71 thoughts on “Babble Bubbles”

  1. David Horsey’s op ed at the Seattle Times:

    I have been a political junkie since I was a little kid, going to campaign speeches and a national political party convention with my dad (all Republican events, by the way). Even if it was not now my job to keep a close eye on politics, I’d still be scrolling through campaign coverage from a dozen different news outlets and watching endless hours of chatter on cable TV.
    One thing that has struck me this year is that, more than ever, the conversation about the 2024 presidential election is filled with repetitive and contradictory babble. On any given day, much of the discussion is about the freshest polling numbers, with few heeding the lessons of previous campaigns that show how polls are frequently wrong and fail to capture underlying currents that are pulling voters one way or another.
    When not picking apart the polls, as if they were mysterious runes, the legion of talking heads spouting opinions is too often regurgitating conventional wisdom or blatantly shilling for one side or the other.
    This phenomenon is nothing new in political news coverage and analysis, but, because there is so much time to fill on 24-hour news channels and such vast terrain available for endless click-baiting and blather in cyberspace, it seems more pronounced than ever.
    Every day, there are truly important bits of news that can add to our understanding of former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris, so we need to pay attention. But boy oh boy, there is a mighty flood of flotsam that has to be waded through to locate those stories that really matter.

  2. Stephen breaks down reactions to the Harris-Trump debate, including the racist rumor about people eating pets, and decodes the easter eggs hidden in Taylor Swift’s Instagram post endorsing Kamala Harris for President.

  3. ed mazza at Huffpo about last night’s show:

    Stephen Colbert isn’t buying Donald Trump’s attempt to duck a second debate after Vice President Kamala Harris “roasted and toasted” him in their first matchup earlier this week. 
    “It was so bad, RFK Jr. scooped him up and put him in his roadkill freezer,” Colbert cracked. 
    Harris’ team proposed another debate shortly after the first one ended. Trump replied by saying only losers ask for a rematch. 
    Colbert offered the former president a graphic reality check. 
    “Counterpoint: She tore out your heart, showed it to you while it was still beating, then ate it on national television,” he said. “And now, she would like seconds.” 

  6. former GOPer song published a few days ago

    A rousing anthem about a former Republican voter awakening to the crapulent, unelectable qualities of the GOP ticket and instead seeing his way clear to voting for the decency on offer with our charismatic and powerful VP Kamala Harris and her running mate Minnesota Governor and Top Man Tim Walz. Let this (probably) award-winning ballad salve the open wounds of right-wing hate and disinformation, and welcome you to the team of acceptance that comprehends we’re all sharing Mother Nature’s creation. Join me in goosing the joy and positivity of the Harris-Walz campaign with any filthy lucre you can spare. https://kamalaharris.com Lyrics: Nick Offerman and Mark Rivers Video: Dunshire Productions

     

  9. https://x.com/dens/status/1294093032183214080
    “To put them in perspective, I think of being on an airplane. The flight attendant comes down the aisle with her food cart and, eventually, parks it beside my seat. “Can I interest you in the chicken?” she asks. “Or would you prefer the platter of shit with bits of broken glass in it?” To be undecided in this election is to pause for a moment and then ask how the chicken is cooked.”
    David Sedaris/The New Yorker 

  10. Almost makes want a MAGA hat so I can turn it into a  kaMAla hat.  Almost. 
    I hope the 300,000 Swifties who registered are in swing states. 

  12. Someday I’ll learn how to post the pictures on here, but there’s a meme with the red hat that says It’s Over. Meanwhile,
     

    Biden wears Trump hat as 9/11 unity gesture, says White House
     
    He was visiting firefighters in Pennsylvania near where one of the four hijacked planes crashed, and the White House said he donned the cap as a gesture of unity.
    Video recording the incident shows the president having a friendly conversation with a Trump supporter before they swap headwear.
     

