This is much more earnest than I am these days, but I stand by this. It's a simplistic view, but once we lost the torture election, we were fucked.
Oh, nostalgia. I scanned through the comment thread, and now I want to stab baa again.
That's why you do things right the first time.
I do think of baa as encapsulating the experience of commenting on blogs in the early 2000s. Such a pleasant, politely spoken, well-educated, generally sensible person, and so effective at reducing me to inarticulate rage (apparently unintentionally! Which I genuinely believe!)
Obsidian Wings generally was kind of like that.
Obama/Madonna 2008 would have been a great ticket.
Thanks for the 'Kokomo' earworm.
Now I'll be listening to the damn song all day.
I haven't seen anyone comment on it, but the last few national polls have been disconcerting. +6, +3, +2 Hillary over the last few days.
Link, although a bunch of new polls just got posted, not entirely dissimilar.
The tweet linked in the OP is spot on, and yet I still remain somewhat optimistic. This might be overly simplistic, but I would say that nominating Trump seems like a failure on the part of the Republican party, not a success. While an awful lot of Republicans are going to vote for him this year, I feel like this shows like there's a real chance that the Republican coalition struggles over the next decade.
I haven't seen anyone comment on it, but the last few national polls have been disconcerting. +6, +3, +2 Hillary over the last few days.
Without looking closely, fivethirtyeight still has Clinton over 85% in both the polls-only and nowcast estimates.
It's hard for me to express how much I love that tweet. It's a point I've been trying to make frequently but couldn't put in to words.
Yeah, exactly. I'm completely confident that Hillary will win, but that does not reassure me about how bad things are. And I agree that Ogged was right to feel this way over a decade ago.
My only quibble with that tweet is that I really like pizza, whereas I'm not objectively looking forward to eight years of HRC as POTUS.
Well, sub in something you're dubious about. Spam.
13: Yeah, me too. Maybe heebie now understands why I haven't been enjoying this election.
If you'll bring it to me, sure. I don't want to go outside because it's stupid hot.
19: Sorry, the offer is only for chris y.
20 me. Don't know why chrome suddenly decided to forget who I was. It remembered when I started typing it in.
I haven't seen anyone comment on it, but the last few national polls have been disconcerting. +6, +3, +2 Hillary over the last few days.
There does seem to be at least a small deflation of the post-convention bounce, but focusing on on the last few polls, it doesn't look like a huge narrowing yet. After 538's adjustment for house effects, the last 5 national polls range from to +4 to +7.
I went out for a bag of chips and caught five Pokemon.
Including an evolved bat-thingy with 400 CP.
I find that Sam Wang is a lot better for my mental health than 538. Though still subject to the issue discussed in the OP-quoted tweet, of course.
I'm struck by how the overwhelming majority of commenters then had links to their own personal blogs. No social media then is part of the answer, I guess.
27: That was the golden age of the liberal blogosphere.
400, that's it?
We're travelling all around and there are in fact different types of things more abundant in different countries. And apparently there are some that are only in certain places- if you want to collect every single one you have to visit at least US, Europe, and Japan. The unique one my kids collected in France is a mime.
I caught an evolved thing that was 1100 CP on Ile de la Cite. My kid is a higher level so he routinely catches things over 1000.
It's not bad for walking half a block.
I have the hardest time getting my brain to understand the message of this tweet because I've programmed myself to think that pizza is bad. I keep reading it as a lesser-of-two-evils anti-Clinton message.
There needs to be a Halfordismo Chrome plugin that automatically translates analogies. "This election is like if your friends pick dinner and 3 vote steak tartare and 2 vote pasta with a side of rolls. Even if steak wins, there's a big problem."
I've only had steak tartare once in my life. It was pretty good.
But honestly, even leaving aside the price difference, I can see why chicken wings are what they serve in most bars.
32: Maybe it's time someone started enforcing the analogy ban.
the last few national polls have been disconcerting
Disconcerting for what it says about the country, but the election is won on a state-by-state level. Obviously.
This isn't a new observation, but damn, I keep marveling at the extent to which we dodged a bullet when Trump became the Republican nominee. The Republican Party no doubt knows that it seriously fucked up -- but I wonder whether they'll take anything from it other than, um, Don't run 17 goddamn primary candidates in the first place. Stuff like that.
I was struck a couple of weeks ago by a Vox write-up about Avik Roy's lament over the future of the Republican Party:
"Conservative intellectuals, and conservative politicians, have been in kind of a bubble," Roy says. "We've had this view that the voters were with us on conservatism -- philosophical, economic conservatism. In reality, the gravitational center of the Republican Party is white nationalism."...
