@OzarkHillbilly:
This is brilliant from Dark Brandon…and she must be absolutely fuming.
If Biden’s people keep up this level of messaging it could be a long campaign for MAGAts.
@OzarkHillbilly: I saw that and am having trouble wrapping my head around it. She definitely sounds accusatory, but when you write everything out, it sure looks laudatory on the page. “The largest public investment in social structure and environmental programs… programs to address medical care, education, urban problems, rural poverty, transportation, Medicare, Medicaid… And he is still working on it.” She appears to think these are bad things.
Out of curiosity, why the extra step? Are your posts being marked as spam when you use a twitter link?
Unrelated, I hope Kathy updates us on how her milk frother worked out. I bought one to make lattes when camping and tailgating*, but haven’t been impressed with it so far.
*If you have a group of friends with whom you consistently do large outings, becoming the “special drink guy” means everyone is really grateful you are there, the group dynamic is just all around better, and you have to pack a hell of a lot less than everyone else. “Alright Jon’s bringing all the cooking gear for the 20 of us. I’ll pack up my portable awnings, and all the boating stuff. Neil, you got that cocktail shaker? Oh, AND a bottle of bitters? You sure you carry all that?”
According to the Palestine Red Crescent Society, there were 193 incidents targeting staff and vehicles in 2023 – a 310% increase compared with the same period last year. Violence has been increasing steadily in the region since March 2022, when the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) began launching near-nightly raids on the West Bank towns of Nablus and Jenin in response to a spate of deadly terror attacks against Israelis.
Recorded attacks include being targeted with live ammunition and steel-coated rubber bullets, both before reaching patients and during treatment, and the obstruction of ambulances trying to access or transport the wounded.
Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP), a UK-based charity, is more used to providing medicines, equipment and trauma training for Palestinian medical staff and paramedics, but said this week that at the Red Crescent’s request it would provide the Palestinian branch of the organisation with a further 20 sets of bulletproof vests and helmets, at a cost of £18,500.
Ahmed Jibril, the head of the emergency and ambulance department at the Red Crescent branch in Nablus, said: “With the increasing risks faced by our teams, most recently seen in Jenin, these bulletproof vests and helmets will provide a crucial layer of protection, allowing our teams to continue saving lives and providing essential medical services in the face of adversity.”
Melanie Ward, MAP’s director, said: “We have taken this unprecedented step in response to an urgent call from Palestinian health workers for protection from the violence they face in the line of duty. No health worker should have to risk their life to save others.”
@Neil Hudelson: I’ve been doing a latte with a milk frother for a number of years. This is the type that looks like a small coffee pot (note that the linked one isn’t my brand, but it appears that many, many brands are made by the same manufacturer). One thing I’ve learned is that some milks froth, and some don’t. Nothing from Trader Joe’s reliably froths. Whole, 2% or skim, oat, almond, plastic bottle, cardboard carton, it doesn’t matter. Other brands are a mixed bunch and even old reliables can sometimes generate an un-frothable carton or two. And I’ve successfully frothed whole, 2%, almond and oat milks of certain brands. I’ve never tried skim because it is a blue tinged abomination unto the lord.
Out of curiosity, why the extra step? Are your posts being marked as spam when you use a twitter link?
I have a Twitter account, so I can see Twitter posts just fine. I just converted the link to Nitter.net so people without accounts can (I believe) view the link.
I have not posted anything by me to Twitter for years, and then maybe just two or three test posts. I do lots and lots of retweeting of other peoples posts I find interesting (I can refer to them later).
Never. We can never point out reality. Especially when it comes to Israel. They are going fully genocidal and Congress is going to jump up and cheer when the last Palestinian is slaughtered.
James, if you want to fisk another pointless George Will column he has a doozy up today. Somehow that we’ve made progress over the last two hundred years, is a repudiation of progressivism.
I hesitated to provide a link. Unless you want to witness the decline of George Will from his previous lows (and the WAPO editorial page), it really isn’t worth reading. I read it only because it had a click bait title Progressive gloom ignores a marvelous historical economic measure that led me to wonder, “What measure? What’s he off on now?” Turns out to be “time price”, a hammer used to sell for the equivalent of four hours work, now it’s 12 minutes. This is somehow somehow repudiates progressivism. And why does he keep saying progressive when the word is liberal?
A federal judge has refused Trump’s request for a new trial in the E. Jean Carroll case. My question is: Why does Trump want a new trial? Hasn’t he been repeatedly yelling that he was “exonerated” of raping her?
I dislike the word genocide being used loosely. The number of Palestinians is greater each passing year, so if it’s a genocide it’s a remarkably ineffective one. The proper term would be ethnic cleansing, I believe. Apartheid state is not, IMO, overstating the case. And yes, increasingly authoritarian with growing fascistic tendencies. But not genocide.
I don’t have one yet. I also left too late yesterday, and didn’t feel like shopping for one.
I do have one like the one @MarkedMan references, also of a different brand. It works well enough, but it’s a bit of a chore to clean. The bottom has the connection it uses to draw power from the base, so it’s hard to wash it without getting any of that wet. We pretty much wind up rinsing and wiping it.
On related matters, this week I want to make goulash again. The first iteration was fine, but it can be improved. For starters, more beef. Next, three hours in the oven was too much. So either more liquid in the sauce, or less time in the oven.
I’ll make rice to mix with the goulash. I always eat it that way. I’ve a vague notion of what to make as a side or starter.
@gVOR10: Time price is the counterpart to time cost. I use this to argue about the cost of college tuition. In 1972, a semester cost $400 at my state university. At $2/hr minimum wage, I had to work 200 hours over 4 months to pay for it or about 12.5 hrs per week. Not a huge burden. Today, using UT-Austin as an example, tuition is about $6000 per semester. At $7.75/hr minimum wage, it would take about 775 hours of labor or about 48 hours/week to cover that amount. Not feasible.
I think labor input to the price of things is a valid measure.
@Scott: Time cost is an entirely valid thing. And several commenters on Will’s WAPO column noted the time cost of college has gone up in recent years. But what generally declining time cost has to do with progressivism and its discontents, as imagined by George Will, was never clear in his column.
The time cost of reading a George Will column is about the same as it was 40 years ago. The value of doing so, in terms of education or entertainment, was never large and has declined of late.
I’ve been getting a small chuckle out of the headlines about the small plane pilot having problems and the passenger landing the plane “without the landing gear”. She wasn’t without the landing gear. It was with her the whole time. She just didn’t use it.
I complain about reporters being lazy and not understanding what they write. This is often apparent in aviation stories. How many stories have you read about an airplane stalling in which the reporter seemed to think that meant the engine quit?
That can be a bit of pedantry. If your windshield wipers don’t work, are you “without wipers” even if they’re right there, unmoving and inert, in their place?
But, yeah, a stall is very different from an engine shutdown. Stall is about the worst thing that can happen, as it causes the plane to plummet.
I don’t mind if they say the engine failed when it was really shut down. Engine failure is a complicated subject, too. usually it means a major failure, like the Southwest flight a few years ago, not a simple mechanical failure that makes the engine stop running.
But for a news piece, saying the engine failed is close enough.
The thing about the slide gave me an image of a slide going through the fuselage, like the Flash phasing through a wall. A close analogy would be with a car or truck. If you read the muffler fell off and was found on the road, that makes sense. If you read the steering wheel fell off and was found on the road, that doesn’t make sense.
So we have a “squeegee kid” on trial for murder here in Baltimore. Last year, when he was 14, he shot and killed a guy after that guy got out of his car with a baseball bat and got into a verbal beef with the kids. Here’s what was seen on a dashboard camera (via The Baltimore Sun):
His footage picks up with Reynolds walking away from the teens and in the direction of his car. Three squeegee workers followed Reynolds, who turned toward them. As he charged, the bat raised over his head, they backed up. He swung the bat in the direction of a worker. Another worker threw an object at Reynolds, hitting him in the head. He appeared to stumble. That’s when another person shoots Reynolds five times.
Here’s my question: Where is the NRA and all the rabid gun nuts we have here in MD? Why aren’t they defending the squeegee kid. This is very obviously a stand your ground case. Why aren’t the gun nuts all over this like they are for other cases, even cases where the provoker wasn’t even armed, or where the shooter actually initiated the provocation. Is it as simple as the color of the skin of the people involved? That likely has a lot to do with it. But it also just illustrates how phony all the constitutional and legal talk these loser man-boys spew out is. They never really mean any of it, no matter how much they puff up their chests and declaim loudly. They have the mentality and principles of thirteen year old boys.
@OzarkHillbilly: and OzarkHillbilly: I think the fact that MTG gave this word-for-word speech as a denouncement of Biden speaks volumes about the chasm between the values she represents and the values that most people (other than her audience) hold. The beauty of Biden’s ad is that it emphasizes that politics matter because people really have different goals.
Our esteemed commenter and contributor Matt Bernius tweeted about 20 minutes ago from the hospital where he is waiting for surgery to fix his broken clavicle…he says he “lost a ‘fight’ with a flight of stairs” but feels fortunate as things could have been worse.
I don’t read Will often, and when I do I almost always disagree with him. But, until this article, I’ve never had to ask the “Is he dishonest or is he stupid?” question of Will. This column is indeed a doozy. My favorite part is this:
Similarly, portions of the government have an interest in insisting on its failure, despite trillions spent, to substantially improve economic equality: Hence the government’s practice of not counting transfer payments and tax rebates (the earned income tax credit) as income for those of modest means. Counting those augmentations of income would reveal that the 2021 poverty rate was not 11.6 percent, but 2 to 3 percent.
People who are poor enough to qualify for massive tax transfers from the government are less poor after the transfers! Huh! And not counting the large check the government gives you to make sure you have the basic necessities to live must be a conspiracy to hide all this wealth?
Correct me if I’m wrong, but wouldn’t counting those tax transfers as income likely kick people out of receiving tax transfers? Could that be why they aren’t counted, because it would be self defeating? Or maybe it’s just a conspiracy by the government to make you think everything’s a failure.
Wait until he finds out that starving people are no longer starving when they are given food. Another little fact these lying progressives don’t want to tell you about so called “food insecurity.”