    https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4gdgw0v3dxo

  14. Trump’s message of American decline resonates with pivotal voters
    Kamala Harris may have rattled Donald Trump on the debate stage, but the former president’s promise to save a nation in decline resonates with undecided voters in this part of a key battleground state.
    It took Paul Simon four days to hitchhike from Saginaw, or so he sang in America, his iconic soundscape ballad of the 1960s with its lost souls on the highways of a country in flux.
    Back then, this city’s long, slow decline had already begun, as Michigan’s once mighty car factories pulled down the shutters, buffeted by the winds of foreign competition.
    Today, the angst and loneliness of Simon and Art Garfunkel’s song are magnified many times over.
    I found 57-year-old Rachel Oviedo sitting on her porch, staring out at abandoned furniture in the street and beyond, the shell of a plant that once made car parts for Chevrolets and Buicks, but finally closed its doors in 2014.
    “We sit here all day long,” she told me. “We see homeless people come in and out of there, they need to tear it down and make something out of it.”
    “A grocery store,” she suggested. “Because we ain’t got no grocery stores round here.” I first met her the day before Tuesday night’s debate in Philadelphia, when she told me she was still unsure of how she was going to vote.
    Donald Trump, she said, felt like a known quantity and like “a man of his word”, while Kamala Harris looked promising but still somewhat unknown.
    “I like her,” she said, “but we don’t know what she’s going to do.”
    Most US states lean either so strongly Democratic or so strongly Republican that the result is a foregone conclusion.
    And if Michigan is one of the few swing states, then Saginaw is one of the few places in it where the vote could genuinely go either way.
    When they come to cast their ballots, it will be undecided voters like Rachel, in places like this, who’ll quite literally have the future of America in their hands.
     
    On the streets of Saginaw, Kathleen Skelcy was knocking on doors, busy canvassing for Harris.
    She told me she finds it a struggle to see any rationale behind the political motivations of her opponents.
    “That’s what’s scary, trying to understand these people and their thinking,” she said.
    “I just think they’re not educated, or they fell asleep in school or something.”
    It’s easy to see this as patronising, another sign that some Democrats chalk Trump’s appeal as merely delusional.
    It’s clear, however, that trust and understanding can be in short supply on both sides.
    As we’re talking, a Trump supporter, aggressive and threatening, emerges shouting from his home, following Kathleen up the street.
    “Harris is a clown,” he yells, adding a few profanities for good measure.
    And on the doorsteps, one Democratic supporter declines the offer of a Harris sign for their front yard, scared, they say, of inviting similar abuse.
    In a few weeks, Saginaw will go the polls.
    Before then, it’s almost certain that many more journalists will pass through this key bellwether district, all of them looking for America.
    It’s here alright, in all its striving and struggling, and in a story today being lived out in stark political division.
    A debate needs middle ground. 
    And there’s very little of that left.

    https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cy0nerwe8rro

     

  15. And Jeremy Zehnder, the truck polisher, admitted to being slightly surprised by Harris’s performance.
    “She did much better than I thought she would,” he told me. “I think she won it.”
    But he’s sticking with Trump. It’s about policy, he said. Taxes, the border and the cost of living.
     

  16. “Taxes, the border and the cost of living.”
     All of which would be so much worse under a Scump administration

  17. These are sad stories, and discouraging to read, for sure, but it’s not most of the country. In any case, Trump is not the answer to what ails them. I’d prefer balanced reporting with stories of optimistic hopeful folks who plan to vote for Harris, and why. Overload of Trump trailer park stories in Scranton is what took Hillary down.* Media, quit doing that to us. 
    Filter out the negative; filter in the affirmative. 

    * looking at you, Jacob Soboroff

  18. It’s about taxes?  Is he a billionaire?  These folks are so racist and misogynistic that they can’t see straight.   

  24. Taylor Swift, biggest winner at Video Music Awards, uses acceptance speech to drop her 2nd political message in 24 hours. “this is a fan voted award” she said, reminding fans, “If you’re over 18, please register to vote for something else that is important — the Presidential election.”… https://www.businessinsider.com/taylor-swift-vma-acceptance-speech-encourage-voters-to-register-kelce-2024-9

    Swift drives over 330,000 clicks to voter registration site after Harris endorsement… https://www.scrippsnews.com/politics/america-votes/taylor-swift-makes-another-push-for-voter-registration-at-vmas-after-harris-endorsement

  27. Trump: “Fire Everybody” at ABC News

    Trump, who is still claiming that he won the ABC presidential debate, is now calling for ABC to fire all of its employees. Does that sound like a winner?

