You forgot to mention that Gavin Newsom just smashed the glass of kool-aid:

https://www.politico.com/news/2025/03/06/gavin-newsom-breaks-with-democrats-on-trans-athletes-in-sports-00215436

speaking trumpftaxes
& taking the Rubes
for a Ride

In the words of that old Toyota jingle:
"You asked for it, you got it."

& then there’s that
new cyberpanzer
swastikar ode:

never wouldda Bought
the motherfucker if
I’d known MUX
was such a
fawking
Nazi.

@1 content completely aside, he's a goof for kissing up to Charlie Kirk of all people. I guess Newsom's staking his claim as the Pragmatic 2028 candidate. No thanks.

"Trump is suspending military flights for deportations because it's too damn expensive. "

They got the propaganda videos they needed to rile up the base so they can now dispense with the flights and they got Democrats to move to the right on immigration with costly electoral results. The cost of rounding up millions of immigrants and holding them, and the economic impact of removing them from the economy makes the entire construct essentially impossible so I wouldn't expect massive follow up besides more demonizing propaganda and more terrorizing of undocumented immigrants.

It's almost like Trump doesn't know what the fuck he's doing.

Small earthquakes 26 miles down are my favorite kind.

I saw an ad on tv this morning featuring a dead-eyed christie noem inviting “illegals” to self-deport if they ever want to be allowed to return to the US. I assume the trump team has figured out their top campaign promise is completely unachievable so they’re asking the people they are demonizing to do their dirty work for them. These people may be evil but they’re not very bright.

@6 Better have many small ones than one big one considering the same amount of stress has to be released

Just a shout out to Charles. It's always nice to see you writing a Slog AM. Your perspective on geopolitical events is still the best out of the whole staff.

@4, @7: Trump always seemed to be the only Republican politician who honestly didn’t understand all of the “deport” rhetoric was just window-dressing for the rabidly hateful nativist voters who form the most solid part of the GOP’s base. He actually seemed to take such rhetoric seriously. Now even he understands it’s impossible, but as noted the GOP can still demagogue on the issue.

I don't know anything about Erika Evans, but if she has relevant experience and isn't running on a platform of "If elected to this job I promise not to do it!" then I'll vote for her sight unseen.

The loss of King Cafe left a whole that still has not been filled. You could find seemingly every type of person, excellent dim sum, strong coffee and the smell of tobacco. Fond memories.

Of course military aircraft are too expensive to be used for regular deportations. That doesn't mean the deportations will end. There are 20-30 million illegal immigrants in the US and Trump supporters will be thrilled to deport just ten percent of them. You can't expect our President to fix a problem overnight that has been building for 50 years.

So 5% of our GDP is potentially impacted by the Trump tariffs. Oooooh, scary stuff. Not really an issue though. Trump will simply collect the tariffs and then redistribute them amongst the impacted US farmers, like he did during his first term. In reality, it is Canada and Mexico who will be devastated by these tariffs. Canada can avoid them by joining the US. And frankly nobody cares about the effects on Mexico because they are responsible for killing hundreds of thousands of Americans by way of fentanyl overdose.

@4 I thought you said Democrats lost elections cause of Gaza? Now it's immigration?

You tried to be a little more nuanced with that take but, at the end of the day, Obvious Russian Troll is obvious.

@13: “Of course military aircraft are too expensive to be used for regular deportations.”

Why? Too much overtime pay for military pilots? Too many military flight attendants? Luxurious military aircraft interiors too costly to maintain?

Or maybe, just maybe, all of those deportations together are inherently too expensive, no matter which method we might use?

@10: that's likely because he is also a rabidly hateful nativist (except for the immigrants who suck up to him).

apparently, he's fixated on increasing the deportation numbers and is making daily inquiries about it, so it's a reach to say he "understands" it's impossible.

I’ve said this before but conservatives think about the economy as a one-dimensional ledger when it is better understood as an ecosystem where fundamental changes to things like billions of dollars in government spending have ripple effects that will be felt across the entire economy. So a policy that “only” impacts 5% of GDP will have knock-on effects that are far greater than the line item itself.

It’s nbd when your average bumpkin doesn’t understand the basic principles of macroeconomics but we’re in for a world of hurt when people like trump and musk don’t get it and they won’t find out until the damage has already been done.

@10:

You're assuming he actually even cares about that. He would literally say anything, promise anything in order to convince enough of the slack-jawed, credulous rubes out there to vote for him. Now that he's been elected, he believes he can simply do whatever he pleases, regardless of whether it directly contradicts what he said he'd do. The rubes served their purpose: they got him into the White House and kept him out of jail; anything else he does from here on out is for his own personal benefit, and no one else's.

@15: Relative to civilian airliners, C-17s consume more fuel, carry fewer passengers, require more maintenance, and don't operate according to regular flight schedules, all of which increases cost of operation. In addition, tasking C-17s for deportation flights will force the military to hire expensive contractor aircraft to cover whatever non-deportation missions the C-17s were originally supposed to be performing. For all these reasons, they're a terrible choice for civil deportation flights. But making terrible choices is a hallmark of the Trump presidency. 😛

@17: Donald and Elon get it, they know what they're doing makes no sense, but their nefarious vision supersedes any circumspection.

@8 I am with you Comte. Trump is a right wing demagogue therefore an opportunist who'll say what is convenient. His only constant is his protecting the economic interest of the extremely wealthy, which include dismantling governance

@14 You are really desperate. I mentioned several reasons for the loss not just the enabling of the Gaza genocide

Obvious moron is obviously a moron

@18 This is the correct view.

