…the time still ain’t right…but…what is?
Is Biden correct? Is there an argument that could persuade a meaningful number of Haley conservatives to vote for Biden? In ordinary times the answer would be no. It still may be no. Negative polarization is the dominant fact of American political life. Asking a person to change political teams is like asking him or her to disrupt friendships and family relationships, to move from the beloved “us” to the hated “them.” They’re going to do it only as a last resort, when they truly understand and feel the same way about the Republican Party that Ronald Reagan felt when he departed the Democratic Party: He didn’t leave the party. The party left him.
Now, however, it’s the G.O.P. that is sprinting away from Reagan — and from Haley Republicans — as fast as MAGA can carry it. The right is not just mad at Republican dissenters for defying Trump; it has such profound policy disagreements with Reagan and Haley Republicans that it’s hard to imagine the two factions coexisting for much longer. Given the power imbalance in a Trump G.O.P., that means that for the foreseeable future traditional conservatives will face a choice: conform or leave.
It’s likely that most people will conform. But they ought to leave. If a political party is a shared enterprise for advancing policies and ideas with the hope of achieving concrete outcomes, then there are key ways in which a second Biden term would be a better fit for Reagan Republicans than Round 2 of Trump.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/10/opinion/haley-voters-support-biden.html
…it’d be a better fit for just about everybody…if that’s what it came down to…I’d feel a lot more relaxed, frankly…but the ones it might not be a better fit for…there’s…something about them
Some of the US’s most profitable corporations, including General Motors, Citigroup and Netflix, have slashed their tax bills in the years since the passage of the Trump tax cuts, with nearly a quarter paying rates in the single digits and 23 paying nothing, a report has found.
The 2017 law cut the top corporate income tax rate from 35% to 21%. But the new assessment of corporate tax avoidance, published on Thursday by the non-profit Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (Itep), found that during the first five years the law was in effect, many profitable public companies in the US paid a far lower rate in practice.
Together, the 342 corporations studied by Itep paid an average effective tax rate of just 14.1%. Eighty-seven companies paid an average of less than 10%; 55 of those firms paid less than 5%; and 23 corporations, including T-Mobile US and Xcel Energy, paid zero (or less) federal income tax over the five-year period – even though they made a profit each year.
Among the lowest taxpayers were companies including Netflix and Nike, as well as several corporations whose CEOs have become high-profile advocates for corporate social responsibility and “stakeholder capitalism”, such as Salesforce and Bank of America.
In the five years since the Trump tax law took effect, “the biggest and most profitable companies don’t appear to be paying anywhere close to that 21% rate”, said Matt Gardner, a senior fellow at Itep and the lead author of the report. “What Trump described as a big tax cut turned out to be just that.”
…there’s rich people, too…but corporations are “people”…they don’t technically get a vote…but they sure do get to throw some money about…&…well…we know without that throwing mere votes at a thing is a bit of a lottery, really
“There appears to be a substantial overlap between the companies that are routinely avoiding corporate income taxes and the companies whose leaders seem to have laudable charitable aims,” Gardner said. “No one would doubt that Marc Benioff wants to do good things in the world. He just doesn’t seem to prioritize doing it in the way that the law says he should. He wants to do it his way.”
The Itep report makes clear that the companies listed in the report aren’t breaking the law. “Tax avoidance occurs because Congress chooses to allow it,” the report notes, “either by enacting special exceptions and breaks from the regular tax rules, or by leaving in place loopholes that are clearly being exploited.”
Congress is currently considering additional exceptions that could help corporations lower their 2022 tax bills even further, the report warns.
A bipartisan tax package that recently passed the House of Representatives, for which corporate interests have been lobbying aggressively for months, includes a tax break that would allow businesses to immediately deduct the costs of “research and development” conducted in the United States.
…hard not to be a little envious, really…I know my taxes don’t seem to bear much resemblance
But the tax deal currently moving through Congress would roll back that limitation for domestic investments – and do so retroactively. That means companies could update their 2022 (and 2023) tax filings to claim billions of dollars in new deductions, ostensibly to reward them for investing in research and development – even though the only thing that would have changed is the text of the tax code.
“By definition, extending them backwards in time … can’t encourage a dime of additional research,” Gardner said.
While limited corporate disclosures make it difficult to say precisely how much money companies could claw back, the available data suggests that this single, retroactive policy tweak could potentially save some firms billions of dollars – and that the benefits “would be hugely concentrated in the hands of a very small number of corporations”, Gardner said.
Meta, for instance, might be able to shave its tax bill by nearly $6.5bn, the report found, which would bring its average effective tax rate below 0% over the five-year period of the study. Microsoft could potentially save a similar sum.
