And as useful as "everything they accuse us of is a confession" Its not comforting when the fascists hold the courts...keep hoping someone will say we have a right to be "woke", and to suggest otherwise is "politically correct ".
Yeah we have a First Amendment right to speak any language we choose, even español...
Re: trusting our own judgements, what you are touting is properly informed pattern recognition. It is not necessarily a thing that young people possess, which is why I am so conflicted about young people (The Future! The Idealism! The Wretched Ignorance!)
Thus, the next wave of voters may not bail anyone out til they are pushing 60, when it will have been too late for decades...
On the flip side, the aging-out generation will die feeling comfy and secure, having phumphed themselves, which will neither help nor hinder the cause of freedom (except insofar as authoritarian states kill off their citizens sooner than democratically operated states do).
Nah, he'll only end it for people under, say, 40 (irrespective if they paid in or not). "Tough breaks, kids", he'll say. "Dopey Joe and Carmello killed it for you. Now, if you vote for my third term I'll see what I can do."
Re that they'll be sorry later, a single bullet point as it were:
2016: proto-MAGAts perceived the economy being fucked up somehow such as they were getting screwed over. They were correct enough up to that point. But then, having expended they're very limited genius, the decided that electing Donny and the rest of the wannabe fascist party was some sort of solution. Reader, as you know, it was the antithesis of any sort of solution.
2024: they fucking do the exact same shit again. (Maybe. I guess? Certainly looks like it.)
Which is to say Hahahahaha of course they won't learn. Arguably they cannot. (Not my opinion. I've seen science guys saying so.)
Anyway, IMO bottom up has been important for ages, maybe forever. Of course overlooked by our fine elected leaders because it tends to leave them out and reduces the take of their grifts. But now, it's pretty much the only game in town, or at least really important.
The funny thing about this cycle's losses is that there's like an entire potpourri of factors that caused it. Like, odds are whatever reason you pick, you're correct; that too.
Saturday night, in Howell, Michigan's American Legion Hall, the Fowlerville Community Theatre staged a production of The Diary of Anne Frank. You can imagine what happened next.
The local Michigan reports were mostly headlined with "People with Nazi flags...etc". It was left to Detroit's Fox channel to lead with "Nazis protest outside 'The Diary of Anne Frank' theater production in Howell". I won't attempt to worry out the editorial judgements involved among all the media who posted. But it is at least a little bit instructive to see Fox comfortable about calling nazis what they are, even if all they are trying to do is normalize nazism.
"Like, odds are whatever reason you pick, you're correct; that too."
Thank you. I was joking (OR WAS I?) that "I've read six analyses of why Trump won. They're all different, and I agree with every one." My favorite so far is The Impenetrable Right-Wing Disinformation (read: Lies) Bubble, but YMMV.
My favorite metaopinion on the RWD was the choad who said, “More Democrats should have gone on Fox, like Mayor Pete!” Yeah, an all-encompassing Russian disinformation scheme could have been neutralized by Chuck Schumer going on Hannity.
"I understand why the notion that such people will wind up hoisted on their own petards is comforting to a lot of liberals."
I seem to remember an Aesop's Fable about this. Something about a fox... and some grapes... maybe they were sour, I dunno.
Anyways, these sort of liberals are just echoing what they hear from the DNC & sumposedly liberal media. It's inconceivable to almost everybody that freedom & benefit are not pie, & everybody can have a slice...
Thanks, Roy. It’s too early to forge a new path forward, and I’ve been alarmed that some people are so eager to assign blame they are just swinging wildly at the low hanging fruit which the GOP helpfully highlighted for them in Trump’s spittle-flecked closing ads. But normies don’t give a shit if some trans kid is playing lacrosse two towns over. Normies don’t give a shit about “woke” universities. I mean the usual suspects of fanatics and grifters do, but normies don’t. Still, I don’t think pointing fingers is entirely useless because if it’s too early for a path forward, at least we can look back and apportion some blame that was so obvious the mistakes were visible from space. Not to piss and moan as much as to recognize how we got here and to learn where NOT to place our reliance in the future.