@20, Yes you’re right, they know they are tanking the economy because musk admitted this in November but I don’t think they understand/care how devastating this will be for the average American or how long it will take to recover. Based on recent comments from Trump he thinks companies can simply move their factories to the US, presumably thinking there would be financial incentive for them to do so, and that this could be achieved on short order.

It’s bad enough that congress is full of millionaires but billionaires exist on a completely different plane of reality. They don’t know/care that their financial interests are oppositional to ours. To them a financial crash is an opportunity to consolidate wealth and power, but this will come at a great cost to millions of Americans. Entire communities never recover, most of them being his biggest supporters, and trump dgaf.

@13: Oh look, the tariffs just got suspended. Again. 😅 There’s no plan here, this president is an idiot and everyone can see it but you. 😂🤣😂🤣

@12
Oh, King Cafe. The dumbwaiter was one of the many cool things about that place. Damn

Btw, there were 11 millions undocumented immigrants as of mid 2022 (the last year with reliable data) so even with a recent influx their number is less than half the number cited by doofus @13. The data seriously undermine the narrative that immigrant numbers are shattering all previous records, which Democrats have unfortunately bought into rather than put up a fight against Republican fear-mongering.

What we know about unauthorized immigrants living in the U.S.
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/07/22/what-we-know-about-unauthorized-immigrants-living-in-the-us/

Oh look!
Hamilton cancelled their scheduled run at the Kennedy Center.
Now that Trump has taken it over, maybe they can show Birth of a Nation, or make the GOP Senators do a vaudeville routine in blackface, or better yet, run some Nazi propaganda films.

@14: Anything the Democrats do that he doesn’t like is a reason they lost. Bottom-of-the-barrel SLOG commenters being the most representative of the American voter, dontcha’know? ;-)

@19: The U.S. military owns plenty of aircraft which are not C-17s, and they lease or charter many as well, some of which are actual jetliners. A friend of mine, lifelong civilian engineer for the U.S. Navy, once flew from Seattle to Japan, aboard a “Patriot Air” 767. (No I did not make up that name.)

@27: Pretty sure that "no more taxpayer-funded performances of Hamilton" was part of the GOP platform.

@28 There is strong evidence that Democrats lost because of 2 out of the 3 reasons that I have mentioned thus far, enabling a genocide in Gaza and the economy not working for over half of Americans. I know that you disagree to the point of being ridiculous in your denial of the obvious but you shouldn't let your emotions make an ass out of you.

@28 and spare us your typical long winded word salad non-sense. Nobody has the time nor the stomach to read pretzel logic ad infinitum

@28: So far, the military deportation flights have used only C-17s or C-130s, mostly the former. Either of those platforms is always going to be way more expensive than commercial passenger flights or chartered jetliner, which are how deportation flights are normally handled.

There's no way a military-owned airplane is ever going to be able to compete on cost with civil aviation. Civil aviation is a highly competitive industry, so the companies already operate as close to the bone as possible. If there were any substantial cost savings just lying around unclaimed, someone already would have captured them.

The military simply does not own a cheap way to transport large numbers of people, which is why the military itself mostly uses commercial flights and charter flights to fly its own people around. Military-owned aircraft are best used for military missions, which civil deportation is not.

@30: "Enabling Genocide" or not, Biden/Harris cutting Israel off from US weapons after 10/7 would have cratered support from Liberal Jews, one of the most reliable Democratic voting and funding blocks. Not all Liberal Jews are in JVP. Most are still Zionists.

A rock and a hard place. By design.

@33: And not only liberal Jews! Plenty of us non-Jewish liberals also see Israel as an ally who deserves our full support—military, financial, and diplomatic. Ukraine even more so. A pox on both MAGA and progressives alike, lol! 🇺🇦🇺🇦🇺🇦🇮🇱🇮🇱🇮🇱

"My barber had this to say while cutting my hair yesterday: "Trump is the kind of guy who can take the seeds out of a ginger cake without touching the crust. He's that kind a thief. He don't play."

All due respect to Charles' barber, but I'm in complete disagreement with those folks who believe him to be some sort of criminal mastermind. Criminal sure, but he's stupid as fucking shit and utterly incapable of engineering anything more complex than a savory combination of selections off a Taco Bell menu.

The tariffs are a great example of this. I'd wager he understands on a basic level that they're a tax on foreign goods, but completely lacks the capacity to reckon with the broader dynamic and downstream economic impacts of their implementation. He glommed onto them as a policy platform a few years ago when he needed something to bolster his reputation as some sort of economic intellectual and now figures he can now just continue to run with it since, as Comte mentioned, he doesn't give a shit about anything else now that he's been elected.

Unfortunately, he has managed to surround himself with some more competent (and just as morally repugnant) folks and they strike me as the bigger threat to our well being.

@30: Yet another propaganda ‘poll,’ bought and paid for by yet another anti-Israel group with a deceptively anodyne name, will not constitute “strong evidence” of anything other than your own continuing gullibility.

@33: Why, it’s almost like you’re saying an ethnic group, one consisting almost entirely of adherents to a fundamentalist branch of an Abrahamic religion, didn’t want a woman elected to the most powerful office in the world. So they relentlessly demanded something she could not deliver, and if which she even promised, would cause her to lose more support than she could ever possibly gain.

