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July 24, 2023 12:26 AM UTC

Monday Open Thread

  • 48 Comments
  • by: Colorado Pols

“Few men have virtue to withstand the highest bidder.”

–George Washington

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48 thoughts on “Monday Open Thread”

  1. Twitter is now "X". Josh Marshall:

    Along with the rebrand I propose "tweeting" should now be called "shitting". Tweets are shits. The site symbolized by the grapheme X is Shitter.

    Twitter and tweeting have become synonymous with microblogging to the point that imitators come up with shit as dumb as "skeeting" and "tooting," and Musk is throwing it out the window.

    1. Not sure how much this matters, but if you do a Google search for x, on the front page you’ll get X (a movie), X (a band), X-Games, X-Box, Radio X, Fast X, Fragile X Foundation, Venture X, X chromosome, IBM X-Force, X-Men, Pro Pilot X, Title X, Fragile X, X streaming, X plane, Pro X II, x (album by Ed Sheeran), Bio X, X Prize, Ten-X, X (video by Jonas Bros), x.org, Musk’s own Tesla Model X, and X (the moonshot factory).

      Mind you, this is only the first page out of about 25 million hits.

      He also got quite a bit of media coverage out of the rebrand, but once that fades I’ll very much question if he’s heard of SEO.

      My Google search for Twitter got about 23 million hits and the first page was almost exclusively directly Twitter-related.

      1. It makes more sense if you think of it as not to remake a company, as it is to diminish it. Removing a tool for liberal organizers

          1. Also just read on Twitter (I will still call it that, like I still say Mile High Stadium) that Musk tried to start rebranding PayPal by starting with X-PayPal. People disliked it, oddly, because PayPal had a recognizable brand name that was already being used as a verb (PayPal me the money). The focus group in part said X reminded them of porn.

      2. Guessing that Musky will now want royalties paid on any use of the 24th letter of the english Merikan alphabet?

        Space-X

        Elon MusX

  2. Hat-tip to MahaBlog.

    As New York Democrat Ritchie Torres told me, “No one or nothing in America is safe from the sheer stupidity of modern Republican politics.” The party has “become monomaniacally anti-woke culture warriors whose ever-lengthening list of targets include acronyms like DEI and ESG, Barbie, gas stoves, Hunter Biden, trans people.” Yes, Ted Cruz called a scene in Barbie “Chinese communist propaganda.”

      2. I'm slow … my understanding and several dictionaries say TBD means "To Be Decided" or "To Be Determined." It is a placeholder term,

        I think it would be more ironic if you could convince "conservatives" that TBI is the threat to conservatives, and begin to have them rallying against American football and military troops having boots on the ground where they are exposed to explosives.

         

         

      2. Have you seen an image of the map, and do you jnow what the line represents? I couldn't contort a vision of SE Asia out of that map if I tried, and it's supposed to represent a journey line according to the producers. I suppose maybe it could be SE Asia in all its crayon glory, and Barbie could have travelled the very edge of China's proclaimed sea border… or, yeah, it's just a fake movie "map" of an inter-reality journey of a toy.

        1. Someone really needs to administer a Rorschach test to Teddy Cruz. In every ink blot, he will see aggression by Communist China and/or a transgender woman trying to urinate.

        2. Communist China is in fact trying to claim some territory in the south China Sea. That is the 9 dash “cow tongue ” line.

          It’s controversial because the US, the Phillipines, Indonesia, and other countries all want to maintain full access to territory China wants.

          The South China Sea is also where China is building artificial islands, and militarizing them. There is reason to be concerned.

          Your guess as to whether this is the territory on Barbie’s map, even a crude crayon map, is as good as mine. Like Phoenix, I can’t tell.

        3. You didn't see the movie so you are just talking out of your ass. Besides you aren't offended that Canada is part of the US or that territory previously part of the confederacy isnt included as land. You are just worked up because you were told to be. Go see Barbie then we'll talk. 

          1. Who are you talking to, John N o D? Why would any of us actually see the Barbie movie?

            Do your American Girl dolls make globe—trotting journeys?

  3. Good News: Republicans are Dying Off. Celind Lake.

    Every year, about 4 million Americans turn 18 and gain the right to vote. In the eight years between the 2016 and 2024 elections, that’s 32 million new eligible voters.