  28. There’s not a numbers tracker out there that finds anything different.

    Steve Rattner: Europe has given about $80B more aid to Ukraine than the US — Trump’s made up numbers are a big lie

  30. Yes, Jamie. I noticed “she puts out” bundled with the stuff about her now being Black.  Racist. Misogynist.  Deranged. 

  32. Dr. John – Translocutioner
     

    Gather around me, everybody gather around me
    While I testify, I feel the summer coming on me
    And the topic will be same, that’s what I’m against
    If you wanna hear my story then just chill out
    Don’t be uptight while I review the attitude of doing right
    You’ve got to accentuate the positive
    Eliminate the negative
    Latch on to the affirmative
    Don’t mess with mister in between
    You’ve got to spread joy up to the maximum
    Bring gloom down to that minimum
    Have faith, a pandemonium
    Libel to walk up on the scene
    To illustrate my last remark
    Talking about Jonah in the Whale,
    Noah in the ark
    What did they do
    When everything looked so dark?
    Then they said “We better accentuate the positive
    Eliminate the negative
    Latch on to the affirmative
    Don’t mess with mister in between, no
    Don’t mess with mister in between”
    To illustrate my last remark
    Talking about Jonah in the Whale,
    Noah in the ark
    What did they do
    When everything looked so dark?
    Then they said
    We better accentuate the positive
    Eliminate all the negative
    Latch on to the affirmative
    Don’t mess with mister in between, oh
    Don’t mess with mister in between
    Don’t you ever mess with mister inbetween
    Don’t you mess with mister inbetween
    Don’t you mess with mister inbetween

  33. thanks sturge,  let’s not forget trump’s first racist mock accent in a presidential debate 

    I have these contrarian Berniecrat type progressives in my orbit, making Republican arguments. They’re driving me nuts.

  34. Sometime after our dad passed, mom moved us across State lines into a PA trailer park. Some good things came out of it. Especially when we got out of it. 

  37. remember the sound of the ice cream truck and the joy it brought to the neighborhood? may ben & jerry’s truck tour have the same effect.

    Ben & Jerry’s co-founders unveil limited ‘Kamala’s Coconut Jubilee’ ice cream (thehill.com)

    Ben & Jerry’s co-founders, Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield, are unveiling a new ice cream flavor, “Kamala’s Coconut Jubilee,” as part of a get-out-the-vote initiative to elect Vice President Harris and other downballot Democrats in November.
    Cohen and Greenfield will join progressive organization MoveOn Political Action for its “Scoop the Vote” ice cream truck tour, which kicks off in Philadelphia on Sept. 16, the same day early voting begins in Pennsylvania.
    For the next month, the ice cream truck tour will make stops in more than 20 cities in battleground states and hold four additional rallies: in Ann Arbor, Mich., on Sept. 28; in Madison, Wis., on Oct. 5; in Phoenix on Oct. 10; and in Las Vegas on Oct. 16.
    During each stop, the organizers will distribute free ice cream and giveaways and help people make a plan to vote by Nov. 5. The MoveOn press release said there will be “special guests,” including elected officials and activists, who will also stop by on the tour.
    […]
    Cohen and Greenfield, at each stop, will also raffle off free limited-edition pints of “Kamala’s Coconut Jubilee,” described as coconut ice cream with a caramel ripple and confetti stars. Tour attendees can enter the raffle online too.
    The Harris-inspired ice cream is branded under “Ben’s Best,” not the traditional “Ben & Jerry’s.”
    The coconut flavor is a nod to Harris’s viral coconut tree meme, which stemmed from an anecdote the vice president told about her mother that resurfaced in the last several weeks. The symbol of the coconut tree soon became a sign of support for the Democratic nominee.
    [continues]

  42. This is her first post-debate rally. Then tonight in Greensboro NC. They are really serious about targeting North Carolina. My cousin Carolyn in Wilmington NC got a canvasser at her house today. GROUND GAME baby!