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/feb/29/trump-tax-cuts-us-companies
…I mean…below 0% sounds a lot like the taxman is paying you to not pay your taxes…&…most of us can’t say that’s how that works…but…in terms of things that are easier said than done
President Biden proposed a $7.3 trillion budget on Monday packed with tax increases on corporations and high earners, new spending on social programs and a wide range of efforts to combat high consumer costs like housing and college tuition.
[…]
Most of the new spending and tax increases included in the fiscal year 2025 budget again stand almost no chance of becoming law this year, given that Republicans control the House and roundly oppose Mr. Biden’s economic agenda. Last week, House Republicans passed a budget proposal outlining their priorities, which are far afield from what Democrats have called for.
[…]
Speaking in New Hampshire on Monday, Mr. Biden heralded the budget as a way to raise revenue to pay for his priorities by raising taxes on the wealthiest Americans and big corporations.“I’m not anti-corporation,” he said. “I’m a capitalist, man. Make all the money you want. Just begin to pay your fair share in taxes.”
The budget proposes about $5 trillion in new taxes on corporations and the wealthy over a decade. Administration officials said Monday that those increases would be split equally between corporations and the nation’s highest earners, and that Americans earning less than $400,000 a year would enjoy tax cuts totaling $750 billion under their plans.
…I know part of why some people have extraordinary amounts of money has to do with how difficult it is to get them to part with the stuff…like it exerts its own gravity that gets stronger as more of the stuff is amassed…but…what with how many people get schooled in basic arithmetic & all…you’d think some of this stuff would be an easier sell…it’s just how numbers work…huge proportions of small values are easily outweighed by negligible proportions of vast sums…& when the sums are so mind-bogglingly big they get hard to wrap your head around…the giant-sounding tiny slices they don’t like forking over might be more than a rounding error…but they wouldn’t truly have a detrimental effect on the associated enterprises…so…again…it feels like this really ought to be an easier sell
“We can do all of our investments by asking those in the top 1 and 2 percent to pay more into the system,” Shalanda Young, the director of the White House budget office, told reporters.
…uh huh
The president has already begun trying to portray Mr. Trump as the opposite: a supporter of further tax cuts for the well-off. “Do you really think the wealthy and big corporations need another $2 trillion tax break?” Mr. Biden asked in New Hampshire, referencing Mr. Trump — but not by name. “Because that’s what he wants to do.”
…it’s the kind of protection the little guy really appreciates, you see…they hate when the state comes for their vast wealth too, you see…it’s…only natural…or something
Speaker Mike Johnson and other members of House Republican leadership criticized Mr. Biden in a statement released Monday afternoon. “The price tag of President Biden’s proposed budget is yet another glaring reminder of this administration’s insatiable appetite for reckless spending and the Democrats’ disregard for fiscal responsibility,” they said.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/11/us/politics/biden-budget-republicans-trump.html
…sincerely…fuck all the way off…these assholes clearly don’t comprehend even a simplified definition of the concept of fiscal responsibility…the only bit they get out of fiscal is “money stuff”…the budgetary sub-text is clearly anathema…& at this point I have no fucking clue what kind of contorted feat of cognitive dissonance they employ when they encounter the term “responsibility”…because they seem to see the thing itself about as well as people spot the gorilla in that famous experiment about how paying attention doesn’t work the way you think it does…&…speaking of watching a bunch of people throwing shit back & forth while ignoring the gorilla in their midst
House conservatives are furious about the government funding bill negotiated by Speaker Mike Johnson that sailed through Congress last week, calling it a betrayal of Republican promises to cut spending and reshape the federal budget.
But in a twist, this time they aren’t threatening to overthrow the man in charge of cutting those funding deals with a Democratic-led Senate and White House, even as they’ve begun to paint him as a functionary for status quo policies.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/conservatives-are-furious-not-threatening-speaker-johnsons-job
…maybe…if you could somehow lose the performative aspect…it wouldn’t be politics any more…but…if you drop the part where you…perform the actual fucking function…then you get this kind of nonsensical shitshow…& I think you might even be able to get widespread bipartisan agreement on the part where we all fucking hate the seething morass of dysfunction & the way that seeps all over everything & generally stinks…but…when it comes to what it all adds up to…boy do we seem to be confused about the output values
In Georgia, demand for industrial power is surging to record highs, with the projection of new electricity use for the next decade now 17 times what it was only recently. Arizona Public Service, the largest utility in that state, is also struggling to keep up, projecting it will be out of transmission capacity before the end of the decade absent major upgrades.
