Facts?! That just makes them devolve to No true Scotsman rhetoric. ;-)

Vance and the rest – including Trump himself – are suggesting that the attacks are because Democrats are demonizing Trump and Democrats need to tone down the vitriol, ignoring that Trump has said Democrats are destroying America and that we won’t have a country left if they get in office and all the rest. At least Vance is – after saying on TV with Dana Bash that they have confirmed reports from Springfield (in an interview about the pet eating thing) – that he, too, ought to tone down his rhetoric, but let’s see if he can stick with that for more than a day.

Here’s a story from July about the left/right spread in toxic language: https://theconversation.com/trump-shooting-is-a-warning-about-how-toxic-language-leads-to-violence-234637

Note the disparity on their graphic:

Ehn. The latest guy called Putin a terrorist on camera, which is something a Trumper would never say.

Yes. The story here is straight from Associated Press, but I looked around and found a few more details in a Telegraph article:

But he woman’s doctor told police that the defendant had tested positive with a rapid test before telling him that she “certainly won’t let herself be locked up” after the result.

Instead she left her apartment and talked to people without a mask, ignoring her mandatory quarantine and positive test.

Note they say MANDATORY quarantine. At the end of the article they explain that Austria’s far right party, Freedom Party, is hyper-anti-vax, expected to win upcoming elections:

Its manifesto has promised a pardon for anyone convicted of breaching coronavirus rules and to repay any fines imposed during the pandemic.

The manifesto says coronavirus regulations were encroachments on fundamental rights “accompanied by unprecedented indoctrination and brainwashing.”

Refresher on McCabe from The Guardian:

McCabe was part of FBI leadership, briefly as acting director, during investigations of Russian interference in the 2016 election and links between Trump and Moscow. Trump fired McCabe in March 2018, two days before he was due to retire. McCabe was then the subject of a criminal investigation, for allegedly lying about a media leak. The investigation was dropped in 2020. In October 2021, McCabe settled a lawsuit against the justice department.

I mention this because y’all know that Trumpers will immediately brush off McCabe’s comments as a known-bad-guy who was fired for being so awful and is now trying to get revenge.

You’re right. I hear you. Intellectually, I understand that the conservative/fundamentalist mindset gives higher importance to following leaders and is more triggered by moral disgust. I understand that a conservative may feel a liberal is less moral because liberals ‘lack’ a moral imperative to follow leaders simply because they are leaders. I even accept that agreeing to a premise has utility by getting everyone to work towards a common goal. Unfortunately, I get stuck on the bit where the premise seems illogical to me, or the leader seems to be obviously lying. That’s the part where any intellectual understanding of why someone might choose to ignore obvious red flags flies to the wayside and I can’t figure out what to do about it.

I’m pretty sure that journalists should continuously report which things are unfounded lies, but I don’t think that will sway those who believe those lies. It might, however, convince the continuously emerging crop of newly interested people to be skeptical.

I spent a good while writing up a reply, but it was long and the main point was: while any group of 100+ people is likely to have a bad actor, you look for credible proof (like Edward Snowden showing evidence rather than Sidney Powell saying she had ‘visions’). Side bit: tales of killing/eating/sexually-exploiting babies and pets by a GROUP should always be taken as a manipulative lie because it always is. When some whacko actually tries that crap, the Boys in Blue get up in arms – even if it means ignoring pressure from their bosses, “He’s Illuminati. Let it go.” No. That sort of thing gets exposed.

I kinda understand how some people fall for conspiracies, but I don’t understand how so many people would VOTE for someone who reliable falls for and promotes so very many obvious conspiracies.

@[email protected] draw for me a Simpsons cartoon of people picnicking while Trump shouts, “In Springfield they’re eating the dogs!”, causing everyone to look on in shock and incredulity.

If you missed it, I highly recommend watching it. High drama. Great visual reactions that you’ll miss if you only hear or read it. Just for fun, here’s a composite image of Daily Beast posts that were flying up as I read reviews elsewhere:

… but even a monster like Dick Cheney – a man who largely created a needless war and supposedly LIKES being compared to Darth Vader – even that monster thinks, “Trump would be horrible for the U.S.”

I basically agree with you, but I took it as both a warning to Democrats to stay vigilant and as permission for Republicans to abandon Trump.

That’s it. Audubon sucks. I was immediately reminded of a recent Vox story on How the most powerful environmental groups help greenwash Big Meat’s climate impact

The National Audubon Society, the beloved bird conservancy organization, rewards regenerative ranchers with its seal of approval in the form of a label that reads “Grazed on bird friendly land” and “Audubon certified.” Such beef can be purchased at about 250 retail and online stores.

Then there’s how Massachusetts Audubon pretended it was going to chop down its trees so it could continue NOT cutting them to get paid to preserve them for carbon-offsets. Propublica:

However improbable the idea might be of a conservation group actually permitting the removal of so much timber, Mass Audubon officials said they had simply followed the state’s rules in claiming that the society could heavily log its forest.

Then there’s E & E News (politico) discussion of Audubon’s internals:

The organization’s former president and CEO, David Yarnold, resigned under pressure in 2021, following POLITICO’s reports of widespread staff dissatisfaction at Audubon, especially among workers of color and the LGBTQ community (Greenwire, April 21, 2021).

An external audit later substantiated some of those claims, and pointed to widespread cultural problems. “Nearly all of the women we interviewed and many of the men commented that implicit bias toward women and people of color is prevalent at Audubon,” the audit found (Greenwire, May 6, 2021).

