative to explain their continued loyalty to Trump."
91: Now I have to read the article to find out how literal you're being.
That seems like a pretty straightforward tale of sexual harassment and abuse, and as such I found it more sad and enraging than bonkers.
Yeah, fair enough. Still, the social-media catfishing and calling the guy's mom (and hiding in the guest room waiting for him to go to bed) are pretty extreme behaviors within the spectrum of common types of abuse. Also notable, though the article doesn't call it out specifically, is that the Falwells apparently let their presumably under-drinking-age son regularly get hammered on Jack Daniel's with his band buddies.
Definitely sad and enraging though. You can see that poor guy still struggling with it.
Sorry. Shouldn't make jokes about harassment.
Literal sexual assault, I'd call it. Hard to prosecute, maybe, but as the story is told, she assaulted him. When it was just threesomes with the consenting pool boy, this was funny and the real story was about the embezzlement, but this is terrible.
Further to 83: The president of the United States delivered his convention speech last night, and this fact is nowhere mentioned in a headline on the landing page of the New York Times. At this moment, literally the only mention of the speech on the front page is this sentence:
President Trump capped the G.O.P. convention by turning the White House into a partisan prop.
Something weird is going on on the Times.