He expands on this idea: "It's a common observation on the left, but it's an observation that a lot of us on the right genuinely believed wasn't true -- which is that conservatism has become, and has been for some time, much more about white identity politics than it has been about conservative political philosophy. I think today, even now, a lot of conservatives have not come to terms with that problem."
This stunned me: you, Roy, really didn't know this? Really??
Anyway, I muse about whether the R Party will attempt to address any of this. (I doubt it.) The progressive left fusses over how to keep the Bernie Sanders impulse alive and well in the future, going forward, as they say: the right should be similarly concerned about keeping the Trumpian impulse at bay. The sad thing there is that their alternative to Trumpism is, I guess, Paul Ryan -- whose small government budget proposals just provide cover for what is essentially the same sort of anti-poor, anti-People of Color policy set.
You know, parsi, the rich are different from you and me.
I'm aware of that. What's your point?
My point is, I was trying to make a Fitzgerald joke.
Those Norman earls are a laugh minute.
More seriously, the right-wing rich buy Republicans to espouse the self-serving economic theories they have convinced themselves of while living in a bubble in which they have zero contact with the right-wing poor who actually vote for those Republicans in significant numbers. My point is, they have different filter bubbles.
+ some punctuation, probably.
I mentally added enough punctuation for it to sound like Shatner read it.
Roy is in a particular bubble, I believe, because his specialty is much wonkier than your average wingnut welfare recipient - abusing multicollinearity to argue that Medicaid harms people rather than helps them.
46: Yeah, that's probably true. Nonetheless, I believe some other younger Republican pundits -- the so-called Reformicons -- have actually acknowledged that the R Party as constituted is insupportable, both morally and electorally. I forget who it was now - a duo writing team - who wrote a policy prescription for the party that was actually not entirely indecent. I was quite surprised.
46: I knew multicollinearity was bad for significance testing, but I had no idea it had political effects.
47: Are you thinking of this -- https://www.amazon.com/Grand-New-Party-Republicans-American/dp/0307277801/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1471033120&sr=1-2&keywords=douthat%2C+ross
Or, they're just charlatans keeping their options open. This being reality, the answer presumably is both.
Yes. Somewhat hilariously, I had just figured out that it was Ross Douthat and Reihan Salam -- and then smirked at myself that Ross Douthat might have done anything that I thought was not utterly stupid, when I switched browser tabs to read Noah Millman on After Trumpism .. which mentions the Salam/Douthat thing.
Short version of their view, as voiced by Millman, for those who don't want to wade through:
The GOP should admit that the Iraq War was a mistake, and champion a genuinely more restrained foreign policy that defines the national interest more narrowly. It should advocate an approach to immigration that sidelines racial and cultural anxieties in favor of recruiting immigrants that will bring the most benefit and cause the least burden to American citizens, and the least pressure on blue collar wages. And, most radically, the GOP should abandon upper-income tax cuts and the privatization of entitlements in favor of reforms aimed at making our social and health insurance systems more effective, comprehensive, and progressive.
Look, I'm not saying these people have the answer to the Republican Party's perfidy all these many decades, but at least they're wandering away from privatizing every goddamned thing.
Before you say it: I'm perfectly aware that much of that prescription can turn into weasel words.
I went out for a bag of chips and caught five Pokemon.
I keep telling Pokey that the plural of Pokemon is Pokemen.
Given the etymology, surely pokemons?
I wasn't sure if one was allowed to use -tachi for nonhumans, but I searched "ポケモンたち" and it was even on what looked like the official Japanese site.
Pokemon is a contraction of "pocket monster" so the plural is clearly pokemons.
And Roy is another frequent mention in the ranks of the reformicons, I believe.
57: When I looked it up they gave an example where it was used for a group of dogs.
Anyway, "pokemon" is the most common plural form; "pokemons" is AFAICT non-standard.
Yeah, I guess it's an animate/inanimate distinction (not the only place Japanese makes it).
51: god those people are doofuses. How does any of that expand their electoral position, all it does is alienate a few more billionaires to donate to the dems, or sit on their money. Which is why the Rs won't do it.
For free I'll tell them what to do, they have to get white women to vote for them in the same percentage as white men.
Shh. They might be listening.
For free I'll tell them what to do, they have to get white women to vote for them in the same percentage as white men.
It worked for Romney!
I've only had steak tartare once in my life. It was pretty good.
I've had steak tartare a few times (though always at Ethiopian restaurants) and it has been consistently excellent.
A+++ WOULD EAT AGAIN
I had no idea that was a thing in Ethiopian. Who brought them their first tartar sauce?
I guess we have raw flank steak. Maybe I'll mash it up and see.
