If you plan to live in a converted bus, I think it would help to have been born and raised in the Soviet Union. That’s what came to mind when I watched this video.
I’ve recently seen a few web sites recommend a long article, published in “Tablet,” about a genre of propaganda called “permission structures,” so I read the article last night.
The permission structure operation was first developed by David Axelrod, for Obama, who then turned it into a massive program that neatly fit his personality and totalitarian tendencies.
This is a big-picture article, and the author probably exaggerates permission structures as an explanatory mechanism for the Obama and Biden years, but I think it’s worth reading.
“Needless to say, the model of politics in which operatives are constantly running permission structure games on the body politic, assisted by members of the press and think tankers eager to be of service to the party, has more in common with pyramid schemes and high-pressure network-marketing scams than it does with reasoned democratic deliberation and debate. At this point, it hardly seems controversial to point out that such a model of politics is socially toxic.”
…
“Constructing a giant permission structure machine that would mechanize the formation of public opinion through social media was never David Axelrod’s intention. Axelrod wanted to help make society better by allowing white voters to obey the better angels of their nature and elect Black mayors, despite being racists. Everyone can agree that racism is bad, just like they can agree that poverty is bad, or disease is bad. The question is whether a given instance of racism or poverty or disease is so bad that, when it comes to eliminating or reducing their ill effects, all other human values, including the value of independent thought and feeling, should be trampled. If the answer is yes, you have placed your trust outside of the nexus of contingent human relationships into the hands of a larger, crushingly powerful machine that you believe might incarnate your idea of justice. That is totalitarianism, or as George Orwell put it in 1984, the image of ‘a boot stamping on a human face—forever.’ ”
…
“It took three powerful men [Musk, Netanyahu, Trump], each of whom had the advantage of operating entirely in public, and with massive and obvious real-world consequences, to rupture the apparatus of false consciousness that Obama built. In doing so, they saved the world—for the moment, at least. While history will judge whether their achievements were lasting, it is clear that if they hadn’t acted as they did, we would still be living inside the machine.”
Axelrod wanted to help make society better by allowing white voters to obey the better angels of their nature and elect Black mayors, despite being racists.
==
In 1967, Carl Stokes was elected Mayor of Cleveland and Richard Hatcher of Gary, Indiana. They were the prototypes for succeeding generations. The former was devoted to orderly management of decline (and could we have some mo’ federal money?). The latter was destructive. You have some exceptions. Anthony Williams in DC was one, Robert Bowser in East Orange, NJ was another. Neither is the subject of notable admiration among politically attentive blacks AFAICT.
Have you noticed the new Democrat hive mind talking point: “Musk is actually President!!!”
They all are saying it.
Pace Cornflour and yesterday’s open thread discussion, counting sdferr, TJ, Barry and huxley — the fact that sticks in my head is the sheer scale of Trump’s triumphant redemption over the Party of Evil (TM):
Trump’s vote margin of victory this time is, nationally, about 2%.
But subtract the votes of the Democratic fiefdoms of just two largest states, California and New York — and Trump’s margin of victory swells to 5% of the US vote count in 2024.
And further deducting two more Left loving bicoastal states, Massachusetts and Washington state, and Trump’s margin of victory grows to 7%!
Mandate, indeed.
Impress this among your friends and etch these percentages on your brain to remind the recalcitrant of the Trump Truth for Victory again and again — because we’ll need to in the years to come.
As Dorothy Parker, a leading critic of the Algonquin Round Table in NYC and its over-baked self-importance once instructed us, “you can lead a horticulture, but you cannot make her think!” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algonquin_Round_Table
Today’s Tom Wolfian villains will need the reminding.
It finds Trump saying to bureaucrats: “Thank you for coming in today; second, you’re fired!”
Brilliant!
(The title itself is undoubtedly a riff on an old Al Pacino movie, “Dog Day Afternoon”.)
Marketing, this couple are influencers and their bus are in lots of influencer videos and blogs with affiliates. Supposedly they spent $50,000 on it in 2020.
T J – I think you’re in danger of getting high on your own supply. Trump’s victory was comparatively less impressive than Obama in 2008 and 2012. Trump in 2024 actually looks an awful lot like Bush in 2004. Bush won by about 2.5% in the popular vote (a full 1% higher than Trump, and Bush also cleared 50%). If you take away California and New York, Bush’s margin was about 5.5%. If you also take away Washington and Massachusetts, Bush’s margin was about 6.0%.
We’ve spent the entire 20th century as a 50/50 country ping-ponging back and forth between left and right, each of whom was absolutely convinced that each victory heralded a new realignment in their favor. So far, none of them were right.
Short answer – Trump needs to deliver more than chaos or we’ll swing right back in 2028.
and obama was about ‘hope and change’ not fundamentally transforming the country, close quote, but that’s what he did and we are laboring under the consequences of that, so did his sock puppet, biden that we have to pretend was legitimately elected, and anyone who spoke out was sanctioned don’t get me started on obama,
Axelrod wanted to help make society better by allowing white voters to obey the better angels of their nature and elect Black mayors, despite being racists.
This gave me pause when I read the Tablet piece. As I understood it, the author meant that whites could vote for racist black mayors. But the sentence could also be read as meaning that the whites were racist.
Many white people have trouble saying that any black people are racist, and many black people say that it is impossible for blacks to be racist.
Brian E – I don’t disagree about the left/right divide, but the current kerfuffle about the CR is more about Trump and his people having no plan.
If Trump wanted something out of the CR, his transition should have said so before Johnson negotiated a deal. There should have been conversations and strategy sessions between the transition team and the Speaker’s office, including a clear-eyed look at how many votes the R team has for the different things that Trump wants.