    Also every year, 2½ million older Americans die. So in the same eight years, that’s as many as 20 million fewer older voters.

    In last August’s Kansas abortion referendum, for example, women under 30 turned out at a rate of 41 percent and helped win the contest. A similar Michigan abortion referendum brought youth midterm turnout to 49 percent — and 69 percent of voters younger than 30 voted to put abortion rights protections in the state constitution compared with just 52 percent of voters 30 and older. Michigan voters elected Democratic majorities in both state houses for the first time in years, and reelected their Democratic governor, attorney general and secretary of state.

    While American voters historically have tended somewhat to become more conservative as they age, no one should expect these voting patterns to change drastically. About 48 percent of Gen Z voters identify as a person of color, while the boomers they’re replacing in the electorate are 72 percent White. Gen Z voters are on track to be the most educated group in our history, and the majority of college graduates are now female. Because voting participation correlates positively with education, expect women to speak with a bigger voice in our coming elections.

    1. QED. WaPo.

      Yale University researchers found that registered Republicans had a higher rate of excess deaths than Democrats in the months following when vaccines became available for all adults in April 2021. The study does not directly attribute the deaths to covid-19. Instead, excess mortality refers to the overall rate of deaths exceeding what would be expected from historical trends.

      Both parties experienced a sharp but similar increase in excess deaths the following winter. But after April 2021, the gap in excess death rates emerged, with the rate for Republicans 7.7 percentage points higher than the rate for Democrats. For Republicans, that translated into a 43 percent increase in excess deaths.

      Researchers said the gap in excess death rates was larger in counties with lower vaccination rates, and noted that the gap was primarily driven by voters in Ohio.

      1. Another look at the partisan impact of COVID comes from Charles Gaba. 

        March (Likely FINAL) Update: County-Level Red/Blue COVID Death Rate Divide Widens Again

        The reddest quintile includes roughly 65.1 million people living in counties where Donald Trump received 62.4% or more of the vote in 2020; the bluest quintile includes around 66.8 million living in counties where Trump received less than 31.6%. While the raw numbers aren't quite equal, both have been adjusted for actual population….

        It’s true that there’s a lot of GOP voters in blue counties…but there’s also still a lot of Dem voters in red counties. Having said that, a far more sophisticated analysis done last summer which adjusted for a dozen other variables still found partisanship to be by far the biggest determining factor in COVID death rates….

        Regarding the impact on [2022] midterm elections: I’ve done extensive analysis on that, and the GOP COVID Death Cult factor made a decisive difference in exactly one statewide race last fall: Arizona Attorney General. It didn’t make the difference in any House races, although it came close in a few.

         

         

    2. That analysis also overlooks the “new voters” by way of naturalization / becoming a citizen, about 750,000 per year (2016-2020), and under the Biden administration [and the reduction of COVID impacts], even more.

      U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) released data showing 1,023,200 naturalizations during Fiscal Year (FY) 2022, the highest annual number of citizens that the agency has naturalized since 2008. 

      Combined with 855,000 naturalized citizens during FY21, this means that nearly two million people (1,878,200) have naturalized over the last two fiscal years.

      While those voters are NOT a cohesive group, they can be particularly important to a winning coalition.  The new citizens are concentrated in the US, and most swing states are among the states with higher numbers of new voters. 

      These new voters could determine the outcome of this year’s election at all levels of government. …

      This a multi-racial, multi-generational voting bloc that represents a powerful political force in the upcoming elections. At a time when anti-immigrant rhetoric is high and policies counter to immigrant interests are being implemented across the nation, New American Voters can raise their voices and sway the outcome of elections for the White House, Senate, governorships, and state legislatures….. 

       

    3. More Good News. 

      Of the 171 cities and counties identified as "college towns" by the American Communities Project, 2 in 3 have grown more Democratic and 38 have flipped from red to blue, according to a Politico analysis of the MIT Election Data and Science Lab.

      College towns have always been much more liberal than random mid-sized towns. As creative hubs, I think they are growing faster as well. In the article they talk about UM (Ann Arbor) and UW (Dane County, Wisconson)

      These mid-Western & Prairie swing states, had moved away from the Democrats after the 1990s – diminished turnout from labor & bachelor-norwegian-farmers, I guess.

