WTF-Beta

Glad I don't use cash any more.

There's a place, somewhere in the White Mountains, that takes a penny and flattens and stretches it into a medallion suitable for jewelry. That would be fun.

Jonathan Chait. Taken as a forewarning. He was a supporter of a Trump presidency in 2016, after all. That's just about all anyone needs to know. Still, it's good to get various points of view.

But the subtitle starts out with a banger:

The party’s progressives seem to think the problem is not with their platform but with voters.

I believe the party's progressives think the problem is the old guard Democratic leadership.

His opinion piece manifests a them (progressives) vs. us(centrists) mindset between factions of the democratic party. Not a very useful approach. Demonizing the progressives, or vice versa, is a recipe for fracture.

After almost a decade of nearly unchallenged supremacy, the progressive movement’s hold on the party is no longer certain.

That's a joke, right?

Kamala Harris’s promise to the ACLU that she would support taxpayer-financed gender-transition surgeries for prisoners and detained migrants received little attention—it was just one more edgy, leftist policy commitment in a campaign that consisted of little else, and her floundering candidacy soon dropped out of sight.

Just plain gratuitous, inflammatory rhetoric that is not based on the facts. "Fact-checkers, including PolitiFact and ABC News, confirmed that while Harris did express support for such care in 2019, federal law and court rulings already require medically necessary care for inmates, and the number of these surgeries is very low."

Her defeat forced moderate Democrats to reckon with the ways progressive activists had not just driven the entire field leftward but also pressured Harris to adopt a position so toxic that it inspired the Trump campaign’s most effective ad.

I call BS. It should have forced moderate Democrats to wake up to Biden's lies, to its dead leadership, and its unwillingness or inability to fight against the rightwing propaganda machine.

What unifies these various outfits is that they all blame progressive interest groups for relentlessly pushing Democrats to adopt positions well to the left of what the general public wants.

More BS. Major progressive policies are supported by a majority of Americans. But it's not across the board. It's complex. I wager what motives the groups he's referring to (Searchlight Institute, etc.) is more likely, money.

First, they deny that polls showing any left-wing positions as unpopular convey meaningful information.

Polls don't show that.

There's a lot of misinformation in Chait's piece.

The old guard in the Democratic party are failing big time. They are failing to speak out against the lies perpetrated not only by MAGA, but by centrists in the Democratic party. Progressives are tired of being pushed to the sidelines and told to shut up. We need voices that will bring the factions together, not this mish-mash of us vs. them.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/czdjegvjz3do

So many laughs from her Hyacinth Bucket (pronounced bouquet) character.

Link to video

That's not the full story. Mamdani had said he would phase out teacher nominations for kindergarten children. And it's nothing new, DeBlasio had the same idea. They would (as far as it seems) continue with 3rd grade. The Gifted program is still based on a lottery system. The need from certain quarters of the political spectrum to tear down Mamdani is desperate.

Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic frontrunner for New York City mayor, has announced his plan to phase out the city’s gifted and talented program for kindergarteners, reviving a proposal first floated under Mayor de Blasio. The program, which enrolls fewer than 5 percent of students in kindergarten, has long been criticized for deepening segregation and limiting opportunities instead of expanding them. Mamdani has tied this change to a broader vision that includes free universal child care and expanded early education, positioning it as a way to build a more equitable school system.

https://www.aqeny.org/2025/10/02/mamdani-says-he-would-phase-out-n-y-c-gifted-program-for-early-grades/

A few points to add to the discussion.

I don't know why Reich says some of things he says, but I do not think "raising taxes on the wealthy, cutting them for the middle class, and establishing universal health care" are particularly centrist ideas, and Clinton was strong on those policy ideas. I would rather call Bill Clinton flexible rather than centrist because I don't think he was an "-ist" type of leader.

Clinton also lost both houses of Congress only two years into his term, which surely forced some change of course.

And clearly, the landscape in 2025 is not what it was in the '90s. The Democrats are in disarray and can hardly afford to lose their base. There's no point in having a party which stands for certain principles if those principles have to be abandoned to win an election. IMO, The Dems need to get specific again (like Clinton) and have to show they are not beholden to the moneyed class.