To the OP, and ogged's post from 12(!) years ago, I totally get where people are coming from on this, but I also feel like we already knew this was the case and always has been, and if people on the left weren't willing to admit it that's a result of people living in bubbles where they aren't forced to confront the ugliness just below the surface of American politics and culture. If anything the fact that Trump is significantly underperforming in the polls relative to Bush in 2004 is a sign that we really have made progress (unless it's just a sign of Trump's personal flaws as a candidate, which is certainly possible). White nationalism has been a core element of US political culture from the very beginning, and while its explicitness as a political issue in elections has varied it's never gone away.
I've been thinking for a while that the best historical parallel to Trump is Andrew Jackson, who was a much better politician but every bit as ignorant and authoritarian, and he was massively popular, won two elections, and successfully implemented many of his insane policy ideas, including some that were blatantly unconstitutional and struck down by the Supreme Court on that basis. And the republic did survive, though it was a close call and a lot of the damage he did persisted for a very long time, in some cases to the present day. But Jackson's constituency didn't go away, and Trump's constituency is its lineal descendant in a very real way, via the Know-Nothings, the Confederacy, the Klan, and the John Birch Society, among other lesser-known movements.
So for better or worse, we're stuck with these guys. Over time they've faded in electoral importance, and they may eventually disappear entirely (though I wouldn't bet on it). One way to understand their mindset is this: while liberal types think America is good because it's democratic, and if it abandons democracy it will no longer be good, white nationalists think democracy is good because it's American, and if America decides to abandon it, so much the worse for democracy but it will be worth it to Make America Great Again. Trump understands this on an intuitive level, though his personal goals appear to be more limited to garnering attention for himself, and it's the impetus behind all of his success.
So yeah, assuming Clinton wins in November we'll still be stuck with all these racist assholes, and there are a lot of them. But they've always been there; this isn't something new. Trump has emboldened them, which is very scary, and dealing with the results of that will be a major challenge going forward. But this isn't a new problem. In some ways it's the oldest problem we have.
I see the thread has moved on to raw meat, which I have never eaten, so I don't have an opinion.
I mean, I've had sushi, and muktuk. But no raw mammals.
I had some raw ground steak, possibly inclusive of raw egg though I don't remember, in Germany, at the end of my stay there one summer. I had been staying for free in an elderly couple's unused apartment and they offered me some when I was returning the key and it would have been pretty rude to refuse.
Anyway, it was fine.
It's been a few years, but it was interesting. Kind of gross raw, but pan-fried a little it wasn't bad. I've heard it's good pickled but haven't had it that way myself.
I suspect I would have enjoyed it more in some kind of highly spiced Ethiopian preparation.
I'm exceptionally averse to eating straight fat, though, as I've mentioned before. People who like both pork bellies and sushi would probably really like muktuk.
What is that? Buttered brie on toast?
neb should totally move to Alaska, where people are all about the fat.
I eat my raw meat surrounded by a layer of progressively more cooked meat.
I have eaten, and enjoyed, muktuk. I'm also a fan of pork belly and sushi, especially uni and very oily fish, so I think there may be a correlation.
Steak tartare is fine; arguably kibbeh nayyeh is better.
74:
Or what baa said...
Or at least compatible with what I take him to mean.
What is that? Buttered brie on toast?
It's burrata on bread, drizzled with olive oil and sprinkled with salt.
i love steak tartare! the tartare at bar tartine is a very good, non-standard version. the best classic version I've ever had was at the restaurant at the top of the mountain in megeve. mmmmm.
i love steak tartare!
According to some schools of information theory, this is a nearly contentless statement.
(By which I mean of course you love steak tartare. You probably love it almost as much as you love shirking on referring comely ladies to yours truly.)
(Which reminds me to ask if you're going to the opera 2nite.)
I am going to the ophuls & then better half going to n by nw, but I cannot face 2 movies as troublesome limb very troublesome today. child has managed to shirk both bc we are too too lenient as parents. Ades appears to have been lost in the shuffle.
Obvi you should send the child to the Ades. Gotta learn how the world works sometime.
Child went for bowl of world's lentil soup with me at café zitouna pre movie, which just ended & was *excellent*. Hope you enjoy opera! Bonne soirée à tout le monde!
Since I guess this is the closest thing to an active politics thread, this NYT piece is remarkable in how many people are willing to talk openly (some of them on the record!) about just what a disaster the Trump campaign is, and with months still left to go before the election. They've had two interventions to try to make him act like a real candidate, both of which failed. The second attempt was the very same day he went on to make his "second amendment people" line. It seems pretty obvious at this point that Trump knows he can't win and is even more unwilling than ever to change his style, since it gets him attention and that's all he really wants.
In other, but not unrelated, news, it appears Clinton has a serious shot at winning South Carolina, and Mississippi and Texas(!) are also looking increasingly within reach.
