[The Soup Nazi]

Originally Posted by !@#$%!

i know, i know... precisely that. the worst nightmares are real. you really picked the right detail to induce dread.

Gets even worse - Vice Chair: Gohmert or Gaetz. Cannot make this up.

[Skuj]

You guys remember how Durham was going to uncover "the crime of the century"?

Well he lost again today, after personally arguing the case against the Steele Dossier main source.

[The Soup Nazi]

From the NYT:

Liz Truss in the wilderness

By Paul Krugman
Opinion Columnist

Liz Truss, Britain’s newish prime minister, has fallen from grace faster than any leader I can think of. According to a poll released Monday, she has only 9 percent approval among British voters — a performance that would probably be impossible in the United States, where extreme political polarization guarantees that even a leader who, say, instigated a violent insurrection will retain a large base of support. The Star, a British tabloid, has a livestream of a head of lettuce next to a picture of Truss, asking which will last longer.

But how did it go so wrong, so fast?

The immediate answer is that financial markets hated Truss’s fiscal plan, unveiled on Sept. 23, which called for unfunded tax cuts for the affluent. Interest rates soared and the pound plunged; the government was soon forced into reversing more or less the whole thing.

But what provoked this market reaction? When the tax cuts were announced, many conservatives compared Truss’s policies — favorably — to those of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. When Reagan pushed through unfunded tax cuts, they also raised interest rates — but they drove the dollar up, not down. Thatcher similarly presided over a strong pound. Why was this time different?

Many observers suggested that investors feared that Britain would start to behave like an emerging market, in which governments try to cover budget deficits by printing money; fears of inflation would indeed lead to higher interest rates but a weaker pound. But this was a bit hard to believe: The Bank of England is politically independent, and unlikely to ratify deficit spending.

A subtler argument would be that the bank, while presumably unwilling to bail out government finances, would nonetheless act to bail out private actors, notably pension funds, which were in fact placed in peril by spiking interest rates. Indeed, the bank did intervene to limit what it considered the danger of a sort of death spiral driven by forced fire sales of long-term bonds.

But the British economist Simon Wren-Lewis argues persuasively that financial markets were responding in large part to increased uncertainty, which was in turn largely a reflection of political uncertainty. The Truss economic plan was obviously unsustainable politically, but it wasn’t clear what would come next.

I’m still mulling over that story about the markets, but the political point is clear. Truss staked out a political position that, to a first approximation, has no public support either in Britain or in the United States. So failure was inevitable.

Politics in the modern West tends to be more or less two-dimensional. One dimension is the left-right divide in economic policy, between those who favor high taxes on the rich and large social benefits and those who want low taxes and small government. The other dimension is the divide over social issues, between those who favor policies promoting racial equality and gay rights and those who bitterly oppose anything they consider “woke.”

A 2017 paper by the political scientist Lee Drutman mapped out the distribution of U.S. voters on these axes; it’s unlikely to have changed much since. (And the distribution of British voters seems similar.) His picture looked like this:

 

There are no libertarians.
Voter Study Group

Notice that the quadrant representing a combination of social liberalism and economic conservatism — what you might call the libertarian position — is largely empty. I sometimes joke that there are only around 15 true libertarians in America, and they all wear bow ties.

More seriously, you can see that most voters like government benefits, a lot. Opposition to social spending comes mainly from voters who believe that spending goes to the wrong people — people who don’t look like them.

Now think about how politicians place themselves. Here’s my even more schematic chart:

 

Truss in the empty quarter.
Author’s imagination

Liz Truss is squarely in the libertarian box. She didn’t make appeals to anti-immigrant, anti-woke sentiment; she did advocate what one analysis assessed as the most conservative economic position of any party in the developed world. So she placed herself in the political wilderness, a barren quadrant where few voters may be found.

It’s unclear what comes next. Truss has reversed course on tax cuts, but the Tories are still advocating deeply unpopular spending cuts. But let me turn from the British scene to that in the United States, and the continuation of a puzzle I noted several years ago.

In America, the positions of the two parties are clear. Democrats are in the southwest quadrant, both socially and economically liberal, while Republicans are socially and economically conservative.

There are, however, many voters who are economically relatively liberal and socially illiberal — who hate wokeness and fear immigrants but want to maintain and even expand Social Security and Medicare, at least for people they see as “real” Americans. Such voters do have political champions in other countries: France’s National Rally, formerly the National Front, established its identity as an anti-immigrant, Islamophobic party, but it has been attacking President Emmanuel Macron’s economic policies from the left, denouncing his plans to raise the retirement age.

continues...

[The Soup Nazi]

...cont'd

In the United States, though, socially illiberal voters who want a strong safety net for themselves have effectively no representation. Donald Trump made a play for such voters in 2016, posing as a different kind of Republican, but once in office he slashed taxes for the rich and tried to kill Obamacare. If Republicans win one or both houses of Congress next month, they’ve already signaled that they will use the debt limit to try to blackmail the Biden administration into cutting Social Security and Medicare.

So even as we marvel at Truss’s political obtuseness, we should ask what it is about the United States that prevents the emergence of anyone catering to a large bloc of voters who want the nastiness of MAGA without the right-wing economics.

Quick Hits

Buyer’s remorse.

The Tories may bring Boris Johnson back.

“When I drive into fog, I slow down.”

Gas prices are heading lower again.

[The Soup Nazi]

Originally Posted by Skuj

You guys remember how Durham was going to uncover "the crime of the century"?

Well he lost again today, after personally arguing the case against the Steele Dossier main source.