That simply cannot be true, because then it would mean American Progressives, like the Stranger and our own dear ‘Bob, had fallen for an obvious piece of cynical political manipulation. And they’re just too gosh darned intelligent and cosmopolitan to get swindled so easily. (Just ask them.)

@31: Butthurt suits you. Thanks for the validation! Just let me know if you need yet another demonstration of your abject innumeracy wrt polling.

@33 I think they could have threaded the needle a little more skillfully. For example actually hold to Biden's "red line" in Rafah.

Besides, good neolibs would never not vote for the Democratic nominee no matter what they did, only wicked progressives betray democracy like that. Kamala could have worn a keffiyeh and chanted "from the river to the sea!" at every public appearance and moderate Dems would have duly Voted Blue No Matter Who in the latest Most Important Election of Our Lives.

@36 "it’s almost like you’re saying an ethnic group, one consisting almost entirely of adherents to a fundamentalist branch of an Abrahamic religion, didn’t want a woman elected to the most powerful office in the world"

Zionists didn't want Kamala?? What?

@27. Springtime for Hitler seems fitting.

@37, 38

brillianitly turned
atop their beady
little heads

bravo.

@37: “Kamala could have worn a keffiyeh and chanted ‘from the river to the sea!’ at every public appearance”

lol, Jill Stein tried the anti-Israel card but it didn’t play well. The Muslim community came out for her in Dearborn, but the rest of the country said “no thanks.” 😂 I believe she finished the election with around 1 percent of the vote, a fairly typical result for a progressive candidate. 😉 Oh well, next election, eh? Ha ha!

Gross Islamophobic stereotypes aside, American Muslims are more liberal than the average American and support democratic candidates by wide margins, including female candidates.

https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2017/07/26/political-and-social-views/

@39
No kidding, I actually listened to
Springtime for Hitler after Trump’s 2016 election. It was the only way I could deal with the absurdity of his winning. Now things are much grimmer.

@42: “Gross Islamophobic stereotypes aside”

And I see thirteen12 is on the same gross bandwagon @38, only his target is Jews! Because of course it is! 😂🤣😂🤣

@43: The original one, 1968, is the best:

https://youtu.be/ovCf9VRLnDY

@33 Attitudes of American Jews toward Israel are a lot more nuanced than you think:

Majority of Jewish voters open to partial arms embargo on Israel
An Election Day poll showed that American Jews remain strong supporters of liberal policies and Democratic politicians, even as they worry about pro-Palestinian demonstrations
"Among the notable findings: 62% of Jewish voters would support the United States withholding shipment of some weapons to Israel until Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu agrees to an American proposal for an immediate ceasefire. Ratings for Netanyahu himself hit an all-time low, with 63% of those surveyed saying they had an unfavorable view of him, up from 59% in 2022, and 66% said they would like to see U.S. sanctions against far-right ministers in his cabinet."
https://forward.com/news/672886/american-jews-israel-arms-embargo-poll/

and I agree with thriteen12 that Harris could have done a lot more to let anti-genocide voters know she would break from Biden's unconditional support short of saying she would order a full scale arms embargo.

@36 I am only commenting about polls conducted by reputable polling organization with a good track record and that use proper methodology. Your crass ignorance (or more likely your terminal unethical posturing) of what constitute proper methodology is YOUR problem, nobody else's

@46 and yet the candidate that ran on the policies you espouse in one of the most progressive districts in the country got thoroughly thumped in the primary

https://www.vox.com/politics/356515/jamaal-bowman-george-latimer-new-york-primary

I guess the voters forgot about the polls.

@43

'the Death of Stalin'
comes to mind
we can only
Pray

(based on what
dear wormmy calls
''a comic book'' - a graphic
novel (I prefer 'novella,' but wormmy
he dont Like that very much so whatever?)

life didn't get much
Cheaper nor shorter than
under Comrade Joe. the movie's a gas

@48: Bowman fell into the same trap that a lot of progressives do: he couldn’t figure out where criticism of Israel stops and antisemitism begins. Especially considering that 25 percent of the voters in his district were Jewish, it was probably a bad idea for Bowman to go around peddling Hamas apologias and antisemitic conspiracy theories! 🤣

@13 I do agree that the current trade agreement with Canada and Mexico was negotiated by a complete moron on our side. That's why Trump's tariffs are so disgraceful. He's the fucking moron who signed that deal on our side.

That said, fuck Joe Biden! He should have ordered Seal Team 6 to take out Trump and Shady Vance when he had the chance. After all, the Supreme Court put the President above the law.

@48 It's not even comparable. Bowman lost a primary to a moderate Democrat thanks to $25 millions dropped on the race by the Israel lobby (most of which was Republican billionaire money). Bowman was outspent 8:1

Progressives on AIPAC’s Defeat of Bowman: “Now We Know How Much It Costs to Buy an Election”

“You don’t drop $15 million on an election if your positions are popular,” said Eva Borgwardt⁩, national spokesperson for the Jewish advocacy group IfNotNow, which endorsed Bowman. “This was an act of desperation from a pro-war lobby that is at odds with the majority of Americans, including American Jews.”

Borgwardt⁩ was referring to nearly $15 million spent on the race by AIPAC, the Israel lobby’s flagship in the U.S. Millions more poured in from AIPAC-aligned groups and donors, bringing the outside spending total to around $25 million.

Bowman’s supporters emphasized that AIPAC attacked him not only because of his criticism of human rights abuses in Israel, but also because he has supported progressive policies that are popular among the party’s base.

