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Bozo_Casanova

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Everything posted by Bozo_Casanova

  1. Exactly. Speaking as the rare example of a middle aged white man with the quads to pull off short gym/running shorts and swimsuits, I'm happy to see them come back.
  2. Father Coughlin has entered the chat
  3. First, I’m not acting like it has nothing to do with it, I said I can’t tell “what role, if any” it played. HOWEVER, the reason why I’m making that point is because I think it dehumanizes the victim of a crime to turn them into a symbol of an issue, and is even more dehumanizing and ghoulish when we don’t know yet that the issue was involved. If the facts of the crime or the perpetrators indicated some nexus to the general environment of anti-trans violence, that would be one thing. If the facts emerge that there is a nexus, the dialogue will make sense. But right now it doesn’t. I mean fuck it, if the facts don’t matter, why not just use pick things at random? Old person gets hit by a car? Anti-trans political rhetoric. You stepped in dogshit at the park? Stochastic terrorism. It’s just this war and that lying son of a bitch Johnson. When, not if, but when right-wing political rhetoric gets people killed I’m ready to assign blame. But it’s very telling that the name of the victim, Sam Nordquist, hasn’t been mentioned since the first post on this thread, and he deserves to have his story told, not just get relegated to the role of “victim” in the story of the Trump era.
  4. 1) I don’t have enough details about this horrific crime to know what role, if any, anti-trans political rhetoric played. 2) Of course that rhetoric diffuses into all of society, but a cursory examination of the social media profiles of the accused only don’t indicate any sort of political awareness 3) what those profiles do indicate is that they are a mix of lesbian women and male sex criminals who live on the margins of society. Until we know more, this case doesn’t seem like the right vehicle for a dialogue about how our politics are causing anti-trans violence.
  5. It’s a very weird story. These five are … quite a group. Doesn’t feel political.
  6. New levels of pettiness - Grant Afseth is the Mavs blogger who Tim McMahon called a “wannabe reporter” on ESPN when actually checked with the Dallas police about McMahon’s “death threats” story.
  7. Yep, and that’s assuming Cornyn even stays in the race once Paxton announces. I have heard that Cornyn tells people privately he has no intention of retiring if Paxton challenges him, which tells me he has every intention of retiring if Paxton challenges him.
  8. Speaking of Mitch McConnell, the face that’s about to get eaten in Texas is John Cornyn’s because Ken Paxton is going to primary him and I’m going to laugh and laugh.
  9. Fuck him. Very few people have done more to damage the Republic.
  10. Also nonsense. Good local candidates live off the land. This is one area where politics is distinct from product marketing. Contesting every race with good candidates is 100% accretive. And if it isn’t accretive, they aren’t good candidates.
  11. Nonsense. Money is cheap nowadays. Attention is precious. Having the most money has never been less important in our lives. What’s important now is being interesting. Agreed, let’s get back to some face eating.
  12. No, my advice is “recruit and run good candidates.” If they do that, all the empathy and effective messaging takes care of itself. I am talking about partisan offices at the statewide and local level, but that’s inclusive of everything from county courthouses to congressional races. Presidential race outcomes get all the attention but tend to be a lagging indicator. Well, a lot of these people were behind the scenes figures and the more public ones would disavow that they did, but: “Dry powder” is most closely associated with the late Kelly Fero and the Molly Beth Malcolm era. The idea was that Bush’s coattails would make 2000 a waste of resources, so they would eke their powder dry in preparation for the notorious Ron Kirk/Tony Sanchez “dream ticket” in 2002, in which Sanchez wondered aloud why he was running and Ron Kirk actually debated John Cornyn about who was closer to George Bush. A lot of county level people thought it was asinine and said so, but some of the more well known figures doing the warning at that time were Jim Mattox and (giving credit where it’s due) Hightower.
