US Politics, May 2024: They Shoot Puppies, Don't They?

i just can't believe how much food costs. that's my biggest thing since the pandemic. its huge. some things are double! that's a lot. i do most of the shopping so i notice. i just don't get take-out or eat out nearly as much. unless my dad says he's paying. then i order everything on the menu.

but *2 for $8* was just never a thing before! for, like, crackers. it never sounds like a great deal.

but my tiny insignificant micro-business is doing okay. *knock on wood not touched by a chicken infested with bird flu*

anyway, people are buying stuff. so, that's good for me. and records are basically luxury items. as long as i never stop working and never take any time off ever and never stop ever i'll be okay.

what if it makes them predictive

Well it does to the degree that we know 40-45 percent of people are definitely voting for Trump no matter what. I just think it makes it hard to parse people's actual experiences because a significant portion of our population is deliberately detached from all reality and data, not just on the economy.

But sure, I mean, I think Trump is in strong position to win and a lack of economic security is one reason for it.

I have vivid memories of the 9/11 aftermath and 2008 crash and recession. No one was buying anything, going out, taking vacations. For a while! This has not been the case since 2021 and it's just not the rich buying luxury items. Some of it is a result of pent-up pandemic demand, but even so! Inflation isn't stopping them.

it's been shown again and again that the average Trump voters are often doing quite well for themselves - they own businesses, they own property - but if they can bitch about the price of gas being higher under Biden, that's all they need for polling like this

But they'd be doing better if Biden wasn't holding the economy back

I was was just looking at videos of European tourist destinations packed with Americans and they didn't exactly look like ulta-wealthy people to me

a bunch of trump voters mad that it's not as easy to by a new care every 3-4 years

buy*

i sell cares

lol ugh

I wonder how many people think stocks are down because they got into crypto at the wrong time and fucked up

BUY THE DIP

Definitely the economy doesn't seem great to many people based on their personal experiences. But the larger thing going on with that poll imo is just the ongoing hyper-partisanalization of reality. If 50 percent of people believe unemployment is at a 50-year high, that's mostly because 40 percent of them are just mindlessly filling in whatever answer is worst for Biden. That kind of thing makes these polls sort of useless.

― a man often referred to in the news media as the Duke of Saxony (tipsy mothra), Thursday, May 23, 2024 11:22 AM (twenty-seven minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

yeah I think this is the long and short of it. I mean yes they are "uneducated" on what's really going on but that's because they spend hours a day watching a network that's been telling them that the Mar-a-Lago raid was actually an assassination attempt.

But the larger thing going on with that poll imo is just the ongoing hyper-partisanalization of reality.

this is part of it, but the media's failures of omission and commission when reporting objective realities enable accelerate that process. for better or worse swing voters are disengaged people who mostly trust the media when they encounter it, and care about things like "the economy" (jn the sense these facts describe it). the media enabling a belief that for example, price cuts are evidence of inflation, is how those swing voters stop being swing voters.

'Dow Jones tops 40,000 for the first time - here's why it's bad for Biden'

look forward to electing a President who will nominate one or two more judges who will hasten the erosion of worker's rights and expand protections for corporations.

hell, who needs the ADA, and discrimination protections

the market will correct

I was was just looking at videos of European tourist destinations packed with Americans and they didn't exactly look like ultra-wealthy people to me

"Americans dress like shit everywhere they go" is a whole other phenomenon, unrelated to the economy.

Dressing like shit is how we show our contempt for the rest of the world

I don't really read CNN or the NYT much but they've been really bad lately, CNN last week had a front page article detailing how the case against Trump had completely unraveled due to Cohen misremembering something (the prosecution provided video evidence the next court day), then yesterday NYT reports on student loan forgiveness but points out every paragraph that Biden promised more than he delivered, omitting the fact that Congressional Republicans and Trump's Supreme Court have obstructed everything he's tried to do, forcing him to find all sorts of weird loopholes. WaPo reports on how young people don't like Biden's approach to Gaza but will then public an op-ed arguing all Jews should vote Trump because Biden allowed all these student protests to happen. they really really want the horse race.