Merrick Fucking Garland, and his whole legal apparatus that didn’t go after Trump like a heat-seeking missile after J6. Timidity, foot-dragging, and an obsession over the “optics” of a vigorous prosecution paved our way directly into fascism. If the Federal government isn’t prosecuting him and putting him away, how bad can anything he did really be? thought dumbass normies.
The Establishment legacy media, who both-sided and horse-raced and sane-washed Trump until he looked like a mildly distasteful but semi-viable alternative for low-information and not terribly bright voters who wanted a Change election. If the media treats him like a regular candidate, how deranged can he really be? thought dumbass normies.
The conservative SCOTUS justices, who dragged their feet on hearing/deciding any litigation that could hurt Trump before giving him the power of a king. If the highest Court isn’t working to stop him but is supporting him, how dangerous to democracy can he really be? thought dumbass normies.
All of which is to say for those of us who are both well-informed AND interested in politics, it’s hard to grasp how little some normies care or know about any of it. I can still remember the woman interviewed in the NYT who blamed Biden for the Dobbs decision because it came down while he was President. And while it wasn’t a large group, a truly alarming number of people were surprised to see that Joe Biden wasn’t still on the ballot on election day.
So the only message I’ve received is to put not my trust in princes. We’re on our own. And now we’re all poised to get the answer to that dumbass normie question, “how bad can he be?”
I'mo drop my early-morning work within yesterday's REBID here, with maybe an edit or two:
Leave us all recognize that the Democratic Party does not really want to be in the rough-and-tumble game of politics at all. Their secret dream is to be the referee...at the same time that the Republican Party has thrown out CalvinBall as being too rule-bound and constricting.
Oh, and speaking of princes, the Reps've gone straight to MachiavelliBall.*
Be careful what you wish for. If the Democratic party turns into the Republican party (they can't because they don't have enough motivated billionaires) you might not like it. Qnd push comes to shove the plutocrats always win until the financial system they sit atop collapses. And look how well it turned out last time.
"Merrick Fucking Garland, and his whole legal apparatus that didn’t go after Trump like a heat-seeking missile after J6."
They gave Trump 4 years to rehabilitate himself. Establishment legacy media doing the "sanewashing" of his incomprehesible campaign speaches helped massively on that front.
When the poor White folks don't line up to pick lettuce or rip chickens apart, there's a ready answer at hand: The intellectuals must be forced to work these jobs so as to re-educate them to what's important to the lifeblood of the nation. Start with the college professors, move on to anyone who has a degree, and fill any empty slots with anyone who wears eye glasses. Five years in re-education should give those eggheads an appreciation for what the authentic Americans do for a living! (If they survive the re-education.)
If things get bad enough, people with degrees and people who can barely read will both line -up to pick lettuce. If there's anyone who can afford lettuce.
But these are Americans we're talking about. Lettuce? You mean that green shit they put on top of my cheeseburger and the first thing I do is take it off and lay it on the plate?
Fun fact! Extremely reputable sources estimate that 70% of the workforce in the Wisconsin dairy industry are illegal migrant workers. That this number is so high is a testimony to the fact that legal migrant workers aren't available. Since the new administration plans on using local police and sheriff departments ( motto : ." If you're Brown you're going down!") to act as enforcement , all the migrant workforce will be subject to constant harassment and consequently, if they have any choice at all, they're not going to show up.
In the early 2000s, just after Bush and just as Obama was getting up and running, there was an anti-immigrant push, driven mostly I believe by Republican congressman and state governments down south. I took a job as a grower at a local nursery. The facility was 10 acres under glass. We grew annuals for home Depot stores in the Midwest. It was a high volume facility and an adequate staff included about 150 migrant workers. I started in February. The most staff we were ever able to find was about 80 people. As a result, I worked at least 10 hours every day from February 3rd to August 28th that year. I didn't know I could do that!
By the end of the year, most of the degreed staff had left. I was one of them.
At least once a week on my way home from the job I would pass by a car full of my coworkers, pulled over to the side of the road by the local cops.
There's a right-wing conceit that these people have no agency. Coming to work in the US is considered a good job. People live communally and put as much of the money in the Bank as they can. When there's an immigration crackdown, everybody gets rousted. A good size percentage of the legal migrants say fuck that and stay home. There's work there. The money is not as good, but at least they don't get hassled or worse by the cops. Everybody hates that.
