American Politics from 2019 on

[Tero]

Threads is feeding me useful and amusing stuff
https://www.threads.net/@tatebasildon/p ... VbnnBFx_eQ

Do I have left blue sky just to the laptop

[Tero]

David Frum, The Atlantic. I watch MSNBC, but rarely that show. Morning Joe himself is a centrist Republican.

This morning, I had an unsettling experience.

I was invited onto MSNBC’s Morning Joe to talk from a studio in Washington, D.C., about an article I’d written on Trump’s approach to foreign policy. Before getting to the article, I was asked about the nomination of Pete Hegseth as secretary of defense—specifically about an NBC News report that his heavy drinking worried colleagues at Fox News and at the veterans organizations he’d headed. (A spokesman for the Trump transition
told NBC, “These disgusting allegations are completely unfounded and false, and anyone peddling these defamatory lies to score political cheap shots is sickening.”)

I answered by reminding viewers of some history:

In 1989, President George H. W. Bush nominated John Tower, senator from Texas, for secretary of defense. Tower was a very considerable person, a real defense intellectual, someone who deeply understood defense, unlike the current nominee. It emerged that Tower had a drinking problem, and when he was drinking too much he would make himself a nuisance or worse to women around him. And for that reason, his nomination collapsed in 1989....

I told this story in pungent terms. It’s cable TV, after all. And I introduced the discussion with a joke: “If you’re too drunk for Fox News, you’re very, very drunk indeed.”

At the next ad break, a producer spoke into my ear. He objected to my comments about Fox and warned me not to repeat them. I said something noncommittal and got another round of warning. After the break, I was asked a follow-up question on a different topic, about President Joe Biden’s pardon of his son. I did not revert to the earlier discussion, not because I had been warned, but because I had said my piece. I was then told that I was excused from the studio chair. Shortly afterward, co-host Mika Brzezinski read an apology for my remarks.

"....The comment was a little too flippant for this moment that we’re in. We just want to make that comment as well. We want to make that clear. We have differences in coverage with Fox News, and that’s a good debate that we should have often, but right now I just want to say there’s a lot of good people who work at Fox News who care about Pete Hegseth..."

I recognize, too, that the prominence of the program has exposed the hosts and producers to extraordinary pressures and threats in the Trump era. Trump has spoken again and again of his determination to retaliate against unfriendly media. Shortly before leaving office, Trump amplified a conspiracy theory that Brzezinski’s co-host, Joe Scarborough, was a murderer. Kash Patel, Trump’s nominee to head the FBI, has compiled an enemies list to target with investigations. Trump’s candidate to chair the FCC has speculated about stripping licenses from platforms that displease the new incoming administration. Interference with mergers and acquisitions to punish critics was a feature of Trump’s first administration. Now MSNBC may be spun off by Comcast, leaving the future of the liberal network very much in question.

The hosts of Morning Joe visited Mar-a-Lago in November to mend fences with Trump. They genuinely have a lot to worry about.

As for my own comments: You can decide for yourself whether I overstepped the proper limits of television discussion. But I also note that if I did misstep, well, my face was on the screen, my name was on the chyron, and anyone who took offense knows whom to blame.

I write these words very aware that I’m probably saying goodbye forever to a television platform that I enjoy and from which I have benefited as both viewer and guest. I have been the recipient of personal kindnesses from the hosts that I have not forgotten.

I do not write to scold anyone; I write because fear is infectious. Let it spread, and it will paralyze us all.

The only antidote is courage. And that’s infectious, too.

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/ar ... age-trump/

[Tero]

Not necessarily due to just Trump, also to social media, but the one cable channel MSNBC that comeptes with Fox is in danger. Fox itself survived massive fines for disinformation.

There is a market for disinformation. The TV end of liberal journalism is soon gone.

[Tero]

Rolling up their sleeves. Republicans. Death to death taxes!

A broken system
Author Headshot
By Jesse Drucker

The federal estate tax — which is imposed on a tiny sliver of rich Americans when they die — is being eviscerated.

In theory, the tax is simple. A married couple can pass along about $27 million (say in cash or stock) to their heirs tax-free. Anything above that is supposed to be taxed at a rate of 40 percent. But although the wealth of the richest Americans has soared over the past several decades, estate tax receipts have not.

The tax has been getting weaker since the 1990s, when a few things happened.