Instead, Trump didn’t make his position known until after Johnson had made a deal. Then he made a bunch of demands and threats. So Trump made Johnson look like a fool once when he reneged on the original deal, and then again when the next CR he presented didn’t have enough votes. Johnson will be weakened even further if we end up having a government shut down over the holidays. And all of this could have been avoided with just a little bit of planning and realism about votes.
But that’s Trump’s MO. It’s shoot from the lip. Always has been. And my criticism here has nothing to do with the merits of Trump’s position, the CR, or anything else. Trump and his team just aren’t very good at getting government to do what they want it to do. Never have been.
@Dax:Many white people have trouble saying that any black people are racist, and many black people say that it is impossible for blacks to be racist.
That’s because academia redefined racism long ago–it is no longer an individual’s attitude or behavior, but a property of groups and their relative mean position in society. As long as CEOs are disproportionately white males, poor white males from Appalachia are racist no matter how they treat or regard people of a different race. As long as felons and the incarcerated are disproportionately black, black Harvard professors and quarter-black Vice Presidents cannot be racist, no matter how they treat or regard people of a different race.
This is incidentally why Asians are being shunted to the bottom of academic racial preferences.
who put the immunity for kinzinger and cheney in the bill, so they could be unaccountable, who put the global engagement center funding Censorship who made E 15 mandate in the bill, none of this was what trump wanted, this is all swamp trash
@Bauxite:the CR is more about Trump and his people having no plan.
Yes, they should have had a plan for Johnson and Schumer cooking something up without their colleagues and dumping 1500 pages on the floor in the middle of the night. And Johnson, of course, who has been fighting his own party to run up the debt following what McCarthy negotiated with Biden since at least May of 2024, has no agency or expectations whatsoever, if Trump doesn’t anticipate and head off his every move it’s Trump that’s the problem and not Johnson. That may be a hostile characterization of what you think, Bauxite, but I don’t think it’s very far off.
It seems you’re basically okay with Johnson shafting the voters of the party you claim to support, and more worried about his standing with Schumer than with what Schumer and Johnson were trying to stick to the American people.
Trump and his team just aren’t very good at getting government to do what they want it to do.
Considering that he hasn’t even taken office yet he is doing more for conservatism than any Republican President-elect I can think of. And how do you explain the last 20 years of the GOP? Are they not good at getting the government what they want it to do? Or are they good at that, and what has happened over the last 20 years is what they really wanted?
By the standards you apply to Trump, the GOPe is either incompetent or lying to Republican voters. To which I say, por que no los dos?
CC™ is back. President elect Trump is already influencing political priorities but it is never enough or good enough for CC™. Is this going to be his refrain for the next 4 years?
“Have you noticed the new Democrat hive mind talking point: ‘Musk is actually President!!!’”
Yeah, but, Until the inauguration, so what if he is? We all know Biden isn’t, since he’s braindead. So if Musk has somehow taken over as interim president until Trump is inaugurated, well, good for him
a sad practice that started back in 2017
==
There was one in Berlin in 2016. Perpetrator was a Tunisian ‘asylum seeker’. His claim had been denied but for some reason he wasn’t taken to an airport and sent to Tunis.
==
There’s been an arrest in the Magdeberg attack today. The man arrested is a Saudi national.
“Muslims brace for backlash following next week’s terror attack”
:the CR is more about Trump and his people having no plan.
–Bauxite
Sure, that would have been nice. I agree.
But Trump and his people were busy running a campaign from a serious underdog position. From what I understand Trump himself hadn’t slept for 72 hours when he won the election.
Since then they have been working at a breakneck pace to get ready for the Trump presidency on Jan 20.
Stuff slips through the cracks. I didn’t hold it against Trump.
@Art Deco:There’s been an arrest in the Magdeberg attack today. The man arrested is a Saudi national.
“Don’t Forget the Culture War”
Good piece by Gary Wolf, who apparently posts here as AWOL Civilization, and whom I discovered through those posts. https://awolcivilization.net/index.html
Steven Bannon estimates Trump has 6 months to a year to implement his agenda.
I agree with him the main battle for the country will begin on Jan. 20. He thinks Trump and much of his cabinet will be impeached if the Democrats retake the House in 2026– which is one of the reasons it’s critical that some of the fallouts of reducing the size of the government must come early– to counter the campaign rhetoric.
Steven Bannon estimates Trump has 6 months to a year to implement his agenda on the Megan Kelley show.
I agree with him the main battle for the country will begin on Jan. 20. He thinks Trump and much of his cabinet will be impeached if the Democrats retake the House in 2026– which is one of the reasons it’s critical that some of the fallouts of reducing the size of the government must come early– to counter the campaign rhetoric.
It’s a great, fun documentary, if one is so inclined.
I’m now reading Tom Wolfe’s “The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test” in French, which chronicles the bus trip. The translator was a literary French guy who lived in the US in the fifties and hung out with the Beats. But he didn’t know hippies from shinola. It’s a dreadful translation.
This video has 14 million views. Little breather from politics. Or maybe not.
Brian E – I agree that Trump has 6 months to implement his agenda. If Trump knows that, if Trump’s team knows that, don’t you think they would have had a plan for the CR and don’t you think that they would have shared that plan with Johnson?
@Bauxite:they would have had a plan for the CR and don’t you think that they would have shared that plan with Johnson?
Why do you exempt the Republican Speaker of the House from any responsibility in opposing Schumer? Why is it all on Trump, who is not even in office yet? Why are you blaming Trump for failing to save us from Johnson trying to give Schumer what he wants, and not blaming Johnson for not standing up to Schumer? Why do you want a President-elect to keep Congress on track, and not the Republican Congressional leadership?
