Saturday, November 03, 2018
The Real Racists
But in our topsy-turvy world of objective journalism, you can't be seen as taking sides against people in power, so almost by definition they can't be racist (or at least you can't call them racists).
Complete Mystery How To Make Voting Easy
Anyway this doesn't require some sort of advanced technology or massive overhaul to your voting system. Just. More. Polling Places. The stories of "long lines" are not heartwarming stories of democracy in action, any more than kids selling lemonade to pay for their mom's cancer treatment are heartwarming stories of American family and compassion. They're stories of policy failure.
Your Liberal Media
For the 10th time in the last 11 days, the New York Times and Washington Post have put the caravan of migrants -- currently weeks away in southern Mexico and dwindling -- on their front pages. https://t.co/Frn76NYVNP pic.twitter.com/soDS6geyhp
— Matthew Gertz (@MattGertz) November 3, 2018
Friday, November 02, 2018
Gonna Have To Ban Cars Until We Figure Out What's Going On
NEW YORK (AP) — Alec Baldwin has been arrested for allegedly punching someone during a dispute over a New York City parking spot.
— Zeke Miller (@ZekeJMiller) November 2, 2018
Sunday Bobbleheads
The conservative line, which the shows implicitly acknowledge in the way they book the shows, is that all the "journalists" are liberals and the conservatives are necessary to provide balance. Journalists who participate on these shows, whatever is in their hearts, do not like to be tarred with an ideological label, and should object to the fact that "liberal" is being stamped on their foreheads every week. That's what they are telling their audience when they allow themselves be a part of this theater.
And whatever their actual ideological leanings, their "neutral" pose means they cannot respond in kind to conservative advocates and hacks who appear on the show. Nerf gun versus actual gun, at most.
If everybody involved believes these journalists are liberals they should be identified and self-identify as such. If not, they shouldn't allow themselves to be "balanced" by conservatives.
But, as I said, I was on this beat for years and nobody gives a shit.
Well Okay Then
But even within the Trumpian worldview of trade, this makes no sense.
WH CEA Chair Hassett, echoing Trump, says trade war with China is mostly hurting them not us
— John Harwood (@JohnJHarwood) November 2, 2018
explains that American consumers can easily buy substitutes for all the generic Chinese manufactured goods from alternative sellers like Malaysia
I do not think decreasing our trade deficit with China while increasing our trade deficit with Malaysia...reduces our trade deficit.
Elite Journalism Is Filled With Racist White Supremacists
They don't like the ugly in the mirror, but it has long been ugly to the rest of us.
Obviously She Was A Crack Ho Like All Black Women
ATLANTA — President Trump disparaged Stacey Abrams, the Democratic nominee for governor of Georgia, in ambiguous and unusually personal terms on Thursday, warning that “her past” left her “not qualified to be the governor.”
The president loves his Yale Law grads. Abrams is a Yale Law grad.
Whatever Happens On Election Day, Rest Assured America Remains A Center Right Country
Thursday, November 01, 2018
Stop That
California regulators, it turns out, take a dim view of Tesla Motors’ Autopilot — not the self-steering system itself, but the name.
In draft regulations released late Friday, the state Department of Motor Vehicles said car companies should not use the terms “self-driving,” “automated” or “auto-pilot” in advertising unless their cars are capable of driving themselves without human passengers paying attention.
For Palo Alto’s Tesla, that could pose a problem.
Musk likes to suggest regulators are getting in his way instead of acknowledging the reality that his fantasy technology doesn't (yet?) work. A reasonable if not fully educated buyer would conclude that the cars require less driver attention than they do.
Two Futures
Give This Man A Ticket
I was not sure when I would use this feature... till today. @elonmusk @tesla pic.twitter.com/bC6rFt2SuW
— D Shawn Kennedy (@rarelyserious) October 31, 2018
And, yeah, sure Elon.
For those unfamiliar, this uses Tesla Autopark/Summon. Slightly smarter version hopefully ready soon. By next year, a Tesla should be able to drive around a parking lot, find an empty spot, read signs to confirm it’s valid & park.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 31, 2018
Driving around a parking lot (especially a garage) and finding a parking spot is one of the tasks that sounds easy to people but is actually really really hard! I do think people who drive a lot have internalized some of the basic tasks so much that they don't know which ones are straightforward for humans but probably not for machines. I, a rare driver, know that cruising around a parking lot is complicated!!!
The Show As Written
Anthropology And Sociology
It's also present in all the "real America" and "Trump voters still like Trump" stories. Or really any time someone from the New York Times gets off the lower half of the island. It's one of the maddening things about those stories. Who are they for? Nobody is interested in them - neither the subjects nor the audience of the newspaper - and nobody is placated by them. They're condescending.
Wednesday, October 31, 2018
Vote
But lots of people don't vote. Most of them don't spend much time thinking about politics. Some of them don't see the point of voting and also don't spend 4 hours explaining this to you. They just have other things to do. Some have dumb ideas! Some think it doesn't really matter who is in charge. Maybe they have a point! For some people a half an hour (or more!) seems like a big bother. I work from home and have no kids and walk 200 feet to my polling place so it really is a zero effort thing. That isn't true for everybody.
Some people, like that dude who is a dick, are unreachable. That's fine. But everybody else... gotta convince them to vote. Go to elections with the electorate you have.
Liberals Are Supposed To Be Nice To Their Conservative Relatives
Her dad is Steve West, 64, the Republican candidate for the Missouri General Assembly who made headlines after winning the GOP primary in August when word spread about his radio show and website through which he regularly espoused an array of bigotry including homophobia, anti-Semitism, Islamophobia and outright racism.
“A lot of his views are just very out there,” Emily West said. “He’s made multiple comments that are racist and homophobic and how he doesn’t like the Jews.”
