The commemorative coin thing is nuts, and it seems to be a fetish throughout this administration (who would have thought a Trump admin would be obsessed with shiny self-aggrandising baubles)? Pruitt had a thing with the EPA challenge coin a while back.
The commemorative coin thing has been going in the US military (and related bits like NASA) for decades; part of their apparently insatiable desire for shiny things. The spread into the civilian side seems new but it might not be.
There always were ads for commemorative coins in the parts of the Sunday paper that only the elderly and people trapped with them would read. I had no idea anybody who wouldn't buy a plate on the Bradford Exchange would ever deliberately acquire a commemorative coin.
Perhaps some day the combination of coin and mass spectrometry will permit the precise dating of the Fall.
Well, the point isn't to buy them, the point is to get given them. It's a neat souvenir that takes up less room than a plaque and looks less scruffy than a unit patch.
My grandmother gave me a commemorative plate featuring bears of one sort or another, one per year, for years. With a big eager hug and a "Just tell me if you don't want anymore!" which of course I couldn't but didn't. My mom just took them down off the wall the other day - probably five of them. Teddy bears, grizzly bears, Winnie the Pooh, a library scene with little decorative bears, etc.
I had never heard the term "challenge coin" in my life until people started making fun of Trump's challenge coin last year. Was it just a military thing until this decade?
You should just use the plates for dinner. Buy one more so you have enough.
It's not so much the existence of challenge coins (there was a 99% Invisible episode a while back so I was aware of the concept before the recent news), or even their spread to civilian parts of government. It's things like Pruitt trying to replace references to the EPA on the EPA challenge coin with random stuff from Oklahoma, and this latest one with having a coin already produced for a summit which may not even happen with the dictator of probably the most oppressive regime in the world.
I thought challenge coins were a crowdfunding gimmick.
How weird is it if one, uh, went looking for how to purchase this challenge coin?
9: more than you could possibly want to know here
https://www.schlockmercenary.com/assets/img/uploads/UAHCC/UAHCC-v0.99.pdf
14: Was sort of thinking that myself. So awesomely tacky, and an interesting historic artifact. But I don't want to fund them.
Sounds like an opportunity for a knock-off.
It is pretty impressive that most of us (including me!) are now able to just shrug off that the entire might of the United States is routinely bearing down to enable obvious quid pro quos (Kushner/666/Qatar; Trump/ZTE). Of course a big precedent was the open confession of intentional crime to Lester Holt just about exactly 12 months ago.
I don't know specifically from challenge coins, but generally speaking, if commemorative stuff is created for an event that does not occur, it should be destroyed. Anything that escapes destruction becomes more valuable than a typical commemorative because it is rarer and shouldn't exist.
So if Trump doesn't get his summit or his Nobel Prize, he has a nice little side grift to profit from.
18: We should make a coin for ourselves.
By "we" of course I mean USians; obviously there are a lot of people stuck being collateral damage, like Qatar residents and Saudi feminists.
18 - I wonder often if we'll ever wake up from the nightmare that is the new normal. Right now I'm pretty pessimistic. I mean, things could be worse -- we're not even the major country to be most pessimistic about -- but the damage will never be undone.
That coin is pure kitsch, and Trump, and authoritarians in general, love them their kitsch. Also, "supreme leader."
Hey, folks, a bit off-topic: Does anyone have any idea what news sources (online) the, uh, majority of regular-folk Americans read, or hear from?
This has been frustrating me: I want to know what they're imbibing. Obvs. I know about Fox News, and what the various right-wing sites are -- but I think they, the latter anyway, still garner a minority of attention overall. What is it, USA Today? Just the local nightly news? Or maybe it's the front page of Yahoo News and that sort of thing. (My mother used to say that: that she'd read something "on the internet" by which she meant Yahoo News, which was automatically loaded as a front page on her internet browser.*)
* I may have answered my own question. But what think you?
Local TV news, which is to say Sinclair, is a huge part of the problem.
