I have had sooooo many cookies this month and APPARENTLY one's diet quality matters and I bought new work pants five pounds ago ugh.
what's the most Teeny song of the Teens?
"Call Me Maybe" or "Despacito" (not the Bieber version) or "Old Town Road."
Call Me Maybe was barely the Teens. Really more Tween than Teen.
I see that Stanley's prediction about the Washington Redskins was wrong on the details but very right about the continuing suck.
Given that the primaries haven't even started yet, it's remarkable how many of the predictions have already been proven wrong
When economists make simplified models of demand assuming only two goods are produced, they now use guitars and Fenty sports bras because Old Town Road is that important.
I think my only prediction for the primary in the first half of 2019 was that the winner would be someone under age 70. May turn out to be the most inaccurate prediction that could be made while also being that vague.
A learning experience: another reminder that people can say they want one type of person in the abstract, but when viewing people individually, they do NOT get ruled out for failing to fit that mold.
Yeah, I'm very concerned by how old all the candidates are, and I'd rather not vote for anyone over 65. On the other hand, I'm tied between Warren and Bernie (I'll vote for whoever's left when it gets to NY, or whoever looks like they have a better shot if they're both still in it), and they're both too old for me.
Happy new year, motherfuckers.
10: You are so far ahead of us. No wonder that your predictions are better.
I'm hoping for President Pence this time next year.
You mean lame duck President Pence, right?
If we're wishcasting, why not President Pelosi?
At the pro-impeachment protest I went to, most of the homemade signs were on message, but one that was a little off said, "IMPEACH PENCE FIRST".
who can come up with the best political fantasy for 2020?
Pee Tape and Pence is there getting the shower.
Peep says I'm good at this, so I'll go nuts. By 2030:
The China Dream will be visibly failing. Growth will be stalling at middle-income level; PRC-centric international institutions will not have displaced American; de facto alliances of various kinds will have substantially contained PRC influence. If Xi is still in power, there will be deepened Maoism; if not, deepened Brezhnevism, with consequent dysfunctions in either case.
US foreign policy will mostly have stabilized on New Cold War lines with bipartisan support. (If Trump is reelected I take this one back.)
Foreign-origin information operations will have been substantially neutralized in most countries. Domestic operations, not.
The EU will exist, with more popular support than currently; re-accession will be a live issue in Britain.
Scary shit will have happened in India.
Well, I got one right last year:
By Christmas no candidate under 70 will be regarded as serious in the Democratic primaries.
We will have squirrels, but not in a way we can understand right now.
I'm mostly with 20 although I think EU countries will (re)take up some of the foreign policy ground & influence US has defaulted on recently. Not quite back to interwar state, but we aren't going back to the 80s, either. If Trump is re-elected he's going to engineer some sort of batshit adventureism that will cement this. Otoh, the GOP may partially implode and make things more interesting politically than they have been in decades. More likely democrats continue own goals and save them from this fate.
Agree China is going to get messy, and it's going to economically hurt most places in the west. Central America is going to get worse. So is South Africa.
US middle class will erode further. There will be a few events that make Australia's current wildfire crop look low-key, and most people will actually turn around to thinking climate action is a good idea. No significant gains in actually doing it though.
UK will regret Brexit. Scotland will make a lot of noise about leaving, but probably won't. Northern Ireland might.
US health care will be tweaked in a way that still ends up costing 3-4x comparable services. There will be another small recession underpinned by malfeasance in the financial sector, but not 2008 level.
Domestic social media/information campaigns will blow up a bit in popular consciousness requiring a scapegoat company or two. No functional change though, they will continue to grow and will eat a good chunk of mainstream advertising revenue.
I did okay, actually.
The ANC will narrowly retain its majority in the National Assembly, but lose it in Gauteng.
Right, wrong.
A natural disaster of some kind will kill a large number of Rohingyas in Bangladesh.
Only a small number.
Iran will shoot numerous protesters.
It did.
The Xinjiang gulag will expand, and begin to be extended to other impure elements. Uighur jihadis will carry out at least one serious attack on a BRI project.
Right, wrong (unless I missed something).
Star Wars will underperform.
Wrong. Even the streaming show apparently is doing well.
Godzilla will blow everybody's minds. I will be smug.
Wrong.
I think [Syrian Kurds]'ll cut a deal with Assad.
Sort of.
Basically, every optimistic prediction was wrong. So 20 should be discounted, except the scary shit.
although I think EU countries will (re)take up some of the foreign policy ground & influence US has defaulted on recently.
I don't think this is inconsistent with 20. Likewise the New Cold War line. Europe did a lot of lifting in the Cold War.
Central America is going to get worse. So is South Africa.
Yes.
70 in a woman is like 55 in a man.
I have wondered why they couldn't impeach Pence at the same time.
Even for all of Pence's sins, it would be too cruel to send him back to Indiana.