Bauxite– This CR is backwards looking. It’s continuing spending at the approx. $2 Trillion deficit spending until Oct. 2025, so no, I would think a conservative speaker would try and minimize what was included in the bill. I would think the speaker would have gone to his members and explained why it was imperative the bill be passed with only Republican votes and once the speaker was convinced he couldn’t wrangle the votes by persuasion/threats gone to the President.
Now I have no idea whether or not this was done, but based on comments by Republican congressmen, this wasn’t done and most of them were unaware of the scope of this CR.
The plan is being shared with Johnson going forward. There are discussions whether to implement Trump’s agenda with one or two CRs next year. There have been discussions between DOGE and Congress about their recommendations, of which some/many would require Congress to implement. All of this will be hard enough.
But what Trump didn’t need was additional spending passed by a Republican House when the theme will be reallocating resources to pay for some of Trump’s agenda. That will be hard.
It looks to me like the Republicans were more than willing to mouth conservative principles, but unwilling to take the risks of implementing them– which includes shutting down the government if that becomes necessary to signal how serious this Congress is/will be.
So now President Trump and his team is responsible for herding Speaker Johnson? An intelligent person would concede that Speaker Johnson is passibly familiar with the dynamics facing the Trump presidency. But CC™ must place all “blame” on The Great Orange Whale.
OM – ok refresh my memory – what does CC mean?
I have noticed that AP is tinting their pictures again so that Trump is oranger than normal and I saw one picture that had a straight line at the neck line so it was an obvious photo shop.
It would be good if all future bills get the AI/Musk/Vivek treatment. It would be interesting to go back to the ACA bill to see what shows up in that bill/law.
But, I can understand why it is hard to read bills since many sections are subbing one word for another so you have to track down the current phrasing of the law to figure out what the impact is. I tried to do that with the ACA.
My state has a requirement that a bill can only cover one topic and the state supreme court has thrown out laws because two different topics were listed in the bill. That should be the rule in Congress.
Liz:
Concerned Conservative, oh so “concerned” that the establishment Republicans aren’t in power,
but mostly just fixated about Donald Trump’s imperfections (being a human, and all that entails).
Bauxite can be lucid, but not when it comes to President Trump.
Om – thanks.. it makes sense.
Great news! Looks accurate…have checked quite a few other sites and they credit Financial Times (FT) as their source—so will use that one:
Donald Trump’s team has told European officials that the incoming US president will demand Nato member states increase defence spending to 5 per cent of GDP, but plans to continue supplying military aid to Ukraine.
***
One person said they understood that Trump would settle for 3.5 per cent, and that he was planning to explicitly link higher defence spending and the offer of more favourable trading terms with the US.
United States’ Defense spending as a percentage of its Gross Domestic Product (GDP) has been around 3.45-3.5% past couple years (looks at 3.1% for 2024 – ‘In 2023, defense spending made up 13.3% of the federal budget’). A chart in that FT article shows Poland over 4+% of their GDP, followed by Estonia, US, Latvia, and Greece over 3+% of their GDP.
Caving in to Russia’s demands – basically letting them take Ukraine would’ve been a disastrous policy for America, and basically empowering Russia with Ukraine’s growing warfare technology…example:
Ukrainian forces reportedly conducted their first attack solely using unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs) and first-person view (FPV) drones, highlighting Ukraine’s ongoing efforts to leverage technological innovation into ground operations. The spokesperson of a Ukrainian brigade operating in the Kharkiv direction reported on December 20 that Ukrainian forces conducted their first ground attack exclusively using robotic systems instead of infantry on an unspecified date near Lyptsi (north of Kharkiv City) and successfully destroyed unspecified Russian positions during the attack. The spokesperson stated that Ukrainian forces conducted the attack with dozens of UGVs equipped with machine guns and also used the UGVs to lay and clear mines in unspecified positions in the area. Ukrainian officials have repeatedly highlighted Ukraine’s efforts to utilize technological innovations and asymmetric strike capabilities to offset Ukraine’s manpower limitations in contrast with Russia’s willingness to accept unsustainable casualty rates for marginal territorial gains.
Ukraine also continues to innovate aerial drone production. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian officials completed tests of a drone attached to fiber optic cables that will be more resistant to electronic warfare (EW) interference. Russian forces have recently fielded such drones in Kursk Oblast and Ukraine. A Ukrainian drone company reported that it recently assembled a prototype of the first FPV drone made exclusively from components manufactured in Ukraine.
Their sea drones are also amazing.
Karmi- Did you read the article you linked to?
From the article:
While Trump still believes Ukraine should never be given membership of Nato, and wants an immediate end to the conflict, the president-elect believed that supplying weapons to Kyiv after a ceasefire would ensure a “peace through strength” outcome, they added.
Note the key words– “wants and immediate end to the conflict” and “supplying weapons after a ceasefire would ensure a “peace through strength” outcome…”
Brian E – you missed the “key words” at the very beginning of the article:
US president-elect’s closest foreign policy aides indicate he will continue arming Ukraine while pursuing end to war
The NATO comment is probably a bargaining chip for Trump. Then:
Trump now intends to maintain US military supplies to Kyiv after his inauguration
We’ll see how that goes, but he has clearly notified Russia that the US will continue to give arms to Ukraine—starting right after his “inauguration” and to continue even after a “ceasefire.”
And ref your comment – Trump talks out both sides of his mouth at times, so yes, I will be watching closely to see if he can PRODUCE on his claim that he will stop the Russian reinvasion of Ukraine in “one day.”
Perhaps you should reread the article…I used Epic Browser to get past paywall.