22: Yeah, this all seems pretty hopeless to me. Even if there are D landslides in the next two elections, much damage, much of it irreparable, has already occurred. And it's not as though all the authoritarian regimes elsewhere are mitigating the situation here. They reinforce each other. Erdogan is Assad is Trump is Kim is Xi.
Well, this sort of thing is why I ask:
Most Americans don't realize Robert Mueller's investigation has uncovered crimes
The Black Cube thing* makes me wonder if some inflection point has been passed with private intelligence and military outfits post OEFI. People have been muttering about PMCs and Westphalia for years, which I always discounted because developed states retain overwhelming resources and are those same PMCs' major clients. But what's causing so much shit isn't brute force, it's intelligence and propaganda, and the volumes of private capital are big enough to bring such operations well into private reach.
*Not in particular, just as a sign of the times.
Erdogan is Assad is Trump is Kim is Xi.
That is...quite a sentence.
Can't pull up the link right now but I think Pew does research on what kind of news media Americans consume.
Thanks, but it's still before five o'clock here.
32: It used to be called the BIOS.
Anyway, I have a real "Summer of 1914" feeling, but it's "If I think of America in the night...."
I found informative. I don't know enough about New York to know if it is true, but it sure feels right.
I guess it's Josh Marshall day again, because I just came over to link an important jeremiad on norms vs. laws I didn't know I needed.
[W]e're confusing ourselves, confusing ourselves with the language of norms. Norms are tripwires to avoid abuses of office. But even as we see in front of our eyes the most extreme abuses of office we're still talking about norms. That's nuts. The abuses of office are the big thing.
I guess it's Josh Marshall day again, because I just came over to link an important jeremiad on norms vs. laws I didn't know I needed.
Thank you! I didn't know I needed that either, and wouldn't have seen it without your link.
What if the schools had sufficient tax dollars and the had to hold a bake sale to build the wall?
the authoritarian regimes...reinforce each other
One of the things in that podcast in the previous Russia thread is that Putin believes there are only three sovereigns in the world -- Russia, China, India -- all others being too weak or too entangled in alliances to have true freedom of action.* He has this fantasy of a Concert of Earth dominated by the US, Russia, and China. In that sense Natilo has a point, the autocracies offering not an alliance or a system but a kind of anti-system.
*In which he has a point; but that just shows how little sovereignty has ever been worth. Like libertarianism for states.
24: Breakfast tv. Those morning shows that offer news (heavy on the entertainment news), weather, celebrity interviews, human interest stories, lifestyle advice, tales of heroic animals, and etc. I think a lot of people get their news from these shows.
37 That was excellent. Josh Marshall has once again become indispensable reading. I overcame my longstanding distaste of his early support for the Iraq war and signed up for Prime after he recognized the union at his shop a couple of weeks ago.
I guess I don't read too many news sources these days, but I feel like Josh Marshall has been as clear on the threat the current executive and legislative and judicial branch leadership pose to democracy of anyone in the US news media. This isn't the first time he's said outright that the Trump administration and its go-along Congress are directly threatening democracy and the rule of law in the US, when I think most commentators stop short of actually laying that out even if they might think it for themselves.
I hit post too soon.
Anyway, I'm not going to track it down because there are so many posts about creeping authoritarianism that it makes it hard to find the one I'm thinking of, but I remember reading something in TPM months ago about the push towards authoritarian government where my first reaction was "this is exactly right, and I can't believe someone actually said it publicly." Around that time I decided to subscribe to TPM Prime too.
thank you for sharing
viagra jakarta
viagra original usa
viagra asli jakarta
jual viagra di jakarta
viagra usa jakarta
viagra obat kuat
viagra original di jakarta
toko viagra di jakarta
Oh, NMM to Trump and Kim meeting in Singapore next month. You weirdos.
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/north-korea-cancel
If not for all the simultaneous recrafting of the country around the dominance of white men, his fumbly trial-and-error diplomacy might be almost amusing.
Well, and the omnipresent threat of nuclear war.
And the massive hit to American respect, and what little moral standing we still had.
