Of course it’s just more performative MAGA nonsense, cutting off the nose to spite the face and calling it “owning the libs.”
These people wouldn’t know Marxist ideology if it slapped them across the face, it’s just another buzzword in the same vein as “socialist” and “leftist” and “communist” (read: “anything I don’t like”).
The constant aggressive anti-intellectualism is exhausting.
I think “owning the libs” is a desirable side-effect and not their main goal.
Their main goal is to keep the lower class voters ignorant and uneducated so that history can be denied and they can be more easily manipulated into voting for right wingers using appeals to emotion (e.g. hatred, racism, patriotism, way of life). This is of course to keep power where it is.
Seriously, what the hell went wrong? I’m from the states and my wife is from a third would country. We are both just living here. Living in America seems like a nightmare now.
I’ve been here for like 5-6 years now. My sister decided to homeschool her children due to shootings. Luckily, she used to be an elementary teacher and her oldest son is easily completing the material he would be learning at his current age.
But still, why would people go there at this point?
I just cannot believe that a Marxist lesbian who believes that collective power is possible to build and can be wielded for a better world is president elect of ALA. I am so excited for what we will do together. Solidarity. And my mom is so proud. I love you mom.
Talk about cutting off your nose to spite your face. Though since most of the picks are from governor Gianforte, I can’t say I’m surprised.
That guy isn’t exactly the sharpest tool in the shed. I’m just sad the Montana I knew and loved was usurped by some out of towner who is totally altering the fabric and culture of that state from a “live and let live” to more of a Idaho-like place. He’s desecrating our state.
I have a feeling the invisible hand is going to force an about face for the GOP on climate sooner than they’d like. Yes, for now they can rail against woke companies for making decisions that improve shareholder returns, but it’s cartoonish already what with the weather of late — and I’m sure what’s to come will involve blaming residents for leaving when there are no insurance companies left willing to touch Florida (point on the map where the bad man …).
Problem is, residents have different thresholds than businesses, and once commercial insurance starts to decline in availability, no amount of rhetoric is going to fix the grocery stores closing down because they can’t get insurance.
Insurance is ultimately a game of musical chairs. For now, there are so many companies and policy types that it’s the boring part at the beginning where everyone mocks the loser but there really aren’t any stakes. The mockery phase will end as companies increasingly become the last holdouts and shareholders start asking why everyone else left but we’re forecasting blue skies.
Insurance is ultimately a game of musical chairs. For now, there are so many companies and policy types that it’s the boring part at the beginning where everyone mocks the loser but there really aren’t any stakes. The mockery phase will end as companies increasingly become the last holdouts and shareholders start asking why everyone else left but we’re forecasting blue skies.
oh yeah–and the thing is for residents it’s already still really bad. there are people on insurance company number 4 in 4 years (or who have two insurance companies because one has to cover one thing and the other covers everything else), and the state is actively trying to disincentivize joining the lender of last resort because they can’t take on that many policies and it’ll kill the remaining insurers. a bad hurricane this year might genuinely be the thing which kicks off the permanent death spiral here–the market needs years of blue skies to “stabilize”.
Oh, absolutely. I think of it as more of a domino effect than butterfly. What we don’t know is how many dominoes the next one to fall will touch. The actuaries at Farmers determined that N events of X size in Y timeframe make these policies undesirable, but it tells us nothing about what N+1 means to other divisions of Farmers, let alone what happens at other companies with their own Xs and Ys.
Well, each major insurer that leaves makes the state more undesirable for everyone that’s left. Each one of these insurers had their share of the “bad” business and now the ones who are left have to sift through the applicants to try to figure out who is safe to insure and who is going to cost them their ability to continue doing business. So with every insurer that leaves, those undesirable risks who pushed them out end up more and more concentrated with the other carriers. I would expect to see more and more of this.
Anybody voting for GOP should really consider whether they want to live in FL because if they have their way the entire country will be exactly like FL. “Oh but MY representatives will only do the things that are good.” No, they won’t. That isn’t how they operate.
I was curious about 30-year mortgage origination volumes in Florida, but best I found quickly was from the CFPB in 2019, so it’s useless given the pandemic, supply-chain issues and inflation since.
I can’t imagine anyone there is getting a 30-year today fully expecting to pay it off, retire and die never having to move again.
Like, who would be buying these people’s homes that they’re leaving in FL in order to get a new place somewhere else?
in all probability, a state authority will eventually need to eat the cost and help resettle a large number of people currently living in Florida. whether that’ll be Florida or the US government (or another party) remains to be seen.
The problem is actually that it has been thought through, extensively. The cruelty is the point. Also, nobody ever asked this “web designer” to design a website for a LGBTQIA+ wedding. This is a created farce, about a “what if”. This person creates templates, and doesn’t want LGBTQIA+ to be able to buy them as anyone else could. Conservative donors cherry picked this to ride it up the line to get their time in front of the corrupt, broken SCOTUS.