  13. I don’t think so. I actually see positive signs at the grassroots and donor level. This thing is really close. It’s not as though Republicans have some massive dominance or anything. Democrats have finally lost the luxury of self-deception. I’m open to the idea that they might change the way they do business. I haven’t seen it yet, but at least right now when party apparatchiks discourage a good candidate from entering a race people are outraged about it.
  14. What does “should“ mean? You have to win to win. Elections are high stakes popularity contests. I’m not sure what I would add to that. Waiting to fail up is a bad strategy and they were warned at the time. I don’t think people understand that Democrats in Texas chose to lose, explicitly, at key times, from 96-2016. Hell, in 2000 they publicly “kept their powder dry” and didn’t fully support their own statewide ticket. I was at the state convention. It was … quite a moment. The top three issues in my community are the cost of living, homelessness and traffic, but addressing them is much less important in an election than connecting to how people feel about them.
  15. Oh to be clear- it’s not a proposal I’m stating the nature of the problem which is that the institution is currently constructed is built to lose.
  16. It is definitely not. Bad messaging is a symptom. It conveys a lack of understanding and empathy (see also O’ Rourke, Beto). Democrats keep searching for these magic incantations that will pull the veil away from the eyes of the masses, without realizing that the words reveal the truth regardless. “I’m going to build an opportunity economy” is a great example. The activist class and The Groups hear a tidy use of political shorthand to pull together a long list of policy goodies for various well connected groups. What middle class America hears is more bullshit from a political class that doesn’t respect them. Both are perceiving accurately. Bro how to you think the GOP broke the Texas gerrymander in the 80s? Democrats aren’t victims.
  17. “What should they say” is not the right question a better question is “who are they” and “what do they care about?” Somehow the majority of Americans missed that they were doing OK. Perhaps that’s begging the question. That’s incorrect. They never recovered from a transformed economy and society. the people a few rungs up did, and pulled the ladder up behind them. And of course, those who were just about to enter the working world at that time had their ability to build any kind of real ownership equity in anything or own a home traded away before they had a chance. And they are all rightly pretty furious. The structure of the economy is much more rigid and there is far less economic mobility than there was 20 years ago. And that was far less than it was 20 years before that. Gen X is the last generation that had much of a chance to do the American dream in the traditional way. Incidentally, you can’t really understand the rise of bitcoin and its popularity with millennial and Gen Z men outside that context, but I digress. I’ll give you that they were better than Republicans, but they don’t deserve more credit than that. Out national elections aren’t “rigged,” Democrats made explicitly and conscious strategic choices at the leadership level to make tactical retreats from places like Texas, betting that demographic change, supported by Republican policy failure would carry them back into power. Their strategic thesis was wrong. It speaks to their ignorance of the communities they counted on. They aren’t victims. 1) abandon all issue based litmus tests and racial or gender representation goals in favor of the single objective of winning races, recruit candidates who are the most credible and appealing person who lives in and is a product of the community on the 2-3 most tangible and immediate problems the community has. 2) Contest every race in every place, with the strategic priority of winning county and state legislative elections.
  18. I stand corrected. Democrats relate to working class people and marginalized communities really well, which is why they communicate and campaign so effectively.
  19. Haha exactly. “I’ve got a plan for that!”
  20. So let me see if I understand: 1) you were impressed by the presentation or at least the delivery of the presentation and 2) you don’t think that VP Harris was capable of delivering a similar speech that well Do I have that right? Please clarify
  21. By the way, @Gatorubet- I’m happy for you that you don’t. It tells me that you hit escape velocity and earned your place in the world and don’t wake up every day with the frustration and shame and my god, the resentment. So you can’t relate to it. You should be glad for that.
  22. Counselor, that is hell of a lot of words to say “I don’t get it.”
  23. This has to be trolling. This person impresses you? Are you joking? I’m seriously confused.
  24. No offense intended, but I think you missed that the point is about class and privilege. And since you aren’t grounded in their class, you don’t relate either. Or at least I don’t think you do, because that is the only way I can explain starting with a rhetorical question about demographic avatars and finishing with a rhetorical question about “them.”
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