“Congressman Bowman’s progressive platform — which includes defending Palestinian rights and halting weapons to the Israeli military — is popular among Democratic voters,” said Beth Miller, political director for Jewish Voice for Peace Action, which endorsed Bowman. “AIPAC had to spend a truly unprecedented amount of money in order to buy NY-16.”

“It is noteworthy that many of AIPAC’s ads did not even mention Israel,” she said. “AIPAC understands that they are losing on the issues, because voters and constituents do not want to fund a genocide.”

The amount of spending on the race should be alarming to everyone who cares about democracy, said Sophie Ellman-Golan, director of strategic communications at Jews for Racial and Economic Justice.

“Now we know how much it costs to buy an election,” she said. “That price tag was nearly $25 million.”

AIPAC invested historic amounts of money in the race because it saw that unconditional support for Israel was unpopular among Democratic voters, Ellman-Golan said. “They would not have spent this much money if they were not scared,” she said. “You don’t spend $25 million — an unheard of amount in a primary — if you’re feeling confident in your candidate.”

https://theintercept.com/2024/06/26/jamaal-bowman-primary-aipac-latimer/

@49 more slander from thumpus the thug

@51 so you’re telling me the issue that you claim was so important to people as a moral outrage was casually cast aside by media spending? Well one could argue that they either didn’t have moral conviction on the issue or they are extremely gullible and open to persuasion. That makes progressive voters looks like spineless morons. Either that or they really didn’t care for the pro Hamas rhetoric.

@53: AverageBob is convinced that AIPAC money is magically more effective than any other source of money, even though AIPAC spending comprised something like 0.3 percent of total election spending in 2024 ($45 million out of $15.9 billion). It’s the modern-day lefty version of the Protocols of Zion. No need to look at all the antisemitic things Bowman actually said in the course of his campaign, the downfall of a progressive politician could only have been the result of that nefarious, magical you-know-who money, wink wink! 😂😂😂 0.3 percent, how could anyone possibly compete against such sinister forces! 🤣

@37: "I think they could have threaded the needle a little more skillfully."

Well, after insisting on calling warfare "genocide," utterly ignoring Hamas' role outside of ceasefire demands, and demanding an illegal arms embargo on Israel, "threading the needle a little more skillfully" really wasn't an option anymore, now was it?

"...Voted Blue No Matter Who in the latest Most Important Election of Our Lives."

You're actually downplaying the trouble Trump's causing, in the middle of his causing it. Bravo!

Please continue to wonder why you can't get anyone to listen to you.

@51, @53, @54: As always, 'bob simply ignores the Nation article from which I've quoted extensively in earlier threads, which describes how Bowman lavishly defeated himself, via spouting extremist 'progressive' rhetoric and positions in a classically liberal district. As the Nation notes, incumbent Bowman was down by double digits in the polls before AIPAC had spent a dime in his district. Also, the overwhelming majority of Bowman's own funding came from outside of his district, yet another documented fact which doesn't fit 'bob's Sinister Outsider Money narrative, and thus got consigned to his Memory Hole.

"Things veered into hypocrisy when Bowman rallied outside of the district with Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez—arguing that right-wing billionaires were trying to buy the district, when only 10 percent of his own contributions came from within."

"...the Latimer campaign had internal polls showing him up 10 points over the incumbent: That’s a massive lead for a non-incumbent, which testifies to Bowman’s weaknesses. Latimer later won by 17 points."

(https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/bowman-aipac-antisemitism-westchester/)

So, AIPAC's huge expenditures took Bowen's 10-point deficit and turned it into a 17-point deficit. Not exactly a powerful performance there, but, as the article explains, AIPAC milked it for everything they could get. 'bob is happy to help AIPAC improve their image, I guess...

I'm old enough to remember when American companies had separate brand names for the Canadian market. Car models used to have different names in Canada.

@53 Denying that being out fund-raised 8:1 played a critical role just shows that you'll say anything and its opposite as convenient and that you are basically arguing in bad faith. Just like your evidence free accusation that he used "pro-Hamas rhetoric" is pathetic. Don't claim you didn't play a part when anti-Zionists are persecuted by Trump's thought police.

@54 The facts remain that the Israel lobby largely outspent several progressives incumbents who were not effectively supported by their own party to face an onslaught of outside money. Whether or not it's a small fraction of the total money spent nationally on campaigning in a specific year is irrelevant. You have used that same lame argument before and it is no more salient today than it was the last time. The existence of a very powerful Israel lobby is acknowledged by almost everyone (including the lobby themselves) so your attempts at painting it as some antisemitic conspiracy theory are ridiculous and utterly unconvincing. You have nothing but slander against anti-Zionists. You are a thug.

@55 The Israel lobby always was campaigning against Jamal Bowman. It didn't start in January 2024. Bowman was notably crucified in the media for months on end for that fire alarm incident in congress in September 23, which is the main reason he was down in the polls early and is strangely missing form your article on Bowman while repeating almost all the pro-Zionists tropes against progressives.

@55 " insisting on calling warfare "genocide,"

Deliberately starving the civilian population, while destroying all supporting infrastructures and killing 10,000's of innocents civilians with Israeli leaders calling for mass murder are all war crimes that amount to genocide.

@55 "utterly ignoring Hamas' role outside of ceasefire demands"

That's a lie. Hamas and others committed war crimes on Oct 7, like taking civilian hostages, but international law recognizes the right to self-defense of occupied populations. Israel has been condemned numerous times for its illegal occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, and its annexation of the Golan heights and various parts of Greater Palestine.