Liz: om and others here consistently misrepresent my intent. I don’t have a very high opinion of Trump. That’s it. His governing style is a combination of chaos and boldness that results in a few wins, a lot of messes, and a great deal of public fatigue outside of the MAGA faithful. (The CR mess going on right now being just one example.) Trump doesn’t adequately plan for the complexities of government as it actually exists, which severely limits what he is able to accomplish.
I also believe that his completely unnecessary boorish behavior kisses away large numbers of voters. We just had four years of a senile Joe Biden followed by Kamala Harris and Tim Walz as the Democratic nominee, and this resulted in a GOP candidate winning the popular vote by less than 2% and a razor thin House majority. There are a lot of things to be happy about, but if this is the best the GOP can do after an administration that deserves to go down with Buchanan administration as the worst in American history, then kiss it all goodbye.
So anyway, om, Art Deco, and others consistently misrepresent me as some kind of GOPe hack. Art Deco regularly accuses me of working on behalf of “handlers.” Of course that’s all ridiculous. I’m not GOPe at all. Haley? I wasn’t wild about her as anything other than a vehicle to much larger majorities than Trump won. Mitt? Nah. Jeb!? No thanks. On the other hand, Vance? I’ve been a supporter for years. DeSantis? Yes please!
Change is necessary, but so is competence. That’s all. Sometimes it really does feel like there’s a cult of personality around Trump.
Bauxite:
I don’t misrepresent your intent, you consistently focus on what you judge to be President Trump’s flaws, failures, and foibles. You choices over time earned the sign.
There are a lot of things to be happy about, but if this is the best the GOP can do after an administration that deserves to go down with Buchanan administration as the worst in American history, then kiss it all goodbye.
Sometimes it feels like Ahab and the Moby Dick, Bauxite.
So the problem is the GOP? Deep concerns indeed.
om you said I’m “oh so concerned that establishment Republicans are not in power.”
Sorry. That is a bad faith misrepresentation.
Here’s your sign, CC™.
Karmi, I’m glad you’re understanding President Trump’s position on ending the war.
If Ukraine were serious about having a strong position to negotiate an end, the would immediately lower the mobilization age to 18.
The would signal to the Russians they are all in. Their tepid response to their manpower shortages on the front lines is painfully obvious. Since August Russia has captured about 2,000 sq km in the eastern fronts and taken back about half the area in Kursk that Ukraine captured then (Ukraine now holds about 600 sq km).
I don’t think there was ever a question the west that they wouldn’t arm Ukraine to defend the new border (where ever that line was established in the negotiations).
This is only a fraction of the problems Ukraine faces. Ukraine only has the resources to pay for half of their government obligations.
In total the western countries have provided Ukraine with $149 billion in financial assistance, and $145 billion in military equipment.
Even after war is ended, Ukraine is going to need massive amounts of aid going forward.
cdrsalamander addresses the demographics of Russia and Ukraine.
It is substack so although I am a paid subscriber I cannot paste section for you, You can read it as a guest IIRC.
My observations are 1) if Russia has so vast a manpower supply why have they been forced to rely on North Koreans in their ham handed bloody approach to take back the Kursk salient and 2) Ukraine has been serious already about fighting the Russians and have lost 100k casualties.
When isolationists quake about conflict escalation in response to Vladdy’s threats regarding weapons supplies for Ukraine to seriously contest Russian aggression it is hard not to be contemptable about the motives of the isolationists. Ukraine cannot wage a attritional war against Vladdy without technological overmatch.
Brian E and Karmi:
You might want to read I&W of the Next Trump Administration’s Approach to Russia and Ukraine – cdrsalamander
cdrsalamander addresses the demographics of Russia and Ukraine.
It is substack so although I am a paid subscriber I cannot paste section for you, You can read it as a guest IIRC.
My observations are 1) if Russia has so vast a manpower supply why have they been forced to rely on North Koreans in their ham handed bloody approach to take back the Kursk salient and 2) Ukraine has been serious already about fighting the Russians and have lost 100k casualties.
When isolationists quake about conflict escalation in response to Vladdy’s threats regarding weapons supplies for Ukraine to seriously contest Russian aggression it is hard not to be contemptable about the motives of the isolationists. Ukraine cannot wage a attritional war against Vladdy without technological overmatch.
Thanks om…quite interesting.
More Russian troops have and are dying than most will admit. I think the “200,000 Russian troops have been killed in the war, and 240,000 wounded” is low on the killed, and am amazed at that wounded number. Example:
In modern conflicts, the ratio of wounded to killed is typically around 3:1 to 5:1. This means that for every soldier killed, 3 to 5 are wounded.
I have seen that “240,000” number before, and believe it was from Keith Kellogg. A private doesn’t know the wounded to killed ratio, but a “three-star general” should—which gives me pause on what he says. However, I do like how CDR Salamander put that article together…quite informative.
Strongly agree with your observation that Russia’s having to bring in North Koreans to help them shows Putin isn’t willing to go full draft mobilization—ISW’s reasoning has been that the Russian people are not going to go for that, and Putin knows it. Ukraine is killing more Russians monthly than Russia can replace.
Ukraine has suffered serious losses also, but they are fighting smartly for their survival, planning for a free future, and creating all kinds of new fighting methods—hence, also strongly agree with the “technological overmatch.”
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If you plan to live in a converted bus, I think it would help to have been born and raised in the Soviet Union. That’s what came to mind when I watched this video.
I’ve recently seen a few web sites recommend a long article, published in “Tablet,” about a genre of propaganda called “permission structures,” so I read the article last night.
The permission structure operation was first developed by David Axelrod, for Obama, who then turned it into a massive program that neatly fit his personality and totalitarian tendencies.