Happy New Year from Arrakis, reprobates!
I didn't predict anything ambitious last year, but I have started to say recently, and still say, the cracks in Biden's confidence are widening and he will drop out early in the primary voting process, maybe in the to-do over whatever won't have gone quite as hoped in Iowa or New Hampshire. No idea what happens in the primary after that.
Star Wars will underperform.
Wrong. Even the streaming show apparently is doing well.
The movie did underperform though? 19% less domestic box office than #8 over the opening weekend, 5% less over the first 11 days.
I spent the day working on my succession plan. The plan part is easy: a tax lawyer downstairs will come up and take a look at the inventory of pending cases I have on hand, notify clients or co-counsel, as appropriate, and help the clients who need new lawyers get them. I have a back-up more litigation oriented lawyer who may want to take over some of the cases, and will be in a position to pitch the clients/co-counsel. The harder part is the inventory, which I've been writing up. Looks like I have 18 open cases (it's slightly more, because some of them are clients with more than one pending case) right now: they'll come and go until such time as I get hit by a truck. (Including one arising from a client's truck hitting someone.) The list has been an interesting exercise, because it's the client, caption, contacts, and where the case is just now. One should be consensually dismissed next week, another has our answer due in two weeks, and everything in between.
I guess I also need to set out contact info for the clients whose cases are closed and I still have files.
I've never felt like I wanted to invest in case management software, since my current system -- keeping a unified calendar with everything on it, copies of documents saved to a hard drive or living in the cloud, and remembering a ton of shit -- works fine for me. Not that anything would be easy for my successors to figure out. That'll be their problem, I suppose.
I predict that no truck will relieve me of the inevitable entropy that overtakes law practices like mine, and I'll end up retiring ahead of schedule. In any event before 2030, so I can stay home and yell at the TV.
I wonder what happened to my dad's old firm. When he left, there were at least two active attorneys. But one had a stroke and the other was married to him. There was a new guy, who was never there with my dad, who got disbarred.
The moral of the story is to never commingle funds or let a clot form in your brain.
They probably mention the commingle-thing in law school.
29: Damn I'm good. Except at search engines, apparently.
2018 was okay.
I've spent the last 6 months of 2019 in increasingly difficult-to-tolerate cancer treatment, and I will be spending a minimum of 8 months of 2020 in cancer treatment of unknown difficulty. The overall prognosis is both poor and indeterminate, with no conclusions to be drawn until 2 years post-surgery, which is on January 2nd. I'm having a hard time investing much interest or emotion in the goings-on of the rest of the world. I hope Trump says some more things about windmills, mostly.
We got a king sized bed. It is extremely nice. My dog is also very good.
A bunch of people are about to come over to my house and I'm in a TERRIBLE mood. Happy New Year! Don't talk to me.
Happy New Year to you also. Not that I'm near your house.
Well, you're all invited, but I might not have enough fancy hats and party blower noisemaker things
We just watched The Neverending Story, but it ended.
That sounds like the Dutch version of Ragnarok.
And there we are. 2020. HNY friends.
I called you all motherfuckers way upthread because you're always like 16 hours late.
Happy New Year, everyone. I predict that the world will get worse in both old-fashioned and new-fangled ways. I predict that people will continue to call things "old fashion."
Messily, I'm sorry your year is going to be so full of suck. Best of luck with tomorrow's surgery.
Tim's Dad got diagnosed with lung cancer just before Christmas. That's not something you can cure. So the question is: will he die this year or can the cancer be managed for a few years with a decent quality of life?
They sent the biopsy cells to Toronto's Princess Margaret hospital for biomarker testing. Tim was doing some research online, and it said that sometimes in the U.S. you have to fight your insurer to get that covered. So, it's a small blessing that we don't have to worry about the finances of care and what's covered.
Let me be the first to wish you all happy new year!
Also, it's 2020, and I still need my glasses to see the TV. What's up with that?
47: Have you tried watching ABC's 20/20? That might work better now.
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Just want somewhere to express some frustration. I have a non-binary roommate who uses she pronouns and who's dating a non-binary person who uses they pronouns and it's an occasion to hear all this -- I dunno what the word is, I guess transphobia, but specifically enbiephobia -- from my family. I know it would be much more painful to have to listen to to it if I were non-binary, and I was about to say, "I can't imagine," but actually I can perfectly and this kind of shit is why I was closeted for so long.
I just had a call with my mother on which I had occasion to say five times in a row, "You are being very rude and you can think what you like but you can also keep it to yourself. I am setting a boundary for what I am willing to listen to. You are being very rude and you can think what you like but you can also keep it to yourself ...."
I mean, fine, people have some kind of resistance to the concept of "non-binary". Why do they think their internal resistance is important to anyone else or needs expressing?
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That is super frustrating.