…three guesses what kind of “people” are drawing down that kind of power in a first-hand sense
Northern Virginia needs the equivalent of several large nuclear power plants to serve all the new data centers planned and under construction. Texas, where electricity shortages are already routine on hot summer days, faces the same dilemma.
The soaring demand is touching off a scramble to try to squeeze more juice out of an aging power grid while pushing commercial customers to go to extraordinary lengths to lock down energy sources, such as building their own power plants.
“When you look at the numbers, it is staggering,” said Jason Shaw, chairman of the Georgia Public Service Commission, which regulates electricity. “It makes you scratch your head and wonder how we ended up in this situation. How were the projections that far off? This has created a challenge like we have never seen before.”
…I mean…they ran a little bar graph next to show a projection that demand in north america would double in the coming decade…double…in a part of the world that uses more of the stuff than almost anyplace I can think of already…&…you’ll never guess what makes up the lion’s share…only kidding…you don’t have to guess…you know…we all know when we think about it…well…most of…uh…some people…probably quite a lot…but…I really should stop assuming folks know the first thing about how the internet works…sorry
A major factor behind the skyrocketing demand is the rapid innovation in artificial intelligence, which is driving the construction of large warehouses of computing infrastructure that require exponentially more power than traditional data centers. AI is also part of a huge scale-up of cloud computing. Tech firms like Amazon, Apple, Google, Meta and Microsoft are scouring the nation for sites for new data centers, and many lesser-known firms are also on the hunt.
The proliferation of crypto-mining, in which currencies like bitcoin are transacted and minted, is also driving data center growth. It is all putting new pressures on an overtaxed grid — the network of transmission lines and power stations that move electricity around the country. Bottlenecks are mounting, leaving both new generators of energy, particularly clean energy, and large consumers facing growing wait times for hookups.
…put it this way, though…if data centers are isolated as a single kind of industrial source of demand…up that demand by anything from half again as much to double…that makes a difference in whole percentage points at a national level…& I can’t think of one kind of housing that could reverberate that way if residents plugged in twice as much shit
The nation’s 2,700 data centers sapped more than 4 percent of the country’s total electricity in 2022, according to the International Energy Agency. Its projections show that by 2026, they will consume 6 percent. Industry forecasts show the centers eating up a larger share of U.S. electricity in the years that follow, as demand from residential and smaller commercial facilities stays relatively flat thanks to steadily increasing efficiencies in appliances and heating and cooling systems.
Data center operators are clamoring to hook up to regional electricity grids at the same time the Biden administration’s industrial policy is luring companies to build factories in the United States at a pace not seen in decades. That includes manufacturers of “clean tech,” such as solar panels and electric car batteries, which are being enticed by lucrative federal incentives. Companies announced plans to build or expand more than 155 factories in this country during the first half of the Biden administration, according to the Electric Power Research Institute, a research and development organization. Not since the early 1990s has factory-building accounted for such a large share of U.S. construction spending, according to the group.
Utility projections for the amount of power they will need over the next five years have nearly doubled and are expected to grow, according to a review of regulatory filings by the research firm Grid Strategies.
…I mean…whether you’re trying to frack the shit out from underneath or slap a massive carbon-belching nodule of the ravenous internet down like a leech on your rickety backwoods power grid…waving the prospect of “easy money” at under-resourced rural communities while depleting them further…is a well-established business model with decades of firm footing & established ways & means…so…same old, same old…only…new demand
“We saw a quadrupling of land values in some parts of Columbus, and a tripling in areas of Chicago,” he said. “It’s not about the land. It is about access to power.” Some developers, he said, have had to sell the property they bought at inflated prices at a loss, after utilities became overwhelmed by the rush for grid hookups.
…&…old ways to meet it
Planners are increasingly concerned that the grid won’t be green enough or powerful enough to meet these demands.
Already, soaring power consumption is delaying coal plant closures in Kansas, Nebraska, Wisconsin and South Carolina.
…I guess you can see why some people in georgia might have more immediate concerns than where that case against mr a-little-light-insurrection-is-a-thing-a-president-just-gets-to-indulge-in might be going
The Portland project Halaburda and Khalili are developing will now be powered in large part by off-the-grid, high-tech fuel cells that convert natural gas into low-emissions electricity. The technology will be supplemented by whatever power can be secured from the grid. The partners decided that on their next project, in South Texas, they’re not going to take their chances with the grid at all. Instead, they will drill thousands of feet into the ground to draw geothermal energy.
Halaburda sees the growth as good for the country and the economy. “But no one took into consideration where this is all going,” he said. “In the next couple of years, unless there is a real focus on expanding the grid and making it more robust, we are going to see opportunities fall by the wayside because we can’t get power to where it is needed.”
