People that you've never heard of, people that are in the dark shadows -- US Politics September 2020

then she dropped the mic and Bananarama's "Cruel Summer" came on over the PA

"Can we play the Pelosi video again?"

Fwiw Biden is now favoured (rather than slightly favoured) to win the election according to 538:

https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2020-election-forecast/

May it remain so.

It changes from favoured to slightly favoured at 70%. It’s been switching between those since it went live a month ago which gives the impression it’s changed a lot but ... it hasn’t.

Ah, I hadn't realized.

What a nightmare of shitty data-viz their model page is, too. Quite a shocking lapse of judgement on their part. And that godawful fox?

interesting if true

Fox News (!!!) confirming the Atlantic story now https://t.co/hIJMZKwtH2

— Christopher Ingraham (@_cingraham) September 4, 2020

The Deep Media has infiltrated Fox News.

@JenGriffinFNC
: This former official heard the President say about American veterans: “’What’s in it for them? They don’t make any money?’ It was a character flaw of the President: he could not understand why someone would die for their country, not worth it.”

trump otm ?

Trump would be wise to start driving his base away from FOX now, so he can hit the ground running with a big audience as OAN majority owner/windbag in January

Second term Trump will reform the military so they get a cut of spoils like a Roman legion.

or citizenship like in Starship Troopers

Thread:

This WP story about how Bill Barr confidently, even pugnaciously, told CNN viewers about a massive mail-in ballots fraud incident in Texas that never happened, is a reminder of some other things like that. /1 https://t.co/K9Q2aBngKI

— Charlie Savage (@charlie_savage) September 4, 2020

is this good

The Chair of the @FEC — the head of the only government agency dedicated to enforcing election law — is actively promoting the President’s re-election campaign on social media. pic.twitter.com/He7YwZDxnO

— Adav Noti (@AdavNoti) September 2, 2020

Thousands of Trumper Vietnam vets slowly coming around to the view that yes, they were suckers

They got a letter from the President the other day. They opened and read it. It said they were definitely not suckers

damn you PK, I just spent a whole two minutes writing this -

got a twitter from the president the other day
opened it, read it, said they were suckers
he wanted votes from the army or whatever
picture fox giving a damn, he said "loser"

I think you win that one, tbh, Camaraderie, because it scans.

early bird gets the worm, also I'm not at all happy with the last line

Vietnam vets slowly coming around to the view that yes, they were suckers

Sadly, the Selective Service System did not care one way or the other. Not everyone had a tame doctor who'd invent some bone spurs for you.

not creepy at all!

President Trump is moving to revamp federal agencies’ racial sensitivity trainings, casting some of them “divisive” and “un-American,” according to a memo by the White House Office of Management and Budget.

In the two-page memo, OMB Director Russell Vought says that Trump has asked him to prevent federal agencies from spending millions in taxpayer dollars on these training sessions. Vought says OMB will instruct federal agencies to come up with a list of all contracts related to trainings involving “white privilege“ or “critical race theory,” the memo states.

The memo was released on Friday.

It also tells all federal agencies to identify all methods possible to cancel contracts that involve teaching that America is an “inherently racist or evil country.”

Trump's push to amplify racism unnerves Republicans who have long enabled him

“The President has directed me to ensure that federal agencies cease and desist from using taxpayer dollars to fund these divisive, un-American propaganda training sessions,“ the memo states.

Just our president doubling down on the popularity of racism yet again. Two months left before Election Day, so he has plenty of time to place lots more heavy bets of racism saving the day. By mid-October he wants every BIPOC person in the USA feeling worse than they did on November 9, 2016.

Has "un-American" ever been used by someone who wasn't a dipshit?

There have been sporadic attempts to flip the meaning of un-American to apply it to undemocratic ideas like racial prejudice or classism, but that bit of rhetorical jujutsu has never had much, if any, effect.

It changes from favoured to slightly favoured at 70%.

I posted about that on FB a couple of days ago. I know it means absolutely nothing, but if you're running thousands of simulations and 69% of them point towards one guy winning, to me that's not "slightly favoured." "Slightly" shouldn't kick in until it drops to somewhere around 55-60%.

That "slightly" is pure CYA, induced by the critical buffeting 538 got in 2016.

That's how someone responded to my post--that Nate Silver, like many people, had been spooked by 2016.

I don't know, though; he came out of that election as one of the few forecasters who wasn't shocked by the result, who'd given Trump a decent chance (about the same 30%, I believe). And as his own site often points out, polling for Biden is meaningfully ahead of where Clinton was. He just doesn't strike me as someone who thinks "the data clearly says this, but I'll throw in a 'slightly' just in case."

I was wondering if it was maybe in deference to the thing that's harder to gauge, possible interference, either internal or external.

There’s a literature on what probabilities people assign to words like likely, probably, favoured, etc. A lot of it comes out the CIA actually. Which should tell you that it’s probably not worth worrying too much about the specific word they’re mapping a number to.