If your last question was nonrhetorical, my guess is that they suppressed their own nonbinariness decades ago. If your mom embraces the freedom of nonbinary people then it threatens her house of cards and destabilizes a lot of choices. So she's being mildly aggressive to stave it off.
Enbiephobia was a new word for me. I knew about transphobia but didn't realize how strongly people felt about non binary folks. That seems like it would be less threatening. I think many people find surgery threatening and confusing, which I kind of understand as long as they keep it to themselves in public. But the other, I don't.
I just posited its existence as a word, and it turns out, after googling, that I misspelled it. It should be "enbyphobia." I don't spend that much time on queer twitter/tumblr, which is where I think one actually reads these words.
Could homophobia, transphobia, and enbyphobia all share a foundation among people who particularly strongly espouse gender conformity, consciously or otherwise? Seen most stiflingly in how children are raised today.
52: I googled it as well and almost wrote it with a "y" but then I thought there might be alternate spellings.
My mom, and my aunt, who is the same kind of jerk, think they're feminists. They're just terfs, or in this case nberfs, but in a less passionately ideological sense, more carping about something they don't understand and are not open-minded enough to ask about. My singing teacher did not know what "non-binary" meant but was calm and generous enough to ask. And he is not exactly the wokest guy on earth. I mean, what they really deserve as a response is, "OK, boomer." They're reactive old people who don't have any kind of metaconsciousness that they are not automatically right in their conflicts with younger people, that there was not some process by which they were righteously indignant when they were young and then the location of cultural correctness magically moved precisely with their opinions, so that now when something seems to them to have "gone too far" to them of course it's just a rational assessment and not a reflection of their own rigidity and narrowness.
They also don't feel like they've been listened to or taken seriously in their lives and can't distinguish between being oppressively ignored and needing to shut up for good reason, because their own relative comfort and privilege is invisible to them, at least on some axes.
I mean, I'm old enough that I sometimes have a "kids today" reaction to some things; I'm just capable most of the time of pausing for sixty seconds and noticing that this is a natural consequence of aging, and having an emotional reaction because I'm in a values conflict with someone doesn't make me automatically right.
And I think what heebie is saying is true and I think it's slightly broader. I think there's some kind of implicit rage at people being willing to say who they are and what they want and expecting to get it. They don't feel *they* were ever able to do that, *they* have been so disappointed, why should other people be so proud, so expressive, so optimistic?
Ugh.
I like to think of my parents as on the open side, but their main experience with the nonbinary concept was Jill Soloway on Fresh Air, and they took away from that Soloway would needlessly antagonize service workers who misgender them. I looked up the transcript and it seems Soloway said they got mad internally but didn't actually speak up, and then roleplayed with Terry Gross a conversation where they did. And regardless of that conversation, Soloway may in fact be a preening asshole, having stuck up for Tambor internally when his behavior on Transparent was at issue.
Also I made these panetonne muffins for my yoga teacher and they are delicious but they would have been more delicious and prettier if I'd remembered to sprinkle on the decorative sugar. Everything is terrible.
I'm just capable most of the time of pausing for sixty seconds and noticing that this is a natural consequence of aging, and having an emotional reaction because I'm in a values conflict with someone doesn't make me automatically right.
This is nicely put.
Yes, but how old did you have to be before you realised that? Almost all teenagers I have known ever since I was one, and certainly including me when I was, needed to learn that having an emotional reaction because I was in a values conflict with someone didn't make me automatically right. and took some years to learn it.
Seen most stiflingly in how children are raised today.
What? The middle school I work at is a different world from my middle school 30 years ago. Kids are openly gay, bi, non binary, etc. and everyone, staff and students, just roll with it. It's the least stifling environment I've ever seen.
61: I'm not sure whether that's to me or Stanley. If to me, I don't quite remember, but younger than 60 or 68, which are the ages of my aunt and mother, respectively. I'm not complaining about teenagers, I'm complaining about old people. My aunt in particular really seems to entirely lack the concept "I might not be automatically right just because I'm having an emotion in a values conflict" or "I may have contributed to this outcome that was unpleasant for me," at least as reflected by her outward statements. I was once mentioning this to my roommate, who said, "that sounds like it must be stressful for her," and I said, "It is. She smokes a lot of pot."
Warren is much more likely than Sanders to lose to Trump.
I've watched a few people in their 60s or 70s handle the awkwardness of learning about nonbinary pronouns, etc, with reasonable grace. Kind of some teenage awkwardness and slip ups, where the first few seemed confusing or funny, but then that reaction passed. I think that's within reason. You can have your not-perfect response, but there is a limited length of time on it.
After, say, 3 corrections, you are obligated to be apologetic about future slip ups. That's where Tia's mom is really failing, in my opinion. Being told that you're being rude over and over again is way past the line.
Warren is much more likely than Sanders to lose to Trump.
This might be true, but she'd be a much better president.