Companies are increasingly turning to such off-the-grid experiments as their frustration with the logjam in the nation’s traditional electricity network mounts. Microsoft and Google are among the firms hoping that energy-intensive industrial operations can ultimately be powered by small nuclear plants on-site, with Microsoft even putting AI to work trying to streamline the burdensome process of getting plants approved. Microsoft has also inked a deal to buy power from a company trying to develop zero-emissions fusion power. But going off the grid brings its own big regulatory and land acquisition challenges. The type of nuclear plants envisioned, for example, are not yet even operational in the United States. Fusion power does not yet exist.
…but a certain mr altman will make out like the proverbial bandit if they crack that one…speculate to accumulate & all that
The big tech companies are also exploring ways AI can help make the grid operate more efficiently. And they are developing platforms that during times of peak power demand “can shift compute tasks and their associated energy consumption to the times and places where carbon-free energy is available on the grid,” according to Google. But meeting both their zero-emissions pledges and their AI innovation ambitions is becoming increasingly complicated as the energy needs of their data centers grow.
…maybe it’s a failure of imagination on my part…but that kind of exercise sounds to me a lot like the people who write to the tax office & demand that none of theirs go to fund the military…the tax people can send them back a bunch of numbers that show their taxes being distributed to not-military purposes…but it’s fucking meaningless & if you attempted to do it for more than a negligible number of people it wouldn’t even pretend to work…so…if you power your entire data-center off solar/wind/geo-thermal directly-generated power that isn’t drawn from “the grid”…that might mean something…if you just run a massive database-juggling exercise that itself needs a bunch of “compute” to say that you can make the numbers dance until it claims “your bit” of the demand on the grid comes from the good places & it’s everyone else who needs power that’s drawing it from the bad sort…in my book that makes you a thing we all promised @elliecoo we wouldn’t type up hereabouts…but…I can’t think of a more apposite term?
The logjam is already pushing officials overseeing the clean-energy transition at some of the nation’s largest airports to look beyond the grid. The amount of energy they will need to charge fleets of electric rental vehicles and ground maintenance trucks alone is immense. An analysis shows electricity demand doubling by 2030 at both the Denver and Minneapolis airports. By 2040, they will need more than triple the electricity they are using now, according to the study, commissioned by car rental giant Enterprise, Xcel Energy and Jacobs, a consulting firm.
“Utilities are not going to be able to move quickly enough to provide all this capacity,” said Christine Weydig, vice president of transportation at AlphaStruxure, which designs and operates clean-energy projects. “The infrastructure is not there. Different solutions will be needed.” Airports, she said, are looking into dramatically expanding the use of clean-power “microgrids” they can build on-site.
The Biden administration has made easing the grid bottleneck a priority, but it is a politically fraught process, and federal powers are limited. Building the transmission lines and transfer stations needed involves huge land acquisitions, exhaustive environmental reviews and negotiations to determine who should pay what costs.
The process runs through state regulatory agencies, and fights between states over who gets stuck with the bill and where power lines should go routinely sink and delay proposed projects. The amount of new transmission line installed in the United States has dropped sharply since 2013, when 4,000 miles were added. Now, the nation struggles to bring online even 1,000 new miles a year. The slowdown has real consequences not just for companies but for the climate. A group of scientists led by Princeton University professor Jesse Jenkins warned in a report that by 2030 the United States risks losing out on 80 percent of the potential emission reductions from President Biden’s signature climate law, the Inflation Reduction Act, if the pace of transmission construction does not pick up dramatically now.
While the proliferation of data centers puts more pressure on states to approve new transmission lines, it also complicates the task. Officials in Maryland, for example, are protesting a plan for $5.2 billion in infrastructure that would transmit power to huge data centers in Loudoun County, Va. The Maryland Office of People’s Council, a government agency that advocates for ratepayers, called grid operator PJM’s plan “fundamentally unfair,” arguing it could leave Maryland utility customers paying for power transmission to data centers that Virginia aggressively courted and is leveraging for a windfall in tax revenue.
[…]
But after decades in which power was readily available, regulators and utility executives across the country generally are not empowered to prioritize which projects get connected. It is first come, first served. And the line is growing longer. To answer the call, some states have passed laws to protect crypto mining’s access to huge amounts of power.“Lawmakers need to think about this,” Hertz-Shargel said of allocating an increasingly limited supply of power. “There is a risk that strategic industries they want in their states are going to have a challenging time setting up in those places.