Anyway the point I'm trying to make- these clowns are going to step on their dicks really hard, right away. ( Hard to believe considering what we know about the size of their dicks) Come April you'll be able to trade six dozen eggs for a gallon of milk. Oh wait, forget that.
Migrants are the ones taken care of the chickens.
Trump has never taken responsibility for anything. He will immediately default to "JoeBidenJoeBidenJoeBidenJoeBiden"
We need to get out ahead of the gaslighting and make sure he owns the consequences of his actions.
Good column, thanks! When anybody asks me I tell them that Ed Roso fellow should be in charge.
"The United States government owns 1.4 billion pounds of cheese. Now, they don't store this in warehouses or storage facilities. They keep this cheese hundreds of feet below ground in converted limestone mines in Missouri."
This from the website of St. Francis High School in Wheaton, Illinois.
More constructively, should add here that whilst in Costa Rica last spring, we were cooling heels in a little town square when my wife noticed a couple begging at the edge. She gave them some cash and talked to them and learned they'd come north thru the Gap and were trying to find enough food and cash to survive the rest of the trip to the US. The missus explained to them about what was ahead, and pointed out that the Costa Rican govt was looking to integrate immigrants because of a shortage of workers there. The begging couple were sceptical...
Yup. I think it’s also instructive that Texas Gov. Greg Abbot, he of the razor wire fences along the Rio Grande and busing migrants to blue cities, has suddenly gone all Treebeard (“Let’s not be hasty!”) on deportation. Seems that his big bucks supporters in agriculture and construction are none to thrilled with the idea of losing their cheap labor force.
What the big-bucks guys in ag and construction want is for these people to remain, but to remain in a constant state of fear so they don't get too uppity in demanding better wages or working conditions. Deportations, carried out haphazardly or incompetently do the job perfectly.
I'm almost positive there will be some new Ag worker visa that will give total control to the employer to set wages and living conditions. All complainers will go to the camps.
More fun facts: lots of grunt level construction is done by migrants, like roofing and framing, so the cost of remodeling and new builds will go up, if those happen at all. Landscaping will go to shit for the same reason. Hotel maids, gone. Dishwashers, adios. Car washes with detailing, sorry, nope. So many underpaid and underrated jobs vacant. Now I’m hearing the exodus, at least back to Mexico, is starting voluntarily because why hang out in the cold North waiting to be arrested? America has benefited from an underground economy of undocumented laborers, and the losses will affect everyone.
Although, like Roy, I have avoided the “what went wrong and what we must do” articles proliferating on the Web, I’ll get around to that behiiv piece later. For now, I know things will get worse for the fascist enablers along with the rest of us, and I expect they’ll blame anyone but Trump when they do. I’ve jotted down today’s economic figures (gas is $2.69 a gallon here) so I can recall them when prices and inflation go up, but that probably won’t be persuasive to the people who vote in 2026 - we’ll see. I don’t know where Roy’s going after emphasizing the fascism, but I do know you can’t eliminate racism by explaining that race is a cultural construct with no underlying genomic basis, at least not to someone who knows Black people are only good at sportsball. And you can’t explain the negative effects of unregulated capital markets to someone who thinks they’re one lottery ticket away from wealth. And misogyny can’t be eliminated by any rational means I can imagine. So we have real problems countering the siren call of “hate thy neighbor” that Republican propaganda has broadcast far and wide.
To the long list of things it seems like we can't explain, add "Bird flu pandemic makes eggs more expensive." Nope, the cause n' effect there was just too complicated for many voters to follow. "Eggs come from... where?"
Number 2 is especially true. I know these assholes, I drank with them for 40 years. Liberals like cheap beer too. If a leopard ends up eating their face, they'll just blame it on liberals.
Nice work. Yes, whatever they do would have worked perfectly were it not for the enemies within. Get them (us) out of the way and America will be great again. Do all the parts you need. And you know what really borders on stupidity, right? Canada and Mexico.
Just to be clear, I won’t be spending time during lunch scrolling through r/LeopardsAteMyFace over the next few years in hopes of seeing team red learn something. It’s strictly for the schadenfreude.
