Seems a better use of our energies “You don’t get a lot of chances to correct history’s mistakes. You get a few. And when you get them, you damn sure better take advantage of them,” said environmental historian Dan Flores. He wasn’t talking about consigning the MAGA movement to the ash heap of history. He was talking about efforts to restore bison herds on the Great Plains: In 1805, when the Lewis and Clark expedition reached the border of what is now North Dakota and Montana, they found herds of American buffalo so numerous, “the whole face of the country was covered” by them, Meriwether Lewis wrote. Less than a century later, in 1889, the nation’s most majestic animal (whose scientific name is Bison bison) had been reduced from practically uncountable numbers to an easily countable 541, and the species teetered on the edge of extinction. Today their numbers stand at about 350,000, most raised as livestock. Only 20,000 of them are protected in federal and state preserves in what are called conservation herds.
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Thank you Philip Bump for this perfectly illustrated explanation of the question of life expectancy which I have tried to explain to people to no avail. For some reason this concept seems to be hard for some people to accept: One day recently, three old friends met to play pickleball. Alan, 85, had taken up the sport first. Over time, he compelled his old college acquaintances Bob, 80, and Don, 75, to join him, in keeping with the rapidly growing sport’s slow downward trend in the median age of its participants. On this day, though, Bob was preoccupied. “Does it ever bother you guys,” he asked, as they were warming up, “that each of us is above the average life expectancy in the U.S.?” Bob, you see, was well-versed in government data, in part thanks to his willingness to indulge in the natural human inclination to want to understand and explore numbers. And Bob was right. The most recent estimates compiled by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, for the year 2021, put American life expectancy at just over 76 years of age.
Looks like it… Ed Kilgore on the latest: Until recently, Democrats’ biggest concern about the 2024 youth vote was that millennial and Gen-Z voters were so disappointed with our octogenarian president that they might not turn out in great enough numbers to reelect Joe Biden. Young voters were, after all, the largest and most rapidly growing segment of the Democratic base in the last election. But now public-opinion surveys are beginning to unveil a far more terrifying possibility: Donald Trump could carry the youth vote next year. And even if that threat is exaggerated or reversible, it’s increasingly clear that “the kids” may be swing voters, not unenthusiastic Democratic base voters who can be frightened into turning out by the prospect of Trump’s return. NBC News reports it’s a polling trend that cannot be ignored or dismissed: The latest national NBC News poll finds President Joe Biden trailing former President Donald Trump among young voters ages 18 to 34 — with Trump getting support from 46% of these young voters and Biden getting 42%.
In all senses of the word Via Axios: Rep. George Santos (R-N.Y.) said Friday he won’t resign from Congress but acknowledged he will likely be expelled as he lobbed salacious accusations at colleagues and called the chair of the Ethics Committee a “p***y”. A growing number of lawmakers in both parties who previously voted against expelling Santos have flipped and now say they will vote to remove him following an explosive Ethics Committee report. Santos said he knows he is “going to get expelled when this expulsion resolution goes to the floor,” adding: “I’ve done the math over and over, and it doesn’t look really good.” In an X space hosted by journalist Monica Matthews, Santos said he is “not going to resign” because “[if] I resign, I admit everything that’s on that report.” Santos said he will defend himself “to the end of time,” criticizing the Ethics Committee probe as biased and goading Chair Michael Guest (R-Miss.) to “stop being a p***y” and force a vote on his expulsion resolution. Rep.
If you don’t watch Fox, as you shouldn’t, you miss the incisive reporting and analysis they provide. Yes, the radical left commies, Marxist thugs like you and I hate pies. We really do. Especially apple pie which is, as you know, American. Because we hate America and don’t want it to be great again. (Nobody wants to “take away” anyone’s gas stoves. The idea is that in the future new gas stoves will not come online and instead modern technology will be delivering a superior form of gas stove that isn’t going to kill the planet. Because we hate everyone.) In case you are wondering what this is about, Kamala Harris and her husband Doug posted a picture of themselves on Thanksgiving with a pie in their kitchen, (at the Naval Observatory where they live? I don’t know.) This has turned into a viral sensation among the right wingers because it shows that they have a gas stove which makes them monstrous hypocrites who hate everyone and want t=people to suffer without any pies. This is what we’re dealing with. Snotty, stupid. nasty little mean girls spouting nonsense. Tens of millions of people think this is awesome.