Amid explosive demand, America is running out of power [WaPo]
…fuck it…I got to get on with my day & I never made a dent in the shit I meant to get around to…which might be thematically appropriate…what with how the stuff this last one’s about is a thing a few folks I know used to call “putting it on the never-never”
Consumers ages 35 and under comprise 53% of “buy now, pay later” users but just 35% of traditional credit card holders, according to LexisNexis Risk Solutions. Many of those core “BNPL” borrowers have grown so comfortable using the installment loans for just-out-of-reach luxuries that they’re putting more everyday purchases on them as well.
Apparel and accessories were the most popular product category among millennial (ages 30-44) and Gen Z (18-29) users of the BNPL provider Afterpay in 2021 and 2022. But last year it fell to fourth place behind “arts, travel and entertainment,” “home and garden” and “hardware,” according to data the company provided to NBC News.
[…]
Many borrowers have flocked to BNPL to avoid credit cards with interest rates of 20% or higher. But younger users’ opting to pay for more necessities in installments also reflects the mini-loans’ growing ubiquity in an economy where many consumer prices have swelled.BNPL providers “got integrated really well and really quickly” into mobile shopping during the pandemic recovery, said Vivek Pandya, lead analyst at Adobe Digital Insights. The services now “have consumers who are very plugged in. So that convenience factor, the ease with which they can kind of move through the BNPL payment process, through their online transaction, has really kept the growth persistent.”
https://www.nbcnews.com/business/personal-finance/buy-now-pay-later-daily-essentials-groceries-young-adults
[…]
Researchers at the New York Federal Reserve recently found BNPL customers use the services differently depending on their finances. Those on shakier footing tend to use them like credit cards “to make medium-size, out-of-budget purchases frequently,” they wrote. More financially stable users turn to BNPL less regularly but do so largely to avoid credit-card interest for big purchases.
[…]
The New York Fed researchers said purchases under $250 were among the most common for both types of borrowers they examined. While financially stable customers were far more likely to use BNPL services for pricier purchases around the $2,000 mark, even low-dollar installment loans can add up, especially for users with many open at once.
…there’s spendy…& costly…they don’t always run on the same clock…but bills are eternally punctual…they don’t even have to try…it’s like…gravity…maybe that’s why we say they fall due?
Trump’s ownership of the Republican Party used to be conceptual. Now it is official.
https://apple.news/A54exQpo8Q36GbtzNvr8tIg
…it’s that same regulatory capture playbook transposed into yet another key…but…yeah…pretty sure that kind of explicitly ideological exercise played out in that kind of context…is called a purge if it happens in places like china or russia or iran or saudi arabia or wherever else his business interests exceed the national interest in his calculations
…I mean I know that old saw about going out with a bang or a whimper…but some days I feel like I’m starting to understand why the whimper option might seem the path of least resistance…at a statistically significant level…&…I can’t say as I’m enjoying the experience?
…it’s one of a bunch of things I really meant to spend the bit up there talking about but somehow I couldn’t pull out of whatever nosedive routine I wound up with this time instead…there were others, too…like…in a similarly lands-like-getting-slapped-with-a-fish way…this bullshit routine
…I mean…the way the floor of his support holds up when he’s full-on crazed-wounded-animal kinds of lashing out…consequences be damned…is truly fucking baffling…even allowing for the whole sublimated tribal sunk costs & mindless adherence to whoever pays lip service to keeping the faith…there’s something macabre about how successful this whole agenda is about getting people to cheer them on while they do the very things they claim they’re stopping “them” doing to “us”?
…that’s where that one gives out…but…how many examples does it take of the part where he will say any old shit if he thinks it plays to his advantage in the moment…& there is fucking nothing that joins it together aside from keeping him insulated from reality well enough to let him feel good about himself?
Let’s hope he does to it what he does to most of his businesses!
If Biden had done this now, it would be covered as a sign of weakness and panic. And the press would be right. Dumping a ton of staff affects polling, fundraising, grassroots organization and PR. Instead the coverage is remarkably bland, like this:
https://www.npr.org/2024/03/12/1238049339/rnc-layoffs-staff-cuts-republican-party-trump-whatley-lara
Like you say, Trump is not known for running efficient businesses, and it ought to be awfully controversial whether he can pull this off.
One of the big values of an independent party organization is being able to tell candidates things they don’t want to hear.Maybe Trump is such a genius he doesn’t need that, but the press ought to ask about the risks of that being wrong.
The energy story is so frustrating. Why aren’t the utilities upgrading their networks? Because they’re prioritizing short-term profits over long-term stability. This is what happens when you cater to these shitheads by somewhat gradually deregulating them.
Probably one of the first projects I’ll undertake in my “retirement” will be to get us off the electrical grid. We have a great roof on which solar panels could sit. Passive solar is also a possibility. Small home wind turbines could help. I’ll do whatever it takes. I hate handing money over to Idaho Power so they can continue to oppose removing dams and transitioning to solar and wind.