For one, a handful of billionaires, including the Kochs, Waltons and Mars families, funded a lobbying campaign to kill the estate tax. It culminated when George W. Bush signed a law that gradually cut the top rate to 45 percent, down from 55 percent, and gradually raised the size of the fortune that could be exempt. The amount excluded doubled in the 2017 Republican tax overhaul signed by Donald Trump. Now, a married couple can pass down $27.2 million to their heirs without paying a dime of estate tax.

Finally, the I.R.S. struggles to do its job — and that’s by design.

Republicans have led a decades-long effort to defund the agency. That has meant fewer audits for the ultrarich. In the 1990s, the agency audited more than 20 percent of estate tax returns. In recent years, it was less than 4 percent. Congressional Republicans cut $20 billion for law enforcement at the I.R.S. in a recent spending bill.

NYT

[Tero]

See if I start a topic there again!

They will be begging to have Deep State come back after Trump, because the deep state is what keeps us healthy and alive and gets us some education. The corporations are what keeps deep state in some control, thorough lobbying of both parties in congress. That is why we got ACA, a compromise to keep insurance companies still going.

The alternative is for us to roll over and play dead. The Oligarchs will keep us in good health and working, age 20-60. Because they need the consumers. After that we are disposable.

What_Exit
Tagaholic Moderator (He/Him but They is fine)
12m
As this is less a topic and more a rant, I’ll be closing it.

If you want it reopened in the Pit let us know.

Rants go into the Barbecue Pit

[Sean Hayden]

Where's that?

I don't see the problem, do they expect you to provide examples with all your arguments? --bleh, a wall of text with every post? It's always a struggle for me to decide how much support to give any argument in an online discussion. Why not just let the discussion get started and have the support get dropped in as it goes?

[Tero]

https://boards.straightdope.com/

[Tero]

Where's that?

I don't see the problem, do they expect you to provide examples with all your arguments? --bleh, a wall of text with every post? It's always a struggle for me to decide how much support to give any argument in an online discussion. Why not just let the discussion get started and have the support get dropped in as it goes?

I never even got to my punchline: corporations don't have babies.

[Tero]

Woke issues in America
https://archive.is/NmqxW

Woke me up
Republicans love to blame everything they consider wrong with America on an epidemic of “wokeness”, by which they tend to mean anything that smacks of virtue-signalling or political correctness. Thus a bridge over Baltimore harbour collapsed earlier this year not, as it might have seemed, because it was hit by a wayward cargo ship, but because one of the nearby port’s six commissioners is a black woman whose human-resources firm helps companies assess how diverse their workforces are, among other things—or so a Republican candidate for governor of Utah asserted.

In fact, discussion and espousal of woke views peaked in America in the early 2020s and have declined markedly since. The Economist has attempted to quantify the prominence of woke ideas in four domains: public opinion, the media, higher education and business. Almost everywhere we looked a similar trend emerged: wokeness grew sharply in 2015, as Donald Trump appeared on the political scene, continued to spread during the subsequent efflorescence of #MeToo and Black Lives Matter, peaked in 2021-22 and has been declining ever since (see charts). The only exception is corporate wokeness, which took off only after Mr Floyd’s murder, but has also retreated in the past year or two.
The term woke was originally used on the left to describe people who are alert to racism. Later it came to encompass those eager to fight any form of prejudice. By that definition, it is obviously a good thing.

But Democrats seldom use the word any more, because it has become associated with the most strident activists, who tend to divide the world into victims and oppressors. This outlook elevates group identity over the individual sort and sees unequal outcomes for different groups as proof of systemic discrimination. That logic is then used to justify illiberal means to correct entrenched injustices, such as reverse discrimination and the policing of speech. It is this sort of “woke warrior” that Republicans love to lambast.
In the most recent Gallup data, from earlier this year, 35% of people said they worried “a great deal” about race relations, down from a peak of 48% in 2021 but up from 17% in 2014. According to Pew, the share of Americans who agree that white people enjoy advantages in life that black people do not (“white privilege”, in the jargon) peaked in 2020. In GSS’s data the view that discrimination is the main reason for differences in outcomes between races peaked in 2021 and fell in the most recent version of the survey, in 2022.

In academia, which is often thought of as a hotbed of wokeism, the trend is much the same. Calls for academics to be disciplined for their views, as documented by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, peaked in 2021 with a total of 222 reported incidents. (Many of these calls came from the right, not just from the left.) A similar database, compiled by the College Fix, a conservative student newspaper, finds 2020 was the peak in calls for scholars to be censored or cancelled. These findings also dovetail with polling data: the share of Americans who think that expressions of racist views should be restricted rose sharply between 2016 and 2021, reaching around 52%, and has since declined slightly, down to 49% in 2022.
Teaching and research also seem to be shifting away from wokery, at least somewhat.