During his eastern US travels late in the 19th century, Twain took in a ballgame at South End Grounds featuring the Boston Beaneaters during that short time catcher Berty Russell was on the roster. That day Russell threw out 3 runners trying to steal, bunted home his young teammate Loose Legs Wittgenstein in a suicide squeeze, and hit a towering shot well over the 450ft mark in left center to win the game. Twain, suitably impressed, pronounced Russell so good he'd put him up against any other wiseguy catcher to ever play the game.
Well said, Roy, very well said. And thanks for the beehiiv link. Now that the MSM is completely in thrall to the billionaires, it's good to find some rational commentary (other than yours, of course).
Assholes can't admit mistakes..
I see that all the damn time.
And as useful as "everything they accuse us of is a confession" Its not comforting when the fascists hold the courts...keep hoping someone will say we have a right to be "woke", and to suggest otherwise is "politically correct ".
Yeah we have a First Amendment right to speak any language we choose, even español...
¿Que´?
So far.
Re: trusting our own judgements, what you are touting is properly informed pattern recognition. It is not necessarily a thing that young people possess, which is why I am so conflicted about young people (The Future! The Idealism! The Wretched Ignorance!)
Thus, the next wave of voters may not bail anyone out til they are pushing 60, when it will have been too late for decades...
On the flip side, the aging-out generation will die feeling comfy and secure, having phumphed themselves, which will neither help nor hinder the cause of freedom (except insofar as authoritarian states kill off their citizens sooner than democratically operated states do).
the aging-out generation will die feeling comfy and secure
until Trump end Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid
Nah, he'll only end it for people under, say, 40 (irrespective if they paid in or not). "Tough breaks, kids", he'll say. "Dopey Joe and Carmello killed it for you. Now, if you vote for my third term I'll see what I can do."
Re that they'll be sorry later, a single bullet point as it were:
2016: proto-MAGAts perceived the economy being fucked up somehow such as they were getting screwed over. They were correct enough up to that point. But then, having expended they're very limited genius, the decided that electing Donny and the rest of the wannabe fascist party was some sort of solution. Reader, as you know, it was the antithesis of any sort of solution.
2024: they fucking do the exact same shit again. (Maybe. I guess? Certainly looks like it.)
Which is to say Hahahahaha of course they won't learn. Arguably they cannot. (Not my opinion. I've seen science guys saying so.)
Anyway, IMO bottom up has been important for ages, maybe forever. Of course overlooked by our fine elected leaders because it tends to leave them out and reduces the take of their grifts. But now, it's pretty much the only game in town, or at least really important.
The funny thing about this cycle's losses is that there's like an entire potpourri of factors that caused it. Like, odds are whatever reason you pick, you're correct; that too.
And for a pretty good one-stop take, this:
https://www.popehat.com/p/and-yet-it-moves
Saturday night, in Howell, Michigan's American Legion Hall, the Fowlerville Community Theatre staged a production of The Diary of Anne Frank. You can imagine what happened next.
The local Michigan reports were mostly headlined with "People with Nazi flags...etc". It was left to Detroit's Fox channel to lead with "Nazis protest outside 'The Diary of Anne Frank' theater production in Howell". I won't attempt to worry out the editorial judgements involved among all the media who posted. But it is at least a little bit instructive to see Fox comfortable about calling nazis what they are, even if all they are trying to do is normalize nazism.
Too much insane cray-cray for me right there.
I got derailed by the last couple of weeks for one of the regular rants, so here: they’re all clinically insane.
Well, they're probably legacy Nazis. Take a look at wiki (starting with 20th century) for Howell's claim to fame. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howell,_Michigan
Sounds like progress, for the play to be put on at the Legion Hall.
"Like, odds are whatever reason you pick, you're correct; that too."
Thank you. I was joking (OR WAS I?) that "I've read six analyses of why Trump won. They're all different, and I agree with every one." My favorite so far is The Impenetrable Right-Wing Disinformation (read: Lies) Bubble, but YMMV.
She visited Wisconsin TOO MUCH.
It's One Weird Trick World right now. The have to write something, and this is something that has the virtueof being "right", so Bob's your uncle.
Almost every day, Uncle Robert gains a new niece/nephew. He's funny that way...
Wouldn’t be my #1 pick, but not one I’d disagree with either.
