US Politics, April 2024: "Are You Better Off Today Than You Were <Checks Notes> Four Years Ago?"

Seems bad man

The fuck? https://t.co/pZsUBB24YN pic.twitter.com/HxRiOWj9LL

— ettingermentum🥥🌴 (@ettingermentum) April 2, 2024

Apparently Fetterman went on the radio responding to the murder of aid workers with some whining about Hamas hiding behind civilians. Hope he has another stroke.

Fetterman can rot

https://i.imgur.com/zHX7LJ0.jpeg

democracy dies in darkness

https://149674310.v2.pressablecdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/Buddy+Christ-11.jpg

Good news:

Nebraska legislators on Wednesday night blocked a late effort to change how the state allocates its Electoral College votes, despite public pressure from former President Donald Trump to shift to a winner-take-all system that would likely benefit him in the fall.

The measure fell short, 8-36, in a procedural vote. While it’s possible supporters could take another stab at advancing the proposal, there remain serious hurdles as the legislative session draws to a close, and it’s unclear whether the proposal has enough support to get across the finish line and become law.

8-36 is not close. Good.

It won’t come up for a vote again. I know that’s what was promised, but there are no vehicles on which it could attach. Winner Takes All isn’t moving in 2024.

— Senator Julie Slama (@SenatorSlama) April 4, 2024

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/04/pink-slime-local-news-outlets-erupt-all-over-us-during-election-year/

PINK SLIME!

The number of partisan news outlets in the US masquerading as legitimate journalism now equals genuine local newspaper sites, researchers say, as so-called pink slime operators gear up ahead of November’s presidential election.

Pink slime sites mimic local news providers but are highly partisan and tend to bury their deep ties to dark money, lobbying groups, and special interests.

NewsGuard, which rates the quality and trustworthiness of news sites, has identified 1,197 pink slime sites operating in the US as of April 1—about as many as the estimated 1,200 real news sites operated by daily local newspapers.

I get my news from traditional blue slime sources only.

wake up early, clear out the encroaching gray goo from the window sill, delete new emails from pink slime mailing lists i didn't sign up for, then i play with gak all day, and i don't even wash my hands

… such sites have filled a vacuum left as traditional local news has been decimated by brands moving their advertising dollars into digital spending at Silicon Valley groups such as Meta and Google

I would propose this is the key bit of the dynamic even tho it’s not the focus of the article

Also the phrase “partisan outlet” is doing a lot of work here

Seems like a real professional operation... RFK Jr's campaign has walked back a fundraising email that referred to January 6 insurrectionists as "activists":

In the appeal sent to supporters, signed by "Team Kennedy," the campaign called for the exoneration of "political prisoner Julian Assange," the founder of WikiLeaks, suggesting he and Jan. 6 defendants are victims of prosecutorial abuse.

"This is the reality that every American Citizen faces — from Ed Snowden, to Julian Assange to the J6 activists sitting in a Washington DC jail cell stripped of their Constitutional liberties. Please help our campaign call out the illiberal actions of our very own government," the fundraising email read.

...

After publication of this piece, Kennedy spokesperson Stephanie Spear told NBC News that the language was an "error."

“That statement was an error that does not reflect Mr. Kennedy’s views. It was inserted by a new marketing contractor and slipped through the normal approval process,” she said.

“All that stuff was a typo”

The two most pertinent questions about RFK Jr's crappy vanity project are how many ballots will he be on in November? and how many of those will be in critical swing states? The process of qualifying for the general election ballot is usually much simpler in the more liberal states than in conservative ones, but every one of the 50 states and multiple territories has a different process for qualifying and his campaign seems far too slapdash to get on more than a dozen or so ballots.

I sure hope so, and I hope none of those are in swing states

In my (admittedly limited) experience so far, it seems like the only people excited about RFKJ are antivaxx moms and general Qfools who don't like Trump embracing the creation of the COVID vaxx and stuff like that.

He might be able to piggyback onto some ballots via a formal Libertarian Party nomination (or a similar fringe party), but I haven't heard that they or the No Labels scammers have expressed interest in him. If it weren't for his name you'd need an electron microscope to see his campaign.

i also don't get why the fuck RFK is even doing this. He has no chance of winning. Does he simply want Biden to lose?

money i guess

the other day, there was a dude in front of my local post office getting signatures to put RFK jr on the ballot, had to resist the urge to give him shit

he’d probably accept your shit as safer than vaccines

lol

No Labels, no candidate, no surprise

https://apnews.com/article/no-labels-2024-third-party-biden-trump-c7477857e1dd05535326b8850f4500a1

money i guess

good morning!