Refugio Mariscal, a former geographic information systems analyst in Audubon’s Great Lakes regional office, said that management at the national level had “almost gotten worse since Yarnold left.”

“I would say as a person of color, there’s still a lot of issues that Audubon needs to deal with,” he said.

Mariscal left Audubon in January for a job at another environmental nonprofit. He said workplace issues at Audubon, plus better pay at the new job, factored into his decision.

“The general culture within Audubon is not very welcoming to staff,” he said in January. “They seem to have a tough time letting go of their old ways of doing things.”

Ouch! I hope no one minds that I left the publicly available info intact. No actual names or anything scary like credit card numbers were in there.

platform tip

Not tip. Something else. Given how much they are getting off each exchange, I feel like tipping is not needed. I checked a few recent donations and took a picture. The most recent transactions are on top.

When someone donates, any tip is excluded from the Beehaw contribution and the Beehaw part is listed. Immediately above it two fees are subtracted from the Beehaw donation: A ‘stripe’ fee and a ‘Host’ fee. So Beehaw never gets your actual donation and the Host always gets a cut.

Edit: attached image shows how a $10 and a $50 donation is each charged as well as showing part of a more recent $10 donation with slightly different stripe fee.

Given that Israel has nuclear weapons, they wouldn’t be ‘sitting ducks’, but I don’t want to see a nuclear war starting in the Middle East. I doubt it would stay contained to the area. I fear that Russia would back Iran and counter – or at least threaten to – with Russian nuclear weapons, which would get the U.S. or our allies back into the mess but escalated to the whole world at risk instead of just a small contested sliver.

I would love to see a workable path to a two-state solution. Experts have spent their lives working towards that goal and it still hasn’t happened. I totally blame the government of Israel for not figuring out a peace with Palestinian residents back in the 1970s, but here we are. Bibbi makes everything worse and his public falls for his ‘strong man’ shtick just like Americans fall for Trump’s version. Sitting in the U.S., the best election choice I can make for the sake of Palestinians is to vote Harris. Beyond the election, there is room for letters, protests, and boycotts, but the problem is mostly with Israel’s government rather than with anyone in the United States.

In terms of who to vote for in the U.S. presidential election, 3rd parties are spoilers. The U.S. voter is wasting their vote if they stay home or vote 3rd party.

Politicians are notoriously evasive, and this particular interview sounded more straight forward than most. Okay, most the honest ones, anyway. I mean: it’s easy to say “Read my lips. No new taxes” or “Free IVF” if you’ve no legitimate plan to fund the government, but if you’re not going to make stuff up for the sound bite, you almost have to be evasive. Robust and well considered plans are made by experts and a politician trying to promote a good plan has to boil it down to a couple nebulous basics. Doing anything else means you either bore the audience OR skip a contingency or other minutia such that your critics call you a liar.

Remember when Obama said you’d get to keep your doctor? He was trying to summarize explaining that Affordable Care would not mandate what doctor you could use, but what he didn’t say was that Insurance Companies would continue to be able choose what doctors they covered, so Obama’s critics said he LIED about keeping your doctor. It was NOT a lie. It was just Insurance companies doing what they always did.

Harris said she would support Israel but the war had to end. If Israeli/Palestinian strife has gone unsolved for 50 years through all sorts of Presidents, I don’t expect any U.S. election to change what goes on over there. The U.S. could theoretically stop aiding Israel as it commits genocide, but the realistic outcome of that would be neighboring countries committing genocide on Israelis, and since that’s the basic reason the country was invented… maybe that’s not the best outcome either. It has been a mess for decades, and I’m not blaming Regan, Carter, Trump, Putin, or Tony Blair for any of the mess with Gaza.

Harris said she would not ban fracking but her values have not changed. I suspect this is because she’s come to see no one banned horses when car came along, and no one need ban fracking if there’s a better alternative. What she did not specify was the carrots and sticks she might employ to get us to which alternatives. That’s fine with me because the tech is changing and the outcome is more important than the method.

Harris said she would enforce laws regarding immigration AND she wanted the tabled border bill on her desk so she can sign it. There’s a bunch she could have said there, too, but my point is that again, she wasn’t particularly evasive.

I, too, think Biden did a great job as President – especially given the constant pushback he got from Congress and the corrupted Court. It frustrated me that the public didn’t notice or care, but I could see from the polls and negative press that there was no way Biden was going to get re-elected, so I was living in despair for our future until he dropped out. With Biden out of the race, the public is paying attention to the race again, becoming aware of the crazy Trump/2025 “agenda nobody asked for”, and (if we’re to believe the polls) becoming more interested in voting for a new face. Yay!

Have hope! But also, if you can volunteer to talk to potential voters, do that too.

If your schedule is too tight to volunteer, or if it is physically/emotionally too much, consider at least talking about her in a positive way.

If that is too much, maybe at least, at least mention that you’re hearing lots more support and enthusiasm than even when Biden won, so you are going to be very suspicious of claims that Dems ‘steal’ elections. Yes, Trump is still supported in the boonies, but more and more suburbs and cities are increasingly wanting Harris – you know, the places with most the people.

Reminds me of the incident in February where a waymo tried to get through a bunch of street revelers, and their response was to set it on fire. From the old pcmag story :

San Francisco Fire Chief Jeanine Nicholson noted that it had tallied 55 incidents where self-driving vehicles had interfered with rescue operations in the city.

Edit: unrelated to above quote, pc mag also says:

In some cases, residents have put orange cones on the hoods of cars, which makes them temporarily immobile.

(see also the autopian story it references)