My favorite metaopinion on the RWD was the choad who said, “More Democrats should have gone on Fox, like Mayor Pete!” Yeah, an all-encompassing Russian disinformation scheme could have been neutralized by Chuck Schumer going on Hannity.
"I understand why the notion that such people will wind up hoisted on their own petards is comforting to a lot of liberals."
I seem to remember an Aesop's Fable about this. Something about a fox... and some grapes... maybe they were sour, I dunno.
Anyways, these sort of liberals are just echoing what they hear from the DNC & sumposedly liberal media. It's inconceivable to almost everybody that freedom & benefit are not pie, & everybody can have a slice...
Thanks, Roy. It’s too early to forge a new path forward, and I’ve been alarmed that some people are so eager to assign blame they are just swinging wildly at the low hanging fruit which the GOP helpfully highlighted for them in Trump’s spittle-flecked closing ads. But normies don’t give a shit if some trans kid is playing lacrosse two towns over. Normies don’t give a shit about “woke” universities. I mean the usual suspects of fanatics and grifters do, but normies don’t. Still, I don’t think pointing fingers is entirely useless because if it’s too early for a path forward, at least we can look back and apportion some blame that was so obvious the mistakes were visible from space. Not to piss and moan as much as to recognize how we got here and to learn where NOT to place our reliance in the future.
Merrick Fucking Garland, and his whole legal apparatus that didn’t go after Trump like a heat-seeking missile after J6. Timidity, foot-dragging, and an obsession over the “optics” of a vigorous prosecution paved our way directly into fascism. If the Federal government isn’t prosecuting him and putting him away, how bad can anything he did really be? thought dumbass normies.
The Establishment legacy media, who both-sided and horse-raced and sane-washed Trump until he looked like a mildly distasteful but semi-viable alternative for low-information and not terribly bright voters who wanted a Change election. If the media treats him like a regular candidate, how deranged can he really be? thought dumbass normies.
The conservative SCOTUS justices, who dragged their feet on hearing/deciding any litigation that could hurt Trump before giving him the power of a king. If the highest Court isn’t working to stop him but is supporting him, how dangerous to democracy can he really be? thought dumbass normies.
All of which is to say for those of us who are both well-informed AND interested in politics, it’s hard to grasp how little some normies care or know about any of it. I can still remember the woman interviewed in the NYT who blamed Biden for the Dobbs decision because it came down while he was President. And while it wasn’t a large group, a truly alarming number of people were surprised to see that Joe Biden wasn’t still on the ballot on election day.
So the only message I’ve received is to put not my trust in princes. We’re on our own. And now we’re all poised to get the answer to that dumbass normie question, “how bad can he be?”
The End of the Innocence, redux.
I'mo drop my early-morning work within yesterday's REBID here, with maybe an edit or two:
Leave us all recognize that the Democratic Party does not really want to be in the rough-and-tumble game of politics at all. Their secret dream is to be the referee...at the same time that the Republican Party has thrown out CalvinBall as being too rule-bound and constricting.
Oh, and speaking of princes, the Reps've gone straight to MachiavelliBall.*
*Apologies to Machiavelli where due.
Be careful what you wish for. If the Democratic party turns into the Republican party (they can't because they don't have enough motivated billionaires) you might not like it. Qnd push comes to shove the plutocrats always win until the financial system they sit atop collapses. And look how well it turned out last time.
Well, the sight of former masters of the universe flying past my 13th floor office window was...bracing...
"Merrick Fucking Garland, and his whole legal apparatus that didn’t go after Trump like a heat-seeking missile after J6."
They gave Trump 4 years to rehabilitate himself. Establishment legacy media doing the "sanewashing" of his incomprehesible campaign speaches helped massively on that front.
When the poor White folks don't line up to pick lettuce or rip chickens apart, there's a ready answer at hand: The intellectuals must be forced to work these jobs so as to re-educate them to what's important to the lifeblood of the nation. Start with the college professors, move on to anyone who has a degree, and fill any empty slots with anyone who wears eye glasses. Five years in re-education should give those eggheads an appreciation for what the authentic Americans do for a living! (If they survive the re-education.)
Worked for Mao.
And Pol Pot. And since we're now under the reign of Pol Potbelly . . .
The refs were poised to call out an 'oof' but I talked them out of it.