63: I think that's also a personality trait, not necessarily correlated with age at all.
It's beyond not getting pronouns right with either of them! They both explicitly said that the whole thing was bullshit. My aunt demanded more than once that I tell her my roommate's partner's "real" gender, *after* I said that they wouldn't find that respectful!!!11!!
I don't know if 64 is true, but 66 isn't an answer to it.
64: Based on what, presumed misogyny? Or are you going by the small difference in polls?
It's not an answer to it, but it's an important consideration. Progressive ideals need to be implemented wisely, or else you squander your opportunity. An ineffective progressive president is merely removing the knife without doing any healing.
I know there are old people who don't have these traits. I am only going to have these traits when I am old if something in me really atrophies. These are particularly reactive, narrow old people. The experience of values conflict with younger people is an inherent part of aging; the inability to reflect on how your context determines your values and how you should try to be curious about other people's views and experiences is a feature of the adults in my family (though it isn't that rare outside it) .
Anyway, it's just enraging for me and has been since forever.
71: No, it isn't. Pre-Trump that may have been true, but no more. He has accelerated the Republican corrosion of your republic so greatly that I doubt seriously it would meaningfully survive a second Trump term.
Oh, I agree with that, too. But our choices aren't Sanders or Trump. If 64 is actually accurate (which absolutely no one knows) then the choices are:
Fighting for a Sanders victory with no guarantees
Fighting for a (closer) Warren victory with no guarantees
Fighting for (anyone else).
Yes, beating Trump is a triage decision tree situation. The consequences are catastrophic if he's reelected. But it's not a foregone conclusion that Warren would lose to him.
They both explicitly said that the whole thing was bullshit.
What's not helping is that the trans stuff has been hijacked by grifters like the Human Rights Campaign and people with autogynephilia. Pushing claims like a manufactured epidemic of hate crimes against trans people and lesbians are transphobic if they don't want to hook up with someone with a penis is of course going to result in a backlash.
He has accelerated the Republican corrosion of your republic so greatly that I doubt seriously it would meaningfully survive a second Trump term.
Oh come on. Bush Jr. and his ilk manufactured an entire war and the republic is still here.
It was to you; and it was me complaining about teenagers, although I know that old people are capable of the same thing.
In general, in many discussions of sex and gender, I am conscious of enormous and possibly unbridgeable cultural divides partly between generations, and partly between the (some subcultures in the) US and the (some subcultures in the) UK. These are not so much a matter of conscious positions as of unconscious assumptions about sexual behaviour, boundaries, etc. For example, it seems to me that there has been a complete normalisation of porn consumption which has led to a centrality of masturbation in ideas of what sex is, why people do it, what they might get out of it, etc.
I haven't thought about this in any very coherent or consistent way and it's a very difficult area to discuss, since it demands trust, honesty and intimacy, which are by definition hard to manage between a representative sample of strangers. And who would be representative?
76: He has a smart, inventive, shamelessly partisan AG actively pursuing conspiracy theories, undermining the FBI, and denying Congress the ability to exercise oversight powers. AIUI the only institutional remedy to this is impeachment; we know how the Senate will vote, and IIRC the Republicans are expected to hold the senate in 2020. Republicans may have been willing to do all this under GWB, but they didn't. Today is different.
I don't know about Warren is much more likely than Sanders to lose to Trump but I do know that a lot of people who say this in my world might also think about I might not be automatically right just because I'm having an emotion in a values conflict.
Are there assholes who would vote for Sanders but not for Warren, even though we are faced with Trump? The existence of such people -- and I think my description fits, given the obvious danger that Trump presents -- is a necessary condition for saying that S is much more likely to win that W. Accepting this as a premise, is there also a hard ceiling on the Sanders movement? That's the tough question, seems to me.
I think that any of our leading nominees can win, and that the challenge of getting adequate numbers of voters of color to the polls in Pennsylvania, Iowa, Wisconsin, and Michigan isn't going to be appreciably easier for any of them.
I also think Sanders may be somewhat more likely to win than Warren. I don't think assholes who are sexist or purists are the problem though. I think it just might be easier to depress turnout with Warren than with Sanders. His base really is enthusiastic that really is convinced but he is a most inclined to care about regular Americans.
I have to say though it's possible Warren would have a better chance. She's certainly going to encounter a lot of opposition who think she's too far left, but The Usual Suspects are going to treat Sanders as a more existential threat. The amount of lies that are going to be told about him are going to be Unlimited by everyone and the Press including the people who are theoretically left.
I'm in Lincoln until tomorrow. Did you want me to fax a Runza?
75: Because I in some sense elicited this comment, I feel like I have to to deal with it somehow.
I have no strong opinions about HRC although I know some people don't like them, but given the rest of your comment, heuristically, I doubt for the same reasons.
