Hope everyone had great weekend. I did a ton of work on my yard yesterday. I’m going to be in pain! Are you ready for the eclipse? Are you sick of hearing about the eclipse?
Don’t let the door hitcha
‘Increasingly chaotic’: Why House Republicans are heading for the exits
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/04/07/house-republicans-retirements-mike-johnson-majority-elections
Stonks!
Stock futures rise slightly in overnight trading following the market’s losing week: Live updates
https://www.cnbc.com/2024/04/07/stock-market-today-live-updates.html
Sprots!
South Carolina beat Iowa to cap perfect season with NCAA Tournament title
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2024/apr/07/south-carolina-iowa-ncaa-tournament-championship-game-result-basketball
Neature!
Wait wut? I feel like this just happened
US braces for cicadas by the trillion as two broods of periodic insects coincide
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/apr/07/cicada-geddon-brood-season-midwest-eastern
Turn around…
Have a great day!
All week they were saying my area would have good skies for the eclipse. So in spite of my better judgment I was looking forward to seeing it in all its glory. Guess what? It’s going to cloud over TWO FUCKING HOURS before it gets to us. So I’m at least hoping to experience the odd way I hear everything looks during totality. But who the fuck knows. The clouds may diffuse the light enough that it fucks that part up too.
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2024/04/08/president-joe-biden-outlines-new-plans-to-deliver-student-debt-relief-to-over-30-million-americans-under-the-biden-harris-administration/
Dug out my eclipse glasses from 2017. I doubt I’ll be able to see much, but I’ll try. It’s only partial here. In 2017 we had a total eclipse, so that was pretty cool. If I don’t see much this time I’m not going to get too upset.
My wife’s library was handing out eclipse glasses but they ran out in basically hours. I don’t remember all this craziness in 2017.
Oh, and PSA. I was told that old eclipse glasses aren’t safe. Mine are branded by NASA. And according to NASA, the “old” thing is not true. As long as the lenses aren’t damaged or scratched, they’re just fine. Yes, there is an expiration date. NASA says that’s simply put there by the manufacturer “in an overabundance of caution.”
Government contractor, baby.
…I’m guessing an overabundance of CYA for liability plays a role…most of those things have plastic lenses…& a lot of plastic degrades under various naturally occurring conditions…too hot…not hot enough…exposure to sunlight
…if someone bought a set, left them lying about in the car for a while before sticking them in a drawer & remembering them next time an eclipse was due…slapped them on…stared into the sky & seared a retina…the product failing to still be capable is going to be something they don’t want to be on the hook for…so under-promising would make sense even if it didn’t let them flog the same thing all over again…I expect that part doesn’t hurt but it’s the other bit that most likely determines the use-once designation…even when actually they’d most likely be fine in a lot of cases?
An interesting analysis of why the press doesn’t repeat the vast majority of Trump’s bat-shit crazy incoherent dementia babble.
Why is the Press Making Trump Seem More Normal?
I think this is a good point:
What I have an issue with is this:
It’s actually possible and not that difficult. There are enough experts out there who can explain what Trump is doing, and enough people who have been studying him and the extreme right for a long time and can do a good job of making sense of just how extreme they are.
The problem for the political press is that they only want sources out of a narrow set of DC pundits, consultants and politicians, not experts. The political press is hypersensitive to charges from within the “official” source community that the experts they would be citing are biased and anti-GOP. That’s why there was a bidding war for Ronna Romney McDaniel while real experts on the GOP are lucky to get a single quote at the bottom of a story.
The fact is that of course any real expert on extremism would have a long track record of producing anti-GOP content. There is no way to prioritize what the experts say and keep the community happy, so the press chooses the status quo.
I certainly agree they do a poor job of saying that he’s talking about stupid shit, but I do not think they should explain the stupid shit. The stuff he goes on about is so arcane and online-brained that you need one of those police detective boards to follow it, and honestly, it’s not worth the Post’s time to explain who, like, catturd2 is to normal people. (I know he’s more in the Elon Musk galaxy of the right-wing extended universe but you get my point.)
I would also say I don’t see that as a big advantage to him when he’s actually trying to make his case to people who are paying attention over the next few months. His crowds might think it’s cool to send death threats to the daughter of a judge they’ve never heard of, but I’m not entirely sure that plays the same outside of the terminally-online RWEU.
I agree that deep dives are a bad idea. There’s really no value to digging into the recesses of neonazi ideas, in part because it’s all so incoherent under any scrutiny. It’s designed to be a swamp.
But I’ve also read commentators who are really good at distilling what he says to get the core message. There are great, accessible writeups of how he is using the same language and images of genocidal leaders, and it is important for journalists to headline them, rather than slip them in the background.