This allows a person to say that, if they FEEL that whatever their work is is a demonstration of art or self expression, they can limit who receives it… A.K.A. “I put love into the food I make at this diner I own, and my religion is for white, Christians only. We don’t serve food to none of the other non-whites. You need to leave!”
Like I said, it will backfire. When people get refused service for MAGA hats or because of being Christian they will throw a fit but they dug the hole for themselves here.
It’s awful and I agree though. It’s disgusting and the cruelty is the point. But the way this is going to be use against them is going to make things so messy and petty.
Regardless of the sourcing, it’s important to have open eyes about these things. While don’t think many outside of Lemmygrad would argue that there isn’t a clear moral difference between the defenders and aggressors in this war (and Prigozhin didn’t exactly name his organization the Wagner Group out of a deep artistic appreciation for German opera, either), Ukraine has also been willing to take help from unsavory groups, particularly in the original Azov Brigade and the RVC. I won’t condemn Ukrainian leadership for engaging in realpolitik while fighting for their nation’s right to exist, but they and their Western allies all need to be careful that fascist elements within Ukraine don’t get the opportunity to leverage the war for greater power and influence.
Wait, what? Target barely even had a Pride campaign this year. They started rolling it out early, then backpedaled so fast and so far that there was basically nothing in June. Certainly nothing that classified as “sexual” to a sane human being. Also, if they’re still claiming there was anything actually trans-body-friendly in children’s sizes, that is pure fiction. As a trans, queer person, I would give Target maybe a C- for LGBTQ+ - friendliness, and that’s giving them the benefit of the doubt. These scumbags are not only morally bankrupt, they’re barking up the wrong tree.
I cannot be bothered to care about this when her colleagues are violating these principles at exponentially higher levels and the last Presidential administration practically uses the office for nothing but self enrichment. Strengthen ethics rules across the board so none of it happens again. If not this goes to the bottom of the list of ethics problems.
I’ve grown somewhat numb to these sorts of stories, as it feels like we’ve run out of permutations on the deck chairs.
In Ye Olde Tymes — say, 2008 — the corporate model of journalism sitting on top of ads on newsprint was rickety but still functioning. And then consolidation brought a gun to this Jenga game.
Newspapers evolved to all have substantially similar structures over the course of the 20th century because all the pieces worked together for daily just-in-time production. You start pulling out pieces, and bad things happen.
But now the industry has these Frankensteined workflows demanded by Alden, New Media Investment Group and other killers of democracy. Newsroom staff are completely divorced from any production facility in use, so the structures in place are already anachronisms with buzzword-laden window dressing.
As far as I can tell, and certainly from recent job postings, a lot of newsrooms think their audience is Twitter and Facebook, not, say … readers. (Yes, yes, we all know the paper as a whole’s audience is advertisers, but journalists are excellent at self-delusion.)
This sets up an absurd game of telephone from writer to, god willing and the crick don’t rise, an editor at a publication to Massive Online Platform™ to reader. The Value® the publisher brings to the table is name recognition and usually long-expired credibility, while the platform makes it convenient to read alongside “both-sides” thinkpieces about Nazi marches.
But in terms of product? I’d like to see two rounds of editing by people familiar with the subject matter and a proofer on everything; who wouldn’t? One editor is better than none, but that’s the extent of beneficial refinement provided before hitting the reader’s eyes.
The org is paying the reporter less than they could make with an established Patreon and an editor friend, getting ad revenue, and passing it along to Facebook, which also gets ad revenue. They are vampire middlemen in the communication process that exist for people who don’t have an established Patreon (I sure as hell don’t).
But gone are the days when a reporter left a paper and became irrelevant. The journalist is the star online, not the paper, and their followers go with them.
Fixing local journalism will take a lot of things, but we have to burn the village to save it. Let all of the value be extracted from newsrooms to hedge funds so we can stop this farce of framing the future of journalism through the lens of today’s corporate structure and concomitant high overhead costs.
Statements like that are why I tend to follow the idea that any government service should be provided to every citizen equally without exception.
We spend so much money in the US trying to make sure only the “correct” people are receiving things like welfare or Medicaid. If we just dropped the restrictions we’d likely be fairly close to being able to afford covering everybody with those programs.
This is exactly what Luxembourg did with their public transit recently. They realized they were spending more in upkeep/salaries/HR/computer systems/policy/etc, and just ripped it all out, and made it free.
That’s the reasoning behind an Universal Basic Income system: deciding who needs financial aid and who doesn’t, is more expensive than just giving everyone a fixed monthly payment and calling it a day.
That is, except for those who think nobody should get anything for free, and are trying to rip out the aid systems altogether.
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