It should also be noted that this wonderous drop in poverty that he’s highlighting was while the child tax credit was in place, the one that created the largest (temporary) drop in childhood poverty since the LBJ era. The largest drop in poverty that they aren’t telling you about I guess.
@Jay L Gischer: Not true. If the only issue is the engines and the body/wings are in tact, the plane can glide to a landing. It doesn’t transition to a falling machine but a gliding machine.
I wish progressives would tone down their Israel-bashing. Not because Israel doesn’t deserve it, they do. But it’s internally divisive and utterly pointless given the politics of the moment. Democrats are no more likely to cut off Israel than the GOP is to support gun control. The complaints do nothing to Israel, but do divide us to no purpose.
And it gets to be a bit much when 90% of the human rights complaints from progressives are aimed at Israel. Everything all good in Sudan now? How about Afghanistan? Put it this way, would you rather be a Palestinian woman living on the West Bank, or an Afghan woman? See also gays, trans, Christians, and more. Progressives have quiet little voices when it comes to India’s blatantly anti-Muslim administration, for example. Ditto Cuba, Guatemala, Venezuela, North Korea, Myanmar, Congo, the ‘Stans, etc… It’s hard to avoid the taint of anti-semitism when it’s the semites taking wildly disproportionate hits.
This Israel obsession is fed by the lingering illusion that we control Israel because we send them money. It is not that simple. Israel has a GDP of 488 billion. We generally give them about 4 billion, which is to say less than 1% of their GDP, money which we get right back in the form of weapons sales. Israel is not our puppet, it is in effect the regional superpower with very strong weapons production of its own and an economy that does not need our charity.
It’s hard to see why we continue to consider Israel as a close ally. The only use they serve for us, really, is middle eastern intelligence (useful) and as a knife to Iran’s throat. When we achieved energy independence we were supposed to be able to back slowly away from the ME, but then I suppose China started making moves into the region. Heavy sigh.
And I’d add that complaining about Israel’s human rights on a smart phone made by slaves in a dictatorship is a bit rich.
Aerodynamic stall doesn’t mean the engine has stopped running, it means the airflow over the wings has become disrupted and they are no longer producing lift. So yes, a stalled airplane (as “stalled” is used in that context) is a falling machine.
@MarkedMan: I didn’t see the ad with the sound on the first time around, so I didn’t connect that it’s all MTG. Two more times before I could fully piece together that she was making this speech at Turning Point.
In the context of Turning Point, that type of progress may well be the death knell for Murka as “WE TEH PEEPUL.” Turning Point may well want to revamp their message. “Liberals are making us all slaves to Big Government” has been a powerful message even among the “moderates” some of all y’all wanna keep reaching out to. “Joe Biden is finishing what FDR started” may be a little too narrowcast to work outside the convention. This could turn out be another “47% of Americans”-type gaffe.
@Neil Hudelson: Try non-fat milk in the frother. Powdered milk works even better, but you need to add considerable sugar and vanilla (but for coffee, I’d guess that would be okay).
(If you’re bringing the cocktail shaker, don’t you have to bring the ice, too?)
Language tends to be very precise in aviation, but not exactly used the way people commonly use language. Keep in mind, too, that terms used in aviation are used by every commercial pilot in the world, whatever their native language.
Anyway, “stall” is always a matter of airflow in aviation. As noted aerodynamic stall brings the plane down. there are other kinds. There’s compressor stall. This happens when the airflow into a jet engine is disrupted so the compressor blades can’t pass enough air to the combustion chamber. This is largely a problem of military aircraft, and some have means of opening the engine inlets wider. In some maneuvers, and depending on the aircraft shape and how it’s configured, you can have one wing stall while the other doesn’t.
It’s really more complicated than I can comprehend.
Stall is also more a matter of angles and wind, than the condition of the engine. If all engines stop working, as in the Gimli glider, the pilots can trade altitude for speed and keep going. How far depends a lot on how high the plane was when the engines failed. If your engines quit just after takeoff, you won’t be able to glide down for a landing.
@Mikey: Tangentially, my sister broke her “shoulder” (not sure which bone(s) were actually broken and she very much does not want to talk about it) in two places this weekend and they are not even going to attempt to repair but instead will go right to a replacement. I feel like the whole surgical orthopedics area is shifting under us year by year.
Wait until he finds out that starving people are no longer starving when they are given food. Another little fact these lying progressives don’t want to tell you about so called “food insecurity.”
I suspect you meant to be sarcastic but that’s an exact analogy for what he is saying.
@Neil Hudelson: “But, until this article, I’ve never had to ask the “Is he dishonest or is he stupid?” question of Will. ”
I haven’t had to ask that question for forty years now. Because in the 1980 campaign, George Will helped Reagan prep for a debate using a prep book stolen from Carter’s campaign by Reagan aides. Then after the debate, he wrote glowing reviews of Reagan’s performance, without mentioning that he has been involved in prepping him.
He’s just another sleazy grifter. But he writes about baseball and uses big words, so that makes him respectable.
I’ve never tried skim because it is a blue tinged abomination unto the lord.
When the foamed milk goes into the coffee, the blue shade is obliterated by the brown–just like with Crayolas. If you’re one of those people who can pour patterns and designs in the latte, good on ya. I admire people who bring artistry to their home entertaining but have never been one of them.*
*When my Veiled Country Lass dessert collapsed on one side coming out of the spring form pan, I transformed it into a Whipped Cream-Toppped Apple Crumb dessert served from an opaque bowl. It tasted exactly the same.
@MarkedMan: When “reaching out to the moderates” will finally permit it. Let’s not forget that we can’t let morality take the lead over tactics. If some Palestinian Red Crescent workers need to go under the bus, remember it’s only a small percentage of the total people on “our” side.
@Mikey: Damn, that’s a bit painful, very limiting movement wise. Hope his heals quickly.
I broke my collarbone in 5th grade. They didn’t do surgery on it because, well, they didn’t do surgery on broken bones then. Just set them and, for my collarbone anyway, gave me a brace to hold the shoulder more or lee in place. It healed up but I’m a little lopsided now.
@Michael Reynolds: The US doesn’t fund the various other countries on your list, or consider them close allies. We don’t have the mainstream of both parties praising Sudan incessantly. No presidential candidate has said there is not a sliver of daylight between his policies and Myanmar’s.
There’s an irritation about being constantly gaslit, and being told that every criticism is antisemitism.
(Plus, of course, there’s the actual antisemitism)
Fuck Israel. If the terrible things they do are broadcast more widely for the wrong reasons, too bad, they’re still doing terrible things. I just wish they were paying enough of a price for it that they would stop.
The weird thing is it being “discovered”, which means it didn’t deploy (inflate) while attached to the plane. Everybody on board would’ve heard a deployed chute slapping against the side…even for the few moments before it would all but certainly tear itself off a plane at 180knts. We don’t even know if it inflated at all, just that it was “found”.
The only certainty is somebody messed up. Best guess is a badly messed up inspection…somebody forgot some screws.
@Gustopher: But it’s not the right time to critique the Israeli government’s increasingly disturbing behavior. Not because the critics are wrong but because it’s too divisive right now. Where we heard these kinds of arguments before?
Oh yes…
“First, I must confess that over the last few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Council-er or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate who is more devoted to ‘order’ than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says ‘I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I can’t agree with your methods of direct action;’ who paternalistically feels he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by the myth of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait until a ‘more convenient season.'”
– Rev. Martin Luther King, in his endlessly prescient Letter From the Birmingham Jail. Times change, but the usual suspects stay the same.
The time to speak up for human dignity is always right now. The suggestion one must speak out against every injustice everywhere all at once or sit quiet is specious status quo bunk.
And the whole smartphone slave labor whataboitism is not clever at all, akin to demanding advocates drop out of society before pushing for change. ‘Aha! You push for clean air, yet you still breathe this dirty air. Gotcha!’ Chile please. In 2023, smartphone use is a basic condition of life, not a moral statement. If not using products made by multinational conglomerates is the prerequisite for offering opinions on politics and human rights, then all of us need to shut up, pack it in, and go home.
It’s a serious but improbable matter. Suppose one day the slide detaches from the plane, and then there’s a landing accident that requires it.
Highly improbable, but then so are all commercial aviation accidents these days. When they happen, it’s better if all escape mechanisms are present and in working order.
I’ve broken the same collar bone 3 times. Roughly between 5-8th grade. Twice because I’m an idiot and once because I was an easy bullying victim.
First time I was on ice, slipped heard it pop. Second time I was on ice again (it take a lot to teach me). That time was funny though. My dad came to “rescue me” and he slipped on the ice and rammed into me sending me careening across the municipal dump I was playing in. I’m surprised it wasn’t worse.
The bullying time, a kid slammed me up against the wall during gym class cause I was a faggot or something. I might have had a concussion too, but they didn’t care about that in the late 80s. I heard that one pop too. Gym teacher got real mad at me that I didn’t get up and got even more pissed when I told him I knew I had to go to the hospital. I was like not my first rodeo hoss.
Never had surgery. I had the brace each time. That whole area is still a little wonky.
As a bonus, I was recently telling my wife about the time I seperated my shoulder skateboarding and drove myself to the hospital. In a stick shift jeep. They all yelled at me at the hospital.
@Just nutha ignint cracker: When I add cream to my coffee, I prefer a very small amount of half and half or, yes, actual cream. I don’t count the calories because it is a tiny amount and the fat is what seems to cut the bitterness for me. Skim milk doesn’t do anything except cool the coffee.
How does your comment about criticizing Israel but NOT other countries square with your comment from Monday of this week criticizing progressives for not being able to focus on one problem instead of distracting themselves with other problems?
@Stormy Dragon: Thanks. I knew about the Gimli glider. I hadn’t heard about the Azores glider. Nice job of airmanship.
75 miles from 33,000 ft would be a glide ration of 12:1. He could go 12 feet forward for every foot he dropped. Better, actually, as your link says he had height to spare when he arrived and had to S turn to kill off altitude. Sport gliders, usually called sailplanes, have glide ratios up to 70:1. Probably very good that he had glider experience, so he was used to the idea he only had one shot at landing and knew how to get it down on the chosen spot.