It’s probably not worth worrying about the numbers either (except to the extent they tell you what the polls are saying, which is not what is going to happen, but is not nothing).

It's a subject that interests me because, teaching grade 6 for many years, I always started probability off with a number line where I got the kids to assign words to their numerical equivalents--certain, likely, very unlikely, etc. I think it went something like this: 15% = very unlikely, 35% = unlikely, 65% = likely, 85% = very likely. (There was no "slightly likely.") But 70% would have simply been "likely," which to me translates as "favoured."

https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/kent-csi/vol8no4/html/v08i4a07p_0001.htm

Lloyd Braun: "Is it just me, or is that a lot of reading?"
Jerry: "That's a lot of reading!"

I see all my words in there somewhere, I've just got to figure out if I was using them correctly.

hi everyone. i had a long night of the soul last night, and wrote this up. so this is by me.

The road to political sanity may run through a bridge game in Atlanta: four women playing together for years, two Democrats, two Republicans — one of whom is quiet about how she voted last time, the other a fervent supporter of the president.

In 2020, the bridge game went online. And conversation about politics went off limits.

Until a funny thing happens, when the quiet Republican asks whether everyone had seen the latest Trump sound bite. The two Democrats clench and look to change the subject. But then the proud Trump supporter allows, to everyone’s surprise, that she cannot abide the incumbent president and his crew any longer.

What’s the wise response? Pause, ponder, weigh the possibilities.

Whether it’s your friend or someone in your family, or anyone with whom you’ve been at partisan odds these past four years, the temptation is to fire back that “You voted for him, you wanted him, cheered for him, you funded and fueled him, and now you have regrets?” There must be penance and flagellation, expiation in exile, bread-and-water rations, a vow of abstinence from Fox News.

Or you can gently affirm them in a way that welcomes them back to the fold without rebuke. A celebration of the prodigal returned, because anyone can be wrong, even profoundly and flamboyantly wrong, and there is no way forward without finding a way to leave what’s past behind. Yes, reconciliation would be easier if they said, “Gee, I was so blind about him, I can’t believe I fell for his gaslighting, I’d do anything to undo my vote but I’ll work to my last breath to help defeat him this time.”

But that’s a lot to expect and, besides, that is not how people convert. Maybe alone, in the dark of night, they reckon with their judgments and quietly whisper to themselves, “How could I be so stupid?” But by daylight, they face the fear of being cast out of their tribe or abandoned by all sides. You can brand them with a scarlet T and scorn them forever, or you can recognize that flaunting your righteousness is not just shallow, it is also shortsighted. Especially with voting imminent in some states, when wobbly voters will test what the future will look like if they switch sides.

No one will ever be persuaded to your cause if you deride their character and dismiss their dignity. Neither burning at the stake nor reform school has much chance of working on individuals who wandered away from the traditional GOP, into MAGA America and now find themselves in the wilderness. Pride and denial make the journey back rocky. Smooth the path for them. Suck it up. Let it go. We have work to do.

I’m not advocating mercy for the Republican officeholders who have enabled a lawless president for 3½ years, even those who, when his polls dip occasionally show some spine. Far too much damage has been done to U.S. security and our social fabric to absolve those who mock Trump in private but massage him in public. They have contaminated the GOP, and it falls to principled conservatives to clean their own house.

But how we judge our public leaders, and the standards we hold them to, is different from how we treat each other. Trump succeeded by salting our wounds; it took the worst president in history to bring out the worst in us, with the help of a media ecosystem that profits from political poison. As it is, too many politicians love to make us hate each other, and too many of us find comfort and company in our shared derision. But if we can close the gap, maybe we can talk.

Which brings us back to the bridge table, and the social value of strategic silence. “Taking it in stride seems like the most generous move,” one of the Democrats says. Surely this quest for clarity, and charity, must start with our family and friends, who we know in all their complexity: yes, maybe I’ve heard you sound like a homophobe or make sexist jokes, but I also know you’ve adopted special-needs kids and work as a volunteer firefighter.

There’s no room for complexity on Twitter, and it has all but vanished from our politics, which grow ever more virtual and, therefore, unpracticed with real people. But complexity is where progress incubates, where compromise lives, where hope resides.

btw, the name of my article is "How should we respond to our former Trump-loving friends (who make up about 0.00000001% of the country)"

Being from a bridge playing family probably made me appreciate that write up all the more. Thank you.

FYI - there is an opinion piece with a nearly identical name in this morning's Washington Post. Regardless, that's some great writing. Thanks for sharing.

Challop on ice to go: I’m worried that people are kinda maybe forgetting a little bit how awful all republican pols are with all the focus specifically on trump

have people’s beliefs actually changed, they’re just embarrassed by the man

great post, btw, karl

The percentage of Republicans in Congress who duck into an elevator, plead ignorance, or simply refuse to say a word, when accosted by journalists for comment on the latest outrageous Trump action or pronouncement has risen to near 100%. It feels like three years ago about half of them would attempt some sort of serious-faced tut-tutting or cautious distancing. Now they are in it up to their nostrils and are full time never-say-die enablers.