On "autogynephilia": because one goddamned person has decided to theorize some typology of transgender women, it doesn't mean he's right, or if he is, that people who were in one category were some how not "really" trans or were hijacking anything. This is some transphobic talking point you've absorbed.
It is is further bs to say without evidence, quotation, or citation that concerns about hate crimes against trans people are a "manufactured epidemic". Here are some numbers for 2017 from AVP. Twenty-seven trans/GNC people were apparently killed in hate violence in 2017 in the US. If you're going to make a claim like this, link to someone saying something wrong, and say why it's wrong.
Finding ways to express preferences without invalidating other people's gender identity is a complicated thing for queers to negotiate and they're figuring it out; I just don't think you're sincere in your deep concern for the welfare of lesbians here. No supposed excesses of all these uppity trans people explains my family's (who know fuck all what they're even talking about, much like you) dickery.
This is the end of the energy I have for this and actually really don't want to get further agitated because my roommate and her partner are coming home and I don't want to be in some stew that I also don't feel I can tell them about. Lesson learned: don't vent about this here. I guess I can go to my programming retreat's message board. I know that they really and truly do not tolerate *phobia.
I feel like faxing it may lose some of the subtle flavors of the Runza.
The cabbage is kind of lacking in volume anyway.
Our nominee is going to be presented as the re-incarnation of Lenin no matter who it is. Maybe Mao is the better prediction.
Chiming in to say that the dynamic that Tia describes here:
They're reactive old people who don't have any kind of metaconsciousness that they are not automatically right in their conflicts with younger people, that there was not some process by which they were righteously indignant when they were young and then the location of cultural correctness magically moved precisely with their opinions, so that now when something seems to them to have "gone too far" to them of course it's just a rational assessment and not a reflection of their own rigidity and narrowness.
is very familiar. I realized I was the "older generation" about 10 years ago when some issue or other came to my attention and I thought "Huh? That's a thing we shouldn't do any more now?" But the grown-up reaction, which I don't think should be rare, is to say "I guess I should listen and learn more about this, or at least be silent while I figure out my own thinking rather than reflexively tell younger people they're Wrong."
If anyone needs a good anthem for 2020, may I warmly recommend Grace Petrie's Black Tie? You don't have to be trans, or LGBT more broadly, to find it pretty compelling (says this cis straight middle-aged white lady).
(Lyrics slightly NSFW, I should say, in case anyone is tempted to blast this from their work computer speakers.)
I find young people confusing and scary, but still better than old people.
I think it's mainly that I can usually just ignore young people. And that most of the counter staff at Runza is young people.
What's not helping is that the trans stuff has been hijacked by grifters like the Human Rights Campaign and people with autogynephilia.
First enbyphobia, now autogynephilia. New vocabulary words!
I ain't the most woke guy in the world, but autogynephilia (and the underlying concept it describes) are entirely new to me. Regardless, I have a feeling that hostility to trans folks doesn't spring from a purported misdiagnosis. If it were so, it would be physicians getting beat up in bars or whatever.
It's awfully easy to ignore the problems of people different from you (as I have heretofore done with the autogynephiles!). And whether or not HRC is bad, it's inevitable that organizations of humans are going to have problems, whether they are civil rights groups or corporations or basketball teams or churches. To explain away bigotry by saying that a particular civil rights group falls short of perfection seems ... unsatisfying.
Most Pennsylvanian assholes are human.
I had a slightly boggling conversation with my father this afternoon on the phone, where Virginia politics (where he is) and Gov. Northam's blackface issues came up. We were discussing whether he had been forgiven or just successfully&shamelessly outlasted the public attention span. He muttered something about it having been a different time, and he was shocked to hear me claim that blackface was always&forever racist - "Whatever happened to black is beautiful?". He then pivoted to the question of play-acting Irish on St. Patrick's day, and I told him that in my experience actual Irish people aren't fond of that, either. Apparently my strident claim that it's never OK to play-act another race didn't sit well with him.
Fun fact, one of the popularizers of autogynephilia as a concept was... the fucksaw guy.
Did he cut his dick off by accident?
I sort of recognize what your dad is trying to say. "Look, we knew it was anti-black, but it didn't carry much cognitive dissonance. The word "racist" really rattles me, and that didn't really rattle me, so I don't think it makes sense to put the word "racist" with that act back then."
It's the kind of thing that's true with a whole lot of acts of complacency, prior to the time when there's a critical mass of people who care about the thing. There are always horrible, commonplace things which will be shocking 50 years from now, but right now face too much complacence to wage war against.
It doesn't make it right to be complacent about the thing, and certainly your dad ought to recognize that it was majorly problematic. But there's nature, nurture, and context, and he's protesting that Northam's not immutably racist - it was just context! (To which the response is, "the context was racist. It was a problematic time.")
Googled to recall if it was actually a reciprocating saw or just had the characteristic motion of one, and apparently you can buy a fucksaw adapter on Amazon now. Truly we are living in the future.