@Erik:
Perhaps I should modify that and say that the Left can’t focus on a winning narrative.
@Gustopher:
Criticizing Israel is perfectly justified, though it’d be nice if liberals could learn some other country names as well. Egypt, for example, which we do subsidize and which has political prisons full of journalists and dissidents. Or the KSA, from which we buy oil and to whom we sell sophisticated weapons systems.
The prog obsession with Israel is not just anti-semitism (although there’s a lot of that) and it’s not that we support them financially, because 1% of GDP is not hugely important. Racism is one of the reasons. Yep, racism. We expect and demand higher standards from Israel because they are White Europeanish people, or are at least seen that way. (Historically, Jews are only intermittently White.) Some of ours.
We don’t make nearly as much noise about human rights in China – from which we buy trillions of dollars’ worth of stuff – because they are not Europeans. We expect and demand more of Europeans (Whites) than we do Asians or Africans or various brown people. And yes, that is a racist worldview.
The Left gets these idées fixe on foreign policy sometimes. Remember all the yelling about Tibet? There was never even the tiniest chance that China would free Tibet. Zero percent. Tibet is the source of China’s water and they’d have to be insane to relinquish control. Now, everyone’s lost interest in Tibet, they are no longer the cause célèbre for celebs. I wonder if it has anything to do with the impracticality of ranting about the people who employ enslaved children to make our cool stuff? I mean, we gotta have our cool stuff, right?
But Israel? Hell, they don’t make iPhones, so, sure, we can shit on them and score some easy virtue points.
@Michael Reynolds: We have more leverage with Israel than China. Even the money going to Egypt is for maintaining peace with Israel.
Saudi Arabia has oil. Israel has falafel.
Israel also injects itself into American politics far more visibly than Saudi Arabia or Egypt.
You say that we hold them to a higher standard because of racism, but while that is true, Israel also continuously promotes itself as the only western democracy in the Middle East. They invite this higher standard.
Meanwhile, they pursue policies that edge up against the UN definition of genocide (a definition that I think is overly broad, or which at least should be split to have Genocide Lite and Holocaust). I don’t think they cross it, but enough serious people do that I think it’s at least on the borderline.
There are lots of people who do the financial crimes of Donald Trump, but get away with it by not running for President. Should we not pursue the most visible case?
As for Israel, I still believe the answer lies with our Spare Dakota. Carve out a chunk as a Jewish Homeland not surrounded by enemies (well, there are the Neo Nazis), and see if that encourages folks. I know God gave them that land over there, but we can transport topsoil from the Middle East. We can move the land!
Why else would God give us two Dakotas? We can rename Bismarck to Jerusalem.
Would a right wing ethnostate in North America be a problem? Sure, but we already have Idaho.
(I think Mideast Peace is a situation where we should not ask “What would Lucy Ricardo do?” and instead ask “What would Metternich do?”. Lucy would have some ridiculous farce where every Palestinian is dressed as an Israeli Jew, and every Israeli Jew is dressed like a Palestinian or something…)
@Beth: Heh, I heard my collar bone go too (won’t bother to explain how it went), and I also heard my biceps tendon go when I tore my rotator cuff (I was tightening a screw). I didn’t hear it the time I dropped a a 12′ 6×6 post on my ankle, but I saw it hit and just said, “That’s broke.” crawled across the drive of the farm whose barn I had been rebuilding, realized that if I didn’t take my boot off RIGHT NOW, they’d be cutting it off in the ER, so took it off (not fun), got help loading up my tools and drove to the hospital 45 miles away.
Nobody yelled at me for doing that. In fact some random guy saw me crawling across the parking lot and ran and got me a wheelchair. Believe it or not they put me in a foot to hip cast for a fibula fracture. A weeeeee bit of over kill there, probably got paid by the inch of cast.
Oh dear. Looks like it’s Crazy Ivan time again.
Russia in addition to ended the Black Sea grain deal has struck Ukrainian grain terminals in Odesa with missiles, destyong 60,000 tons of grain.
And is threatening to treat any ship sailing to or from Ukrainian ports, and any Ukrainian ship whatsoever, as a munitions carrying target.
And that any country whose national flag vessels visit Ukrainian ports will be regarded as “party to the conflict.”
Now the guessology:
Are they really intent on a blockade?
If so, IIRC current international law requires a declaration of such; and does a “special military operation give the legal standing?
Of course, being Russia, legalities are likely to be the last thing they’ll think about.
And how will Turkiye react?
Alternatively is this just some move to try to force some sort of concession via talks with Turkiye?
Do they think a grain price crisis will serve them diplomatically?
Are they going to get really insane and do something stupid, like hit a ship carrying Ukrainian grain out of Contanta in Romania?
Also, there’s a fair probability of Ukraine trying to use its drone-boats to hit a Russian ship out of Azov or Novorossiysk.
As for Israel, I still believe the answer lies with our Spare Dakota.
…
Why else would God give us two Dakotas? We can rename Bismarck to Jerusalem.
…
Would a right wing ethnostate in North America be a problem? Sure, but we already have Idaho.
I’ve always said Truman should have settled the Jewish refugees in Alabama. Better for the Palestinians, better for the Jews, better for Alabama. Think how much more prosperous and democratic Alabama would have turned out. I do like the idea of renaming Bismarck. I was born in a hospital there and I can never remember if it’s k or ck.
God didn’t give us two Dakotas, a Republican congress did. Two Dakotas was four reliably Republican senators for the price of two. Then for awhile it wasn’t. Now it is again.
Under governors Burgum and Noem both Dakotas are pretty much right wing ethno-states now.
Best bet is to be the coffee guy in your car camping/ cabin network. You can do wonders with just a camp stove and an espresso pot. Just cart along the right gear and ingredients. It’s not much really, and fresh milk and cream takes a bit to go off and way longer than one weekend even if unrefrigerated.
Camping or cabin, the coffee person gets major love.
You do wonders for people’s hangovers and they appreciate it. You are the man Saturday and Sunday mornings.
US Aid to Egypt in fiscal year 2022: ~$1.3 billion
US Aid to Egypt in fiscal year 2022: ~$3.3 billion, adding to a cumulative total that has made Israel the single largest recipient of U.S. foreign aid. Ever.
So, no duh, Americans — including American Jews who will no doubt be surprised to learn they are antisemitic — hold Israel to a higher standard. Of course. To whom much is given, much is required and expected (as it should be).
And for the record, pressure from liberals resulted in the Biden administration withholding multiple hundreds of millions of aid to Egypt over its spotty human rights record, something that Democrats couldn’t get on board with even after the Israeli government’s racist anti-Obama antics followed by its racist embrace of Trump’s white supremacist fascism. Facts do matter, just not to those who love to caricature and stereotype groups whose priorities, activities, and affairs it turns out they know little about.
God didn’t give us two Dakotas, a Republican congress did.
Surveyors thought there was a lot more water in them there Dakotas than there really was, due to an unusually wet year. They were actually expecting massive growth and didn’t want a huge mega state.
So, we got two states with three people total between them. (Figures adjusted for effect)
(We really should have a “once you hit 5% of the population, your state gets split” or “if you have less than 0.5%, please join your least populous neighbor” to solve these problems — keep Senate representation equal within an order of magnitude)
Also, 1889 — I’d rather have more Republican Senators then than Democrats.
I had a concussion in 1980. High school football. Playing free safety. Got nailed hard from the side I never saw coming. Totally legal block, btw, no shame on him. Being blind-sided is basically on me.
I kept trying to sit up and couldn’t. I was face down. I was basically out. I was trying to sit up into the ground, into negative space. I righted myself, or somebody turned me over on my back. An assistant coach hit me with smelling salts, which were a thing at the time.
They sent be back in two plays later. I have no memory. I watched the game film later. I did well. Really well. I did not recall. This was news to me. I reviewed my stat line. I overperformed in tackles. I made an interception, ffs. Arguably easily my best game and I have no memory of it at all. That happened in a blank state.
The thing you have to get right in that role is position and angles. The spooky thing is that I was better at it post-concussion. I saw myself perform better on film after being fairly severely concussed recently.
It took until the bus ride home for someone to figure out I was running on autopilot and wasn’t really there.
One guy I played with broke his clavicle during a no contact drill. Tripped, fell funny and landed oddly. Our starting center.
Another guy got his femur broken during a game. A running back who was fast, slippery, a great outside the edge runner. But undersized. On a play where he was the blocker physics and sheer happenstance caught him wrong.
He was in a traction cast in a hospital bed for several months to make sure his thigh bone healed straight. He still ended up walking with a pronounced limp.
@DK:
So, your theory is that progressives obsess over Israel while completely ignoring Egypt because 3 is bigger than 1? Is that how human rights works? Let me ask you something. Let’s accept the 3 to 1 ratio, now show me the one third as many progressive critiques of Egypt.
By your logic for every three prog whines about Israel there should be one for Egypt. Right? Crickets anyone?
We do about 700 billion dollars of trade with China, much if not most with state-owned or controlled industry. That’s many, many billions of USD going right into the coffers of the Chinese Communist Party which our own government has accused of actual genocide, not the Israeli ‘genocide’ which somehow keeps resulting in more of the people it is genociding. But they aren’t the problem, no, Israel is the problem.
It always is.
Netanyahu is a piece of shit and belongs in prison. Likud (under whatever name) is a fascist party. All true. You know what else is true?
Thousands of actual or perceived government critics or opponents remained arbitrarily detained and/or unjustly prosecuted. No adequate investigations were carried out into at least 50 suspicious deaths in custody involving reports of denial of adequate healthcare or torture. Death sentences were handed down after grossly unfair trials and executions were carried out. Sexual and gender-based violence remained prevalent, amid the authorities’ failure to adequately prevent and punish it. Authorities repressed workers’ right to strike, and failed to protect them from unfair dismissal by companies. Residents of informal settlements were forcibly evicted and detained for protesting against home demolitions. Authorities prosecuted Christians demanding their right to worship and others espousing religious beliefs not sanctioned by the state.
