American Politics from 2019 on

[Tero]

The anti Musk social media, Threads and Blue Sky, are having a war.
https://bsky.app/profile/willoremus.com ... s4twiq5k2w

Today they (Threads) took another step— finally allowing users to set their default feeds to a chronological “following” feed.

[Tero]

aaron.rupar
8h8 hours ago
I think the future of the Democratic Party is mostly going to be running on the issues Trump and the GOP mess up over the next year and change. That’s the position you put yourself in when you lose the presidency and both chambers. Pretty hard to set the agenda in those circumstances.

[Sean Hayden]

The democrats lost to Trump twice, and once after Jan 6th and a conviction. If this were any other endeavor they’d all be out of a job.

Maybe it’s time for another party.

[Tero]

The democrats lost to Trump twice, and once after Jan 6th and a conviction. If this were any other endeavor they’d all be out of a job.

Maybe it’s time for another party.

What sort of party would reach 49% who don't want any government? We just need to wait 4 or 8 years. Then they will be begging: you win, we had no idea. Bring back government.

The people that voted Trump only believe Foxnews, and there the facts are news clips. We need to see the horror of Trump 4 years in news clips. BUT, now the billionaires will buy all the TV stations. So now what? Ban TV?

[Tero]

WP newsletter
some politics in there

Let America’s dumpster fire be the only inferno this holiday.You’re reading the Today’s Opinions newsletter.
How curious traditions end up entrenched in the kitchen. How curious traditions end up engulfing the kitchen. Gratitude for diplomacy, for the “deep state” and for AI
Bewildering, beloved tradition

It’s the day before Thanksgiving, so I’ll keep this as brief as a deep-fried turkey inferno that firefighters manage to contain to the free-standing garage.

Megan McArdle writes that this will be her first Thanksgiving “as an orphan, which simultaneously seems a strange way to describe yourself at 51 and the most accurate rendition of what it feels like to face the holiday without my mother or father.”

Her retrospection is moving and stuffed with memories — including a very funny story her mother annually told (sometimes more than once) involving the curious culinary tradition of lopping four inches off the end of a ham.

The takeaway for Megan: “So much of what we do is not science or art. It is the things that are done because that is how our mothers did them, and their mother before them — including, most of all, the things they taught us without meaning to.”

If you’re looking for the funny but without the moving (though, come to think of it, the ballad “Terminal B” from the made-up musical “Princess of LaGuardia” is pretty plaintive), revisit Alexandra Petri’s collection of songs written for a holiday that endured too many years without them.

The 2022 collaboration with composer Jack Mitchell produced such hits as “Uncle John’s Had One Too Many Cocktails,” “Uncle John’s Had Three Too Many Cocktails” and the “Space Oddity”-like “1-800 Butterball.”
Oh, and speaking of the deep fryer, I am currently staring at the menacing stockpot that will contain gallons of boiling oil ere long — my first Thanksgiving witnessing this promethean feat. It calls to mind the Editorial Board’s decennially republished warning against deep-frying.

Back in 2002, the board’s resident haruspex removed gizzard and liver and saw augured in them a terrible future: “hot oil pouring over the side of the turkey pot, hitting the fire and shooting skyward in a dramatic eruption high enough to ignite the backyard deck. Many dwellings have been lost in this way, and more likely will be as this formerly regional delicacy becomes a national enthusiasm.”

Twenty-two years on, I peer behind the stockpot to make sure the fire extinguisher is there,

Outside the kitchen (slash driveway), what should we be grateful for?

David Ignatius says Middle East diplomacy has finally notched a victory with the Israel-Hezbollah cease-fire brokered by the Biden administration. As one expert told David: “It’s far from a perfect agreement, but both sides see some advantage, and it may actually hold because the alternatives are so dire.”