And to be clear, it’s something responsible journalists can do if editors and execs allow it. Kim Jong Un and Putin issue long diatribes with vague, elliptical, contradictory language, and reporters go to experts to distill what they say rather than repeat it or treat the explicit language as meaninguful.
What’s missing though is a willingness at the top to treat Trump as a bad faith communicatir who needs the same treatment as Brezhnev, and the RNC and Fox as Pravda and TASS.
…I think to boil it down to a lack of willingness at that level is somewhat of a gross simplification of something that, ultimately, is almost definitionally a trade off of nuance
…at this point…unlike the first time he ran…it’s also somewhat of a known quantity…it’s not news to anyone with less than a tin ear who hears the man speak that it’s always a medley of dog-whistles, non-sequiturs & vindictive &/or self-aggrandizing bullshit…& those who aren’t of that opinion aren’t inclined to pay attention to anyone who makes it hard for them to cherry-pick the things they think say what they want him to
…you can pick any speech he makes…or statement his lawyers produce…& annotate the thing until it’s two or three times longer & all the ways it’s pretzeled logic spun of falsehoods or implied statements that would be admissions of guilt if they were explicit are identified & broken down appropriately…I did it once for a DOT but the universe chose not to inflict that on anyone & it vanished in the ether…& I simply couldn’t be bothered to do it all over again…& maybe I’d have done it differently if there were a paycheck in it…but a huge part of why he’s had the success he’s had following bannon’s strategy of flooding the zone with bullshit is precisely that by the time you’ve shown one thing to be bullshit there’s a dozen more to get to that came up since you started
…sure…from time to time you can do the equivalent of an academic meta-analysis to show what the prevailing strands demonstrate…which is effectively the exercise you point to with things like big kremlin productions…but you can’t do that every time without retreading enough ground that people simply tune it out & your circulation numbers take a hit
…outside their own ecosystem people widely do treat fox news the way they do statements of russian officials…but to do so explicitly as a news organization is to invite litigation that is liable to do more harm than expecting people to be astute enough to read between those lines…the fact it’s a literal punchline on a regular basis suggests that most people “get it”
…what always seems to escape me when you make these pronouncements about how the press could find a magic bullet for this stuff is how you envisage that working in a way that would have the effect you desire…or how it would make the difference you want solely based on a change of personnel in a single industry while every other aspect of the rigged game remains the same…it just seems like a complaint that’s unlikely to be remedied in the way you say it could be if there were simply the will in an editor or two & you never get around to explaining how on earth that would even work in a real-world scenario
…it’s not that I’m blind to the issues that so clearly wind you up but one day I’d love to get to the part where all the thinking you’ve done is developed into something that would let me grasp what it is you can see that none of the people who get paid to write this stuff up apparently have the insight into their own industry to do…& since it’s entirely possible they’re all too close to the coalface to see it it’s not only plausible but genuinely something I’d be more than interested in reading
…probably need a post of its own to really do the thing justice…a series, even…given it’s clearly the product of many years spent identifying the faults & foibles of individuals across the span of their careers at multiple institutions
…as that beau fella would say…it’s just a thought?
This was true in 2016 too. The thing is that people got enough of him unfiltered both then (and after) and know what the deal was AND he’s even less coherent now than he was 8 years ago.
I think the idea that the press is “editing” Trump is really important. They cherry-pick quotes that seem to make a point and then add coherent context around it.
If you read the unaltered transcripts or actually listen to his “speeches” in their entirety, it’s very clear he is impaired and largely incoherent.
I think his dementia is a big reason that his “rallies” are nonexistent and his public appearances outside of court are dwindling. His handlers realize the longer he’s in public, particularly in an unfamiliar or objective setting (as opposed to partisan press like Fox), the more his babblings are going to get reported.
Plus the Biden campaign pounces, pulls out damning clips, and starts running them on social media. Every Trump appearance is a Biden campaign ad.
It’s sad to watch the normalization process because it takes a huge toll on the credibility of the press, but they simply can’t see it.
The latest example is going to be his supposedly big announcement on abortion where he is saying he thinks it’s a state’s rights issue. The headlines are going like this:
Trump declines to endorse a national abortion ban and says it should be left to the states
https://apnews.com/article/trump-abortion-2024-ban-7bf06e0856b88a710c79a6eb85cffa6a
Donald Trump says abortion should be left up to states, sidestepping calls to back federal restrictions
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/donald-trump-abortion-2024-election/
Except you know that within a week he’s going to be shouting how he appointed the Supreme Court that killed Roe, he’s glad he did it, and he’ll appoint more judges like them.