"and demanding an illegal arms embargo on Israel"

You have been shown repeatedly this was false but like a good propagandist you keep repeating the same falsehoods

@57 Bob, listen to yourself. For the last year and a half you have been telling everyone on this board that what Israel is doing is an existential crisis. In fact you said it was such a moral failure of the Biden administration and Harris campaign to address it that people sat on the sidelines and let a madman be elected president. This issue you said was central to the core of the campaign. Now you are telling me that by dropping a few million dollars in New York, in a heavily progressive district, AIPAC was able to convince people to go against their moral compass and vote for someone who stated they supported the continued campaign against Hamas? That makes absolutely no sense and its where progressives like you fail every time. It's never because it was bad policy or that people disagree with you. It's always some nefarious group that was able to influence the election whether it be AIPAC this time or the mysterious group of Trump supporters that live in Capital Hill and always rise up to scuttle the progressive fever dream for Seattle. There are only two options here, either this issue was no where near as important as you and your Hamas loving friends claim it was (this is the truth) or progressive voters are generally low information voters with no moral compass so whoever gets in their face the most can unduly influence them (this is partially true). Both of those outcomes are bad for you and the rest of the progressives out there.

@54 "AverageBob is convinced that AIPAC money is magically more effective than any other source of money, ... the downfall of a progressive politician could only have been the result of that nefarious, magical you-know-who money, wink wink!"

No, he quoted a number of Jewish people as presenting the argument you're mocking. Are you saying all those Jewish people are antisemitic conspiracy theorists? I guess you only like the Jews who support your neocon fopo. Pretty cynical.

@55 "You're actually downplaying the trouble Trump's causing, in the middle of his causing it. Bravo!"

No I'm just acknowledging that you and people like you would vote for a Democrat even if the candidate held all the opposite opinions from you, including some you find repugnant, because you are so smart and pragmatic.

@60 "you said it was such a moral failure of the Biden administration and Harris campaign to address it that people sat on the sidelines and let a madman be elected president."

No, tensorna et al said that people staying home over Gaza are to blame for a madman being elected (or, more so, it's somehow Kshama Sawant's fault). The rest of us know that's nonsense.

@60 "That makes absolutely no sense"

People voting against their own interest because of vicious propaganda makes no sense? You aren't a very good student of history, including very recent history like the election of GOP to a trifecta (President, house and senate)

@62: ‘Bob has said repeatedly the Democrats’ support of “genocide” was one reason they lost, and right here in this thread he says it again, @30:

“… Democrats lost because of 2 out of the 3 reasons that I have mentioned thus far, enabling a genocide in Gaza…”

Everyone on this board can see the “genocide” crowd now either fleeing from terms like “Genocide Joe,” and/or throwing blame upon AIPAC (or whomever your bogeyman is now). The Nation wrote an entire article specifically to debunk the points ‘Bob keeps trying to make here, and still he yells that he’s right, and everyone else is wrong.

What you guys do not want to face is that Bowman ran as a hard-left “progressive” in a solidly liberal district, started behind in the polls, and lost despite saying everything you agree with, and his invoking of progressive heroes Bernie Sanders and AOC.

Your positions are deeply unpopular with the liberal electorate whose support you need. Either figure out why, or get used to more like Trump.

@63 so then your excuse is that progressives are low information voters and can't think for themselves. ok.

@64 "Your positions are deeply unpopular with the liberal electorate whose support you need. Either figure out why, or get used to more like Trump."

This is what we've been saying to mainstream Dems, who've now lost to actual Trump twice. That's cool a progressive lost one House election after being inundated with the most negative-ad money ever but I'd say that anecdote pales in comparison to two Presidential losses.

@66

the Wormtongue's
constant lies remind
of Thedonolde who, if
he Repeats them Often
Enough, Expects them to
become somehow Magically

True! wormmy IS the FOX @tS
the Rupert Mudroach, Rodger
'Dodger' Goebbels/Ailes of
Seattle Progressive media.

Total
Gratitudes
to commenters
here, willing to take
them on head-to-head!

keep it Up!
Never give in
to the f-g Fascists.

@57: "Denying that being out fund-raised 8:1 played a critical role..."

The polling data and election results deny that fund-raising played a critical role. You yourself admit this, when you started ranting about fire alarms. Did it ever occur to you that Bowman's slide may have started after September 2023 because starting in October 2023, he loudly adopted the messaging of conspiracy theorists and terrorists?

'A non-exhaustive list: describing the war in Gaza as a “genocide,” a term that Bernie Sanders has explicitly resisted; disputing that the attack was unprovoked; using the settler colonialism framework that posits Jews as non-Indigenous interlopers in a land they have no claim to; praising well-known Jewish provocateur Norman Finkelstein, whose book The Holocaust Industry accuses Jews of exploiting the Holocaust and promotes conspiracy theories (he later apologized); generally promoting or aligning with groups and people who celebrated October 7 as “resistance”; characterizing Jewish settlement patterns in Westchester as segregated; using “Zionist” as a pejorative.'

And, he chose to die on the same hill as you:

'...truly ugly footage of Bowman denying that Hamas raped Israeli women on October 7 (he eventually apologized, sort of).'

Little wonder you're (again in this thread!) fighting polling results which actually track to real election results.

(Same Nation article as above.)