…some years back someone I know mentioned to me that a lot of the really rich people they knew…in their case mostly for work-related reasons…had begun to view being able to take for granted that their provision of water & power would remain uninterrupted if the supply failed to as an obvious investment
…& if you have the budget…you can do some cool shit with landscaping & architecture & one way or another you wind up with a lovely looking spot that’s not as expensive to run & generally a delight to live in
…somehow when that’s applied on a large scale rather than to cater to a singular wealthy interest…everything seems to be backwards about the going forwards?
…maybe if the bitcoin people had been all about distributed networks of renewable generative power sources I would have been more inclined to lend credence to their grasp of the principles they espoused about the benefits of taking that approach to currency…that requires considerably more resource intensive upkeep than bits of parchment with ink on them…I expect that’ll be one of them imponderables I’ve heard tell of
…but…yeah…it’s a real “oof…” that one
…had an uncle once who pulled that off…but we can’t all live in a watermill…&…I can say with some certainty having been available labor for at least my share of it…there’s a lot of work involved in doing that stuff for yourself…so…good luck with it…solar has a lot less moving parts so I think you should consider yourself to have a head start?
I know a couple of families who became very wealthy by investing in utilities stocks and bonds. I was told 30 years ago it was the way to go: tax advantages, the state guarantees profits and returns, they have monopolies, you really can’t lose. Well, we the consumers can, if you’ve looked at a utility bill lately. Try to wade through the myriad lines of taxes and special assessments and umpteen charges and you’ll see that the provision of power is actually not that expensive. In New York ConEd is a cash cow. Need another half a billion to squander on some ill-advised and graft-heavy scheme? You regulate ConEd. Slap on another .4% surcharge. People will scream but it’s not like customers are going to walk away and go somewhere else. [Except the ones who go to Florida and elsewhere.]
Short term profits over long term stability is the business model for every corporation ever.
Not to mention–at least *seemingly* in states like TX–if they WAIT, and just don’t upgrade until the system fails terribly?
They can get the feds to PAY for the fixes, as they simply sit back & rake in the profits until then…
And THEN, because Texas was held over a barrel and the D’s WON’T force the issue (because we don’twant poor folks to suffer!), the assholes running the businesses can just wait & profit & wait & profit, as they skip out on taxes & reap ALL the benefits, while still HOLDING ONTO those businesses & scamming the system
My comment today on polls:
Slew of new polls drop showing Biden winning, and they were taken before his SOTU
Yes, polls are worthless. Yes, polls skew wildly to the right because (say it with me) only old white Republicans answer their phones. So why am I posting this? This means things are far, far worse for Trump than even I thought.
Some more perspective:
1. The RNC has little money and what there is will be stolen by Trump to pay legal bills. Biden has had a superb fundraising year capped by the SOTU, which generated another huge surge of donations. Meanwhile, old-school Republicans are stating they will no longer donate. Biden can bury Trump in ads, and hopefully he will channel Dark Brandon, since the SOTU showed people want him to show some spine.
2. There have been 23 special elections across the country since Dobbs. Guess how many the Republicans won? Zero. And that’s in red states like Florida. Zero. Forget polls, look at results (yes the irony inherent in this post is not lost on me).
…in no particular order…thank you for your service…apologies if I’m behind on my dues but I have no desire at this time to unsubscribe from your newsletter…& generally yes to all of the above?
Today @SplinterRIP‘s info dump shows HOW BAD THE BILLIONARIES WANT TRUMP because of those fucking tax cuts. They paid/pushed for the skewed polling via their MSM buddies to scare the shit out of the Dems because they know many are weak kneed chickenshits and would bail at the first sign of trouble.
Instead of scaring the Dems away from Joe Biden, they created a sense of urgency in the Biden Campaign and the Dems while creating a fantasy/bullshit complacency among MAGAts (and many are lazy, stupid and complacent otherwise they wouldn’t be MAGAts) and some GOPers.
Of course, the big one is the ending of Roe Vs Wade by the moron wingnut Supremes setting off female rage at losing their (rightful) bodily autonomy.
Goes to show that Trump is destroying everything he touches.
1. Addiction to his tax cuts exposed the Billionaires and millionaires for who they really are. Greedy motherfuckers are not what actually makes a civilization successful. THERE ARE NO GOOD BILLIONAIRES!
2. He’s inadvertently smashing the RW Noise Machine. Instead of a unified voice against Dems/Biden, they’re fighting each other because they want the MAGAt Crowd who can’t conceive of debate/dissension only blind stupid loyalty. So many competing agendas and views… for an audience of brain dead morons who have no money.