      1. Case in point, My home town:

        Colorado is one of the states that have benefited from this shift. “Since 2008, when Larimer [County] first flipped from red to blue, [Colorado] has firmly been in the Democratic column,” reported Politico. “Between the 2000 and 2020 presidential elections, in Larimer [home of Colorado State University,] and Boulder County, home to the University of Colorado, the Democratic vote grew by 169,000 votes. The Republican vote, by comparison, grew by just 21,000 votes.”

        Hmm. Boulder was always quite liberal- both on campus and off.

        The college part of Fort Collins of my youth was fairly liberal, even though CSU was an Ag school with lots of rancher and farmer kids. But, Larimer County was all farm & ranch agricultural (like Weld County is to this day). Loveland was well known for being a sun-down town into the 1960s – within my memory. Subsequently we had LOTs of suburban-style growth: college-educated extreme middle-class, but I wouldn’t say they were universally liberal; Lots of Texas and California refugees. “Dear, next time let’s move somewhere ‘nice'”.

        The re-alignment after Trump has been to collapse the college-educated suburban vote to the Democrats, and the rural small-town, and non-college voters to MAGA.

        I don’t think that has anything to do with college imparting socialist-values to students, which is what MAGA-ites are claiming. More like revulsion against TRUMP and Christian Nationalists.

    1. It literally turns my stomach to listen to her spew her lying bullshit.

      Anyone who ever voted for this vacuous piece of garbage owes the rest of us an apology.

        1. I disagree. In that MAGA-addled mind of hers she probably thinks the Dukes of her district might fall for it.  Her true believers were popping tents over her little trash can stunt. 

          1. Thanks for posting, Michael. With minimal regret, I couldn't force myself to turn on the sound. Meanwhile, "back at the ranch," I mailed my first contribution check to Adam Frisch this past Friday.

            Website is Adam for Colorado. 

    2. Meanwhile in CD-3 we get NOTHING substantive from her position holding.  Like Trump and the rest of the 88 million brain dead please majority CRUSH THEM. 

      1. Unfortunately, there are Lauren "Bim" Boebert backers. Politico headline:

        Club for Growth readies $20m fund to boost Boebert, Gaetz and other McCarthy antagonists

        the Club also noted that it would also help the three members of the 20 who could be most at risk from Democrats in a general election: Boebert, Luna and Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.). Boebert’s 2022 challenger, Adam Frisch, is running again after nearly besting her last fall. He announced raising a whopping $2.6 million in the second quarter of this year.

  5. The "Dead Ron Bounce". Josh Marshall at TPM.

    A Jebbite candidate clothed in a MAGA suit to succeed in the post-Trump era, to be sure, but still a Jebbite candidate. I imagine that this would seem odd to a lot of people since whatever ones feelings about Jeb Bush I don’t think most people ever thought of him as scary or evil. The fact that DeSantis was, like Bush, a Governor of Florida just cemented the equation. It also gave him a footing with many of the same Florida high-roller donors, or at least same kind of Florida high roller donors.

    It all fits from a certain perspective. Jeb Bush is where the oligarch GOP went off the rails. Jeb was the chosen one to face Hillary Clinton. And if it wasn’t Jeb they had a next generation under-Jeb lined up in the person of Marco Rubio. Trump destroyed them both. But seeing DeSantis in these terms never quite fit either. He was never really a Jeb in Trump clothing or as close as one could get to a Jebbite figure in the Trump era. Whatever DeSantis believes in his heart when it comes to issues of gender identity and other culture war issues, he’s always been hard right. He was a member of the House Freedom Caucus before most people even knew what that was. Ron’s effort to run to Trump’s right was predictable on many levels, not simply as an over-literal campaign misfire.

    Of course, DeSantis’s billionaire backers were happy to go along with whatever kind of campaign he was going to run – as long as he was successful. But he wasn’t. And that’s the key to the campaign’s still-unfolding free-fall. There was never a real DeSantis constituency, aside perhaps from some Incel/mass shooting message boards. What there was was a pretty big move-on-from-Trump constituency.

    It wasn’t a majority certainly and it wasn’t Never Trump or anti-Trump. But there was a substantial minority of Republicans interested in moving on from Trump’s baggage and the mounting evidence of his electoral weakness – if it could be done. What DeSantis did do last Fall was consolidate almost all of that move-on constituency based on the mistaken belief that he could pull it off. Once that impression started to falter there was no real support for the guy himself to hold on to. And here we are – on a private jet to nowhere.