That’s Amnesty International talking about Egypt. Not Israel, Egypt. Which progressives don’t give a single fuck about because we only give them a billion dollars, and not three billion.
How many Uighur slaves were used to make items you have in your house right now? Have progressives called for shutting down all Chinese imports until they stop murdering and imprisoning and torturing? Nope. Why not?
But, until this article, I’ve never had to ask the “Is he dishonest or is he stupid?” question of Will.
Why are you treating this as an either/or question? To me, it’s obviously all of the above. The man did graduate and post-doc work in being venal and stupid. And frankly, his writing about baseball is overrated, IMO.
Which progressives don’t give a single fuck about because we only give them a billion dollars, and not three billion.
To put it unkindly, you continue to prove yourself pathologically dishonest on a Trumplike level, stubbornly repeating lies even after they’ve been debunked. You lie like this often about groups you don’t belong to, don’t know anything about, and haven’t bothered to research, so it’s unsurprising you’re doing it yet again.
As I’ve already pointed out, it was because of progressive upset with Egypt’s human rights records that Biden administration just withheld aid to Egypt. You don’t know about this, because the only thing you know about progressives is what you see on Twitter and in the right wing media that has broken the brains of most voters in your age group.
However, your insistence that progressives don’t care about Egypt is a flat-out lie. And it will remain a lie no matter how many times you repeat the lie.
When the facts change, logical people change their opinions. But you are illogical, arrogant, hopelessly biased, set in your beliefs, certain you know it all, and incapable of change. So I know you will continue to ignore the facts to instead tediously flog your dead hobby horse of blindly bashing liberals.
That’s fine, but it won’t make you any less wrong. Shouting profanties doesn’t make your characteristically hateful and fact-free cranky old man diatribes true. God bless!
But they aren’t the problem, no, Israel is the problem.
Liberals think they’re both problematic. You’re the one stuck in zero-sum, either/or, childishly black-and-white thinking that apparently prevents you from holding two thoughts in your head at once.
How many Uighur slaves were used to make items you have in your house right now? Have progressives called for shutting down all Chinese imports until they stop murdering and imprisoning and torturing? Nope. Why not?
First of all, I don’t know that no liberals have done this, because I do know that liberals have called out China for a human rights record, something you probably lie about. But, again, China has not portrayed itself as a close democratic ally of the US, parlaying that branding into making itself the number one recipient of US Aid. Israel has. What’s threadbare are your pathetic attempts to downplay and distract from that very salient difference between Israel and the countries you desperately want to change the subject to.
And how many items made by slave labor are in your house? What are you doing about it?
With so many indictments to his name (he has the best indictments, alotofpeoplesaythat), and knowing how thorough federal prosecutors tend to be, I’m beginning to hope Benito will cop a plea that avoids prison, and will withdraw from the 2024 race.
It might be more on brand for the Cheeto to risk a trial, counting on jury nullification, or maybe on bribing the jury (if he can get someone else to put up the money), or intimidating the jury, or intimidating witnesses.
I’m not predicting what he’ll do. Very likely, he doesn’t know, and even more likely he’ll change his mind a few million times in the meantime.
I may be ill-informed on some things. As are we all. You may not like my interpretation of events, but I don’t lie. Not ever.
Let’s put all progressive complaints about all other human rights issues in the entire world in a big pile. Place them on one side of the scale. Now do Israel. And if you tell me it’s not wildly disproportionate, I won’t call you a liar, but I will say your facts are wrong.
Progs obsess over Israel because 1) They see them as White/Europeans and thus apply a very different standard than they do to non-white nations. 2) They see them as US client states. That is naive and outdated thinking. 3) Because they get to strut their courage and rack up virtue points by attacking one of our constituent voter groups. Proves you’re not beholden to the man. Right on, fist pump! And 4) Because as much as you refuse to see it, a lot of people – our good folks on the Left – are anti-semites. British Labor had the same inability to admit what was plainly true, which is one reason why Jeremy Corbyn is no longer relevant.
Here’s the truth: the Left is not morally pure or intellectually error-free. We have racists. We have anti-Semites. We have transphobes and gay-bashers and god knows we have ageists. The difference between us and MAGAts is one of degree, a very large degree of difference, but pretending that we are without sin is weak and silly and self-harming.
You take the same stance on all things progressive: we are right because we are good therefore we are right. And any criticism – no matter how small – is not something you seem able to handle. You want to compare me to Trump? I’ll compare progs to Putin: they keep losing and keep insisting no mistakes have been made. How does a losing army turn things around when they are incapable of listening to criticism?
It bums me out. Both Dakotas are well worth visiting just for their natural beauty. And the folks are nice even to out of state visitors.
One of my all time car camping campgrounds is in the Black Hills. A gorgeous lake surrounded by stunning foothills. It’s in the back-end of nowhere and even during tourist season it is usually empty. You can shroom your brains out and howl at the moon for hours and there is no one there to tell you to shut up and go the sleep. I was there last summer, howled at the moon and dove naked into the lake. It was glorious.
I used to go car camping with my friend Brad a lot. Brad is a proud gay man. We loved going to the Dakotas because we could get to a different, interesting biome fast. Set up, bliss, hang out, hike, go into town, whatever. One thing I noticed is that Brad comported himself slightly differently. He knew he was not in Minneapolis. I don’t know the right words – he coded himself differently, behaved differently, spoke differently which I assumed to be for his own self-protection.
He grew up in a really small town in Southern Minnesota. Moved to the big city as quick as he could.
I joshed him gently one time that the waitress at the diner was clearly flirting with him. He told me one of the local gentleman at the counter stools picked up his vibe and gave a discreet nod.
All that passed me by completely. Am I that het oblivious? Apparently so.
Brad knew small towns better than me. Brad knew small town upper Midwest better than me, by leaps and bounds.
You know what, I change my deportment too in small towns when I visit. I become less, I don’t know, urban, maybe? Becoming less urban is probably a hell of a lot easier than becoming less gay.
All of us try to fit the vibe of the room, be ourselves, but not poke our heads up too high. Maybe not all of us.
I hit against that occasionally. For Brad, that is a daily concern that he is highly attenuated to constantly. It must be exhausting.
Theodore Roosevelt NP is one of my favorite places on the planet.
My favorite road in the US runs about 10 miles south of the Canadian border along the upper edge of NoDak across Montana. It is stunningly empty. It is so empty it messes with your head and it goes on forever.
23% of Blacks hold anti-Semitic views. 19% among US-born Hispanics. 10% among Whites, 15% of the general population. This is what people will admit to a pollster. The reality will of course be worse.
You take the same stance on all things progressive: we are right because we are good therefore we are right. And any criticism – no matter how small – is not something you seem able to handle.
Wrong on all counts, homie. I’m not a progressive so there’s no “we” here — I nurse personal animus towards Bernie’s political children. But unlike you, I try to make sure my anti-Berniebro critiques are fact-based. I have no vested interest in progressives being right, my interest is combating misinformation.
You cannot handle new data, complexities, and contradictions that undercut your biased, oversimplistic narratives. Because your stance seems to be I’m always right, so I won’t thoughtfully update my opinions ever, because I’m never wrong.
We’re all ill-informed. Difference between me and you is that as I become aware of updated information, I tweak my beliefs to add nuance and context. You never do, which results repeated false statements. Liberals are supposed to be better than this but you act like a MAGA extremist, refusing facts you don’t like.
A person repeating that progressives don’t care about Egypt after learning progressives pushed for aid to be withheld to Egypt is choosing to lie.
A guy who giving reasons Israel gets additional scrutiny but deliberately ignores the “wildly disproportionate” amount of military and economic aid American taxpayers give to Israel has made a choice to not tell the whole truth. No big mystery why: he’s a liar.
Someone who shouts “We’re losing!” in one breath while complaining in the next about Biden and Democrats not getting credit for their many wins — who today attacks The Left for focusing on one issue after yesterday complaining The Left’s attention is divided — is showing how dishonest people almost always end up contradicting themselves. Oversimplistic delusions inevitably get crushed by the complex and contradictory truth known as ‘reality.’
Style may matter more than substance in fiction writing, but this is not necessarily the case in analysis. Subtlety doesn’t make good copy, so your comments have all the subtlety of an axe. We get it. Fiction is what you do, and it’s fun to read. But the boring facts still matter.
Oh I know. I grew up black and queer in The Greatest Country in The World. I know that the rates of anti-blackness, racism, and/or homophobia among whites, blacks, Hispanics et al is much worse than advertised, I know *all* about how that game works.
@Michael Reynolds: So, now that you’ve demonstrated what a superb civil libertarian you are by documenting the atrocities around the world, I’m wondering what you actually do about any of it? Is bashing liberals somehow freeing the oppressed in Egypt?
I think you’re wrong to call MR a liar. He’s a bullshitter.
That is, he likes to argue and he desperately needs to win every argument. And once winning is all that matters, then it doesn’t matter to him what arguments he makes. Does he contradict himself three times in two messages? Sure, but he’s not here to fight for a truth. He’s here to fight and to win.
Truth is not an issue here. MR gets bored and to entertain himself he throws out a provocative statement, and then beats back those who disagree with him. If he actually wanted to convince anyone, he would stick to facts, but it’s much more fun to improvise, elaborate and move goalposts.
And the angrier you get, the more he’s winning. Because none of this matters to him. It’s a game.
And hey, Michael — none of this is meant as criticism. This is the part you like to play on this board, and I’ve got no problem with that. But you’re kind of getting DK all wound up here — you win! — and this argument is looking like it might get ugly… and no one here wants that.
But you’re kind of getting DK all wound up here — you win!
Thank you! But I’m not wound up, I’m denying fake facts and bad analysis by adding the context of dry, boring factual info. I’m fine, I’m not the cranky dude angrily shouting profanities and falsehoods lol
Liar, bullshitter…six in one hand, a half dozen in the other. A liar By Any Other Name is still a liar. Someone insists on repeating things that are not true, I going to describe them as a dedicated liar. That’s how I was brought up.
Someone doesn’t want to be called a liar there’s a simple solution: tell the truth. It need not be so dramatic.