And why could Bowman, an incumbent, not raise money effectively within his district? Nine dimes of his every dollar came from outside the district, and Westchester is hardly some impoverished shithole. Sounds like the citizens who knew him best had already "voted" with their dollars before they drubbed him by double-digits at the actual election.

@59: "Hamas and others committed war crimes on Oct 7, like taking civilian hostages, but international law recognizes the right to self-defense of occupied populations."

Hamas was not protecting the population of Gaza, Hamas was shooting rockets into Israel (you know, indiscriminate bombing of a civilian population) from behind the civilians of Gaza, intentionally using them as human shields. That is the very opposite of defending them, it was intentionally getting them killed. Hamas' leadership even desired a higher body count, and still you think Hamas was defending civilians? Just because you won't look at the evidence provided to you does not mean that evidence does not exist. Just because you cannot be convinced on this matter doesn't mean the voters here in New York State can't think for themselves.

@57: "Whether or not it's a small fraction of the total money spent nationally on campaigning in a specific year is irrelevant."

lol, it's typical of antisemitic conspiracy thinking to believe that AIPAC's 0.3 percent of election spending somehow puts them on the same level as the 99.7 percent of election spending that doesn't come from AIPAC. The numbers are irrelevant, I guess, when the source of the money is Jews! 🤪

As for the Bowman election, that dude got outspent because people don't like donating money to crackpot antisemitic conspiracy theorists, but they do like donating money to defeat them. 😂😂😂

@59: An even more despicable Hamas war crime, one you can't bring yourself to recognize, is their co-location of fighters and weapons with the civilian population of Gaza. That's why Israel is allowed to bomb so much. If you're against bombing Gaza, you should be against co-locating Hamas assets with civilians. I certainly am! But you seem to ignore it for some mysterious reason? 😉

"Hamas was not protecting the population of Gaza"

You forget in Bob's mind all of Israel is occupied territory and they are colonizers who don't belong there so theoretically anything Hamas does whether it be lobbing rockets into civilian areas, blowing up buses and yes even kidnapping civilians is considered "self defense" of the occupied land. This is the mindset of most of the pro Palestinian / Hamas supporters which is why peace is a pipe dream at best since they will never accept any proposal where Israel continues to exist as a country.

@67: "True! wormmy IS the FOX @tS
the Rupert Mudroach, Rodger
'Dodger' Goebbels/Ailes of
Seattle Progressive media."

Yet, what have I spent much of this very thread doing? Quoting from the Nation.

When Seattle "progressives" equate quoting from the Nation (!) as being like FOX, they have truly fallen off the far left end of the political spectrum. (And by "spectrum," yes, I do mean, "horseshoe." When Trump finally bungles his way out of FOX's graces, his right-wing base will start equating FOX with lefties like the Nation.)

@69 "As for the Bowman election, that dude got outspent because people don't like donating money to crackpot antisemitic conspiracy theorists, but they do like donating money to defeat them"

Not "people" explicitly pro-Israel Super PACs. You want to focus on national percentages but in Bowman's race, the one we're talking about, explicitly pro-Israel Super PACs spent over $15 million out of a total ~$20 million in the race. Why you're pretending this wasn't the case is beyond me.

https://www.opensecrets.org/races/outside-spending?cycle=2024&id=NY16

@73: "Not 'people' explicitly pro-Israel Super PACs ... explicitly pro-Israel Super PACs spent over $15 million out of a total ~$20 million in the race"

lol, you might want to sit down for this, but pro-Israel super PACs themselves get their money from ... wait for it ... people! 😂 Now, many of those people are Jews, so their personhood may sometimes be difficult for you to recognize, but they are people all the same. 😛

It's no surprise to me that Jews would be eager to spend heavily to defeat an antisemitic candidate. Maybe that does come as a rude surprise to you, I don't know? 😄 I think racism's bad and Bowman deserved every dime that got spent against him, lol.

Speaking of dimes, I noticed you said the AIPAC spend against Bowman was $15 million, but Averagebob @51 said it was $25 million. I know the numbers are irrelevant to you people so long as the source of the money is Jews, but wouldn't you want to be at least internally consistent? $10 mil one way or the other is a pretty big margin of error! 😂

@66: "This is what we've been saying to mainstream Dems, who've now lost to actual Trump twice."

In 2016, Clinton received millions more votes than did Trump, in 2020 Biden-Harris defeated Trump-Vance, and if the 2020 electorate had shown up in 2024, Harris would be president now. So your claim of deep unpopularity by Democrats seems lacking, somehow. (What, no love from you for Sawant, who worked very hard to defeat both Clinton and Harris?)

@73: No one here's pretending there wasn't a large amount of money spent to defeat Bowman. What we are saying is all of that money merely managed to move an incumbent, who at the start of the race was down by double-digits in the polls, to losing by -- wait for it! -- a somewhat larger double-digit figure in the actual election. A whole lot of money blown, to achieve a small amount of complete overkill. That's far more of a criticism of the people who spent the money than it is on spending money generally.

Again, why was an incumbent down ten points in the polls at the start of the race? (When the only 'answer' to that here is 'bob ranting about a fire alarm, that point has been well and truly conceded.) Why could Bowman raise only ten cents of every one of his dollars from within a very well-off district? Why did he have to depend that heavily upon outside money (which is the type you're decrying here, BTW) when voters in the district are not poor?