Marc Fisher plunged far into the “deep state” and reports that a great many of the career civil servants at the Justice Department have no intention of allowing President-elect Donald Trump to push them out. “One Justice veteran says most colleagues will stay on,” Marc reports, “both because civil service rules protect them from cavalier cashiering” and because officials from the first Trump administration eventually — in the DOJ veteran’s words — “saw that we were good Americans who want to do the right thing.”

And the Editorial Board writes that artificial intelligence is making health care much more accurate and much less expensive. The board examines the transformation (already!) of cancer screenings, emergency room diagnoses and medical research

Chaser: Perry Bacon says there remain plenty of avenues for advancing policy that progressives should be thankful for — if they would just take a break from dumpster-fire doomscrolling and actually pursue them.

Smartest, fastest

Seven guest writers who have long followed the figures headed into Trump’s Cabinet pinpoint the moments that made them who they are.

Karen Tumulty puzzles through why voters rejected ranked-choice voting in referendums this year, when the electoral system could be so salutary to our politics.

Democrats used to be the future-oriented party, Fareed Zakaria writes. What happened?
It’s a goodbye. It’s a haiku. It’s … The Bye-Ku.
Let the day’s worst fate
Be gravy congelation
Not conflagration

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions ... e-cabinet/

[Sean Hayden]

The democrats lost to Trump twice, and once after Jan 6th and a conviction. If this were any other endeavor they’d all be out of a job.

Maybe it’s time for another party.

What sort of party would reach 49% who don't want any government? We just need to wait 4 or 8 years. Then they will be begging: you win, we had no idea. Bring back government.

The people that voted Trump only believe Foxnews, and there the facts are news clips. We need to see the horror of Trump 4 years in news clips. BUT, now the billionaires will buy all the TV stations. So now what? Ban TV?

Maybe. But it is the time of bubble popping, so be careful with what you think you know about others.

[Tero]

In 1863, November’s last Thursday fell on the 26th. On November 19, Lincoln delivered an address at the dedication of a national cemetery at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. He reached back to the Declaration of Independence for the principles on which he called for Americans to rebuild the severed nation:
​​”Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”

The following year, Lincoln proclaimed another day of Thanksgiving, this time congratulating Americans that God had favored them not only with immigration but also with the emancipation of formerly enslaved people. “Moreover,” Lincoln wrote, “He has been pleased to animate and inspire our minds and hearts with fortitude, courage, and resolution sufficient for the great trial of civil war into which we have been brought by our adherence as a nation to the cause of freedom and humanity, and to afford to us reasonable hopes of an ultimate and happy deliverance from all our dangers and afflictions.”
In 1861, Americans went to war to keep a cabal from taking control of the government and turning it into an oligarchy. The fight against that rebellion seemed at first to be too much for the nation to survive. But Americans rallied and threw their hearts into the cause on the battlefields even as they continued to work on the home front for a government that defended democracy and equality before the law.
And in 1865, at least, they won.
Happy Thanksgiving.
Heather Cox Richardson

Lee Cagley
Wow. The cabal of wealthy white men we are facing now, in this century, is spectacularly well-funded and fanatically focused on keeping and expanding their wealth and power. We need a Lincoln, clearly, and a party just as focused on improving the lives of its citizens. God help us all, so that Thanksgiving Day four years from now will be as meaningful as its noble predecessors.

[Brian Peacock]

The democrats lost to Trump twice, and once after Jan 6th and a conviction. If this were any other endeavor they’d all be out of a job.

Maybe it’s time for another party.

What sort of party would reach 49% who don't want any government? We just need to wait 4 or 8 years. Then they will be begging: you win, we had no idea. Bring back government.

The people that voted Trump only believe Foxnews, and there the facts are news clips. We need to see the horror of Trump 4 years in news clips. BUT, now the billionaires will buy all the TV stations. So now what? Ban TV?