    1. From Twitter…or “X”… or whatever it’s being called today?  Some MAGA’s are losing their *hit over the election results: 

      So get a load what’s happening in Spain. Globalists are stealing another election. 

      The Socialist Prime Minister lost last night.

      The guy who won is a “conservative” but not a very solid one. Nonetheless he wouldn’t legalize bestiality and the other stuff that the Socialists are doing in Spain.

      So, his name is Feijoo. He won the election. He won an absolute majority in the Senate.

      He won the popular vote and he won the most seats in Parliament.

      He didn’t win an absolute majority in the Parliament though. The Parliament decides the Prime Minister. 

      He has to rely on the Vox Party, who are the real good guys, to get the majority.

      Even with their seats, he still needs seven seats in his coalition to get a majority.

      But none of the other parties are willing to make a coalition with him because they consider him a “right wing extremist”.

      This guy in America would be considered further Left than most Democrats. He’s not far right. Not even close.

      So, anyway, the current Socialist Prime Minister has said that he won the election and will form a government with the remaining coalitions.

      He didn’t win the election. There is no argument to be made that he won the election.

      But, because of the coalition system, he is going to unite with an eco-terrorist party and three separatist parties to get him the majority.

      He’ll have to literally concede on a referendum to separate the region of Catalonia from the rest of Spain… something that would tear the country apart LITERALLY.

      This is the extent these Socialist hacks will go towards to retain power.

      Since the majority of conservatives abroad are pretty weak, they won’t be screaming in the government how a man who lost the elections yet remains the President is illegitimate… but they should.

      They should call him an illegitimate Prime Minister and protest in the streets until new elections are called… but they likely won’t.

      Just like us in America. We had our one day of January 6th and now we just act like Biden is legitimate.

      Conservatives need to get tough and get tough fast.

      The country of Spain is becoming the rape capital of Europe – for women and animals.

      They’re being inundated with illegals who are now more emboldened than ever to rape anyone they want.

      It’s about to be a rapefest. The socialist government literally lowered the criminal sentences for rapists and freed a bunch of rapists out of jail so they could take to the streets and start running through some vaginas.

      This is SICK BEHAVIOR. This is the Left.

      They say they love democracy but they only use the veil of democracy to never give up power. It’s one big fraud and we’re stuck in it.

      1. So, the Popular Party won the popular vote. Big deal. Tell that to Presidents Al Gore and Hillary Clinton.

        It’s not a matter of getting the most votes but in getting them in right combination of districts or states.

        The Spanish election reminded me of the US House last November. A big right-wing wave is a comin’, Yadda, Yadda, Yadda, followed by a big yawn.  

        The really interesting thing was the collapse of the two extremes. Sumar (formerly Podemos) on the far left went from 35 to 31 seats. The center-left socialists went from 120 to 122. Vox, the neo-fascists, went from 52 to 33 seats. The center-right PP went from 89 to 136 seats.

         

      1. Yes, indeed. And that was after they received the coveted endorsement of Georgia Meloni (i.e., Madam Mussolini) in Italy.

        No word from SNL's Weekend Update reporters on whether the still-gravely-dead Francisco Franco weighed in with his support for Vox.

    1. I'll bet his staff was up nights for months on end consulting with climate experts to come up with a deep policy like that. 

        1. It’s going just like Exxon scientists predicted it would back in the 70’s. 

          Not to be alarmist but…this is what’s called a six-sigma event, now unfolding in Antarctica. 

          Otherwise known as a once-in-7.5-million-year event. 

          Hang onto your hats.

          #ExxonKnew

           

           

          1. That is scary stuff, Michael. If I understand…and I think I do.

            So far, our locale has been spared the intensity of heat that is killing people a couple hundred miles to the south. And…saints be blessed, we have altitude.

            I fear the upvalley traffic will be steadily increasing for a long time…🤨

  8. Ha, Ha, Ha, Ha, Ha, Ha, Ha, Ha, Ha, Ha, Ha, Ha. via Josh Marshal.

    the takeaway by the end of today is that all social media moguls own some trademark claim to X with the exception of Elon Musk, who doesn't

    1. Welp, @twitter name so coming off the building right now but @elonmusk didn’t get permit for the equipment on the street so @SFPD is shutting it down.

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