Finally, the Nation's article starts with some hard-eyed skepticism about AIPAC's loud claims to victory over Bowman, and noting it's to AIPAC's advantage if elected officials believe AIPAC is far more powerful than it is. Yet 'bob, kristo', and you have spent plenty of words here on touting the supposedly powerful threat AIPAC presents. Why are you doing AIPAC's PR work for free?

@74 I'm saying the dislike for Bowman was not broad based as you implied, it was overwhelmingly single-issue PACs who spent against him. Making that explicit in case you're not just playing dumb.

@75 "In 2016, Clinton received millions more votes than did Trump"

This is like claiming you actually won a football game where you had fewer points but more yards. You're embarrassing yourself.

as a rule
sociopaths
can be neither
shamed Nor embarr-
assed thirteen, twelve

having Both
Impunity &
Immunity

@76: "it was overwhelmingly single-issue PACs who spent against him"

Yes .... because Bowman was an antisemitic conspiracy theorist, and that just so happens to be their "single issue!" 😂

Interestingly, though, the advertisements that the PACs paid for with all their sinister you-know-who money (wink, wink) did not only focus on Bowman's antisemitic conspiracy theories but also on Bowman's various other progressive positions as well. In the end, it turned out the dislike for Bowman was very broad indeed. 😂

from the Chris Hedges Report

How the Media
Walked us into
Autocracy

Ralph Nader joins Chris Hedges to chronicle his life's work fighting corporate power, and provides insight as to how the American public can continue fighting it today.

The American corporate coup d'état is almost complete as the first weeks of the Trump administration exemplify. If there has been one person who saw this coming, and has taken courageous action over the years to prevent it, it would be Ralph Nader.

The former presidential candidate, consumer advocate and corporate critic joins host Chris Hedges on this episode of The Chris Hedges Report to chronicle his life’s work battling the corporate takeover of the country and how Americans can still fight back today despite the growing repression from the White House.

“The sign of a decaying democracy is that when the forces of plutocracy, oligarchy, multinational corporations increase their power, in all sectors of our society, the resistance gets weaker,” Nader tells Hedges.

Nader asks people to look around them and witness the decay through the ordinary parts of their lives. “If you just look at the countervailing forces that hold up a society—civilized norms, due process of law and democratic traditions—they're all either AWOL [absent without official leave] or collapsing,” he said.

Civic groups are outnumbered by corporate lobbyists, the media barely pays attention to any grassroots organizing and the protests that do occur, such as the encampments at universities, are brutally suppressed.

It’s not an impossible task, Nader says, recalling the precedent of organizing in the U.S. He says the fundamental basics are supported by a majority of people regardless of their political labels.

--by Chris Hedges; Mar 7

oodles more with
two of my Favorite Lefties,
Chris Hedges* & Ralph Nader – Lions of the Left

https://chrishedges.substack.com/p/how-the-media-walked-us-into-autocracy?r=k7ee3

*former nyt ME Bureau Chief
before he had a beef with
the nyt for failing to Pro-
mote gee dubya bush's
little war on the Iraqiis

@spawn of wormmy 🍤
the Citizenry prefers
Progressive policy

fuck off with
your Lies.

@78 don't fool yourself, the pro-Israel crowd are just fine with antisemites so long as they're committed to keeping the arms and cash flowing to their favorite settler colonial ethnostate.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/nov/27/jewish-antisemitism-support-israel-gaza-zionism

@81: If the Israelis insisted their political allies had to be free of anti-semitism, they wouldn't have any political allies at all! 😂 You don't survive 3,000 years of continuous occupation in the Middle East by waiting for the rest of the world to love you, lol!

There's never an excuse for antisemitism, one of the oldest pathologies of civilization. But if you must be an anti-semite, at least be an anti-semite who supports Israel's right to exist. 😉

@71 d13refugee

I say exactly the opposite @59 yet you claim that I consider attacking and kidnapping civilians legitimate self-defense. Either you are some kind of moron or you are some nasty piece of work.

@82 wow you came off "antisemitism is their single issue" so fast my head is spinning. Guess you knew it was bullshit when you wrote it.

@76: "I'm saying the dislike for Bowman was not broad based as you implied,"

Yes, and as @78 delightfully noted, you're doing a remarkably bad job of supporting what you're saying. Try answering the questions I asked, about Bowman's paltry in-district fundraising and double-digit starting deficit.

"This is like claiming you actually won a football game where you had fewer points but more yards."

You claimed the Democratic agenda was deeply unpopular, yet it won the popular vote nationwide, and then both popular and electoral votes nationwide. Whose auto-embarrassment is on display here?

@85 "You claimed the Democratic agenda was deeply unpopular"

No I said they'd lost to Trump twice, which is obviously true, and you replied with some non sequitur moral victory nonsense

@83 do you consider Jews colonizers and illegal occupiers of Israel?

@87 I explicitly condemn kidnapping civilians and other actions as war crimes so I certainly don't consider it legitimate self-defense, you stupid POS

will this hot mess be
@tS's policy for-
ever?

is
there
to be no
Limit on lies? how
'bout 'intellectual' dishonesty?

can we
Downvote
some of these
arch-villians Soon?

how bout vanillas?
I meant villains
where's my
damn
Edit
but-
ton?

Wormtongue
knows his narrative
survives if he can Distract
us with his typically-revisionist
hysteria disguised as History but saf Ain't.

moving On:

Wanna get outta
your dismal
'downturn,'
Dems?

listen Up:

Nader: Democratic Party Leaders –
Get Tough and Hold Regular
Unofficial Congressional
Hearings by and for
the People!