And Trump is saying he sees no need to get out the vote. Meanwhile, Paul Ryan seems to be seriously concerned that Trump may make the GOP lose the House. The House!
104.last We can't be that lucky, can we? One can hope.
Meanwhile Trump is recruiting poll watchers and saying he can only lose through poll fraud.
Just another day in the summer of chaos and Pokemon.
I do think it's pretty unlikely that the Dems actually take the House. The Senate is looking increasingly likely, though, and it's more important anyway for things like nominations. And hopefully Schumer will be more aggressive than Reid about killing the filibuster.
Someone should totally be setting up gyms or whatever at polling places.
I guess I could have suggested that at the Young Dems meeting today that I was invited to but didn't attend. Oh well.
I liked Sam Wang's post on the potential of the House flipping, which I totally didn't just google and read right now, not least because it doesn't get bogged down into made up* detail like 538.
*yeah, yeah, "projected", but this far out who cares about that level of detail?
Trolling because drunk(ish): even if you do take the House, does anyone seriously think that Clinton wouldn't just fritter away that opportunity with half-measures?
Yeah, that's actually where I found the second link in 104.
112: Nah. Unified government under one party is very unusual in the US, and under those circumstances the president is far from the only actor with real power to make things happen. Pelosi and Schumer could absolutely force Clinton's hand on lots of stuff.
Which is not to say they necessarily will, but in the American system Congress is very, very powerful, despite how useless it's generally been in recent years.
Ok. Yay! I guess. In other news, it seems I will have to cross half the goddamn city to find vermouth.
116: Sorry, but he is next in line.
Remember the 2009-2010 Congress and its big push for a carbon tax, card check, a large stimulus, and a health care act that wouldn't immediately be run away from by cowards who were going to lose their seats if anything passed, no matter how week, and/or who decided to retire without fighting for or apparently believing in anything recognizably progressive? I hope the Democrats can have a majority like that again!*
*This would be trolling but I'm not going to follow up. I know there's a panglossian take on that same Congress.
If this were the best of all possible worlds vermouth would definitely be closer. The 2009 Congress was the frittering I had in mind.
Yes, that was not the Democrats at their best. I think at least some of them have learned their lesson from the years since, though.
Still a few months left for Obama to get 80 votes for a stimulus package.
He's more into executive action these days. Lessons: sometimes people really do learn them.
120 Will no one deliver the vermouth of your choice to your very doorstep?
One might have hoped they would have learned their lesson from 8 goddamn years of the Bush administration, but apparently things work differently in Washington.
Can we please at least wait until after the election to set up the circular firing squad?
Possibly! But not in English.
I know it's tradition and all, but jeez.
American liberals are world champions at snatching despair from the jaws of victory.
Circular firing squads are the only way to be sure you won't be up against the wall. It's like having a minimum basic income.
I am attempting to get drunk on hard cider. I think this is going to take a while.
It isn't so much the despair as the snatching of defeat from victory in 2009-10 which occasioned said despair. If I were less misanthropic I would be inclined to side with bob on this.
When I make my trek I'll look for Calvados too.
133: Yeah, no question, that was a dispiriting experience. I really do think people who lived through it and the aftermath have learned some things, though, as evidenced by Obama's recent emphasis on executive action (which a recent NYT story apparently documents, though I haven't read it yet).
It sounds like Mossy is having a dispiriting experience right now.
Or at least has recently undergone one. (A Czech friend was very amused that the word for liquor in English is the same as the word for soul. She went round exclaiming "Becherovka is Czech national soul!" and chuckling to herself.)
Probably hard to find in Alaska, admittedly.
Smith & Forge Hard Cider was on sale at Fred Meyer, so I got that.
I don't expect repeal of what remains of the filibuster. Nor should progressives be looking for it, imo. The Senate is going Republican in 2018, and if one worries about grand bargains and the like, filibuster is the only defense.
Obviously, if Democrats win the House this fall, it will go Republican in 2018 as well.
It won't matter even in the slightest whether Congress has done great work in passing progressive legislation or just stalled around, and it won't matter in the slightest whether Clinton has done well on her various initiatives.
A Czech friend was very amused that the word for liquor in English is the same as the word for soul.
So, the word "liquor"?
That remark needs to be taken in the spirit in which it was intended.
144 might seem snarky but I actually could not understand what was intended.
Another word for soul is spirit, and spirit is also another word for distilled alcoholic beverage. So one could say equally correctly in English that the Italian national spirit was a love of music and liberty, and that the Irish national spirit was whiskey.
'Soul' is used pretty liberally here, for obvious reasons. One of the breweries makes Soul City. A Koelsch. Pretty good, I ray. And one of the wineries makes Soul Red.
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