[Tero]

Rep. Tom Tiffany says he'd like to cut "mandatory spending" like food stamps
https://www.threads.net/@aaron.rupar/po ... WTeRl6L7Bw

[Tero]

"It’s been clear for quite a while now that red America and blue America are becoming like two different countries claiming the same territory, with two different versions of the Constitution, economics, and American history. But Babel is not a story about tribalism; it’s a story about the fragmentation of everything. It’s about the shattering of all that had seemed solid, the scattering of people who had been a community. It’s a metaphor for what is happening not only between red and blue, but within the left and within the right, as well as within universities, companies, professional associations, museums, and even families," writes Jonathan Haidt.

Why the Past 10 Years of American Life Have Been Uniquely Stupid
It’s not just a phase.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/ar ... WPn_D8TZig

[Tero]

Elsewhere, the Musk danger:

The Rich Corporate faction under Musk and Vance actually take control. The federal government is vastly downsized, corporations get a lot more control over people, and a oligarchy similar to current Russia under Putin takes over.

Probably the worst thing the MAGA folk did. They took the last power away from themselves.

[macdoc]

Anyone recall the world this portrayed?

[Tero]

JoJoFromJerz‬ ‪@jojofromjerz.bsky.social‬
15h
Elon Musk spent $250 million dollars so Donald Trump could put him in charge of cutting wasteful spending.
(so it was waste? only if the Dems reverse any of Trump II changes)


‪JoJoFromJerz‬ ‪@jojofromjerz.bsky.social‬
16h
“Who gives a fuck about Christmas and decoration” Melania Trump was on Fox selling “patriotic ornaments” this morning, because of fucking course she was.

JoJoFromJerz‬ ‪@jojofromjerz.bsky.social‬
1d
The Secretary of Defense ANSWERS to the American people and to our Constitution.
Rapey McBoozehound Hegseth said he only answers to Trump.
And that tells you everything you need to know.


JoJoFromJerz
‪@jojofromjerz.bsky.social‬
They don’t know me, and I don’t owe them shit, but I will do them this one little favor, I’ll give them this one teeny tidbit of advice - if you underestimate me, you’ll do so at your own peril.

LINK
https://jojofromjerz.substack.com/p/wta ... irect=true

We’re talking about the kind of left side of the bell curve fuckwits who wake up and binge watch ‘reveal the real baby daddy’ chair tossing/hair pulling stage fights on Maury Povich just to warmup for the Red Bulled-up road rage they’ll invariably unleash in the drop off line of their youngest spawn’s summer Bible school.

And while it might have been nice if post-apocalyptic, Nightmare on Elm Street election from hell, they’d have packed up the family F150-Small-in-the-pants and taken a few weeks off to go rafting in the remote banjo woods of wherever the fuck Georgia they like to “relax”, while giving those of us on team “what the fuck just happened” some time to breathe… that ain’t what they did.

Nope. They’ve only gotten angrier. And it’s not quite the same kind of window licker, IQ of a bedroom slipper, nebulous “cry harder” reply in an app angrier. This is darker. It’s emboldened. It’s menacing. And it’s hell bent on making sure a whole bunch of folks they don’t like (ehem, myself included) pay for what we have “done”, because we had the audacity to disagree with them, vehemently, and frequently, and in some cases, ok maybe in most cases, more than a touch condescendingly.

And if you know me, you know that like punching a MAGA muppet in the nose on Twitter as much as the next guy. Some people unwind with a book, some folks like a nice cup of tea, for others maybe it’s the beach… I get it, I like all of that too. But I also happen to find great comfort in telling those Trump-humping turnips to fuck off. All the way off. Often.

They want to frighten their “enemies.” They want us to be afraid. They want us to “learn a lesson” about “running our mouths.” And they’re not gonna let a block on their explode-a-car jumping bean nepo baby’s Nazi hellscape get in the way of them making sure we get the message.

And when that comes to me, it means that they call my cellphone. They leave messages about coming to “fuck me up.” They text me to tell me that I’m the one who is “unhinged.” They send emails so lengthy, so misspelled and so rambling I’d need an illiterate monkey to give me a lobotomy just to decode it partially.

[Brian Peacock]

Anyone recall the world this portrayed?

Or this...