    Tomorrow, two rallies in Pennsylvania — Johnstown and Wilkes-Barre

  45. I think Lara Looner just told Lindsay Graham to come out of the closet after Lindsay told Stump that Looner was “toxic”. 

  54. mtgreenee

    Little bit of a history lesson for a few of you. Laura and I used to be friends going back to 2018. I used to defend her and support her like in this post here. I endorsed her first run for congress, donated to her, and fundraised for her and then she lost. Then when she ran again against Daniel Webster, I told her to run in another district, so she could win, but she refused. When I didn’t endorse her, she turned on me and began attacking me and lying about me. I still advocated for her to get her former Twitter account back, now X account. Laura has lied so much about me and others like Matt Gaetz, even though we are Pres Trump’s most loyal and fierce elected Members of Congress. She breaks a few good stories here and there but there are many others she embellishes or flat out lies. However her attacks have no bearing on me, nor I am concerned with what she says. As a matter of fact, outside of a bubble on this platform, most regular people don’t know who she is. But when it comes to post that are flat out racist, hateful, and make President Trump look bad, she needs to be responsible and delete them.

    /———

    Hahahahaha

  60. Sturgeone says:
    September 10, 2024 at 9:30 pm
    They’re EATING THE DOGS!!

    It was electric.

    It’s going down in history 
    it’ll be viral forever

  61. “Little bit of a history lesson for a few of you. Laura and I used to be friends…”
    History lesson from MTG…..you know that’s got to be some serious shit right there…..

  62. i’ll tell you what: I resent Marjorie Taylor Greene’s deleterious effect on the public discourse so much but I’ve never used her name on this forum, until now
     
    BUT
     
    I will commend Marjorie Taylor Greene now because she’s saying what people in positions like hers with audiences like hers need to say.  Things dozens of more “respected” republican leaders refuse to say.  So good job, Rep. Greene.

  63. Too little too late,  in my opie 

    She’ll never get past dogging that school shooting survivor down the street, not with me, I don’t care what she says. I can appreciate the sentiment but not with her. She’s just running scared. With good reason.

    She has attained Prrmanent Pig status.

  64. That’s fair, i can’t remember every reprehensible act or statement of hers, but letting of the the racism is the first step in seeing through the republicans’ lies and empty policies
     
    So, Vote Kamala, Rep. Greene, tell your friends 🇺🇸 

  65. What good is her anti-racist statement when she’s still an abject racist herself and  is still actively attempting to help Putin wreck our country. I have to say the same to her as Jon Stewart directed at dick Cheney.   Liz Cheney has earned the chance to be a human being but not the dick……too late for the dick.

    Yay he endorsed Kamala. It was the LEAST he could do. I doubt that even he thinks that absolves him of all the misery he’s caused.

  67. Joe Walsh is the only Republican I’ve seen who was a rabidly sickening tea party guy who had an absolute turn around and in addition to voting Democrat has over and over profusely apologized for his part in giving rise to the macabre orange shitpile.  He gets a pass for having “woke”

    Liz Cheney has come to the light, and I dig her for it, but I doubt she’ll ever admit to having been wrong.

  68. I tried. I really tried … to watch Jesse Watters. 45 seconds tops. I failed. Sorry, but that shit is unwatchable. 

  69. Following Taylor Swift’s endorsement of Kamala Harris, there has been a “400% or 500% increase” in voter registration — between 9,000-10,000 people per hour, according to data firm TargetSmart.
    “It’s really unlike anything I’ve seen,” says TargetSmart senior adviser Tom Bonier. (CBS Evening News)

Comments are closed.

Join the Trail Mix

Get an alert when Craig goes live, and the link when our Open Thread heats up.