This is a big-picture article, and the author probably exaggerates permission structures as an explanatory mechanism for the Obama and Biden years, but I think it’s worth reading.
Here’s a link:
https://www.tabletmag.com/feature/rapid-onset-political-enlightenment
And here are a few representative paragraphs:
“Needless to say, the model of politics in which operatives are constantly running permission structure games on the body politic, assisted by members of the press and think tankers eager to be of service to the party, has more in common with pyramid schemes and high-pressure network-marketing scams than it does with reasoned democratic deliberation and debate. At this point, it hardly seems controversial to point out that such a model of politics is socially toxic.”
…
“Constructing a giant permission structure machine that would mechanize the formation of public opinion through social media was never David Axelrod’s intention. Axelrod wanted to help make society better by allowing white voters to obey the better angels of their nature and elect Black mayors, despite being racists. Everyone can agree that racism is bad, just like they can agree that poverty is bad, or disease is bad. The question is whether a given instance of racism or poverty or disease is so bad that, when it comes to eliminating or reducing their ill effects, all other human values, including the value of independent thought and feeling, should be trampled. If the answer is yes, you have placed your trust outside of the nexus of contingent human relationships into the hands of a larger, crushingly powerful machine that you believe might incarnate your idea of justice. That is totalitarianism, or as George Orwell put it in 1984, the image of ‘a boot stamping on a human face—forever.’ ”
…
“It took three powerful men [Musk, Netanyahu, Trump], each of whom had the advantage of operating entirely in public, and with massive and obvious real-world consequences, to rupture the apparatus of false consciousness that Obama built. In doing so, they saved the world—for the moment, at least. While history will judge whether their achievements were lasting, it is clear that if they hadn’t acted as they did, we would still be living inside the machine.”
Axelrod wanted to help make society better by allowing white voters to obey the better angels of their nature and elect Black mayors, despite being racists.
==
In 1967, Carl Stokes was elected Mayor of Cleveland and Richard Hatcher of Gary, Indiana. They were the prototypes for succeeding generations. The former was devoted to orderly management of decline (and could we have some mo’ federal money?). The latter was destructive. You have some exceptions. Anthony Williams in DC was one, Robert Bowser in East Orange, NJ was another. Neither is the subject of notable admiration among politically attentive blacks AFAICT.
Have you noticed the new Democrat hive mind talking point: “Musk is actually President!!!”
They all are saying it.
Pace Cornflour and yesterday’s open thread discussion, counting sdferr, TJ, Barry and huxley — the fact that sticks in my head is the sheer scale of Trump’s triumphant redemption over the Party of Evil (TM):
Trump’s vote margin of victory this time is, nationally, about 2%.
But subtract the votes of the Democratic fiefdoms of just two largest states, California and New York — and Trump’s margin of victory swells to 5% of the US vote count in 2024.
And further deducting two more Left loving bicoastal states, Massachusetts and Washington state, and Trump’s margin of victory grows to 7%!
Mandate, indeed.
Impress this among your friends and etch these percentages on your brain to remind the recalcitrant of the Trump Truth for Victory again and again — because we’ll need to in the years to come.
As Dorothy Parker, a leading critic of the Algonquin Round Table in NYC and its over-baked self-importance once instructed us, “you can lead a horticulture, but you cannot make her think!” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algonquin_Round_Table
Today’s Tom Wolfian villains will need the reminding.
THIS is LOL FUNNY!
Satirical trailer of the new TV series, “DOGE DAYS: The Purge of the US Government.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SmleMzR5CcY&t=89s
It finds Trump saying to bureaucrats: “Thank you for coming in today; second, you’re fired!”
Brilliant!
(The title itself is undoubtedly a riff on an old Al Pacino movie, “Dog Day Afternoon”.)
Marketing, this couple are influencers and their bus are in lots of influencer videos and blogs with affiliates. Supposedly they spent $50,000 on it in 2020.
T J – I think you’re in danger of getting high on your own supply. Trump’s victory was comparatively less impressive than Obama in 2008 and 2012. Trump in 2024 actually looks an awful lot like Bush in 2004. Bush won by about 2.5% in the popular vote (a full 1% higher than Trump, and Bush also cleared 50%). If you take away California and New York, Bush’s margin was about 5.5%. If you also take away Washington and Massachusetts, Bush’s margin was about 6.0%.
We’ve spent the entire 20th century as a 50/50 country ping-ponging back and forth between left and right, each of whom was absolutely convinced that each victory heralded a new realignment in their favor. So far, none of them were right.
Short answer – Trump needs to deliver more than chaos or we’ll swing right back in 2028.
and obama was about ‘hope and change’ not fundamentally transforming the country, close quote, but that’s what he did and we are laboring under the consequences of that, so did his sock puppet, biden that we have to pretend was legitimately elected, and anyone who spoke out was sanctioned don’t get me started on obama,
it’s like dejavu all over again
https://nypost.com/2024/12/19/media/disney-renews-george-stephanopoulos-contract-with-pay-cut-despite-16m-trump-settlement-because-it-didnt-want-his-blood-on-their-hands-source/
Bauxite– what TJ is pointing out is there are two Americas, IMO. And those two Americas are incompatible in many areas.
This current kerfuffle about the CR is an example of that.
why they are doomed, norway is,
https://x.com/HillelNeuer/status/1869845825242968216https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/singh-says-the-ndp-will-vote-to-bring-this-government-down-in-new-letter-1.7153541
Re Cornflour at 10:02 AM,
Axelrod wanted to help make society better by allowing white voters to obey the better angels of their nature and elect Black mayors, despite being racists.