Enough already with the Democrats’ confused disarray in responding to Tyrant Trump’s vicious, illegal destruction of critical federal programs for all Americans so as to favor the insatiable greed and power of the Super-rich and giant corporations.

The plutocrats are demanding more tax escapes, corporate welfare, and green lights for lawlessness.

No more excuses for the failing Democratic Party and its contracting out of electoral campaigns to profiteering corporate-conflicted political/media consulting firms

Progressive Congressional Democrats like Al Green, Elizabeth Warren, and Independent Bernie Sanders know exactly what needs to be done to Stop Dangerous Donald and Marauding Musk from their lawless, fascistic overthrow of our government and our Constitution.

First and foremost, House and Senate Democrats can hold UNOFFICIAL public hearings on Capitol Hill, highlighting an all-time winning agenda supported by the citizenry and opposed by the Trumpsters.

These are the long-overdue, immensely needed, and widely popular programs abandoned by the corporate Democrats who allowed the disastrous loss last November to the most corrupt, cruel, bigoted, and greedy GOP since its founding in 1854.

To see what I and Mark Green and two dozen civic leaders urged the Democrats to AUTHENTICALLY adopt in 2022 and 2024 (see winningamerica.net and my 2024 book titled Let’s Start the Revolution and The Inflection Election by Mark Green). The following are the election winners. . .

--by Ralph Nader
March 7, 2025

more:
https://mailchi.mp/nader/democratic-party-leaders-get-tough-and-hold-regular-unofficial-congressional-hearings-by-and-for-the-people?e=ae71353e32

think
they’ll
Listen?

they Never
Lose: what's
in it for Them?

@84: ha ha, there’s lots of different flavors of antisemitism! You’ve even got some on you, ya know! 😂 The kind that sets off AIPAC is the kind that says Jews don’t have a right to sovereignty in Israel. There’s plenty of other kinds, of course, including some that even you would probably recognize as bad. 😘 But I condemn all forms of antisemitism, not just one or two. 😇

@42: While we're both totally sure a poll from 2017 remains super relevant today, could you please check that poll to see how well it predicted the "Abandon Harris" movement amongst Islamic voters in Michigan last year? Thanks!

@86: You responded to my description of the progressive agenda as deeply unpopular with a counter-claim that progressives had said the same thing about the Democratic agenda (@66). Yet Clinton won a majority of the popular vote in 2016, and Biden-Harris won in 2020. How did a deeply unpopular agenda win the nationwide popular vote two out of three times?

Oh, and as for the external expenditures defeating Bowman (as opposed to Bowman raising 90% of his money from outside the district, which is 100% A-OK fine, and totally NOT an example of sinister outsiders trying to buy the election), you know what really wins elections? Votes. (Shocker!) Back to the Nation:

"There are about 130,000 Jews in Westchester, representing 9 percent of the population, who typically account for 20 percent of the vote. This year they reached 24 percent, with more than 50 percent of the mail-in vote coming from likely Jewish constituents, thanks in large part to a GOTV operation called Westchester Unites. Westchester Unites identified a universe of 27,000 likely Jewish Democrats, focusing on those who had voted in one of the last four primaries, casual voters rather than prime voters. It then ran an aggressive organizing campaign to turn out a staggering 15,000 Jewish voters... as a 501(c)(3), Westchester Unites was expressly forbidden from pushing a candidate. It canvassed, phone banked, and sent mailers full of information about how to vote without any mention of a candidate, and organized throughout the 40 Jewish institutions in the district, across religious denominations. Its main message was “antisemitism is on the ballot,” betting that Jews would do their own research and find Bowman’s words and actions sufficiently motivating.'

And they did.

So, how much of Bowman's fall, from a negative 10% start to a 17% loss, depended upon such get-out-the-vote organizing, and how much upon external expenditures*?

*The external expenditures you and 'bob complained about, of course; NOT the external expenditures which supplied 90% of Bowman's own campaign funds. As you know, 90% of Bowen's funds sincerely represented the altruistic contributions of legitimately concerned citizens who just so happened to reside outside of the district, and certainly NOT any attempt by outsiders to buy the election, because SHUT UP THAT'S WHY.

"As you know, 90% of Bowen's funds sincerely represented the altruistic contributions of legitimately concerned citizens blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah . . . "

ad nauseum
ad vomitas
ad infinitis

who
Reads
his tripe?

mired
in the Past
Keeping us here
in wommy's Tarpit

the Abyss
personified.

@94: “mired in the Past”

Well, when there are only, like, ten progressives who have won federal office in the last decade, they gotta go to the mat for the legacy of each and every one. 🤣 Here, the legacy of Jamaal Bowman is antisemitism, so they are going to the mat for that! 🤣🤣🤣

@88 you didn’t answer the question but I think everyone here knows what your answer is.

🍤🚽🚮.

@94: "who
Reads
his tripe?"

You do. You quoted from the last paragraph of my comment. :-D

Please again tell us how the Nation equals FOX News. Woo-hoo!

sans icons
skipping ahead
to the Handle and
avoiding your poison
works for Me – should I
happen to glance upward
not for the whole derogatory
there may be noteworthy quotes

tho seldom worth mining

but Avoiding
the Poison
works
For
me

wormmy.

now
spew
spew
spew

more than
I choose
to chew.

@98

rodger
'dodger'
goebbels/
ailes got Nuthin'

on the Wormtongue.