Apparently, at least once somebody just put a dildo over an actual reciprocating saw blade. Don't google that.
Lesson learned: don't vent about this here. I guess I can go to my programming retreat's message board. I know that they really and truly do not tolerate *phobia.
And whether or not HRC is bad, it's inevitable that organizations of humans are going to have problems, whether they are civil rights groups or corporations or basketball teams or churches.
Unfogged also counts as a collection of humans. Tia, I appreciated your venting, think that it makes sense to not continue spending energy on the conversation here when it feels like too much of a drain, but also hope you'll feel like following-up (on this or other related topics) in the future.
Reading the thread backwards and seeing HRC as a shorthand for Human Rights Campaign was confusing.
Yes. I was thinking what are they blaming her for now?
On "autogynephilia": because one goddamned person has decided to theorize some typology of transgender women, it doesn't mean he's right, or if he is, that people who were in one category were some how not "really" trans or were hijacking anything. This is some transphobic talking point you've absorbed.
Talking point? It's in the last two editions of the DSM.
It is is further bs to say without evidence, quotation, or citation that concerns about hate crimes against trans people are a "manufactured epidemic". Here are some numbers for 2017 from AVP. Twenty-seven trans/GNC people were apparently killed in hate violence in 2017 in the US.
Yeah, "apparently". These organizations like to paint every trans homicide as a hate crime but the reality is these killings are virtually all due to domestic disputes or disputes that arise from being involved in the drug trade and/or sex work. HRC puts out similar numbers, the last several years having between 22 and 29 transgender homicides a year. Loads of major news outlets along with our current crop of primary candidates trumpet this because we live in a world where virtue signalling trumps math.
The general estimates for the transgender population run around .2 or .3 percent of the population, so around 700K to a million people. The murder rate in the U.S. is 5 per 100K. These so called epidemic numbers put the trans homicide rate at least 30 percent less and maybe not even half the rate of the rest of the population.
The report I linked to explicitly disaggregates hate crimes and intimate partner violence. Did you bother to look at it? Even the hate crime and ipv numbers are not every trans person killed in the US in a year. If you have some citation, link to it. You are still just bullshitting. You are absolutely not credible on this or related issues; the fact that you decide that those 27 people were not killed in hate crimes when I just provided a source does not make it so. You must provide a source, or you should really shut up.
Okay, here is a newsflash: the DSM has historically and in the present promoted bigotry against sexual and gender minorities. It is a political document. It is not some pellucid reflection of profound truths of the human psyche. (I literally don't know anyone *in the field* who would defend the DSM as authoritative as to reality.)
In any case, the talking point is that there are somehow real and fake trans people, and other cisgender people are capable of sussing out the difference and are legitimately empowered to doubt the legitimacy of other people's transness. This is what you said and it is a well-known transphobic talking point and you could learn about this if you spent ninety seconds googling and reading. It would be interesting to talk about erotic responses to your own body in people of all genders in a group of people who were actually interested in having the conversation in good faith, but that's not you, and in a group of people in which the range of people being talked about were well represented, and that's not this thread right now.
I cannot believe I pulled this shit out of the woodwork when I just wanted to fucking vent about my family. I know my feelings are not the most important thing here, but it FUCKING SUCKS to have someone close to you where just talking about the bare facts about your life elicits this torrent of bullshit. I can literally not be saying anything but using the word "partner" and that's enough.
Yes whoever we nominate will be compared to Stalin Lenin Mao and Hitler regardless but but Bernie will face the most attacks from within the party. I think some people in the Democratic party would prefer Trump to Bernie
It's waaaay upthread now, but Messily, I hope the surgery went smoothly and that 2020 sucks less than expected. And BG, I'm really sorry about your FIL. There's some really hopeful new/experimental stuff for lung cancer out there; I hope he's a candidate/responder.
108. I haven't kept up: is Bernie actually a Democrat now?
Fascinating. Say more.
108: The idea that everyone must march in lockstep behind the Democratic nominee is correct, but some Bernie supporters had a significant problem with that last time around. It certainly seemed as though some within the Democratic Party (and socialists aligned with Democrats) preferred Trump to Hillary.
but some Bernie supporters had a significant problem with that last time around.
This is a fact which half the time I believe, and the other half of the time I think it's Russian propaganda.
The question is how many is 'some'. I mean, out of millions and millions of people, 'some' preferred Trump to Hillary, sure. But I don't think that was an important wing of Bernie's support.
The Warren vs. Sanders "more likely to win" thing seems very difficult to gauge. They currently have different bases, and Sanders has been more effective connecting with working-class people, which might translate into turnout in the general. Warren has also shown some vulnerability in how she's responded to relentless bad-faith attacks, which is a bit worrying. That said, Sanders seems more likely to freak out the middle-class white people into voting for Trump because mah 401k. So who the fuck knows?
