“Drones the size of cars” Yes, that’s your next Commander in Chief. “And that’s how MAGAts started shooting down small private airplanes all over America,” a friend quips. Forbes: For weeks, citizens across New Jersey — as well as New York, Pennsylvania and Connecticut — have reported seeing clusters of drone-like objects flying low in the sky at night, yet information remains scarce, even as state officials now say they’ve seen the drones firsthand, received mixed information from federal agencies and pushed the FBI for answers. Citizens report seeing “drones the size of cars” overhead. With those red and green lights, I suspect we’re simply seeing those giant flying cats The Weekly World News told us years ago were terrorizing New Jersey. The flying kitties are just showing off their Christmas spirit. Donald Trump has none. And he hates pets. Especially oversized flying ones.
Uncategorized
You can’t really blame them. Most voters made it pretty clear that they don’t give a damn about female equality or even autonomy. So why pretend? The GOP knows which way the wind is blowing and it’s not into a future where female leadership is considered important or, frankly, even acceptable. We need to concentrate on coddling young men and reassuring white males that they still run the world. All this women stuff only hurts the ball team.
Many, many thanks to all of you who have contributed so far this year. I can’t tell you what it means to me, especially now when everything has been feeling a little bit bleak. It reminds me that none of us are alone in all this and gives me hope that we’ll be able to regroup and push back on what Trump and his henchmen have planned for us. Everybody with a blog or a substack is quoting Professor Timothy Snyder these days, especially his admonition not to “obey in advance.” Sadly, we’re watching so many do exactly that right now. Media figures, government officials, world leaders and CEOs are making the pilgrimage down to Mar-a-Lago to kiss the ring (even, in some cases, holding their hands over their hearts to strains of the January 6th choir singing the national anthem!) Democrats are starting to signal that Trump is someone they can work with. It’s enough to make you crazy. It feels as if they’ve all completely given in to his noxious authoritarianism before he’s even started to implement his plans.
The NY Times is reporting that Trump is conducting most of his business at Mar-a-Lago these days after dark, often over dinner with whichever CEO or dignitary has traveled to offer fealty and tribute that day. Of the more than 80 personnel announcements Mr. Trump has made since Election Day, 45 have been announced in social media posts and emails that he has sent after 6 p.m. Many have come after 10 p.m., prompting a wave of social media chatter and television coverage that sometimes continues throughout the night and into the early morning hours. One of his veteran staff members said Mr. Trump was known to leave voice mail messages in the middle of the night saying: “This is your favorite president.” He sometimes follows up the next day, suggesting the person might want to share the audio with his friends and family. Trump’s lovely spokesman Stephen Cheung says that Trump’s working night and day which is obviously bullshit. But several people close to Mr. Trump — along with aides who have come to expect emails, texts and phone calls to arrive well after bedtime — say he is often just getting started around dinnertime. That is usually when Mr.
I’ve been wondering about the problem of young people growing up in a time when Donald Trump is ubiquitous and seen as a normal political leader. The youngest voters were only 6 years old the last time we had a presidential election in which he wasn’t the candidate. He might as well be FDR to them. It became particularly worrisome to me when I heard about all those text messages being sent to Black kids and girls right after the election saying they were going back to the plantation or “your body my choice” and processions in the halls of high schools waving Trump flags. It’s just so ugly. This piece by a high school senior says it all: After Trump’s victory, it became okay to be young and a Trump supporter and anti-woke. It became okay to make offensive jokes, which in many cases were not jokes but just crude and rude insults. It became okay to support the oppression of marginalized groups. I attend a school that fits well into Middle American Republicanism in the Northeast. I won’t repeat the many things I’ve heard in class and the halls that would be classified as hate.
No defense except offense A call for a lefty demagogue has popped up for the second time in a week. This time from Jonathan Last at The Bulwark. Trumpism represents a break from the old politics for which America has few defenses. Trump has “extrapolated existing dynamics while also transforming the public’s attitudes toward violence, democracy, and the rule of law,” he writes. So now what? Setting aside his ‘druthers (and morality, for the moment), how do we win elections in this environment? Joe Biden’s (and Democrats’) theory of the case was, as I’ve complained, same-old, same-old. Govern and run on kitchen tables issues, insists Nancy Pelosi’s generation. Democrats did, and delivered for red, rural areas in particular where Democrats have bled support. Who noticed? And Trump? Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty are museum pieces, not guideposts, these days. A plurality of Americans is now more interested in pulling up the ladder behind them, Last suggests. (I’m reading between his lines.) They’d rather kick down than lift up latecomers to the threadbare American Dream. Making the pie higher is out. Zero-sum is in.
Following up on my earlier post Journalism is not how I describe to people what we do here at ye olde blog. At best, it’s advocacy journalism. Somehow (with your help and indulgence) we’ve managed to hang on since the aughts, post-Facebook and post-Twitter, while traditional journalism has lost ground to propaganda-inflected social media and cultural influencers. I wince at “influencers,” but suppose they get traction the same way Digby explained bloggers did in our heyday (2007): If you have something to say you can say it–and if it touches a chord, people will return time and again to read what you’ve written and discuss the issues of the day with others who are reading the same things. […] Each of us finds their niche. I’m a blogger pundit, a role for which I am eminently qualified, since, exactly like pundits on television and in newspapers, I have opinions, I write them down, and a lot of people read them. (Yes, that’s all there is to it. Sorry Mr. Broder.).
These billionaires are the worst people on earth: Meta Platforms has donated $1 million to president-elect Donald Trump’s inaugural fund, the latest step by CEO Mark Zuckerberg to bolster his once-fraught relationship with the incoming president. The donation, confirmed by the company, is a departure from past practice by Zuckerberg and his company, and comes after an election campaign in which Trump threatened to punish the tech tycoon if he tried to influence the election against him. The contribution and efforts to court the incoming administration are emblematic of the balancing act for technology CEOs whose companies have often been the target of ire from Trump and other Republicans and whose workforces tend to lean strongly to the left. Now, with Republicans set to take control of the White House and both houses of Congress and calling for new regulation of tech, some executives are adopting a new posture toward Trump. They have more money than God, as masters of the universe they are safe and secure and yet they feel the need to kiss Donald Trump’s ass in the most obsequious way possible. What pethetic little men they are.
Run ads right now, every day On Meet the Press last weekend, Trump made this inane comment: He didn’t invent the word groceries. I don’t know what was rattling around his head when he said that. But he did use the word. A lot. And he promised that he was going to lower their cost over and over again. Yet in today’s TIME Magazine interview he said: If the prices of groceries don’t come down, will your presidency be a failure? I don’t think so. Look, they got them up. I’d like to bring them down. It’s hard to bring things down once they’re up. You know, it’s very hard. A quick reminder of his campaign promises: Trump before the election: vote for me, and I’ll lower the cost of groceries. Trump today, to Time magazine: actually, it's not that simple: “It's hard to bring things down once they're up. You know, it's very hard." pic.twitter.com/nU36fg8y35 — Republicans against Trump (@RpsAgainstTrump) December 12, 2024 For the full Trump “weave” on the above of how he planned to lower the price of groceries, Philip Bump published the whole thing here.