MTG is stumping for Biden. Yes, that MTG, and the president himself approves her message.
substitute nitter.net for twitter.com. link should work even if you do not have twitter account
https://nitter.net/clearing_fog/status/1681471778085027840
@OzarkHillbilly:
This is brilliant from Dark Brandon…and she must be absolutely fuming.
If Biden’s people keep up this level of messaging it could be a long campaign for MAGAts.
@charontwo:
Link above is re Michigan electors coordinating with the national RNC.
@OzarkHillbilly: I saw that and am having trouble wrapping my head around it. She definitely sounds accusatory, but when you write everything out, it sure looks laudatory on the page. “The largest public investment in social structure and environmental programs… programs to address medical care, education, urban problems, rural poverty, transportation, Medicare, Medicaid… And he is still working on it.” She appears to think these are bad things.
@charontwo:
Out of curiosity, why the extra step? Are your posts being marked as spam when you use a twitter link?
Unrelated, I hope Kathy updates us on how her milk frother worked out. I bought one to make lattes when camping and tailgating*, but haven’t been impressed with it so far.
*If you have a group of friends with whom you consistently do large outings, becoming the “special drink guy” means everyone is really grateful you are there, the group dynamic is just all around better, and you have to pack a hell of a lot less than everyone else. “Alright Jon’s bringing all the cooking gear for the 20 of us. I’ll pack up my portable awnings, and all the boating stuff. Neil, you got that cocktail shaker? Oh, AND a bottle of bitters? You sure you carry all that?”
No comment.
@Neil Hudelson: I’ve been doing a latte with a milk frother for a number of years. This is the type that looks like a small coffee pot (note that the linked one isn’t my brand, but it appears that many, many brands are made by the same manufacturer). One thing I’ve learned is that some milks froth, and some don’t. Nothing from Trader Joe’s reliably froths. Whole, 2% or skim, oat, almond, plastic bottle, cardboard carton, it doesn’t matter. Other brands are a mixed bunch and even old reliables can sometimes generate an un-frothable carton or two. And I’ve successfully frothed whole, 2%, almond and oat milks of certain brands. I’ve never tried skim because it is a blue tinged abomination unto the lord.
@Daryl: @MarkedMan: I have to think there was some editing involved, I have to, but damned if I can detect it with my piss poor hearing.
@OzarkHillbilly: When do we stop pretending Israel is not an apartheid state?
@MarkedMan:
Sounds good to me.
@Neil Hudelson:
I have a Twitter account, so I can see Twitter posts just fine. I just converted the link to Nitter.net so people without accounts can (I believe) view the link.
I have not posted anything by me to Twitter for years, and then maybe just two or three test posts. I do lots and lots of retweeting of other peoples posts I find interesting (I can refer to them later).
@MarkedMan:
Never. We can never point out reality. Especially when it comes to Israel. They are going fully genocidal and Congress is going to jump up and cheer when the last Palestinian is slaughtered.
James, if you want to fisk another pointless George Will column he has a doozy up today. Somehow that we’ve made progress over the last two hundred years, is a repudiation of progressivism.
I hesitated to provide a link. Unless you want to witness the decline of George Will from his previous lows (and the WAPO editorial page), it really isn’t worth reading. I read it only because it had a click bait title Progressive gloom ignores a marvelous historical economic measure that led me to wonder, “What measure? What’s he off on now?” Turns out to be “time price”, a hammer used to sell for the equivalent of four hours work, now it’s 12 minutes. This is somehow somehow repudiates progressivism. And why does he keep saying progressive when the word is liberal?
A federal judge has refused Trump’s request for a new trial in the E. Jean Carroll case. My question is: Why does Trump want a new trial? Hasn’t he been repeatedly yelling that he was “exonerated” of raping her?
I dislike the word genocide being used loosely. The number of Palestinians is greater each passing year, so if it’s a genocide it’s a remarkably ineffective one. The proper term would be ethnic cleansing, I believe. Apartheid state is not, IMO, overstating the case. And yes, increasingly authoritarian with growing fascistic tendencies. But not genocide.
@MarkedMan: Damned if I know.
@Beth: The politics are truly ridiculous.
@Michael Reynolds: Agreed.
@Neil Hudelson:
I don’t have one yet. I also left too late yesterday, and didn’t feel like shopping for one.
I do have one like the one @MarkedMan references, also of a different brand. It works well enough, but it’s a bit of a chore to clean. The bottom has the connection it uses to draw power from the base, so it’s hard to wash it without getting any of that wet. We pretty much wind up rinsing and wiping it.
On related matters, this week I want to make goulash again. The first iteration was fine, but it can be improved. For starters, more beef. Next, three hours in the oven was too much. So either more liquid in the sauce, or less time in the oven.
I’ll make rice to mix with the goulash. I always eat it that way. I’ve a vague notion of what to make as a side or starter.
@OzarkHillbilly:
Commentor Jackie over at BJ notes that,
I wonder what other good things she gives Biden credit for.
@gVOR10: Time price is the counterpart to time cost. I use this to argue about the cost of college tuition. In 1972, a semester cost $400 at my state university. At $2/hr minimum wage, I had to work 200 hours over 4 months to pay for it or about 12.5 hrs per week. Not a huge burden. Today, using UT-Austin as an example, tuition is about $6000 per semester. At $7.75/hr minimum wage, it would take about 775 hours of labor or about 48 hours/week to cover that amount. Not feasible.
I think labor input to the price of things is a valid measure.
Monday I saw a brief note that an emergency slide from a United 767 had fallen to the ground near O’Hare.
The lack of detail was infuriating. emergency slides are inside the plane, at each exit door. How does one fall off?
Well, on the 767, there’s a slide on the outer fuselage for the over-wing exit. So, no phasing of matter or other tricks required.
Still, it’s a major malfunction. It’s designed to be stowed or deployed, not to detach.
The Canadian wildfire smoke is getting very heavy here in northeastern Mass.
@Scott: Time cost is an entirely valid thing. And several commenters on Will’s WAPO column noted the time cost of college has gone up in recent years. But what generally declining time cost has to do with progressivism and its discontents, as imagined by George Will, was never clear in his column.
The time cost of reading a George Will column is about the same as it was 40 years ago. The value of doing so, in terms of education or entertainment, was never large and has declined of late.
@Kathy:
I’ve been getting a small chuckle out of the headlines about the small plane pilot having problems and the passenger landing the plane “without the landing gear”. She wasn’t without the landing gear. It was with her the whole time. She just didn’t use it.
I complain about reporters being lazy and not understanding what they write. This is often apparent in aviation stories. How many stories have you read about an airplane stalling in which the reporter seemed to think that meant the engine quit?
Today Trump wrote: “Any lawyer that represents me is either a fool, or a Great American Patriot that History will love and cherish!”
Not that I don’t agree with the first part, but what the hell is he talking about?
@CSK: Relatively certain he’s talking about what a hard time he is having finding lawyers to represent him…
@CSK: I think he’s saying: Be my lawyer and your reward will not be monetary but instead you’ll be famous.
@gVOR10:
That can be a bit of pedantry. If your windshield wipers don’t work, are you “without wipers” even if they’re right there, unmoving and inert, in their place?
But, yeah, a stall is very different from an engine shutdown. Stall is about the worst thing that can happen, as it causes the plane to plummet.
I don’t mind if they say the engine failed when it was really shut down. Engine failure is a complicated subject, too. usually it means a major failure, like the Southwest flight a few years ago, not a simple mechanical failure that makes the engine stop running.
But for a news piece, saying the engine failed is close enough.
The thing about the slide gave me an image of a slide going through the fuselage, like the Flash phasing through a wall. A close analogy would be with a car or truck. If you read the muffler fell off and was found on the road, that makes sense. If you read the steering wheel fell off and was found on the road, that doesn’t make sense.
So we have a “squeegee kid” on trial for murder here in Baltimore. Last year, when he was 14, he shot and killed a guy after that guy got out of his car with a baseball bat and got into a verbal beef with the kids. Here’s what was seen on a dashboard camera (via The Baltimore Sun):
Here’s my question: Where is the NRA and all the rabid gun nuts we have here in MD? Why aren’t they defending the squeegee kid. This is very obviously a stand your ground case. Why aren’t the gun nuts all over this like they are for other cases, even cases where the provoker wasn’t even armed, or where the shooter actually initiated the provocation. Is it as simple as the color of the skin of the people involved? That likely has a lot to do with it. But it also just illustrates how phony all the constitutional and legal talk these loser man-boys spew out is. They never really mean any of it, no matter how much they puff up their chests and declaim loudly. They have the mentality and principles of thirteen year old boys.
@OzarkHillbilly: and OzarkHillbilly: I think the fact that MTG gave this word-for-word speech as a denouncement of Biden speaks volumes about the chasm between the values she represents and the values that most people (other than her audience) hold. The beauty of Biden’s ad is that it emphasizes that politics matter because people really have different goals.
When a car “stalls” it means its engine isn’t running. It has transitioned from a driving machine to a rolling machine.
When an airplane “stalls”, it means it has transitioned from a flying machine to a falling machine.
Our esteemed commenter and contributor Matt Bernius tweeted about 20 minutes ago from the hospital where he is waiting for surgery to fix his broken clavicle…he says he “lost a ‘fight’ with a flight of stairs” but feels fortunate as things could have been worse.
Get well soon, Matt!
@gVOR10:
I don’t read Will often, and when I do I almost always disagree with him. But, until this article, I’ve never had to ask the “Is he dishonest or is he stupid?” question of Will. This column is indeed a doozy. My favorite part is this:
People who are poor enough to qualify for massive tax transfers from the government are less poor after the transfers! Huh! And not counting the large check the government gives you to make sure you have the basic necessities to live must be a conspiracy to hide all this wealth?
Correct me if I’m wrong, but wouldn’t counting those tax transfers as income likely kick people out of receiving tax transfers? Could that be why they aren’t counted, because it would be self defeating? Or maybe it’s just a conspiracy by the government to make you think everything’s a failure.
Wait until he finds out that starving people are no longer starving when they are given food. Another little fact these lying progressives don’t want to tell you about so called “food insecurity.”