This gave me pause when I read the Tablet piece. As I understood it, the author meant that whites could vote for racist black mayors. But the sentence could also be read as meaning that the whites were racist.
Many white people have trouble saying that any black people are racist, and many black people say that it is impossible for blacks to be racist.
Brian E – I don’t disagree about the left/right divide, but the current kerfuffle about the CR is more about Trump and his people having no plan.
If Trump wanted something out of the CR, his transition should have said so before Johnson negotiated a deal. There should have been conversations and strategy sessions between the transition team and the Speaker’s office, including a clear-eyed look at how many votes the R team has for the different things that Trump wants.
Instead, Trump didn’t make his position known until after Johnson had made a deal. Then he made a bunch of demands and threats. So Trump made Johnson look like a fool once when he reneged on the original deal, and then again when the next CR he presented didn’t have enough votes. Johnson will be weakened even further if we end up having a government shut down over the holidays. And all of this could have been avoided with just a little bit of planning and realism about votes.
But that’s Trump’s MO. It’s shoot from the lip. Always has been. And my criticism here has nothing to do with the merits of Trump’s position, the CR, or anything else. Trump and his team just aren’t very good at getting government to do what they want it to do. Never have been.
@Dax:Many white people have trouble saying that any black people are racist, and many black people say that it is impossible for blacks to be racist.
That’s because academia redefined racism long ago–it is no longer an individual’s attitude or behavior, but a property of groups and their relative mean position in society. As long as CEOs are disproportionately white males, poor white males from Appalachia are racist no matter how they treat or regard people of a different race. As long as felons and the incarcerated are disproportionately black, black Harvard professors and quarter-black Vice Presidents cannot be racist, no matter how they treat or regard people of a different race.
This is incidentally why Asians are being shunted to the bottom of academic racial preferences.
who put the immunity for kinzinger and cheney in the bill, so they could be unaccountable, who put the global engagement center funding Censorship who made E 15 mandate in the bill, none of this was what trump wanted, this is all swamp trash
@Bauxite:the CR is more about Trump and his people having no plan.
Yes, they should have had a plan for Johnson and Schumer cooking something up without their colleagues and dumping 1500 pages on the floor in the middle of the night. And Johnson, of course, who has been fighting his own party to run up the debt following what McCarthy negotiated with Biden since at least May of 2024, has no agency or expectations whatsoever, if Trump doesn’t anticipate and head off his every move it’s Trump that’s the problem and not Johnson. That may be a hostile characterization of what you think, Bauxite, but I don’t think it’s very far off.
It seems you’re basically okay with Johnson shafting the voters of the party you claim to support, and more worried about his standing with Schumer than with what Schumer and Johnson were trying to stick to the American people.
tl; dr when it comes to Trump you make isolated demands for rigor. Perfect example follows:
Trump and his team just aren’t very good at getting government to do what they want it to do.
Considering that he hasn’t even taken office yet he is doing more for conservatism than any Republican President-elect I can think of. And how do you explain the last 20 years of the GOP? Are they not good at getting the government what they want it to do? Or are they good at that, and what has happened over the last 20 years is what they really wanted?
By the standards you apply to Trump, the GOPe is either incompetent or lying to Republican voters. To which I say, por que no los dos?
CC™ is back. President elect Trump is already influencing political priorities but it is never enough or good enough for CC™. Is this going to be his refrain for the next 4 years?
The Great Orange Whale breaches.
a sad practice that started back in 2017
https://x.com/MarinaMedvin/status/1870188767023182249
but the bnd is laser focused on the afd,
“Have you noticed the new Democrat hive mind talking point: ‘Musk is actually President!!!’”
Yeah, but, Until the inauguration, so what if he is? We all know Biden isn’t, since he’s braindead. So if Musk has somehow taken over as interim president until Trump is inaugurated, well, good for him
a sad practice that started back in 2017
==
There was one in Berlin in 2016. Perpetrator was a Tunisian ‘asylum seeker’. His claim had been denied but for some reason he wasn’t taken to an airport and sent to Tunis.
==
There’s been an arrest in the Magdeberg attack today. The man arrested is a Saudi national.
This is the Democratic Party
==
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dc0FUYpE2yE
@miguel:a sad practice that started back in 2017
“Muslims brace for backlash following next week’s terror attack”
:the CR is more about Trump and his people having no plan.
–Bauxite
Sure, that would have been nice. I agree.
But Trump and his people were busy running a campaign from a serious underdog position. From what I understand Trump himself hadn’t slept for 72 hours when he won the election.
Since then they have been working at a breakneck pace to get ready for the Trump presidency on Jan 20.
Stuff slips through the cracks. I didn’t hold it against Trump.
@Art Deco:There’s been an arrest in the Magdeberg attack today. The man arrested is a Saudi national.
Must be some kind of mistake. The Associated Press headline said that “a car” was responsible.
“Don’t Forget the Culture War”
Good piece by Gary Wolf, who apparently posts here as AWOL Civilization, and whom I discovered through those posts.
https://awolcivilization.net/index.html
Steven Bannon estimates Trump has 6 months to a year to implement his agenda.
I agree with him the main battle for the country will begin on Jan. 20. He thinks Trump and much of his cabinet will be impeached if the Democrats retake the House in 2026– which is one of the reasons it’s critical that some of the fallouts of reducing the size of the government must come early– to counter the campaign rhetoric.
Steve Bannon on the “Political War” Coming in 2025 and Why Trump Has Six Months to Get Things Done
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wgk3mjrNx8M
Steven Bannon estimates Trump has 6 months to a year to implement his agenda on the Megan Kelley show.