And can you blame them? TPM reports: Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) is experiencing some political repercussions for dumping gasoline on his fractured party’s descent into dysfunction when he ousted House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) for the sin of keeping the government open. While the congressman is still popular in his Panhandle home district, his standing in Florida overall is in a state of disrepair. The Florida Atlantic University Mainstreet PolCom Lab released the results of statewide polling it conducted between Oct. 27 and Nov. 11 last week. It found that 57 percent of Florida voters are unhappy with Gaetz’s job as a congressman. That means that just 21 percent of voters surveyed approved of the congressman’s performance in Washington. About eight percent were “neutral” and 14 percent indicated they didn’t know how they felt, per the poll results. When broken down by party, his approval rating is only a little less bleak. Among Democrats surveyed, almost 83 percent said they disapprove of the professional antagonist.
Trump’s “Stanford” experiment The MAGA faithful, at long last, have not seen the light. That Road to Talledega moment, that flash of insight when the scales fall from their eyes and their political savior is revealed a bronzer-caked madman bent on the destruction of the red, white and blue nation they hold so dear? Never happened. What has happened since Donald Trump’s Veterans Day “vermin” speech is that the mainstream press and others have finally stopped giving him the benefit of the doubt. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but Donald Trump is a fascist,” late-night host Stephen Colbert told his audience. Former Republican Tom Nichols declared Trump had “crossed one of the last remaining lines that separated his usual authoritarian bluster from recognizable fascism.” Even the New York Times this week broached the subject. But the answer to why the faithful have not wavered might be found in Philip Zimbardo’s 1971 Stanford Prison Experiment and its aftermath. Zimbardo famously set up a mock prison in Stanford University’s psychology department.
Where we are headed That’s about as succinct as it gets. So do yourselves a favor. Volunteer for a local campaign. Donate to a local campaign (not to a marquee one doomed to fail because you really can’t stand the Republican). Encourage your Democratic family and unaffiliated friends (especially) to vote in the primary and general election next year. Yes, it really does matter: BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — In the northwest corner of Louisiana, a candidate for parish sheriff demanded a recount Wednesday after losing by a single vote in an election where more than 43,000 people cast ballots. […] “This extraordinarily narrow margin … absolutely requires a hand recount to protect the integrity of our democratic process, and to ensure we respect the will of the people,” John Nickelson, the Republican candidate who trailed by one vote in last week’s election for Caddo Parish Sheriff, posted on social media Wednesday. Henry Whitehorn, the Democrat who won the sheriff runoff, did not immediately respond to an email requesting comment. You’ve seen plenty of close races, even in unlikely places like this.
They’re there for him in his time of need. And they’re prepared to use the power of the state to shut down his critics. Here’s how the free speech warriors of the right defend the first Amendment: Elon Musk’s new lawsuit against Media Matters, which X Corp. filed late Monday, has been dismissed by legal experts as a frivolous effort to bully a prominent critic into silence. But some Republicans apparently see this as a feature, not a bug: They are allying themselves with Musk’s effort for precisely this purpose. Musk’s suit charges that Media Matters deliberately and deceptively harmed X (formerly Twitter) with a widely-publicized investigation showing that posts containing pro-Nazi content appeared on X alongside advertisements from leading companies. That, along with a surge in antisemitic content, has advertisers fleeing the site, sparking a slide in ad revenue. Republicans are eagerly rushing to Musk’s rescue — and not just rhetorically.
“It looks like they hate immigrants. Well I am an immigrant, and I did what I could to try and save that little girl ”— Hero Brazilian delivery driver Caio Benicio Right wingers rioted in Dublin last night, angry because an immigrant stabbed 5 people. It turns out that it was an immigrant who stepped in and stopped the assailant. Imagine that. Brazilian food delivery driver in Dublin heroically stopped the knifeman who attacked a group of young children outside their school yesterday. The attack, which hospitalized three children under the age of 7 and a 30 year old teacher who was trying to protect them, triggered the worst riots in living memory in the Irish capital after a far right mob, described as a “lunatic, hooligan faction” by the police was whipped up by reports on social and mainstream media that the knifeman was an immigrant. The ringleaders were then joined by opportunistic rioters who looted stores, and torched buses and police vehicles.