Pol Pot
If things get bad enough, people with degrees and people who can barely read will both line -up to pick lettuce. If there's anyone who can afford lettuce.
Under such a regime, picking lettuce would be one way to get ahead.
https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQ-N0DwGCIFvrWL82OCzsLapncuvR2etIntmQ&s
But these are Americans we're talking about. Lettuce? You mean that green shit they put on top of my cheeseburger and the first thing I do is take it off and lay it on the plate?
Given the texts already sent to Black people across America (https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/black-people-are-receiving-racist-text-messages-about-picking-cotton-at-the-nearest-plantation/ar-AA1tHKLt) this was, shall we say, considered.
Let’s just say I no longer wonder why I never really felt like I belonged in this country.
I don’t.
Fun fact! Extremely reputable sources estimate that 70% of the workforce in the Wisconsin dairy industry are illegal migrant workers. That this number is so high is a testimony to the fact that legal migrant workers aren't available. Since the new administration plans on using local police and sheriff departments ( motto : ." If you're Brown you're going down!") to act as enforcement , all the migrant workforce will be subject to constant harassment and consequently, if they have any choice at all, they're not going to show up.
In the early 2000s, just after Bush and just as Obama was getting up and running, there was an anti-immigrant push, driven mostly I believe by Republican congressman and state governments down south. I took a job as a grower at a local nursery. The facility was 10 acres under glass. We grew annuals for home Depot stores in the Midwest. It was a high volume facility and an adequate staff included about 150 migrant workers. I started in February. The most staff we were ever able to find was about 80 people. As a result, I worked at least 10 hours every day from February 3rd to August 28th that year. I didn't know I could do that!
By the end of the year, most of the degreed staff had left. I was one of them.
At least once a week on my way home from the job I would pass by a car full of my coworkers, pulled over to the side of the road by the local cops.
There's a right-wing conceit that these people have no agency. Coming to work in the US is considered a good job. People live communally and put as much of the money in the Bank as they can. When there's an immigration crackdown, everybody gets rousted. A good size percentage of the legal migrants say fuck that and stay home. There's work there. The money is not as good, but at least they don't get hassled or worse by the cops. Everybody hates that.
Anyway the point I'm trying to make- these clowns are going to step on their dicks really hard, right away. ( Hard to believe considering what we know about the size of their dicks) Come April you'll be able to trade six dozen eggs for a gallon of milk. Oh wait, forget that.
Migrants are the ones taken care of the chickens.
Trump has never taken responsibility for anything. He will immediately default to "JoeBidenJoeBidenJoeBidenJoeBiden"
We need to get out ahead of the gaslighting and make sure he owns the consequences of his actions.
Good column, thanks! When anybody asks me I tell them that Ed Roso fellow should be in charge.
Ok, ok, I get it: outsource my cheese habit.
2 marks.
"AMERICA IS LEANING ON CHEESE!" -- Tom Servo
"The United States government owns 1.4 billion pounds of cheese. Now, they don't store this in warehouses or storage facilities. They keep this cheese hundreds of feet below ground in converted limestone mines in Missouri."
This from the website of St. Francis High School in Wheaton, Illinois.
You mean they *still have that goddamn cheese*? 🤯
Tariffs will end that dream
But, but...it's MINE!!!!
Tariffs are Trump's dream and he has a bit more of a say than you
Aldi's!
Can I get Pt Reyes Blue there?
How about Aged Toma?
Italian table cheese?
Hell, if I hafta I'll settle for a lifetime supply of a good 'n creamy Havarti.
More constructively, should add here that whilst in Costa Rica last spring, we were cooling heels in a little town square when my wife noticed a couple begging at the edge. She gave them some cash and talked to them and learned they'd come north thru the Gap and were trying to find enough food and cash to survive the rest of the trip to the US. The missus explained to them about what was ahead, and pointed out that the Costa Rican govt was looking to integrate immigrants because of a shortage of workers there. The begging couple were sceptical...
Yup. I think it’s also instructive that Texas Gov. Greg Abbot, he of the razor wire fences along the Rio Grande and busing migrants to blue cities, has suddenly gone all Treebeard (“Let’s not be hasty!”) on deportation. Seems that his big bucks supporters in agriculture and construction are none to thrilled with the idea of losing their cheap labor force.
