Thursday, November 21, 2024
Take Off, You Hoser
Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau confirms Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former defence minister Yoav Gallant will be arrested if they step foot in Canada after the ICC’s decision to issue arrest warrants. pic.twitter.com/QF1bw0p0EM
— Paris Marx (@parismarx) November 21, 2024
Purification Through The Suffering Of Others
A common worldview - not limited to conservatives, sadly - but this bit is quite amazing:
People are working!
People have to get, as my father would have said, real work, real jobs. People are going to have to get jobs and they're going to be scrambling.I'm so old I remember when economists believed the natural rate of unemployment/NAIRU was 6%. That was stupid, but the actual rate has been below that since June 2021. If you think the issue is that people have dropped out of the labor force, the prime age participation rate is higher than it's been since April, 2001.
People are working!
Sure Why Not
I've seen a lot of "don't worry your silly heads, Putin won't launch a nuke" but not much "and this will achieve...".
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — The Biden administration announced Wednesday that it will give Ukraine antipersonnel mines to help it slow Russia’s battlefield advances, marking the second major shift on U.S. military support for Kyiv in days.
"Pete Hegseth Has Learned His Lesson" - Susan Collins (Probably)
I find it cute that lots of Republicans are telling their gullible client journalists that they have Concerns and then will probably push all these guys through one way or another.
A California woman told police that Trump Cabinet pick Pete Hegseth physically blocked her from leaving a hotel room, took her phone, and then sexually assaulted her even though she “remembered saying ‘no’ a lot,” a police report obtained by CNN shows.
Something
Practical effect likely not much more than being politely asked to leave restaurants, and perhaps the US bombing of Den Haag, but better than not.
The International Criminal Court (ICC) has issued an arrest warrant for Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyhu, accusing him of crimes against humanity war crimes over the war in GazaHopefully I am being too cynical.
The court has also issued arrest warrants for Israel’s former defence minister Yoav Gallant and Hamas leader Mohammed Deif. Israel said in August it had killed Deif in an air strike in Gaza earlier this year.
Wednesday, November 20, 2024
Not So Easy To Find A Governor That Doesn't Suck Shit
Amazing.
Rep. Ritchie Torres on Wednesday refused to rule out mounting a 2026 Democratic primary challenge to Gov. Hochul.
What Are We Doing Here
One doesn't have to fear nuclear retaliation to worry that escalation without clear goals is unlikely to achieve anything other than death and destruction. But, hey, it's Biden.
Also you can fear nuclear retaliation, even though all the serious voices have increasingly started lecturing us not to. Because they have.
Speaking Of
I have a friend (Catalan) who is a big deal in the opera world. Years ago he was flying to Chicago for work-related stuff. He was supposed to attend a show that evening, but was barely going to make it, if at all, given the timing of the flight arrival.
Being in a hurry, after getting off the plane, he and his partner stupidly started running, which especially in the post 9-11 era was a bit of a nono. It was certainly a lot of a nono before clearing immigration/customs.
A security guard quickly stopped them.
Uh, sirs, what the hell do you think you are doing?
My friend [flustered and determined, with far from perfect English]: I am going to see [Spanish accent/pronunciation] Oh-pay-rah!
The security guard sprung into action, quickly escorted them to the front of the line, and rushed them through.
His partner, also Catalan, but much more familiar with the US, had to explain:
He thought you were going to be appearing on Oprah.
Being in a hurry, after getting off the plane, he and his partner stupidly started running, which especially in the post 9-11 era was a bit of a nono. It was certainly a lot of a nono before clearing immigration/customs.
A security guard quickly stopped them.
Uh, sirs, what the hell do you think you are doing?
My friend [flustered and determined, with far from perfect English]: I am going to see [Spanish accent/pronunciation] Oh-pay-rah!
The security guard sprung into action, quickly escorted them to the front of the line, and rushed them through.
His partner, also Catalan, but much more familiar with the US, had to explain:
He thought you were going to be appearing on Oprah.
America's Worst President
Joe Biden.