I had a threesome with Jake Gyllenhaal and Barbara Bush.

― the talented mr pimply (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, May 23, 2024 10:38 AM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

Is… is that TRUE?

Dressing like shit is how we show our contempt for the rest of the world

It's showing off our egalitarian chic.

xxp

they don't just want a horse race, they are actively pining for more of those sweet tax cuts

but the media's failures of omission and commission when reporting objective realities enable accelerate that process

There's plenty of dubious framing from the MSM, but also I think when people talk about too much about the MSM they vastly overstate its actual reach and influence. Starting with that 40-ish percent of Americans who not only don't care (or even hear) what the MSM says about anything, they will disbelieve it on principle. And other less partisan low-information voters aren't much more influenceable by the NYT or CNN or whatever. I'm not saying the media doesn't matter, but we've reached a point where it's hard to say that it matters much on this kind of stuff. The MSM is already full of stuff that's objectively bad for Trump, but it's not making any perceivable dent in his standing.

Political reporters, the ones I've known, aren't evil -- they're grindingly, exhaustively obsessed with j-school standards of objectivity.

tipsy otm. Old Republicans watch FOX and anonymous YouTubers (all day). My parents will toss in Lester Holt at 6:30.

people being wrong about societal and economic trends is more of an expectation than a surprise at this point (and possibly... forever), it's been the case with crime, child safety, what's actually going to kill you as an average American, etc. for all of our lives

The MSM is already full of stuff that's objectively bad for Trump, but it's not making any perceivable dent in his standing.

― a man often referred to in the news media as the Duke of Saxony (tipsy mothra), Thursday, May 23, 2024 12:54 PM (twenty-four minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

true but they mitigate this by giving Trump every possible benefit of the doubt. as president he got near-universal praise when he made it through a SOTU speech and started bombing Yemen. nearly everything Biden does is reported through Republican framing. in 2016 more attention was given by far to Hillary's email server than anything Trump did. it was the one thing everybody knew about her. I don't think this makes a huge difference but its definitely enough to swing an election

Two abortion-inducing drugs could soon be reclassified as controlled and dangerous substances in Louisiana under a first-of-its-kind bill that received final legislative passage Thursday and is expected to be signed into law by the governor.

Supporters of the reclassification of mifepristone and misoprostol, commonly known as “abortion pills,” say it would protect expectant mothers from coerced abortions. Numerous doctors, meanwhile, have said it will make it harder for them to prescribe the medicines that they use for other important reproductive health care needs, and could delay treatment.

Louisiana currently has a near-total abortion ban in place, applying both to surgical and medical abortions. The GOP-dominated Legislature’s push to reclassify mifepristone and misoprostol could possibly open the door for other Republican states with abortion bans that are seeking tighter restrictions on the drugs.

Current Louisiana law already requires a prescription for both drugs and makes it a crime to use them to induce an abortion in most cases. The bill would make it harder to obtain the pills by placing it on the list of Schedule IV drugs under the state’s Uniform Controlled Dangerous Substances Law.

https://apnews.com/article/abortion-pills-louisiana-legislature-controlled-substance-06ea3e8df86b72b473efe8fc71054ddf

I don’t think the MSM is responsible for 60% of adults being wrong about objective facts like “we’re in a recession” or “the stock market is down”. Most of that is due to negative partisanship. But republicans who watch Fox News do not comprise 60% of the population. there really are swing voters who really do watch CNN and read the NYT etc. and absorb the tone.

(and fail to learn facts that are important to how they vote, because those facts are not stated)

Texas is the reason

Texas doctor who said nine-year-olds can safely give birth appointed to maternal mortality committee

Dr. Ingrid Skop called the supreme court’s overturning of Roe v Wade ‘a victory’ and has argued in favor of abortion bans

Skop – who has called the supreme court’s overturning of Roe v Wade “a victory in the battle but not the end of the war” – has argued in favor of forcing rape and incest victims as young as nine or 10 to carry pregnancies to term. “If she is developed enough to be menstruating and become pregnant and reach sexual maturity, she can safely give birth to a baby,” Skop told the House oversight committee in 2021. Pregnancy at such a young age is shown to carry significant health risks, including pre-eclampsia and infections.