FYI - there is an opinion piece with a nearly identical name in this morning's Washington Post. Regardless, that's some great writing. Thanks for sharing.

hey they ripped me off! bezos is going down, i'm suing.

i posted that op-ed in jest, but i do respect the place it comes from. i used to be in that place. like this part:

Surely this quest for clarity, and charity, must start with our family and friends, who we know in all their complexity: yes, maybe I’ve heard you sound like a homophobe or make sexist jokes, but I also know you’ve adopted special-needs kids and work as a volunteer firefighter.

but yes, imagine that the homophobia extends to a lifelong effort to deny the humanity of LGBTQ+ people, or that the sexist jokes are actually just the outermost layer of something that has a core of belief that men have divinely-enforced dominion over women. what happens when you start with the people you know the best, and have the most empathy for, and realize that they're a REAL piece of shit, and the deeper you dig the less empathy you feel? really, in a terrible twist, the less empathy they deserve, truly?

obviously not everyone has wannabe neo-nazis in their family, but i feel like my overall experience has similarities with the GOP and their supporters right now, or rather over the last 10+ years (at its most acute phase - i understand the origins of this shit in the 60s and beyond). people used to talk about how a bunch of white people lost their minds when a black man became president. i always kind of took that as a figure of speech, but a bunch of white people really DID lose their minds when a black man with an arabic sounding name was put in charge, and was easily reelected. for those people, at least, my level of empathy is ZERO, permanent ZERO, permanent FUCK YOU for all time, and that especially includes family, because i understand more than anyone how many chances they've had

Good post, Karl.

As the only outright Dem in a family whose gerontocracy still worries about the Democrats forcing young women to cut sugar cane like Castro did (not Joe Biden; they acknowledge he's a nice man duped by AOC and Sanders), I despair too, but I've heard, more than once since August, a couple relatives disparage "how the government is treating us" under COVID. Last week my father floored me when he admitted he wished "Washington" would pay parents a living wage for taking care of their kids should the kids need to stay at home.

"You realize that's a New Deal-type solution," I said.

"That's right," he said quietly.

xp

yikes, sorry! always fun to unload on dad in public for the millionth time. but i guess my halfassed point is just that the washpo sucker's bridge game is going to get real rowdy in 2024 when the "former Trump-loving friend" who finally found the courage to squeak out the possibility that trump might have done some bad things, in month 43 of 48 of his first term, somehow finds themselves really drawn to Tom Cotton or Ivanka or Scott Adams or whoever else has the best plan to punish their supposed persecutors. "i thought after trump that she had finally seen the light! and we welcomed them back without even criticizing them for supporting our white supremacist president until month 43 of the 48 hellish months of trump's first term! i'm so surprised that she's doing this again! oh well, that's the fourth trick, your turn donna"

The next Republican President after Trump's gonna be a football coach. Probably college but maybe Bill Belicheck.

Ditka

a family whose gerontocracy still worries about the Democrats forcing young women to cut sugar cane like Castro did (not Joe Biden; they acknowledge he's a nice man duped by AOC and Sanders), I despair too

truly, *hugs*

WASHINGTON — Democratic nominee Joe Biden’s transition team has signed a memorandum of understanding with President Donald Trump’s General Services Administration to begin planning for a potential handover of power.

Biden’s team signed the memo with the General Services Administration Thursday, according to the agency. The document is required under the Presidential Transition Act and formalizes how the federal government will go about assisting Biden’s transition team ahead of Election Day.

Formal federal support for presidential transition teams was first put into practice in 2012 in an effort to ensure presidential candidates are prepared to assume the White House should they win the election.

In 2016, both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump had offices and staffs in the same building preparing for a transition ahead of Election Day. Nearly all of Trump’s plan was subsequently shelved after he won the White House.

For the first time, the 2020 memo includes a pledge by Biden’s team to devise and publish an ethics plan to be implemented should he win on Election Day. That requirement was put into the place in a 2019 amendment to the transition act.

idg why bad-mouthing the military is sticking to trump *now*? he's been saying the same shit all along, going back to mccain and the khan family and how the army guys ambushed in niger 'knew what they were getting into' etc

Because he's targeting the military profession in its entirety now.

Oh 2020paws...

Multiple boats in distress, sinking at Trump Boat Parade on Lake Travis https://t.co/fAc9yHKiuz

— Lee Santos (@TxHopsfarmer) September 5, 2020

idg why bad-mouthing the military is sticking to trump *now*?

Maybe because a succession of small scratches will erode the effectiveness of Teflon? Or maybe the prominence of this story in the media has no relation to whether it is *sticking to Trump* any better this time than it did before, when the media gave it plenty of play.

pom otm, this story proves his disrespect is systemic rather than targeted at a few individuals