I agree with him the main battle for the country will begin on Jan. 20. He thinks Trump and much of his cabinet will be impeached if the Democrats retake the House in 2026– which is one of the reasons it’s critical that some of the fallouts of reducing the size of the government must come early– to counter the campaign rhetoric.
Steve Bannon on the “Political War” Coming in 2025 and Why Trump Has Six Months to Get Things Done
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wgk3mjrNx8M
Re: Converted school bus
Ex-hippie that I am, I recall Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters’ great trip across America in a converted school bus.
–“MAGIC TRIP – Official Trailer – Ken Kesey Documentary”
https://youtu.be/6q8qlsx8tdA?t=21
It’s a great, fun documentary, if one is so inclined.
I’m now reading Tom Wolfe’s “The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test” in French, which chronicles the bus trip. The translator was a literary French guy who lived in the US in the fifties and hung out with the Beats. But he didn’t know hippies from shinola. It’s a dreadful translation.
This video has 14 million views. Little breather from politics. Or maybe not.
The Kiffness – Eating the Cats ft. Donald Trump (Debate Remix)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3BrCvZmSnKA&t=107s
Brian E – I agree that Trump has 6 months to implement his agenda. If Trump knows that, if Trump’s team knows that, don’t you think they would have had a plan for the CR and don’t you think that they would have shared that plan with Johnson?
@Bauxite:they would have had a plan for the CR and don’t you think that they would have shared that plan with Johnson?
Why do you exempt the Republican Speaker of the House from any responsibility in opposing Schumer? Why is it all on Trump, who is not even in office yet? Why are you blaming Trump for failing to save us from Johnson trying to give Schumer what he wants, and not blaming Johnson for not standing up to Schumer? Why do you want a President-elect to keep Congress on track, and not the Republican Congressional leadership?
Bauxite– This CR is backwards looking. It’s continuing spending at the approx. $2 Trillion deficit spending until Oct. 2025, so no, I would think a conservative speaker would try and minimize what was included in the bill. I would think the speaker would have gone to his members and explained why it was imperative the bill be passed with only Republican votes and once the speaker was convinced he couldn’t wrangle the votes by persuasion/threats gone to the President.
Now I have no idea whether or not this was done, but based on comments by Republican congressmen, this wasn’t done and most of them were unaware of the scope of this CR.
The plan is being shared with Johnson going forward. There are discussions whether to implement Trump’s agenda with one or two CRs next year. There have been discussions between DOGE and Congress about their recommendations, of which some/many would require Congress to implement. All of this will be hard enough.
But what Trump didn’t need was additional spending passed by a Republican House when the theme will be reallocating resources to pay for some of Trump’s agenda. That will be hard.
It looks to me like the Republicans were more than willing to mouth conservative principles, but unwilling to take the risks of implementing them– which includes shutting down the government if that becomes necessary to signal how serious this Congress is/will be.
So now President Trump and his team is responsible for herding Speaker Johnson? An intelligent person would concede that Speaker Johnson is passibly familiar with the dynamics facing the Trump presidency. But CC™ must place all “blame” on The Great Orange Whale.
OM – ok refresh my memory – what does CC mean?
I have noticed that AP is tinting their pictures again so that Trump is oranger than normal and I saw one picture that had a straight line at the neck line so it was an obvious photo shop.
It would be good if all future bills get the AI/Musk/Vivek treatment. It would be interesting to go back to the ACA bill to see what shows up in that bill/law.
But, I can understand why it is hard to read bills since many sections are subbing one word for another so you have to track down the current phrasing of the law to figure out what the impact is. I tried to do that with the ACA.
My state has a requirement that a bill can only cover one topic and the state supreme court has thrown out laws because two different topics were listed in the bill. That should be the rule in Congress.
Liz:
Concerned Conservative, oh so “concerned” that the establishment Republicans aren’t in power,
but mostly just fixated about Donald Trump’s imperfections (being a human, and all that entails).
Bauxite can be lucid, but not when it comes to President Trump.
Om – thanks.. it makes sense.
Great news! Looks accurate…have checked quite a few other sites and they credit Financial Times (FT) as their source—so will use that one:
Trump wants 5% Nato defence spending target – ‘US president-elect’s closest foreign policy aides indicate he will continue arming Ukraine while pursuing end to war’
United States’ Defense spending as a percentage of its Gross Domestic Product (GDP) has been around 3.45-3.5% past couple years (looks at 3.1% for 2024 – ‘In 2023, defense spending made up 13.3% of the federal budget’). A chart in that FT article shows Poland over 4+% of their GDP, followed by Estonia, US, Latvia, and Greece over 3+% of their GDP.
Caving in to Russia’s demands – basically letting them take Ukraine would’ve been a disastrous policy for America, and basically empowering Russia with Ukraine’s growing warfare technology…example:
Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, December 20, 2024
Their sea drones are also amazing.
Karmi- Did you read the article you linked to?
From the article:
Note the key words– “wants and immediate end to the conflict” and “supplying weapons after a ceasefire would ensure a “peace through strength” outcome…”
Brian E – you missed the “key words” at the very beginning of the article:
The NATO comment is probably a bargaining chip for Trump. Then:
We’ll see how that goes, but he has clearly notified Russia that the US will continue to give arms to Ukraine—starting right after his “inauguration” and to continue even after a “ceasefire.”
And ref your comment – Trump talks out both sides of his mouth at times, so yes, I will be watching closely to see if he can PRODUCE on his claim that he will stop the Russian reinvasion of Ukraine in “one day.”
Perhaps you should reread the article…I used Epic Browser to get past paywall.