But except for those, it is, yes, almost, but not quite, amusing.
I probably left it out because nuclear war risk has been the side effect of powerful men's Schwanzschwingen for generations now.
Is "Schwanzschwingen" German for dick-measuring? There's a non-contiguous "wang" in there, at least.
We're at least a few minutes closer to midnight, though. Bit of a concern.
I don't know about this Trump guy. Maybe he's not good at being president after all?
"Give Trump a shot. He deserves it. How bad could he be?"
He did actually use the slogan "What do you have to lose?" during the campaign.
44: Yeah, Marshall is kicking ass. I need to sign up for Prime.
Where the you was specifically black people. What an ass.
If only the challenge coins had been on blockchain, they could now be recalled instantaneously by smart contract.
43: Thanks, Just Plain Jane - now that I think about it, that's probably right. My brother seems to have whatever the Fox morning program is on, in the morning, as he showers and gets ready for work. Fox and Friends, I guess. I was bummed to see that, but it was a data point that I'd forgotten.
The White House gift shop: unbroken and unbowed from the challenge coin.
I think the question about media sources may be misconceived. I've read a bit of Nathan Kalmoe's work, drawing on Philip Converse, about how little background information Americans typically have about politics.
I have been thinking for months how an acceptance of Marshall McLuhan's idea that it is the medium, not the message is in tension with blaming Fox News for the misinformation so prevalent among some.
63: Robert, I'm not sure what you mean by "in tension with"
48: I should start reading him again. (Also a former TPM writer.)
63: YOU KNOW NOTHING OF MY WORK.
The message on Fox is, mostly, hate.
I recognize "conservatives" in the USA cannot formulate rational arguments, with propositions leading to conclusions. But would you be better able to formulate arguments if you listen to CNN? What about if you listen a lot to Maddow, whatever the content?
I look forward to correction from one hiding behind a potted plant.
I think the information environments are totally asymmetrical. So yes I think the decision process of a Maddow viewer is going to be reality based to a much greater extent.
Agree with Mr Carp in 69. Because when it comes to the craziness factor, Rachel Maddow is not Sean Hannity, is just not even close to that level of lunacy.
|| Since this seems like the general politics thread, I'd just like to say how much I am enjoying the second iteration of #hometovote. |>
I've read more Phil Converse than you've had hot dinners.
2015 for the gay marriage ref. Seems like just yesterday.
Yes, the gay marriage referendum almost exactly three years ago. It was absolutely heartwarming seeing folks spend their time and money to go vote for human rights. Same this time.
So do you think the message is more important than the media?
Have you not met people that will totally vote on your side, but cannot articulate much why? I have in mind one who was much worse off than me, totally understood voting for unionization could get him fired if the vote failed, did it anyway, but probably couldn't explain why. It was totally not a theoretical question.
75: agreed. This morning I saw a woman who was in from Thailand; many more in from elsewhere in Europe. It's really heartening. Someone on Twitter said it sounded almost mythological, where all the women of Ireland have been cursed for a generation and must return from far-flung lands to break it. Anyway, bodes well for the results. (Was just listening to a podcast where the host was just ruing not voting against prop 8. Every vote matters.)
Remind me again why these asshats run the Democratic party? "Accomplishment wing", jesus fucking christ. I guess losing the Republic to kakistocrats is an accomplishment of some kind.
I had been lead to believe we could expect better from Tom Perez, but apparently not.
76.2 I don't know the person you're talking about, and so can't judge whether you're really being as patronizing as it sounds.
Is the fellow a regular Maddow viewer?
||
Wasnt there some sort of digital imaging specialist on the blog once (hem hem)? or maybe an actual librarian? I want to celebrate all the digital humanities stuff, and could do with talking to people. The usual suspects know my address
|>
I would think TtaM would be handy, no?
If repeal passes, is the ROI parliament likely to legalize most abortion, or is that its whole own big separate fight?
81 Definitely talk to TtaM. Also fake accent. My institution has been and continues to be involved in some major digital initiatives. I'll drop you a DM (I don't think I have your email).