It should also be noted that this wonderous drop in poverty that he’s highlighting was while the child tax credit was in place, the one that created the largest (temporary) drop in childhood poverty since the LBJ era. The largest drop in poverty that they aren’t telling you about I guess.
@Jay L Gischer: Not true. If the only issue is the engines and the body/wings are in tact, the plane can glide to a landing. It doesn’t transition to a falling machine but a gliding machine.
I wish progressives would tone down their Israel-bashing. Not because Israel doesn’t deserve it, they do. But it’s internally divisive and utterly pointless given the politics of the moment. Democrats are no more likely to cut off Israel than the GOP is to support gun control. The complaints do nothing to Israel, but do divide us to no purpose.
And it gets to be a bit much when 90% of the human rights complaints from progressives are aimed at Israel. Everything all good in Sudan now? How about Afghanistan? Put it this way, would you rather be a Palestinian woman living on the West Bank, or an Afghan woman? See also gays, trans, Christians, and more. Progressives have quiet little voices when it comes to India’s blatantly anti-Muslim administration, for example. Ditto Cuba, Guatemala, Venezuela, North Korea, Myanmar, Congo, the ‘Stans, etc… It’s hard to avoid the taint of anti-semitism when it’s the semites taking wildly disproportionate hits.
This Israel obsession is fed by the lingering illusion that we control Israel because we send them money. It is not that simple. Israel has a GDP of 488 billion. We generally give them about 4 billion, which is to say less than 1% of their GDP, money which we get right back in the form of weapons sales. Israel is not our puppet, it is in effect the regional superpower with very strong weapons production of its own and an economy that does not need our charity.
It’s hard to see why we continue to consider Israel as a close ally. The only use they serve for us, really, is middle eastern intelligence (useful) and as a knife to Iran’s throat. When we achieved energy independence we were supposed to be able to back slowly away from the ME, but then I suppose China started making moves into the region. Heavy sigh.
And I’d add that complaining about Israel’s human rights on a smart phone made by slaves in a dictatorship is a bit rich.
@Kazzy:
Aerodynamic stall doesn’t mean the engine has stopped running, it means the airflow over the wings has become disrupted and they are no longer producing lift. So yes, a stalled airplane (as “stalled” is used in that context) is a falling machine.
@Kazzy:
I give you the Gimli Glider (I’m sure Kathy knows about this one).
http://www.cbsnews.com/miami/news/man-attempts-to-rob-nail-salon-employees-customers/
Bummer.
@Mu Yixiao:
I’ll see that, and raise you the Azores Glider
@MarkedMan: I didn’t see the ad with the sound on the first time around, so I didn’t connect that it’s all MTG. Two more times before I could fully piece together that she was making this speech at Turning Point.
In the context of Turning Point, that type of progress may well be the death knell for Murka as “WE TEH PEEPUL.” Turning Point may well want to revamp their message. “Liberals are making us all slaves to Big Government” has been a powerful message even among the “moderates” some of all y’all wanna keep reaching out to. “Joe Biden is finishing what FDR started” may be a little too narrowcast to work outside the convention. This could turn out be another “47% of Americans”-type gaffe.
@Neil Hudelson: Try non-fat milk in the frother. Powdered milk works even better, but you need to add considerable sugar and vanilla (but for coffee, I’d guess that would be okay).
(If you’re bringing the cocktail shaker, don’t you have to bring the ice, too?)
@Jay L Gischer:
@Kazzy:
@Stormy Dragon:
@Mu Yixiao:
Hopefully I didn’t leave anyone out.
Language tends to be very precise in aviation, but not exactly used the way people commonly use language. Keep in mind, too, that terms used in aviation are used by every commercial pilot in the world, whatever their native language.
Anyway, “stall” is always a matter of airflow in aviation. As noted aerodynamic stall brings the plane down. there are other kinds. There’s compressor stall. This happens when the airflow into a jet engine is disrupted so the compressor blades can’t pass enough air to the combustion chamber. This is largely a problem of military aircraft, and some have means of opening the engine inlets wider. In some maneuvers, and depending on the aircraft shape and how it’s configured, you can have one wing stall while the other doesn’t.
It’s really more complicated than I can comprehend.
Stall is also more a matter of angles and wind, than the condition of the engine. If all engines stop working, as in the Gimli glider, the pilots can trade altitude for speed and keep going. How far depends a lot on how high the plane was when the engines failed. If your engines quit just after takeoff, you won’t be able to glide down for a landing.
@Mikey: Tangentially, my sister broke her “shoulder” (not sure which bone(s) were actually broken and she very much does not want to talk about it) in two places this weekend and they are not even going to attempt to repair but instead will go right to a replacement. I feel like the whole surgical orthopedics area is shifting under us year by year.
@Neil Hudelson:
I suspect you meant to be sarcastic but that’s an exact analogy for what he is saying.
@Neil Hudelson: “But, until this article, I’ve never had to ask the “Is he dishonest or is he stupid?” question of Will. ”
I haven’t had to ask that question for forty years now. Because in the 1980 campaign, George Will helped Reagan prep for a debate using a prep book stolen from Carter’s campaign by Reagan aides. Then after the debate, he wrote glowing reviews of Reagan’s performance, without mentioning that he has been involved in prepping him.
He’s just another sleazy grifter. But he writes about baseball and uses big words, so that makes him respectable.
@MarkedMan:
When the foamed milk goes into the coffee, the blue shade is obliterated by the brown–just like with Crayolas. If you’re one of those people who can pour patterns and designs in the latte, good on ya. I admire people who bring artistry to their home entertaining but have never been one of them.*
*When my Veiled Country Lass dessert collapsed on one side coming out of the spring form pan, I transformed it into a Whipped Cream-Toppped Apple Crumb dessert served from an opaque bowl. It tasted exactly the same.
@MarkedMan: When “reaching out to the moderates” will finally permit it. Let’s not forget that we can’t let morality take the lead over tactics. If some Palestinian Red Crescent workers need to go under the bus, remember it’s only a small percentage of the total people on “our” side.
@Mikey: Damn, that’s a bit painful, very limiting movement wise. Hope his heals quickly.
I broke my collarbone in 5th grade. They didn’t do surgery on it because, well, they didn’t do surgery on broken bones then. Just set them and, for my collarbone anyway, gave me a brace to hold the shoulder more or lee in place. It healed up but I’m a little lopsided now.
@Michael Reynolds: The US doesn’t fund the various other countries on your list, or consider them close allies. We don’t have the mainstream of both parties praising Sudan incessantly. No presidential candidate has said there is not a sliver of daylight between his policies and Myanmar’s.
There’s an irritation about being constantly gaslit, and being told that every criticism is antisemitism.
(Plus, of course, there’s the actual antisemitism)
Fuck Israel. If the terrible things they do are broadcast more widely for the wrong reasons, too bad, they’re still doing terrible things. I just wish they were paying enough of a price for it that they would stop.
@Mikey: I hope that Matt recovers quickly and that the next time he fights his stairs he is victorious, or at least gets to a draw.
@Mikey:
I hope everything turns out all right. I can only guess how much that hurt.
@Kathy:
The weird thing is it being “discovered”, which means it didn’t deploy (inflate) while attached to the plane. Everybody on board would’ve heard a deployed chute slapping against the side…even for the few moments before it would all but certainly tear itself off a plane at 180knts. We don’t even know if it inflated at all, just that it was “found”.
The only certainty is somebody messed up. Best guess is a badly messed up inspection…somebody forgot some screws.
@Gustopher: But it’s not the right time to critique the Israeli government’s increasingly disturbing behavior. Not because the critics are wrong but because it’s too divisive right now. Where we heard these kinds of arguments before?
Oh yes…
– Rev. Martin Luther King, in his endlessly prescient Letter From the Birmingham Jail. Times change, but the usual suspects stay the same.
The time to speak up for human dignity is always right now. The suggestion one must speak out against every injustice everywhere all at once or sit quiet is specious status quo bunk.
And the whole smartphone slave labor whataboitism is not clever at all, akin to demanding advocates drop out of society before pushing for change. ‘Aha! You push for clean air, yet you still breathe this dirty air. Gotcha!’ Chile please. In 2023, smartphone use is a basic condition of life, not a moral statement. If not using products made by multinational conglomerates is the prerequisite for offering opinions on politics and human rights, then all of us need to shut up, pack it in, and go home.
@dazedandconfused:
It’s a serious but improbable matter. Suppose one day the slide detaches from the plane, and then there’s a landing accident that requires it.
Highly improbable, but then so are all commercial aviation accidents these days. When they happen, it’s better if all escape mechanisms are present and in working order.
@OzarkHillbilly:
I’ve broken the same collar bone 3 times. Roughly between 5-8th grade. Twice because I’m an idiot and once because I was an easy bullying victim.
First time I was on ice, slipped heard it pop. Second time I was on ice again (it take a lot to teach me). That time was funny though. My dad came to “rescue me” and he slipped on the ice and rammed into me sending me careening across the municipal dump I was playing in. I’m surprised it wasn’t worse.
The bullying time, a kid slammed me up against the wall during gym class cause I was a faggot or something. I might have had a concussion too, but they didn’t care about that in the late 80s. I heard that one pop too. Gym teacher got real mad at me that I didn’t get up and got even more pissed when I told him I knew I had to go to the hospital. I was like not my first rodeo hoss.
Never had surgery. I had the brace each time. That whole area is still a little wonky.
As a bonus, I was recently telling my wife about the time I seperated my shoulder skateboarding and drove myself to the hospital. In a stick shift jeep. They all yelled at me at the hospital.
@Just nutha ignint cracker: When I add cream to my coffee, I prefer a very small amount of half and half or, yes, actual cream. I don’t count the calories because it is a tiny amount and the fat is what seems to cut the bitterness for me. Skim milk doesn’t do anything except cool the coffee.
@Michael Reynolds:
How does your comment about criticizing Israel but NOT other countries square with your comment from Monday of this week criticizing progressives for not being able to focus on one problem instead of distracting themselves with other problems?
https://www.outsidethebeltway.com/mondays-forum-138/#comment-2812244
@Stormy Dragon: Thanks. I knew about the Gimli glider. I hadn’t heard about the Azores glider. Nice job of airmanship.