The effort is serious enough that the White House has launched a pointed pushback. “Disapproving arms purchases for Israel at this moment would …put wind in the sails of Iran, Hezbollah, and Hamas at the worst possible moment,” the document from the Biden administration reads.Everyone who stuck with this administration until the end should be occasionally politely asked to leave restaurants (the most extreme form of elite accountability there is).
The document additionally appears to endorse continued fighting despite the administration’s public narrative that it is seeking settlements to end the deadly Israeli military campaigns in Gaza and Lebanon.
Every Time
After the election, well-meaning people were like "let's heal, and regroup," while the ghouls with the money and the microphones set to work blaming everybody but themselves.
The irony here is that Jentleson is describing a campaign that looks a lot like the one that Harris ran, and lost. As progressives quickly pointed out in response, in 2024 Harris did indeed say no to the kinds of groups he mentioned, leaning on celebrity endorsements and vague pronouncements of “joy.” The special interests that were most influential this cycle weren’t progressives but AIPAC, cryptocurrency PACS, and Uber, whose former chief counsel Tony West (Harris’s brother-in-law) urged the candidate to moderate her message so as to better appeal to corporate interests.
As journalist Dan Denvir wrote before the election, Democrats this cycle fell back on an old playbook of trying to outflank Republicans on immigration. They championed a bill chock-full of the right’s preferred policies, like expanding ICE detention capacity and restricting asylum, then campaigned on the fact that the GOP voted it down when Trump told them to. Having previously called Trump’s border wall a “medieval vanity project,” Harris then pledged to spend hundreds of billions of dollars building it. As Denvir writes, “Given the choice to pander to reactionaries or shore up the party’s left wing, Democrats tend to prioritize the former. The result is a dangerous asymmetric polarization: Republicans radicalize on immigration, while Democratic elites chase after them. The ‘normal’ position on immigration moves ever rightward.”
What precisely might Harris have said to better convince voters that she would be adequately tough on immigration? And if her fatal flaws in Jentleson’s view mostly come down to things she said in the 2020 primary, does that mean that all candidates should ignore the realities of the race that they’re currently in—including in relatively progressive seats—so as to avoid Republican blowback if they run for something else in the future? The trouble with the “moderation” pitch isn’t just that it ignores the reality of the election that just happened. It also leaves Democrats playing catch-up in debates whose terms are perpetually set by Republicans, whatever the real-world consequences. The demand that the party embrace whatever positions happen to be popular at the moment imagines public opinion as exogenous to the work of politics. What precisely is the “moral imperative” to win elections if Democrats are merely choosing the correct position among the options that the right lays out for them?
Vive la Résistance!
Amazing shit in the New York Times.
A central pillar of American democracy is that no man is above the law. But Mr. Trump isn’t an ordinary man.There's no point in arguing with this stuff. Pointing and mocking is all it deserves.
He's A Very Generous Man
I don't see the problem.
The House Ethics Committee obtained records, including a check and records of Venmo payments, that appear to show that then-Rep. Matt Gaetz paid more than $10,000 to two women who were later witnesses in sexual misconduct probes conducted by both the House and the Justice Department, according to documents obtained by ABC News.
The Venmo records show that between July 2017 and late January 2019, Gaetz -- who was first elected in 2016 -- allegedly made 27 Venmo payments totaling $10,224.02 to the two witnesses, who were over the age of 18 at the time.
Wednesday Morning
It's taboo to trash Oprah, but I do not think her net impact on the world has been good.
Tuesday, November 19, 2024
You First
No one's stopping you. Put on a hard hat. Chew some tobacco. Curse a bit more. Whatever you think this is, [checks wikipedia] you Cornell graduate.
I think she's saying Dems need to do some code switching. Or cosplaying.At a post-election DSCC briefing with winning Dem candidates.
— David Weigel (@daveweigel) November 19, 2024
Elissa Slotkin: “I personally think that identity politics needs to go the way of the dodo.” Dems should take language “not from the faculty lounge, but the assembly line.”
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