Oo, consequences!
So Abbott, unlike Trump, is actually in touch with somebody who's in touch with reality?
As well as their personal servants.
What the big-bucks guys in ag and construction want is for these people to remain, but to remain in a constant state of fear so they don't get too uppity in demanding better wages or working conditions. Deportations, carried out haphazardly or incompetently do the job perfectly.
I'm almost positive there will be some new Ag worker visa that will give total control to the employer to set wages and living conditions. All complainers will go to the camps.
So pretty much the equivalent of the Gulf States model.
This is really interesting--so much so that I'm leaving this remark without snark. Thanks.
More fun facts: lots of grunt level construction is done by migrants, like roofing and framing, so the cost of remodeling and new builds will go up, if those happen at all. Landscaping will go to shit for the same reason. Hotel maids, gone. Dishwashers, adios. Car washes with detailing, sorry, nope. So many underpaid and underrated jobs vacant. Now I’m hearing the exodus, at least back to Mexico, is starting voluntarily because why hang out in the cold North waiting to be arrested? America has benefited from an underground economy of undocumented laborers, and the losses will affect everyone.
MAGAs with blame Biden, of course.
Uncle Joe, still driving anti-(right sort of) American policy from BeYOND the GR-...sorry...OVAL OFFICE!
Just hope you got your hurricane damage taken care of!
Although, like Roy, I have avoided the “what went wrong and what we must do” articles proliferating on the Web, I’ll get around to that behiiv piece later. For now, I know things will get worse for the fascist enablers along with the rest of us, and I expect they’ll blame anyone but Trump when they do. I’ve jotted down today’s economic figures (gas is $2.69 a gallon here) so I can recall them when prices and inflation go up, but that probably won’t be persuasive to the people who vote in 2026 - we’ll see. I don’t know where Roy’s going after emphasizing the fascism, but I do know you can’t eliminate racism by explaining that race is a cultural construct with no underlying genomic basis, at least not to someone who knows Black people are only good at sportsball. And you can’t explain the negative effects of unregulated capital markets to someone who thinks they’re one lottery ticket away from wealth. And misogyny can’t be eliminated by any rational means I can imagine. So we have real problems countering the siren call of “hate thy neighbor” that Republican propaganda has broadcast far and wide.
To the long list of things it seems like we can't explain, add "Bird flu pandemic makes eggs more expensive." Nope, the cause n' effect there was just too complicated for many voters to follow. "Eggs come from... where?"
Well, if they come from sick birds I'll save ya a carton.
Number 2 is especially true. I know these assholes, I drank with them for 40 years. Liberals like cheap beer too. If a leopard ends up eating their face, they'll just blame it on liberals.
Drinking With Assholes is just sitting there, waiting to be snatched up by the next up&coming podcast sensation.
"Treat the truth as a shield until such time as it can be useful a sword." Word. Looking forward to Part Two.
Nice work. Yes, whatever they do would have worked perfectly were it not for the enemies within. Get them (us) out of the way and America will be great again. Do all the parts you need. And you know what really borders on stupidity, right? Canada and Mexico.
Just to be clear, I won’t be spending time during lunch scrolling through r/LeopardsAteMyFace over the next few years in hopes of seeing team red learn something. It’s strictly for the schadenfreude.
Face it - the leopards won't mind either way...
This phrase was bothering me:
"(the leopards-eating-face fallacy, I think Bertrand Russell called it)"
til the ghost of Yogi called to say, "Let it go, man..."
Bertrand Russell is the Yogi Berra of Mark Twajns.
During his eastern US travels late in the 19th century, Twain took in a ballgame at South End Grounds featuring the Boston Beaneaters during that short time catcher Berty Russell was on the roster. That day Russell threw out 3 runners trying to steal, bunted home his young teammate Loose Legs Wittgenstein in a suicide squeeze, and hit a towering shot well over the 450ft mark in left center to win the game. Twain, suitably impressed, pronounced Russell so good he'd put him up against any other wiseguy catcher to ever play the game.
2 marks for Loose Legs.
Really REALLY good. Thanks, Roy.
Well said, Roy, very well said. And thanks for the beehiiv link. Now that the MSM is completely in thrall to the billionaires, it's good to find some rational commentary (other than yours, of course).