People doing polls in swing states?
116: Yes, those are super reliable!
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2016/president/wi/wisconsin_trump_vs_clinton-5659.html
The baseball guy called it right, right?
118: Curt Schilling?
Yes, but I don't think he did any polling.
Yeah, that guy. Silver Schilling.
No. He was way less wrong than the people who were making claims that Clinton's election was a virtual certainty, and arguably not wrong at all given his responsible emphasis on uncertainty in forecasting, but he didn't make a correct binary call on the election.
I hear a whole lot of 108 last from Sanders oriented people who also say that there's no way they are going to vote for Biden. And some use the former to justify the latter. There's plenty of spittle flecked contempt to go around -- no one should be dishing it out if they're not prepared to take it. And indeed, no one should be dishing it out at all, because there's no Sanders victory without people currently supporting Biden* and no Biden victory without people currently supporting Sanders.
Right now, I'm hard pressed to think of an early state where Warren beats Sanders. I haven't made much of a dive into the polling, mind you, so this is pretty nearly ex recto. But if he consistently beats her, then what's her path to the nomination?
* Yes, I know that the theory is that Sanders brings such a huge new following to the mix that he doesn't need the votes of 'corporate Democrats.' Evidence for this actually happening is pretty thin.
IMO, the Warren movement exhibits somewhat less spittle flecked contempt than the Sanders movement. I guess the theory for Warren at this point is that once it becomes clear that Biden and Sanders can't knock the other out, and that their supporters won't rally to the other, then Warren can be the consensus candidate.
It's all so terribly unscientific.
For a while Warren was pretty much everyone's second choice (when they polled for that). Not sure if that's still true.
Right, it's a human system. In 2004, the idea was widespread that Dean's army of young volunteers was going to change the composition of the Iowa caucuses. And maybe it looked good on paper to his strategists. Then it doesn't work out, he has a rally for his people, and some media types think (correctly) that they can get clicks and buzz by making a big deal out of the tone, or timbre, whichever, of his exhortation to fight on.
113: This is a fact which half the time I believe, and the other half of the time I think it's Russian propaganda.
114: But I don't think that was an important wing of Bernie's support.
122: I hear a whole lot of 108 last from Sanders oriented people who also say that there's no way they are going to vote for Biden.
Right. I was attempting to gently tweak roger there. I believe that I am much more representative of Bernie supporters than roger is. I was a very enthusiastic Hillary supporter in the general election, and won't have any trouble working up to being excited about Biden if it comes to that. I haven't really thought this through, but of the surviving presidential candidates, Joe may now be in my Top 10!
Further to 123, I'd just add that I am nowhere near certain that Sanders can't knock Biden down in those first four contests.
125: In the Capitol Weekly California tracking poll, one of those that asks this question, if you add together levels of support as either first or second choice, Warren is far and away the top, with 46% support, vs. Sanders 35%, Biden 28%, Buttigieg 27%. (For context, she is also the top candidate in this particular December poll, with her at 23% as first choice, Sanders and Biden both 19%, and Buttigieg 14%.)
130: Is that just California?
they can get clicks and buzz by making a big deal out of the tone, or timbre, whichever, of his exhortation to fight on.
The asymmetries between Democratic scandals sold by the media as being career-ending, and Trump scandals sold by the media as being career-ending is breath-taking.
122 et al. I can't imagine any actual Democrat or progressive or any other left-of-center affiliation except hardcore Leninist ("heighten the contradictions!") sitting out 2020 or voting for Trump as a spite vote, no matter who the Democratic candidate is. I am not terribly fond of any of the current front-runners, but so what?
133: That's how I feel. But on Twitter -- oy! I read the other day that if Sanders is nominated than Hillary will endorse Trump. And this tweet got likes! My only hope is that these are all bots.
134: "Then" not "than", peep! I attack others, but I am the worst!
133 is me too, but was also me in 2016.
What kind of idiot pays their way as a delegate from California to the convention in Philadelphia so they can boo John Lewis? The kind who even now says that Clinton would have been as bad or worse than Trump. The existence of the EC means that even a vanishingly small cohort of people who think that Clinton (or Gore) aren't good enough, so why not punish the people who support them (the real enemies) by letting the Republicans win.
Looks like second choices are asked pretty frequently now. In the latest YouGov (national) poll, the equivalent sum support is Biden 38, Warren 33, Sanders 28, Buttigieg 14. And in Ipsos, it's Biden 35, Sanders 31, Warren 26, Buttigieg 12. So not very clear-cut - in Ipsos Warren didn't even get the highest share of second-choice support.
This is a fact which half the time I believe, and the other half of the time I think it's Russian propaganda.
Me too. That it was Russian propaganda at the time and is now part of the Bernie mythos.
I liked Castro, am sad his candidacy was never viable, hope he gets major important roles next.