Where’s the presidential debate schedule?

Boom: https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/04/05/business/jobs-report-march-economy

yeah but the vibes are off

Unemployment vibe rate up 4.5%

i got hired for a part time job, which makes teaching three classes and working 25 hours a week at the gym front desk. “the economy is great” my ass— if i have to work as much as i am to reach a modest standard of living, then the economy is shit. period.

like, i know my experience isn’t universal, obviously, but truly find it bizarre that a bunch of people with pretty decent jobs on a message board would essentially mock those who don’t feel like they’re doing that well, despite the figures from economists. it might not be meant that way but that is the way it appears!

Table, I apologize, I wasn't thinking of people in your situation. I think it's obscene you literally need five part-time jobs just to keep your head above water. I know I'm lucky in the job situation (it's certainly not due to my tact or charm).

I've learned that the general state of the economy has little to do with my personal situation. I was at my lowest during the "boom years" on the late 90s, and I basically doubled my income in the middle of the economic collapse of 2009. Of course I don't deny that that was generally a bad time for a lot of other people.

The biggest income jump of my life coincided with the Trump years.

Most of my friends seem to be doing OK in their various fields, but I know at least a couple of them (especially in media and marketing/advertising) have been wrestling with some serious worries that their ride could end with no warning. Kind of like when the Coyote launches himself off a cliff at high speed but doesn't actually fall until he looks down.

My media friends, yeah, are the most unstable.

I think academia and particularly teaching are undervalued but I don't see that as a function of the current economy as much as I see it as a decay and reconfiguration of the social structures of our society.

I was in college 20 years ago and back then, the main trend was the hiring of adjunct professors and instructors who had no real path to a permanent job position or a decent salary. Partly due to the devaluation of education, more so the burgeoning number of students and emphasis on postsecondary education as a path to a majority of jobs in the labor market. Teaching should be a valued position with a livable wage.

There is lots of shifting sands out there. In the past week I've had conversations with two different physicians bemoaning the state of their profession in the corporate era. They feel undervalued and under-appreciated, just cogs in a machine that more or less looks at them interchangeably, as a set quantity that can be replaced with little to no though, there just to say yes or no to things. Woah is me, right? They are of course doing fine financially, but they work really hard, and if the standard-bearer of education and success is feeling the squeeze and stress in the fight against burnout, it does not bode well.

Which is wild, because (at least when I was coming up), education and healthcare had a patina of reliability and sustainment. Like, get into those careers and you’ll be OK.

well, the more people who go into attractive professions, the greater the leverage of the employers becomes

after 30 years as a translator Maria has to make ends meet working in a cruddy used record store in Western Mass. the robots took all her work. thanks, obama!

xxpost Exactly. As I understand it, part of the shift hinges on a bigger focus on nurses, PAs, etc. (who in turn have themselves seen, yes, higher wages and more or less 100% employment, but with more than their own share of burnout).

but seriously she was just getting jobs proofreading machine translations for no money and for a highly-skilled human that was too depressing for words. i kinda wonder about all those medical documents getting translated by AI now. maria will tell you. they make tons of mistakes.

Did I or someone post the news piece about doctors using AI to dumb down medical results and instructions, to match the average level of reading comprehension in this country?

☹️

Biden’s been great for govt employees. Two of the biggest standard of living increases since the 80’s

xps - Corporation-controlled medicine is a great example of how information aggregation is devaluing individual training and experience. My primary care physician is required to work from a what amounts to an imposed script designed to deliver statistically-approved 'care'. According to this script my therapeutic needs are adequately defined by a few neat categories that correspond to the categories that were defined within published studies. Whatever the peer-reviewed study discovered within those confines, it must be applied to my case or else the doctor becomes a renegade who exposes the corporation to the dreaded risk of malpractice litigation.

The only avenue open to her for using her years of specialized training consists of deciding which script best fits the symptoms I'm "presenting" during my exam. Because I'm pretty healthy, my major symptoms are that I'm a white male, 69 years old, and whatever my BMI and BP happens to be on the day of my annual exam (hint: my BMI & BP are fine). But the script spits out its recommendations anyway, which she duly recites to me.

Hey, remember how 24 hours ago RFK's campaign was swearing they didn't mean to defend January 6 rioters? Well, today the candidate announced he'd appoint a special counsel to investigate how their rights may have been violated.

that's literally 'defending' them