Indeed. The people who manage our access to and the context of the political information we see are themselves political actors. It doesn't matter how bad things get for whoever, they'll always be some ready stooges to blame - and it won't be the people causing the problems, unless a political actor begins to focus their ideas around those narratives. Greedflation or the weirdification of the Republican party are examples of those kinds of narratives - and the Dems dropped them like molten shit as soon as they started to seep into the political conversation... because the people who manage our access to and the context of the political information we see have the motivation and capacity to simply reframe them as irrelevant &/or illegitimate.

[Tero]

Elon Musk on Threads?
If he is, he is now following me and will send me to jail
https://www.threads.net/@elon___musk514

[Tero]

I got rid of him. He does not post anyway.

On instagram too.
elon_musk514
0 posts
Elon Musk
Entrepreneur
has 200 followers and he follows 2600 people

[Sean Hayden]

Democratic-controlled cities are finalizing plans to oppose mass deportation
Many have passed ordinances intended to shield migrants from efforts by the incoming Trump administration to eject them from the country.

LOS ANGELES — The resistance promised by blue state governors after the election of Donald Trump is beginning to take shape as city leaders, advocacy groups and the nation's second-largest school district launch efforts to oppose mass deportations.

The cities of Los Angeles, Chicago and Philadelphia have vowed to shield people living in the U.S. without authorization from efforts by the incoming Trump administration to carry out what it has said will be the largest deportation effort in history.

The Los Angeles Unified School District has declared itself a sanctuary for migrants, and the ACLU of Southern California filed a lawsuit this month against U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, demanding details on how the incoming administration plans to carry out the roundups.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/de ... rcna180851

[macdoc]

it's time


Indigenous version

[Tero]

Big picture:

That social contract began to break down in the late 1970s. The power of unions was undermined, and taxes on the wealthy cut back. Typical workers’ wages, which had previously increased in tandem with overall economic growth, started to lag behind. Inflation-adjusted wages stagnated and at times decreased. The result was a decline in many aspects of quality of life for the majority of Americans.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/202 ... trumps-win

[Tero]

Former republicans no longer active warn Trump. That will make him more determined.



he was a bit more stern to Trump elsewhere

[Tero]

No more free food. Those Republican senators have been way too liberal.

"Congress is feuding over a new farm bill, making lawmakers likely to punt the matter for another year and leave American farmers and families on food assistance without an update to the legislation that controls how much federal support they receive.

"Republicans and Democrats agree it is time for an updated bill. The last one was written in 2018 and expired two years ago, meaning American farmers are trying to run their businesses based on 6-year-old policy.

"But the two parties cannot get past a core dispute over how to pay for it. Republicans want to cut nutrition assistance for the poor to pay for bolstered financial support for farmers, while Democrats refuse to reduce food support for low-income people."

"Underneath the policy fight also lies a political subplot. Senator Debbie Stabenow of Michigan, the Democratic chairwoman of the Agriculture Committee who has been her party’s leading voice on the issue for more than a decade, will retire in January."

"With her legacy on the line, Ms. Stabenow has refused to sign off on any deal that involves taking money from the main federal food support mechanism for the poor, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, even as she concedes that Republicans are likely to force through such a change once she is gone."

"Since farm bill talks began two years ago, Republicans have repeatedly said they want to “put more farm in the farm bill” by funneling more dollars into price supports and crop insurance. About 80 percent of farm bill spending goes toward the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, which helps feed more than 42 million Americans. That proportion has grown significantly since a nutrition title was first added to the farm bill in 1973."

"The House version of the bill would increase “reference prices” — the floor below which market prices must fall to prompt subsidy payments to farmers — by 10 percent to 20 percent. That measure, backed primarily by Republicans, places particular emphasis on a few southern crops like rice, peanuts and wheat. The version from Ms. Stabenow limits those hikes to 5 percent across the board."
("New York Times" reporter Maya C. Miller looks at the likelihood of the "lame duck" Congress passing a Farm Bill. The headline on her story reads, "As Congress Feuds Over Farm Bill, Growers Are 'Stuck in Limbo.')