Liz: om and others here consistently misrepresent my intent. I don’t have a very high opinion of Trump. That’s it. His governing style is a combination of chaos and boldness that results in a few wins, a lot of messes, and a great deal of public fatigue outside of the MAGA faithful. (The CR mess going on right now being just one example.) Trump doesn’t adequately plan for the complexities of government as it actually exists, which severely limits what he is able to accomplish.
I also believe that his completely unnecessary boorish behavior kisses away large numbers of voters. We just had four years of a senile Joe Biden followed by Kamala Harris and Tim Walz as the Democratic nominee, and this resulted in a GOP candidate winning the popular vote by less than 2% and a razor thin House majority. There are a lot of things to be happy about, but if this is the best the GOP can do after an administration that deserves to go down with Buchanan administration as the worst in American history, then kiss it all goodbye.
So anyway, om, Art Deco, and others consistently misrepresent me as some kind of GOPe hack. Art Deco regularly accuses me of working on behalf of “handlers.” Of course that’s all ridiculous. I’m not GOPe at all. Haley? I wasn’t wild about her as anything other than a vehicle to much larger majorities than Trump won. Mitt? Nah. Jeb!? No thanks. On the other hand, Vance? I’ve been a supporter for years. DeSantis? Yes please!
Change is necessary, but so is competence. That’s all. Sometimes it really does feel like there’s a cult of personality around Trump.
Bauxite:
I don’t misrepresent your intent, you consistently focus on what you judge to be President Trump’s flaws, failures, and foibles. You choices over time earned the sign.
Sometimes it feels like Ahab and the Moby Dick, Bauxite.
So the problem is the GOP? Deep concerns indeed.
om you said I’m “oh so concerned that establishment Republicans are not in power.”
Sorry. That is a bad faith misrepresentation.
Here’s your sign, CC™.
Karmi, I’m glad you’re understanding President Trump’s position on ending the war.
If Ukraine were serious about having a strong position to negotiate an end, the would immediately lower the mobilization age to 18.
The would signal to the Russians they are all in. Their tepid response to their manpower shortages on the front lines is painfully obvious. Since August Russia has captured about 2,000 sq km in the eastern fronts and taken back about half the area in Kursk that Ukraine captured then (Ukraine now holds about 600 sq km).
I don’t think there was ever a question the west that they wouldn’t arm Ukraine to defend the new border (where ever that line was established in the negotiations).
This is only a fraction of the problems Ukraine faces. Ukraine only has the resources to pay for half of their government obligations.
In total the western countries have provided Ukraine with $149 billion in financial assistance, and $145 billion in military equipment.
Even after war is ended, Ukraine is going to need massive amounts of aid going forward.
https://www.cfr.org/article/how-much-us-aid-going-ukraine
Brian E and Karmi:
You might want to read
I&W of the Next Trump Administration’s Approach to Russia and Ukraine – cdrsalamander
https://cdrsalamander.substack.com/p/i-and-w-of-the-next-trump-administrations
https://open.substack.com/pub/cdrsalamander/p/i-and-w-of-the-next-trump-administrations?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email
cdrsalamander addresses the demographics of Russia and Ukraine.
It is substack so although I am a paid subscriber I cannot paste section for you, You can read it as a guest IIRC.
My observations are 1) if Russia has so vast a manpower supply why have they been forced to rely on North Koreans in their ham handed bloody approach to take back the Kursk salient and 2) Ukraine has been serious already about fighting the Russians and have lost 100k casualties.
When isolationists quake about conflict escalation in response to Vladdy’s threats regarding weapons supplies for Ukraine to seriously contest Russian aggression it is hard not to be contemptable about the motives of the isolationists. Ukraine cannot wage a attritional war against Vladdy without technological overmatch.
Brian E and Karmi:
You might want to read
I&W of the Next Trump Administration’s Approach to Russia and Ukraine – cdrsalamander
https://cdrsalamander.substack.com/p/i-and-w-of-the-next-trump-administrations
https://open.substack.com/pub/cdrsalamander/p/i-and-w-of-the-next-trump-administrations?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email
cdrsalamander addresses the demographics of Russia and Ukraine.
It is substack so although I am a paid subscriber I cannot paste section for you, You can read it as a guest IIRC.
My observations are 1) if Russia has so vast a manpower supply why have they been forced to rely on North Koreans in their ham handed bloody approach to take back the Kursk salient and 2) Ukraine has been serious already about fighting the Russians and have lost 100k casualties.
When isolationists quake about conflict escalation in response to Vladdy’s threats regarding weapons supplies for Ukraine to seriously contest Russian aggression it is hard not to be contemptable about the motives of the isolationists. Ukraine cannot wage a attritional war against Vladdy without technological overmatch.
Thanks om…quite interesting.
More Russian troops have and are dying than most will admit. I think the “200,000 Russian troops have been killed in the war, and 240,000 wounded” is low on the killed, and am amazed at that wounded number. Example:
I have seen that “240,000” number before, and believe it was from Keith Kellogg. A private doesn’t know the wounded to killed ratio, but a “three-star general” should—which gives me pause on what he says. However, I do like how CDR Salamander put that article together…quite informative.
Strongly agree with your observation that Russia’s having to bring in North Koreans to help them shows Putin isn’t willing to go full draft mobilization—ISW’s reasoning has been that the Russian people are not going to go for that, and Putin knows it. Ukraine is killing more Russians monthly than Russia can replace.
Ukraine has suffered serious losses also, but they are fighting smartly for their survival, planning for a free future, and creating all kinds of new fighting methods—hence, also strongly agree with the “technological overmatch.”
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OT – site seemed like it crashed earlier. I couldn’t get back in to edit a comment, and kept getting error messages about the site. Had to reenter my name, email, and website info before posting this comment. Just posted, and my info was saved.