State committee or National?

"... Texas health committee tasked with reviewing maternal deaths...."

It doesn't sounds like she'll have any power, but still

In Texas we have to accept that anyone appointed to a state committee under this regime will be straight garbage.

I wonder how many people think stocks are down because they got into crypto at the wrong time and fucked up

Tragically, I think the crypto dweebs are doing pretty well if they rode it out. FTX is going to be able to make a lot of people whole because so many of their bullshit coin holdings have skyrocketed.

Ponzi: The Sequel

It appears that I sold my leftover darknet bitcoinage (0.002) for $60 when it was at $29k, I could have had $135!!!

DeNiro doing the voice over, pretty good

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OiwJ3kTMX60

Just a gentle reminder for those whose minds have drifted away.

Gimme the fake news and free my soul

oh no

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/05/25/trump-loudly-heckled-libertarian-national-convention

Former president Donald Trump encountered an unusually tough crowd at the Libertarian National Convention on Saturday night as the audience loudly booed him and used noisemakers to drown out his speech.

The first current or former president to speak at the third-party’s convention, Trump made several major promises to libertarians in the crowded, rowdy room, including assuring the audience that he would appoint a libertarian to his Cabinet if elected in November. But the presumptive Republican nominee also taunted the third party that has typically garnered around 1 to 3 percent of the vote in presidential races, saying they should nominate him if they want to win.

“Maybe you don’t want to win,” Trump said to a loud chorus of boos from the crowd. “Keep getting your 3 percent every four years.”

...Nonetheless, Trump lobbied for an invitation to speak to the libertarians, aiming to appeal to their voters amid concerns from the two major parties that third-party candidates could attract voters who could swing a close presidential contest with President Biden.

Despite the hostile crowd, Trump received his warmest response when he said if reelected, he would pardon Ross Ulbricht, the mastermind behind the online drug market Silk Road, who was sentenced to life in prison in 2015. A Trump adviser was paid to seek clemency for Ulbricht in the final days of Trump’s administration, but no pardon was forthcoming.

Libertarians, who believe that drugs should not be criminalized, have vocally criticized Trump for not pardoning Ulbricht. Many attending Trump’s speech carried “FREE ROSS” signs.

https://crooked.com/podcast/the-trump-voters-who-are-sick-of-trump-ep-2/

Here's an excerpt from a horror novel:

The story of how an elite strike force of Christian lawyers, activists and politicians methodically and secretly led the country down a path that defied the will of a majority of Americans, who wanted abortion to remain legal, has been hidden until now. The ultimate aim of this behind-the-scenes conservative coalition, which powered one of the most significant political resurgences the United States has ever seen, went far beyond questions of when — and if — a pregnancy can be legally ended. For them, the fall of Roe was not an end but a beginning in their effort to make all abortion illegal and, in effect, roll back the sexual revolution. It was not only a political battle but a spiritual mission, rooted in their Christian faith and their belief that they were fighting for the highest moral stakes of the modern age. Their opponents didn’t see what was coming until it was far too late. After so many decades of taking Roe for granted, supporters of abortion rights had grown dangerously complacent and disorganized in ways that made them slow to appreciate the severity of the threat.

This investigation is built on more than 350 interviews with people who had knowledge of these events, including elected officials, lawyers, activists, doctors and ordinary people whose lives were changed by the fall of Roe. The reporting spanned 16 states and Washington, from statehouses to the White House, and a review of previously unreported documents.

generous of nyt to give christianity to christofascists

Didn’t propublica just do this?

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2024/05/supreme-court-going-off-the-rails-amicus-end-of-term-june.html

(apologies if that was posted in the SC thread, which I do not follow for mental health reasons)

As Cam’ron once opined, “It’s gonna be a hot summer.”

As Cam’ron once opined, “it’s gonna be a hot summer” https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/28/us/politics/robert-de-niro-trump-biden-campaign.html

my bet is that few will remember flags-gate by the time the roberts scrotus is over— and it sure looks like a lonnng time.