‘Emergency’ World Naked Bike Ride planned in Portland

https://www.oregonlive.com/portland/2025/10/emergency-world-naked-bike-ride-planned-in-portland.html

My contractor emailed me last Friday and said he could start my latest project Monday. OK, short notice, but I was happy to hear from him. After the accident and the ensuing flight of monies out of here, I had considered postponing until spring. But on second thought decided that there needs to be some positive developments in addition to the negatives lately.

So he was here Monday and tore out the wood paneled wall in the living room. When I moved here, the inside wall and the outside wall were paneled in dark stained, solid wood paneling. A few years ago I had the inside wall paneling cut down to wainscoting and then papered the top of the wall.

He'll be installing sheetrock (moisture barrier and insulation first) on this exterior wall, which I'll paint to match two of the other walls, leaving the wainscoting wall as a focal wall.

Next project after this is to get rid of the hideous ceiling and replace it with sheetrock, but that will be next spring.

This picture from some years back, shows the dark paneling.

Here is what the wall looks like since Monday.

I love the fact that my house is not clad in plywood or OSB (are they the same thing?).

Looks lovely, and thanks for reminding me to go visit the local orchard!

The follow up. I have the car and I love it.

Before I set out for the dealership to pick up the car, I called my insurer's local office to have them send the binder and the really helpful agent told me I never needed to have a code texted to my phone!! Crickey! I told him the rep I spoke to the week before really put the damper on my day. So that was all squared away.

I called Hyundai to inquire about my 'account' and bluelink and explained that my temporary password had expired. Again, nice agent, but horribly difficult to hear and understand. He got me into my account and said my car doesn't have bluelink! I asked him three times to double check and explained how the saleslady had told me she had enabled it. He assured me emphatically and had me look at the web page to see there was nothing there. I'm not pursuing it any further. I don't want it, so all's well that ends well.

One little (really quite minor) disappointment is I can't hook up my iPod (I'm so old fashioned) with the usb cable like I could in my older car. It looks like bluetooth is the only option for connecting auxiliary devices. Oh, well.

@Rontuner Indeed. The military swears to uphold and protect the Constitution, not a president. I hope they do their job well.

From Robert Reich, on substack:

What the Democrats need least: a new think tank financed by billionaires

What elected Dems REALLY need is the courage to stop taking big money and raise taxes on the wealthy to finance what most Americans need

Friends,

I recall participating in heated debates in late 1968 and early 1969 about why Democrats lost the presidency to “tricky Dick” Nixon. And another set of debates in the early 1980s about why Democrats lost to smooth-talking right-winger Ronald Reagan.

And then, after the disastrous midterm elections of 1994, why they lost both houses of Congress. And then in 2000 and again in 2004, why they lost to the insipid George W. Bush. And, worst of all, in 2016 and then again in 2024, to the monstrous Trump.

These debates usually occur within the rarified precincts of Democratic think tanks located in well-appointed offices in Washington, D.C.

They feature people called “political consultants” and “political operatives,” whose sole distinction is to have participated in one or more Democratic campaigns. Few have ever run for office. Fewer have ever served in office. Almost none live in the hinterlands; they live in or around Washington. They all make their money consulting and operating.

And for more than 50 years, they’ve almost always said exactly the same thing: Democrats must move to the “center” in order to “recapture” the “suburban swing” voters who are up for grabs.

May I say, based on my experience in and around politics over the last 60 years, including a run for office and stints in two Democratic administrations, that this is utter horseshit?

Democrats have been moving to the putative “center” for over five decades. This has never helped them. It has only hurt.

The conventional lore among the Democratic consultant class is that Bill Clinton won the presidency in 1992 and saved the party by tacking to the “center.”

Wrong. Clinton won only a plurality of voters in 1992 because Ross Perot grabbed Republican voters from George H.W. Bush.

Moreover, Clinton didn’t run on a centrist message. He ran on a message Franklin D. Roosevelt would have been proud of.

I should know. I advised him during the campaign and then joined his Cabinet. Clinton ran on raising taxes on the wealthy, cutting them for the middle class, and establishing universal health care.

I was in Little Rock when, in announcing his run for president, Clinton “refuse[d] to be part of a generation that commits hardworking Americans to a lifetime of struggle without reward or security” and condemned a system in which “middle-class people spend more time on the job, less time with their children, bringing home less money to pay more for health care and housing and education.” He said it was “wrong” that “while the incomes of our wealthiest citizens went up, their taxes went down.”