75 miles from 33,000 ft would be a glide ration of 12:1. He could go 12 feet forward for every foot he dropped. Better, actually, as your link says he had height to spare when he arrived and had to S turn to kill off altitude. Sport gliders, usually called sailplanes, have glide ratios up to 70:1. Probably very good that he had glider experience, so he was used to the idea he only had one shot at landing and knew how to get it down on the chosen spot.
@Erik:
Perhaps I should modify that and say that the Left can’t focus on a winning narrative.
@Gustopher:
Criticizing Israel is perfectly justified, though it’d be nice if liberals could learn some other country names as well. Egypt, for example, which we do subsidize and which has political prisons full of journalists and dissidents. Or the KSA, from which we buy oil and to whom we sell sophisticated weapons systems.
The prog obsession with Israel is not just anti-semitism (although there’s a lot of that) and it’s not that we support them financially, because 1% of GDP is not hugely important. Racism is one of the reasons. Yep, racism. We expect and demand higher standards from Israel because they are White Europeanish people, or are at least seen that way. (Historically, Jews are only intermittently White.) Some of ours.
We don’t make nearly as much noise about human rights in China – from which we buy trillions of dollars’ worth of stuff – because they are not Europeans. We expect and demand more of Europeans (Whites) than we do Asians or Africans or various brown people. And yes, that is a racist worldview.
The Left gets these idées fixe on foreign policy sometimes. Remember all the yelling about Tibet? There was never even the tiniest chance that China would free Tibet. Zero percent. Tibet is the source of China’s water and they’d have to be insane to relinquish control. Now, everyone’s lost interest in Tibet, they are no longer the cause célèbre for celebs. I wonder if it has anything to do with the impracticality of ranting about the people who employ enslaved children to make our cool stuff? I mean, we gotta have our cool stuff, right?
But Israel? Hell, they don’t make iPhones, so, sure, we can shit on them and score some easy virtue points.
@Kathy: Thanks, Kathy et al! I stand corrected. I was thinking/using the term colloquially and not precisely.
@Michael Reynolds: We have more leverage with Israel than China. Even the money going to Egypt is for maintaining peace with Israel.
Saudi Arabia has oil. Israel has falafel.
Israel also injects itself into American politics far more visibly than Saudi Arabia or Egypt.
You say that we hold them to a higher standard because of racism, but while that is true, Israel also continuously promotes itself as the only western democracy in the Middle East. They invite this higher standard.
Meanwhile, they pursue policies that edge up against the UN definition of genocide (a definition that I think is overly broad, or which at least should be split to have Genocide Lite and Holocaust). I don’t think they cross it, but enough serious people do that I think it’s at least on the borderline.
There are lots of people who do the financial crimes of Donald Trump, but get away with it by not running for President. Should we not pursue the most visible case?
As for Israel, I still believe the answer lies with our Spare Dakota. Carve out a chunk as a Jewish Homeland not surrounded by enemies (well, there are the Neo Nazis), and see if that encourages folks. I know God gave them that land over there, but we can transport topsoil from the Middle East. We can move the land!
Why else would God give us two Dakotas? We can rename Bismarck to Jerusalem.
Would a right wing ethnostate in North America be a problem? Sure, but we already have Idaho.
(I think Mideast Peace is a situation where we should not ask “What would Lucy Ricardo do?” and instead ask “What would Metternich do?”. Lucy would have some ridiculous farce where every Palestinian is dressed as an Israeli Jew, and every Israeli Jew is dressed like a Palestinian or something…)
@Beth: Heh, I heard my collar bone go too (won’t bother to explain how it went), and I also heard my biceps tendon go when I tore my rotator cuff (I was tightening a screw). I didn’t hear it the time I dropped a a 12′ 6×6 post on my ankle, but I saw it hit and just said, “That’s broke.” crawled across the drive of the farm whose barn I had been rebuilding, realized that if I didn’t take my boot off RIGHT NOW, they’d be cutting it off in the ER, so took it off (not fun), got help loading up my tools and drove to the hospital 45 miles away.
Nobody yelled at me for doing that. In fact some random guy saw me crawling across the parking lot and ran and got me a wheelchair. Believe it or not they put me in a foot to hip cast for a fibula fracture. A weeeeee bit of over kill there, probably got paid by the inch of cast.
@MarkedMan: Coffee with cream=/=a latte (the coffee drink that foamed milk is added to).
Just sayin.
Oh dear. Looks like it’s Crazy Ivan time again.
Russia in addition to ended the Black Sea grain deal has struck Ukrainian grain terminals in Odesa with missiles, destyong 60,000 tons of grain.
And is threatening to treat any ship sailing to or from Ukrainian ports, and any Ukrainian ship whatsoever, as a munitions carrying target.
And that any country whose national flag vessels visit Ukrainian ports will be regarded as “party to the conflict.”
Now the guessology:
Are they really intent on a blockade?
If so, IIRC current international law requires a declaration of such; and does a “special military operation give the legal standing?
Of course, being Russia, legalities are likely to be the last thing they’ll think about.
And how will Turkiye react?
Alternatively is this just some move to try to force some sort of concession via talks with Turkiye?
Do they think a grain price crisis will serve them diplomatically?
Are they going to get really insane and do something stupid, like hit a ship carrying Ukrainian grain out of Contanta in Romania?
Also, there’s a fair probability of Ukraine trying to use its drone-boats to hit a Russian ship out of Azov or Novorossiysk.
@Gustopher:
I’ve always said Truman should have settled the Jewish refugees in Alabama. Better for the Palestinians, better for the Jews, better for Alabama. Think how much more prosperous and democratic Alabama would have turned out. I do like the idea of renaming Bismarck. I was born in a hospital there and I can never remember if it’s k or ck.
God didn’t give us two Dakotas, a Republican congress did. Two Dakotas was four reliably Republican senators for the price of two. Then for awhile it wasn’t. Now it is again.
Under governors Burgum and Noem both Dakotas are pretty much right wing ethno-states now.
@Neil Hudelson:
Best bet is to be the coffee guy in your car camping/ cabin network. You can do wonders with just a camp stove and an espresso pot. Just cart along the right gear and ingredients. It’s not much really, and fresh milk and cream takes a bit to go off and way longer than one weekend even if unrefrigerated.
Camping or cabin, the coffee person gets major love.
You do wonders for people’s hangovers and they appreciate it. You are the man Saturday and Sunday mornings.
US Aid to Egypt in fiscal year 2022: ~$1.3 billion
US Aid to Egypt in fiscal year 2022: ~$3.3 billion, adding to a cumulative total that has made Israel the single largest recipient of U.S. foreign aid. Ever.
So, no duh, Americans — including American Jews who will no doubt be surprised to learn they are antisemitic — hold Israel to a higher standard. Of course. To whom much is given, much is required and expected (as it should be).
And for the record, pressure from liberals resulted in the Biden administration withholding multiple hundreds of millions of aid to Egypt over its spotty human rights record, something that Democrats couldn’t get on board with even after the Israeli government’s racist anti-Obama antics followed by its racist embrace of Trump’s white supremacist fascism. Facts do matter, just not to those who love to caricature and stereotype groups whose priorities, activities, and affairs it turns out they know little about.
@gVOR10:
Surveyors thought there was a lot more water in them there Dakotas than there really was, due to an unusually wet year. They were actually expecting massive growth and didn’t want a huge mega state.
So, we got two states with three people total between them. (Figures adjusted for effect)
(We really should have a “once you hit 5% of the population, your state gets split” or “if you have less than 0.5%, please join your least populous neighbor” to solve these problems — keep Senate representation equal within an order of magnitude)
Also, 1889 — I’d rather have more Republican Senators then than Democrats.
@Beth:
I had a concussion in 1980. High school football. Playing free safety. Got nailed hard from the side I never saw coming. Totally legal block, btw, no shame on him. Being blind-sided is basically on me.
I kept trying to sit up and couldn’t. I was face down. I was basically out. I was trying to sit up into the ground, into negative space. I righted myself, or somebody turned me over on my back. An assistant coach hit me with smelling salts, which were a thing at the time.
They sent be back in two plays later. I have no memory. I watched the game film later. I did well. Really well. I did not recall. This was news to me. I reviewed my stat line. I overperformed in tackles. I made an interception, ffs. Arguably easily my best game and I have no memory of it at all. That happened in a blank state.
The thing you have to get right in that role is position and angles. The spooky thing is that I was better at it post-concussion. I saw myself perform better on film after being fairly severely concussed recently.
It took until the bus ride home for someone to figure out I was running on autopilot and wasn’t really there.
@Beth:
One guy I played with broke his clavicle during a no contact drill. Tripped, fell funny and landed oddly. Our starting center.
Another guy got his femur broken during a game. A running back who was fast, slippery, a great outside the edge runner. But undersized. On a play where he was the blocker physics and sheer happenstance caught him wrong.
He was in a traction cast in a hospital bed for several months to make sure his thigh bone healed straight. He still ended up walking with a pronounced limp.
@DK:
So, your theory is that progressives obsess over Israel while completely ignoring Egypt because 3 is bigger than 1? Is that how human rights works? Let me ask you something. Let’s accept the 3 to 1 ratio, now show me the one third as many progressive critiques of Egypt.
By your logic for every three prog whines about Israel there should be one for Egypt. Right? Crickets anyone?
We do about 700 billion dollars of trade with China, much if not most with state-owned or controlled industry. That’s many, many billions of USD going right into the coffers of the Chinese Communist Party which our own government has accused of actual genocide, not the Israeli ‘genocide’ which somehow keeps resulting in more of the people it is genociding. But they aren’t the problem, no, Israel is the problem.
It always is.
Netanyahu is a piece of shit and belongs in prison. Likud (under whatever name) is a fascist party. All true. You know what else is true?
That’s Amnesty International talking about Egypt. Not Israel, Egypt. Which progressives don’t give a single fuck about because we only give them a billion dollars, and not three billion.
How many Uighur slaves were used to make items you have in your house right now? Have progressives called for shutting down all Chinese imports until they stop murdering and imprisoning and torturing? Nope. Why not?
Your logic is threadbare, to put it kindly.