3. Trump is breaking the RW Money Machine. For decades the Koch brothers and Sheldon Addleson types could dutifully fund the Cato Institute, the Federalist Society and the GOPers among others to get what they want. Thanks to all the grifters and morons that came with Trump AND Trump himself, these shitheads are reluctant to part with their cash because they don’t want to fund Charlie Kirk’s lifestyle or Donald Trump’s legal bills. The ROI has collapsed to the point where they’d rather keep their money. The Kochs are evil, but they like competent evil.
I’m honestly surprised that ‘ol Linz’s tweet is still up, and that he never erased it-
@SplinterRIP, we should have a contest to determine the most vile, gender-neutral, non-body-part, pejorative. Made up words are fair game for inclusion. And then reserve its use for situations such as the one you referenced. I’ll bet that you and/or @clevernamehere2 could come up with a list for polling, or a poll for listing, suggestions for the DeadSplinter vote. I mean, I still giggle at most “bad words”, just like an eight-year-old boy. George Carlin’s bit is classic for a reason.
Also, thank you for the opportunity to expound upon why I am opposed to the c-word. A friend asked me to explain why it bothers me, and I settled on this: It is because the term is almost exclusively used derogatorily that I am offended – the very fact of being female is used against us, and others, reducing us to one part of our body. The unstated understanding is that being female is less, negative, disgusting, undesirable, etc.
…so…I know you have a fondness for etymological rabbit holes…but I’ve always sort of assumed that particular one might not be on your favorable list…but…I’d admit to having a passing familiarity with some interesting stuff about the evolution of bad language & its not without an interesting history…might be more inclined to start with jonathan green’s dictionary of slang than urban dictionary…but there’s a not dreadful discussion of the difference in the way it lands here
https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/7059/why-is-cnt-so-much-more-derogatory-in-the-us-than-the-uk
…the stackexchange lot tend to be more reliable than not…& you can get away with it if you’re cosmopolitan
https://www.cosmopolitan.com/uk/love-sex/sex/a30218871/cunt/
…but there’s a whole strand of the thing that it has in common with variously terms that are derogatory in a misogynistic fashion, the abrupt plosive/guttural switch up of a bit of blunt anglo saxon…& the ways it makes sense to talk about throwing some terms at some people…& it can be satisfying in a sort of visceral way
…trying to come up with a term to stand in for all the wounding properties of that particular four letter word…but stripped of all the ways that terms that lean into the wound analogy to an unpleasantly biblical degree the way that one does…along with a lot of things we generally look on as less offensive despite being fruit of the same forest we mostly can’t see for all the trees
…that’s quite the challenge
…love to see what folks could come up with, though?
You do know me – yes indeed I have a fondness for etymological rabbit holes. Your links were all worth the click. This quote in particular:
And that’s without getting into vagina dentata.
It’s impolite to talk about the Dune 2 popcorn buckets like that!
@Elliecoo–i’m with you, ALL the way, on loathing the use of Cunt as an insult!
I tend to agree, with the (stereo?)typical feminist-y retort, when it’s used as an insult–that they’re *far* nicer, warmer, and cozier places, than the way they’re being described!😉🤣
As for the insult body part?
An absolute CLASSIC for *me* is the truly EPIC Deadspin “Lustful Cockmonster” rant by former Vikings Punter Cris Kluwe (who was *also* one of the commenters down in the rabble amongst us, iirc his Kinjaverse handle was Cassandra-something)
His @SplinterRip-like verbosity also included gems like, “narcissistic fromunda stain,” and “Holy fucking shitballs,”…
If I *didn’t* know better?
Honestly, with Kluwe’s love of language & *ALL* the fun words–much like Rip’s? I’d *almost* suspect that our beloved Deadsplinter fellow Logophile *was* @ChrisWarcraft 😉😁
Also, that beloved rant *is* very much believed to have been a LARGE part, to him getting fired/cut a while later (it was yet *another* part of why I stopped watching the NFL);
https://deadspin.com/i-was-an-nfl-player-until-i-was-fired-by-two-cowards-an-1493208214
I love the word “chud” because it’s so evocative. But hmmmm, much to think on …
Oh, I just know that you have list in you, waiting to get hit by a bus!!!
I have a good friend who often trades non-vulgar hyper-specific insults with me as a long-running joke. Lately I’ve been referring to him as a “noted AI evangelist” while he likes to call me “failed Barstool columnist.”
…the tailored insult is the mark of the true craftsman
The c-word doesn’t go over well in my house. I tend to favor non-gendered terms like “fuckwit.” Fuck is very versatile when coupled with the appropriate modifier: stupid fuck, useless fuck, dumb fuck, ignorant fuck. Similarly, asshole covers a lot of ground.