We won't know until retrospect, but if Warren wins and validates her campaign strategies, I think we'll get a lot of think pieces about her subtle genius and new campaign methods. The selfie lines, of course. But her endorsement strategy seems really well tailored to, um, me. Getting Megan Rapinoe, Roxanne Gay, Rebecca Solnit to release endorsement videos/essays? (Ashley Nicole Black and her tweet?) Someone there has a good sense of where cultural power lies these days.
Ideally, Warren wins Iowa narrowly, Sanders wins New Hampshire by a mile, Biden wins Nevada, and Warren wins South Carolina solidly. Then Biden and Sanders get hit by busses on Super Tuesday. Buttigieg or Booker remain in the race long enough to keep things interesting after that but ultimately wind up as VP at best. That way every major faction gets to pat themselves on the back for a victory, all intra-party venom ends by early March, and there's tons of free press.
130: and if we had ranked choice voting or whatever it's called, she'd be a shoe-in. How that plays out in a first-past-the-post system, I don't know.
Love it, mate. I'm just thinking we need to spice up the third act a little.
144: The primary elections aren't FPTP, fortunately - state delegates will be split up mostly by vote proportion so if everything is as evenly divided and nobody drops out, it becomes a contested convention and theoretically Sanders and Warren delegates could express these ranked preferences by coalescing behind one of the two.
I don't think that will happen, but it's a good backstop at least.
The Convention will be deadlocked and then Bloomberg will make a last-minute push by basically buying up all the delegates, and just when he appears to have it locked up, one of the even wealthier billionaires (Bezos, Gates, or Buffett) will swoop in and steal the nomination. Democrats will run on a platform of competent plutocracy.
Man. I'd really like to commit to a candidate and start rationalizing my attachment and idealizing them. I've been trying to stay openminded until the primaries, and reminding myself that any member of the group is an improvement, etc. Having multiple futures is draining, and I want that to coalesce so I can start rooting for my team.
I've settled down on being absolutely delighted if it's either Warren or Sanders, who seem close enough on policy to me that I'm not sweating the distinctions between them, and absolutely willing to vote for and work for anyone else.
OT: an interesting article on the collapse of Republicans in San Diego. It is interesting to see the SANDAG transportation plan as a central issue. It should be; to meet new CA law (which my friend kinda-mostly wrote) would re-make the region. But interesting to see that people actually recognize the importance of such a bureaucratic thing.
Right, because if it is Warren or Sanders, it means the country recognizes the enemy and is ready to fight. That alone would be incredible.
I do remember in 2016, talking to a friend about Sanders v Clinton, and my friend saying then that if Sanders won, it would mean the world was so different than everyone thought that all political predictions were meaningless. Now I barely remember what it was like to have expectations.
I have basically mentally checked out of the primary until it's my turn to vote. I still follow the news, but I try not to get too invested in any candidate. Basically, I'm Megan.
151: Is this friend someone with a surname that incorporates a verb relating to cooking?
That's not an obvious clue for me, so probably not. It is my friend at OPR.
Oh, I see. I was thinking of a legislative staffer and possibly a different field of super-technical reform (RHNA).
Oh, so I guess Trump is going to get his war with Iran.
IMO, Warren has done her candidacy no great service with her "I'm with Bernie" position. His fans and stans and surrogates attack her relentlessly on social media every day, and still she says, "I'm with Bernie."
I guess this was always about going after the Sanders constituency? But it makes her look subservient, and handmaiden-ish, makes her look like she's auditioning for a VP slot in a Sanders admin. And anyway, she's not ever going to get that hard-core of Sanders supporters. The bro is strong with them, they're just not ever going to support a woman.
I'm 100% behind LB's comment in 150.
I put my name in to be a Warren delegate. Its a bit of a long shot, but it could happen.
Looking at Castro's platform now that he's dropped out. His policies aren't bad. I like Warren better, but I think Castro would have been my 2nd or 3rd choice - certainly ahead of Mayor Pete.
To the title of the post: My boss flew me and all employees into the headquarters for an all employees meeting today. The first PowerPoint started with "2020: the year of 20/20 vision".
You can't expect somebody to be both a pilot and a great writer.
164: Did you see the slide clearly? If so, it's true!
And yet the way things are going, maybe we'd rather not look.
that hard-core of Sanders supporters. The bro is strong with them, they're just not ever going to support a woman.
I've no doubt there are misogynistic dicks who support Bernie, but this is a b.s. talking point that we've really got to stop repeating. There's no evidence of a wave of Bernie bros outside of anecdotes and bot tweets.
OT: There's now a vanity press advertising on the TV for authors of Christian books.
I just learned that Carrie Fisher had a daughter and that her daughter was in the latest Star Wars. I'm learning a lot today.
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"unfortunately, most of the accidents are a direct consequence of smoother, nicer roads,"|>