The political press in 2016 refused to treat Clinton’s warnings about Trump and abortion seriously, and even leading up to the reversal, the political press was loaded with stories suggesting Trump’s justices were rational incrementalists.
When that turned out to be hogwash, faith in the press took a big hit. But the attitude of the pundit class is that it’s the public’s fault for losing faith, not their own failures.
Rethreading elsewhere…
If she were the hero we deserved, Hillary Clinton would have been pounding the drum on social media the past few days that you should not, under any circumstances, stare directly at the eclipse … so that millions of morons would go “oh yeah well GUESS WHAT?!?!?!?!”
Eclipsomania is reminding me of those sci-fi B movies from the 1950s where entire metropolitan areas are evacuated safely and calmly, but now it’s in reverse, and people are fleeing toward this almost supernatural phenomenon.
I will note that I-87 — which runs between New York City and Montreal — was definitely busier than usual yesterday for a Sunday afternoon and there were more RVs and out-of-state plates on the road than is typical for this time of year.
But I am definitely rolling my eyes at the governor predicting a traffic calamity this afternoon and that people are going to starve and dehydrate in their cars. Like, c’mon. Don’t be Cuomo.
Aye-yi-yi.
‘I’m a little bit tired’: Briton becomes first person to run the length of Africa
Not the shortest route!
It’s gonna take a lot to drag me away from you
There’s nothing that a single man or more could ever do
I bless my feet down in Africa
Gonna take some time to do the things we never had
…bless?
…or blister?
Ah, a delightful bit of British understatement . . .
Fuck these people…
and fuck this lady!
https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2024/04/american-stewards-of-liberty-endangered-species-national-parks-byfield-summit/
“Arkansas governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders has declared a state of emergency in response to Monday’s solar eclipse when the real emergency is that the governor of an entire state is a fucking moron. ”
https://crooksandliars.com/2024/04/sarah-huckabee-sanders-declares-state
Maybe she’ll charge her poor state another trip to Paris (and send her grifter idiot family to the Super Bowl next year) all for the price of a lectern.
One of the reasons No Labels shut down is that they were pulling votes away from Trump, not Biden. All those disappointed Haley voters are looking for someone that’s not Trump or Biden. But they’re all Republicans.
I think that the eclipse shown in Meg’s post looks like the eye of God.
This is a good quick rundown of how the political press is screwing up Trump’s abortion announcement
https://www.mediamatters.org/new-york-times/news-outlets-help-trump-obfuscate-his-abortion-position
but there will be more later as it all follows the same messed up pattern described in the “Why is the Press Making Trump Seem More Normal?” piece by Dan Pfeiffer linked above by bryanlsplinter.
Pfeiffer made the valid point of how far the political press goes to analyze and digest what Trump says to make it coherent. It’s a lot of work, as he makes clear, with the result he describes:
Trump’s entire history on abortion is deeply unserious. As the quotes in the piece above note, Trump isn’t even saying what the political press claims he’s saying.
There are plenty of people who could distill what Trump is actually saying in clear, intelligible terms – the people quoted are just a start. And to be clear, this would be good for ratings and readership – people are hungry for honest reporting on Trump and abortion. Honest reporting would be a win-win situation for the political press.
They can’t manage it, though, even on a gimme putt like this. And the downside is when he drops the game, the press who went to such lengths to normalize him takes a hit with him.
As an addition, Michael Tae Sweeney posted to Bluesky
To which Adam Serwer adds
https://bsky.app/profile/adamserwer.bsky.social/post/3kpn34izqvt2r
I will bet that the scolding and denial by the political press is going to get harsher and more reflexive as the thinness of the propaganda gets clearer and clearer.
This is a conscious choice. They don’t have to treat Trump as a moderate on the grounds of journalism. There is no revenue rationalization for downplaying who he is. It’s not remotely complicated.
But Serwer is both right and clear, just as he was when he distilled the GOP’s agenda into “The cruelty is the point.” Get ready for the scolds.
…if it takes one to know one I expect you’ll continue to keep us posted
…still think you’d do well to make it posts, though…depending on the market there’s a considerable difference in the extent to which the distinction even has a difference…but probably best not to bother with those…judging by the way the US media gets your goat I think if you branched out into the UK or the french press you’d need blood pressure meds at the bare minimum?
LOL
or Canadian press which might lead to head-implosion
Should get 93.9% here. And it isn’t cloudy! I have eclipse glasses and the time blocked on my calendar so no bonehead schedules a meeting.
I’ve got a meeting that starts three minutes before the peak. It’s a general meeting so I’ll be logging in a bit late.