I also think there’s a lot of room to bring back older terms, like buffoon, lackwit, lickspittle, poltroon, and so on. We’ve left a lot of good insults on the table.
Excellent use of Regency insults!
Dipshit is a decent catchall insult too.
I use chucklefuck an awful lot.
I also use the term “fuck nugget” more than I probably should.
…I couldn’t tell you why exactly…but one that springs to mind a lot for me is “cockwomble”?
I honestly don’t mind the word when it’s used in the casual European way. Then it’s no different than calling someone a dick or an asshole. But I have never heard either of those used as a pejorative with the same level of ugliness and venom reserved for the C word. That word is often held out as the worst thing you can call someone. Using it as a slur is misogynistic.
Ngl, I DO kinda like the Australian way of sprinkling it in *everywhere,* and calling your favorite people Cunts–like the Australians do!😉😂🤣
Down there, it seems to have the general usefulness as a “sentence seasoning” like the Aero use of the word “Fuck”–it’s a modifier, exclamation point, verb, and all those *other* grammar terms I forget like adjective/adverb/etc–it just adds “seasoning,” context, and emphasis to certain thoughts”–like the *verbal* equivalent of Garlic–“you add it with your *heart*!”😁
Remember this one?
The Hur hearings are on, and gee, who could have possibly guessed that a lifelong GOP functionary would openly lie about what he found when talking to a Democratic president and then immediately quit the DOJ to shit on him some more: https://www.cnn.com/politics/live-news/robert-hur-hearing-biden-03-12-24/index.html
Luckily, the Dems earned 175 Bipartisan Brownie Points by trying to look fair, giving them a total of 17,811 — and if they earn 78 billion they can get exactly one (1) Republican vote on one bill one time.
They’re gonna have to start keeping him out of the public eye:
Trump’s brain can no longer construct a sentence – even to lie
…this part
…seems solidly in the bit where I was moaning earlier about the successful ability to get cheered on for doing the thing while saying he’s protecting the little guy/nation from having the thing done that he’s doing…but…this stuff
…pretty sure that’s the kind of thing that friend of mine who thinks he had a stroke would consider corroborating evidence for the fluent aphasia thing…& this?
…he’s pulling these numbers out of some sort of mental goop…”have to make more than 50% over a fairly short period of time to stay up”…what do you suppose was explained to him that way…because it obviously wasn’t this…but…might have had to do with liabilities & overheads…& generally when he says “been treated very, very badly” he means himself…so…routed gives me something to smile about, I suppose…& if you skip the absurd attempt to parlay it into equating to zeroing out the debt…this shit
…he’s just straight up trying to make out that he can run the table on the same busted flush that’s taking the legs out from under the only world order he ever came close to understanding…in terms you’d use to describe primate mating behaviors…which is a dangerous analogy for him…because in silverback terms…he’d get torn to pieces…still…if I were one of those forensic accountant types…I’d be very interested in figuring out where he was pulling these numbers from
…you can bet there was a number he worked back from to get to claiming that apartment of his was orders of magnitude bigger than it is…& if he thinks the biggest number generated off a single pair of those sneakers they might not even have made the limited number of they sold…I’d bet serious money it maps to some numbers someone ought to be interested in unpicking
…but that’s all conjecture…the only part I’m certain about is that whatever it sounds like…it does not sound “presidential”?
Clown even gave himself a nickname, the irony challenged “Honest Don”
Hahahaha.
Shitpants doesn’t get that you never nickname yourself. You get/earn your nickname.
Also douchecanoe. For when the bag is just not big enough relative to the amount of douchebaggery happening and a canoe is needed.
Textbook case of the pot calling the kettle black
https://apple.news/AJhZpqIyKSlCY_Oq-5RzL9Q
Deadspin is dead
It’s been dead for years. Someone just forgot to tell it to lie down.
…they keep trying to juice the corpse to do the frankenstein thing, though…so presumably someone thinks it’s got at least one more jump scare in it before they roll the credits?
Spanfeller spelled it “Deadpin” at one point in his release, which is truly *chef’s kiss*
As one wag on Defector noted: [sic] to sports.
Wait. This guy (in the video) is a sports podcaster, and is stunned and amazed that Deadspin shut down? Like I’m gonna listen to anything else about which he has a take?
Oh, damn. The Democrats are kicking ass and taking names at the Hur hearing. These videos are … holy shit. They’re going head on at the “diminished capacity” stuff.
That first one can just be a Biden ad. Just run it over and over on AM radio.
And Fox News. Run it four times an hour.