@Kathy:
Some other recent slide deployments from 767s.
Looks like this is a bit of a thang…as the saying goes. 767s seem to have developed an embarassing premature evacuation problem.
@Neil Hudelson:
@wr:
Why are you treating this as an either/or question? To me, it’s obviously all of the above. The man did graduate and post-doc work in being venal and stupid. And frankly, his writing about baseball is overrated, IMO.
@dazedandconfused:
“…premature evacuation…”
Very clever. 😀
@Michael Reynolds:
To put it unkindly, you continue to prove yourself pathologically dishonest on a Trumplike level, stubbornly repeating lies even after they’ve been debunked. You lie like this often about groups you don’t belong to, don’t know anything about, and haven’t bothered to research, so it’s unsurprising you’re doing it yet again.
As I’ve already pointed out, it was because of progressive upset with Egypt’s human rights records that Biden administration just withheld aid to Egypt. You don’t know about this, because the only thing you know about progressives is what you see on Twitter and in the right wing media that has broken the brains of most voters in your age group.
However, your insistence that progressives don’t care about Egypt is a flat-out lie. And it will remain a lie no matter how many times you repeat the lie.
When the facts change, logical people change their opinions. But you are illogical, arrogant, hopelessly biased, set in your beliefs, certain you know it all, and incapable of change. So I know you will continue to ignore the facts to instead tediously flog your dead hobby horse of blindly bashing liberals.
That’s fine, but it won’t make you any less wrong. Shouting profanties doesn’t make your characteristically hateful and fact-free cranky old man diatribes true. God bless!
@Michael Reynolds:
Liberals think they’re both problematic. You’re the one stuck in zero-sum, either/or, childishly black-and-white thinking that apparently prevents you from holding two thoughts in your head at once.
First of all, I don’t know that no liberals have done this, because I do know that liberals have called out China for a human rights record, something you probably lie about. But, again, China has not portrayed itself as a close democratic ally of the US, parlaying that branding into making itself the number one recipient of US Aid. Israel has. What’s threadbare are your pathetic attempts to downplay and distract from that very salient difference between Israel and the countries you desperately want to change the subject to.
And how many items made by slave labor are in your house? What are you doing about it?
With so many indictments to his name (he has the best indictments, alotofpeoplesaythat), and knowing how thorough federal prosecutors tend to be, I’m beginning to hope Benito will cop a plea that avoids prison, and will withdraw from the 2024 race.
It might be more on brand for the Cheeto to risk a trial, counting on jury nullification, or maybe on bribing the jury (if he can get someone else to put up the money), or intimidating the jury, or intimidating witnesses.
I’m not predicting what he’ll do. Very likely, he doesn’t know, and even more likely he’ll change his mind a few million times in the meantime.
@DK:
I don’t lie. Full stop.
I may be ill-informed on some things. As are we all. You may not like my interpretation of events, but I don’t lie. Not ever.
Let’s put all progressive complaints about all other human rights issues in the entire world in a big pile. Place them on one side of the scale. Now do Israel. And if you tell me it’s not wildly disproportionate, I won’t call you a liar, but I will say your facts are wrong.
Progs obsess over Israel because 1) They see them as White/Europeans and thus apply a very different standard than they do to non-white nations. 2) They see them as US client states. That is naive and outdated thinking. 3) Because they get to strut their courage and rack up virtue points by attacking one of our constituent voter groups. Proves you’re not beholden to the man. Right on, fist pump! And 4) Because as much as you refuse to see it, a lot of people – our good folks on the Left – are anti-semites. British Labor had the same inability to admit what was plainly true, which is one reason why Jeremy Corbyn is no longer relevant.
Here’s the truth: the Left is not morally pure or intellectually error-free. We have racists. We have anti-Semites. We have transphobes and gay-bashers and god knows we have ageists. The difference between us and MAGAts is one of degree, a very large degree of difference, but pretending that we are without sin is weak and silly and self-harming.
You take the same stance on all things progressive: we are right because we are good therefore we are right. And any criticism – no matter how small – is not something you seem able to handle. You want to compare me to Trump? I’ll compare progs to Putin: they keep losing and keep insisting no mistakes have been made. How does a losing army turn things around when they are incapable of listening to criticism?
@gVOR10:
It bums me out. Both Dakotas are well worth visiting just for their natural beauty. And the folks are nice even to out of state visitors.
One of my all time car camping campgrounds is in the Black Hills. A gorgeous lake surrounded by stunning foothills. It’s in the back-end of nowhere and even during tourist season it is usually empty. You can shroom your brains out and howl at the moon for hours and there is no one there to tell you to shut up and go the sleep. I was there last summer, howled at the moon and dove naked into the lake. It was glorious.
I used to go car camping with my friend Brad a lot. Brad is a proud gay man. We loved going to the Dakotas because we could get to a different, interesting biome fast. Set up, bliss, hang out, hike, go into town, whatever. One thing I noticed is that Brad comported himself slightly differently. He knew he was not in Minneapolis. I don’t know the right words – he coded himself differently, behaved differently, spoke differently which I assumed to be for his own self-protection.
He grew up in a really small town in Southern Minnesota. Moved to the big city as quick as he could.
I joshed him gently one time that the waitress at the diner was clearly flirting with him. He told me one of the local gentleman at the counter stools picked up his vibe and gave a discreet nod.
All that passed me by completely. Am I that het oblivious? Apparently so.
Brad knew small towns better than me. Brad knew small town upper Midwest better than me, by leaps and bounds.
You know what, I change my deportment too in small towns when I visit. I become less, I don’t know, urban, maybe? Becoming less urban is probably a hell of a lot easier than becoming less gay.
All of us try to fit the vibe of the room, be ourselves, but not poke our heads up too high. Maybe not all of us.
I hit against that occasionally. For Brad, that is a daily concern that he is highly attenuated to constantly. It must be exhausting.
Theodore Roosevelt NP is one of my favorite places on the planet.
My favorite road in the US runs about 10 miles south of the Canadian border along the upper edge of NoDak across Montana. It is stunningly empty. It is so empty it messes with your head and it goes on forever.
@DK:
Some facts:
23% of Blacks hold anti-Semitic views. 19% among US-born Hispanics. 10% among Whites, 15% of the general population. This is what people will admit to a pollster. The reality will of course be worse.
Brand new the Mountain Goats song released today called Clean Slate. First song from a new album called Jenny From Thebes.
The repeated lyric throughout is
Remember at your peril
Forget the ones you can
Both hit hard. The why of how you came to think that. “Forget the ones you can”. That is profound and really, really fucked up.
Someone is moving away from a very bad situation.
I’m going to geek out to the Mountain Goats for the next 24 hours.
@Michael Reynolds:
Wrong on all counts, homie. I’m not a progressive so there’s no “we” here — I nurse personal animus towards Bernie’s political children. But unlike you, I try to make sure my anti-Berniebro critiques are fact-based. I have no vested interest in progressives being right, my interest is combating misinformation.
You cannot handle new data, complexities, and contradictions that undercut your biased, oversimplistic narratives. Because your stance seems to be I’m always right, so I won’t thoughtfully update my opinions ever, because I’m never wrong.
We’re all ill-informed. Difference between me and you is that as I become aware of updated information, I tweak my beliefs to add nuance and context. You never do, which results repeated false statements. Liberals are supposed to be better than this but you act like a MAGA extremist, refusing facts you don’t like.
A person repeating that progressives don’t care about Egypt after learning progressives pushed for aid to be withheld to Egypt is choosing to lie.
A guy who giving reasons Israel gets additional scrutiny but deliberately ignores the “wildly disproportionate” amount of military and economic aid American taxpayers give to Israel has made a choice to not tell the whole truth. No big mystery why: he’s a liar.
Someone who shouts “We’re losing!” in one breath while complaining in the next about Biden and Democrats not getting credit for their many wins — who today attacks The Left for focusing on one issue after yesterday complaining The Left’s attention is divided — is showing how dishonest people almost always end up contradicting themselves. Oversimplistic delusions inevitably get crushed by the complex and contradictory truth known as ‘reality.’
Style may matter more than substance in fiction writing, but this is not necessarily the case in analysis. Subtlety doesn’t make good copy, so your comments have all the subtlety of an axe. We get it. Fiction is what you do, and it’s fun to read. But the boring facts still matter.
@Michael Reynolds:
Oh I know. I grew up black and queer in The Greatest Country in The World. I know that the rates of anti-blackness, racism, and/or homophobia among whites, blacks, Hispanics et al is much worse than advertised, I know *all* about how that game works.
@Michael Reynolds: So, now that you’ve demonstrated what a superb civil libertarian you are by documenting the atrocities around the world, I’m wondering what you actually do about any of it? Is bashing liberals somehow freeing the oppressed in Egypt?
@DK: “No big mystery why: he’s a liar.”
I think you’re wrong to call MR a liar. He’s a bullshitter.
That is, he likes to argue and he desperately needs to win every argument. And once winning is all that matters, then it doesn’t matter to him what arguments he makes. Does he contradict himself three times in two messages? Sure, but he’s not here to fight for a truth. He’s here to fight and to win.
Truth is not an issue here. MR gets bored and to entertain himself he throws out a provocative statement, and then beats back those who disagree with him. If he actually wanted to convince anyone, he would stick to facts, but it’s much more fun to improvise, elaborate and move goalposts.
And the angrier you get, the more he’s winning. Because none of this matters to him. It’s a game.
And hey, Michael — none of this is meant as criticism. This is the part you like to play on this board, and I’ve got no problem with that. But you’re kind of getting DK all wound up here — you win! — and this argument is looking like it might get ugly… and no one here wants that.
@wr:
Thank you! But I’m not wound up, I’m denying fake facts and bad analysis by adding the context of dry, boring factual info. I’m fine, I’m not the cranky dude angrily shouting profanities and falsehoods lol
Liar, bullshitter…six in one hand, a half dozen in the other. A liar By Any Other Name is still a liar. Someone insists on repeating things that are not true, I going to describe them as a dedicated liar. That’s how I was brought up.
Someone doesn’t want to be called a liar there’s a simple solution: tell the truth. It need not be so dramatic.