On Tuesday, her brother contacted The Star to say that he, too, was concerned about their father’s candidacy.
“My dad’s a fanatic. He must be stopped,” said Andy West, the middle of Steve West’s three children. “His ideology is pure hatred. It’s totally insane.
The Only Poll That Matters Is The One On...
We'll know in a week!
The Neighborhood
The stench of death hung heavy along South 11th Street in 1905. The smell had grown so bad that neighbors had gone to the local police district to complain. They claimed that a crazed man and woman were guarding a dead body inside a row house near Washington Avenue. They had been barring the door for weeks and, judging by the smell, the corpse had entered a state of advanced decay. There were flies covering the shutters of a rear bedroom of the building.
But they also recounted unbelievable details. Strange rituals went on inside and the residents of the home, which they had for years referred to as “House of Mystery,” worshipped a woman who they said could grant eternal life.
A dead body was still a dead body. A patrolman summoned a doctor from the city coroner’s office to investigate. The two men had little way of knowing that they were about to bring an end to a saga that had begun nearly 50 years earlier. A story of a secret society that had once enticed the city’s wealthy and powerful. A story of miraculous visions, grave robbing, con artistry, and court battles. They had no sense of the shock and horror they would soon feel, nor that the same feeling would soon grip the entire city.
The Bubble
No worries, though, they just get to lie about it now. Backsies.
Fox Con
Morning Thread
Today, it's back to the grindstone.
Gotta get these bozos out of office.
GOTV.
Tuesday, October 30, 2018
Late Night
Totally Normal
An alleged scheme to pay off women to fabricate sexual assault allegations against Special Counsel Robert Mueller has been referred to the FBI for further investigation, according to a spokesman for the special counsel’s office, Peter Carr. “When we learned last week of allegations that women were offered money to make false claims about the Special Counsel, we immediately referred the matter to the FBI for investigation,” Carr said in a statement on Tuesday.
Nothing Really Matters
The Easiest Scoop
Not Just Trump
Morning Thread
We're all gonna die of small pox! It's true! I read it on the intertubes.
Monday, October 29, 2018
Pithy
It’s notable that the last moment of purported ‘unity’ was GWB and the Iraq war – when the traditional media flocked to Fox’s view of the world, rather than vice versa.
This is good and right. And not just about "unity" but about how the rest of the news didn't get how toxic Fox was until (a little bit) later in the Obama administration. Because for a time "we" were all Fox News (not me! that's why you read this sucky blog).
Nazis Are Good Except Liberals Are Nazis and They Are Bad
Cut Your Mic
Monday Morning
Let's hope it's just bluster and nothing real.
Sunday, October 28, 2018
Adam Speak
The apparent spark for the worst anti-Semitic massacre in American history was a racist hoax inflamed by a U.S. president seeking to help his party win a midterm election. There is no political gesture, no public statement, and no alteration in rhetoric or behavior that will change this fact. The shooter might have found a different reason to act on a different day. But he chose to act on Saturday, and he apparently chose to act in response to a political fiction that the president himself chose to spread, and that his followers chose to amplify.
As for those who aided the president in his propaganda campaign, who enabled him to prey on racist fears to fabricate a national emergency, those who said to themselves, “This is the play”? Every single one of them bears some responsibility for what followed. Their condemnations of antisemitism are meaningless. Their thoughts and prayers are worthless. Their condolences are irrelevant. They can never undo what they have done, and what they have done will never be forgotten.
The Vitriol Is Coming From Inside The Studio
CT: Look, I agree with you. He was not sort of a traditional conservative. He was, to me, he gave voice, what he did, he was the tone setter. He was sort of that anti-political correctness. That was, if he had a true north, that was it, right?
HH: Yup.
CT: If there was some way he could do that story, and if he could do that every night, right, he would find a way to do some form of that every night. But what he was, was the you know, it’s like he was the opening act that brought the crowds, but he became almost more fun to watch than the concert itself, sometimes.
HH: Yeah.
CT: But he was the entertainer, probably more entertainer than any of the others, right? And anybody else in this ecosystem is, I mean, he said it in his own statement. I thought it was incredibly self-aware that he said informed and entertained. He used the word entertained.
HH: Yeah.
CT: No real journalist would use that.
HH: Yeah, yeah.
CT: Okay, and that’s fine. I admire the self-awareness at least by saying that. But, so but he set a tone, and I think so while he was never, you cannot take an issue and say Bill O’Reilly championed that issue beyond the war, the phony war on Christmas, right? That was like a fun, that was an entertainment thing for him. But you couldn’t say championed one issue or one cause or thing like that. But what was thought, what would the conservative media ecosystem be without him?
Wow Where'd He Get A Crazy Idea Like Soros Was Paying To Import Brown People To Take Over The US
It's The Partisans Who Are Wrong
Sunday Roundtable
Jamelle Bouie, Jeffrey Goldberg, Lanhee Chen, Susan Page
Jeffrey Goldberg's a bit of a tough one. I'll lump "centrists" in with neutrals for the sake of this. I'm always putting the thumb on the scale against myself a little bit here because the point is not to argue about these things.
So, 1 conservative, 1 liberal, 2 neutral. The closest thing you get to a liberal-leaning panel on these shows!
This Week:
Matthew Dowd, Donna Brazile, Mary Jordan, Reihan Salam
1 conservative, 1 liberal, 2 neutrals (Dowd is a full of shift grifter, but that's his current self-identification).
Meet the Press:
Erick Erickson, Joshua Johnson, Amy Walter, Kristen Welker
1 batshit crazy racist conservative, 3 neutrals.
Total:
3 conservatives, 2 liberals, 7 neutrals.
A surprisingly liberal week!
Sunday Morning
Read it and weep.
All of that in just one week.