Since the Clinton administration, the Democratic Party’s biggest problem hasn’t been the “left” but its dependence on wealthy donors and corporate PACs, which have consistently argued for moving the party to the “center” and away from the working class. The moneyed interests in the party also back much of the Democratic consultant class.

So it’s no surprise that another Democratic think tank is now being formed, financed by billionaire donors, to push the party to the “center.”

This one is called the Searchlight Institute, and its head is Adam Jentleson, who The New York Times describes as “a veteran Democratic operative” who wants to “minimize the sway that left-leaning groups have over candidates before what is expected to be a crowded 2028 presidential primary.”

Jentleson says “the folks who are most to blame about Trump are the ones who pushed Democrats to take indefensible positions” (i.e., the left).

Searchlight starts with an annual budget of $10 million and a staff of seven in its Capitol Hill offices. According to the Times, the organization is subsidized by “a roster of billionaire donors” including Stephen Mandel, a hedge fund manager, and Eric Laufer, a real estate investor.

What?

If Democrats have learned anything from their losses over the years, especially their two horrific losses to Trump, it should be that they need a charismatic messenger with a clear and convincing message about how to lower the costs of living for average working families — especially housing, health care, and child care. And raise taxes on the rich to pay for it.

At least since Richard Nixon, Republicans have been honing a cultural populist message telling working-class Americans that their problems are due to Black people, brown people, immigrants, LGBTQ+ people, government bureaucrats, “coastal elites,” socialists, and high taxes on the wealthy.

Democrats could have been honing an economic populist message that told working Americans that their problems are largely due to monopolistic corporations, greedy CEOs, rapacious billionaires, and Wall Street gamblers. And therefore what the nation needs are high taxes on the wealthy and big corporations, including a wealth tax, that allow the nation to meet the minimum needs of average working families for housing, health care, child care, and the rest.

This economic populist message is a winner. The most prominent candidate to capture the Democratic Party’s imagination this year, Zohran Mamdani, won the primary for mayor of New York by focusing on working families’ needs for affordable housing, groceries, and child care, to be financed by a tax hike on the wealthy.

This message also has the virtue of being accurate.

It accounts for the nation’s near-record inequalities of income and wealth, the tsunami of money flowing into American politics, the steady decline in tax rates paid by the ultra-wealthy, the near impossibility of forming unions, the near-monopolization of industries such as food and fossil-based energy, and the seeming inability of the richest nation in the world to respond to the needs of its working people.

But, with the exception of Bernie Sanders, AOC, Mamdani, and a few other brave elected Democrats and young candidates, Democrats have eschewed economic populism because they haven’t wanted to bite the hands that feed them.

As a result, working Americans understandably concerned about stagnant incomes, decreasing job security, and soaring costs of housing, health care, child care, and much else are hearing only one story — Republican cultural populism — and not the other, truthful populism.

It is a political truism that if one party gives you an explanation for your problems and a set of solutions for overcoming them, while the other party does neither, you’re apt to go along with the party that gives you the explanation and prescriptions, even if they’re rubbish.

Not surprisingly, the “rosters of billionaire donors” to Democratic think tanks like the new Searchlight Institute are not interested in offering the real explanation or real solutions. But because they don’t want to sell the Republicans’ cultural populism, they’re left opting for the so-called “center. ”

And what’s at their center? Lists of insipid policy proposals that don’t require raising taxes on the wealthy or on big corporations, or getting big money out of politics, or empowering average Americans. In other words, proposals that maintain the status quo.

This deployment of US troops to various US cities worries me, a lot. I fear there is some ulterior motive. I hope it's only a fear.

All I can think of is, why? Have we become so lazy we can't be bothered to exert a little effort to cut meat?

Disney Shareholders Request Jimmy Kimmel Suspension Records, Citing Concerns Execs ‘Breached Their Fiduciary Duties’

https://www.thewrap.com/disney-shareholders-jimmy-kimmel-suspension-letter/

There are not a whole lot of blooms left in the yard, but I brought in a few I could find along with some foliage to brighten the dining room.

There can be no such thing as small government in a country that has evolved from a handful of states in the early years of this country, to the sprawling country it is today. A history that includes the birth of the industrial revolution and justice's broadening of corporate power due to misguided interpretations of Darwinism. Effective small government in the year 2025? Pipe dream.

Are the brain dead republicans ever going to wake up!?