 

[The Soup Nazi]

Well this is fucked up:

Opinion | Gen X is used to flying under the radar. That’ll end if it goes full GOP.

[!@#$%!]

Originally Posted by The Soup Nazi

Well this is fucked up:

Opinion | Gen X is used to flying under the radar. That’ll end if it goes full GOP.

oh, mcardle's bullshit. read it this morning. or maybe it was last night. she's only half right. not even--she's a libertarian. but yeah many cynics have embraced maga. haven't we seen them here, after all?

but look at the photo: it's a bunch of white people. then read the comments.

[The Soup Nazi]

Originally Posted by !@#$%!

but look at the photo: it's a bunch of white people.

Also, some of 'em look pretty old to have been Cobain's contemporaries. I don't look like that! Y'know what they call me on the street? Never "sir" or "mister"; it's always "young man". Then again, hanging on the wall I have a portrait of me which takes care of aging...

[!@#$%!]

Originally Posted by The Soup Nazi

Also, some of 'em look pretty old to have been Cobain's contemporaries. I don't look like that! Y'know what they call me on the street? Never "sir" or "mister"; it's always "young man". Then again, hanging on the wall I have a portrait of me which takes care of aging...

she's also mixing up her demographics by including people up to age 64

[The Soup Nazi]

Originally Posted by !@#$%!

she's also mixing up her demographics by including people up to age 64

Yeah, that was a waste of a "gift article", come to think of it.

[!@#$%!]

Originally Posted by The Soup Nazi

Yeah, that was a waste of a "gift article", come to think of it.

some of the comments she got in response were pretty good

[!@#$%!]

LETTUCE WINS!

Originally Posted by Skuj

Christ!! It might be before Wednesday. The knives are out.

not quite wednesday but close enough!

--

video feed is in a must-watch state right now:

Originally Posted by _tunic_

LIVE: Can Liz Truss outlast a lettuce?


see also:Will Daily Star's 60p Tesco lettuce or PM Liz Truss last longer? Watch live feed

many thanks for initially posting this hahahahaha

[!@#$%!]

oooooof bad news for ukraine this mother fucker if there is a god please wipe him from existence

[!@#$%!]

Originally Posted by The Soup Nazi

Gets even worse - Vice Chair: Gohmert or Gaetz. Cannot make this up.

 

[The Soup Nazi]

Originally Posted by !@#$%!

some of the comments she got in response were pretty good

Couldn't bring myself to read 'em. Anyway, shame on her for mentioning Nirvana. Anyone who dug/digs Nirvana and votes GQP should spontaneously vaporize on account of being an oxymoronic waste of oxygen.

[The Soup Nazi]

How about some good news for a change:

Amy Boney Carrot denies attempt to block Biden student loan forgiveness plan from taking effect

Lindsey Graham loses appeals court bid to stall testimony in Trump election interference probe

Pentagon to provide funds, help for troops seeking abortions

and most importantly, although this belongs in a different thread, but so what:

Joni Mitchell to play first headline concert in 23 years

Yeah!

 

[Skuj]

The lettuce wins. Fuck, it's still edible.

[!@#$%!]

Originally Posted by Skuj

The lettuce wins. Fuck, it's still edible.

https://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/lat...ttuce-28292417

absolutely fucking savage xD

[The Soup Nazi]

^^^

 

Who should be the next Prime Minister?

Lettuce

Gemma Collins

Neil Warnock

David Beckham

Gary Neville

Demi Rose

Sometimes British humour is simply unbeatable.

[The Soup Nazi]

Another dose of Krugmanship for y'all:

Facts, feelings and rural politics

By Paul Krugman
Opinion Columnist

The hard-right turn of rural America has become a key factor in our nation’s troubled politics. Rural voters are a declining share of the electorate, but their turn to the MAGAfied Republican Party has been so sharp that, combined with the way our political system underweights urban voters, the radicalization of small towns and the countryside may determine the future course of American democracy — indeed, may lead to its demise.

And yes, I mean radicalization. We aren’t just talking about an ordinary shift in voting behavior. Much of rural America seems to be turning into a one-party region in which people are actually afraid to express dissent from their Biden-hating neighbors.

What’s causing this radicalization? Political scientists have found that rural Americans believe that they aren’t receiving their fair share of resources, that they are neglected by politicians and that they don’t receive enough respect. So it seems worth noting that the first two beliefs are demonstrably false — although I’m sure that anyone pointing this out will be denounced as another sneering member of the urban elite.

The truth is that rural America is heavily subsidized by urban America. You can see this by looking at states’ federal balance of payments — the difference between federal spending in a state and the amount a state pays in federal taxes. Here’s a plot of those balances, on a per-capita basis, in 2020 versus urbanization in the 2010 census (the most recent data available):

 

Rural America gets a lot of aid.
Census, Rockefeller Institute

As you can see, less-urbanized states receive far more from the federal government than they pay in; highly urbanized states like New Jersey don’t get nearly as much. Indeed, in a normal, non-Covid year the most urbanized states are usually net contributors to the federal budget.

Now, for the most part this subsidization of rural America reflects the nature of our social safety net rather than explicitly favorable treatment. Rural areas are relatively poor, old and sick. This means that they pay fairly little in federal taxes while receiving large benefits from Social Security, Medicare and other government programs.

But there is also considerable aid targeted directly on rural areas. Most notably, in 2020 Donald Trump sent $46 billion in aid to farmers. To get a sense of how huge this was, note that these days there are only about two million farms in America, and annual net farm income is only about $150 billion.

So the idea that the government discriminates financially against rural areas is the opposite of the truth. That said, it’s true that rural areas are hurting economically, despite receiving a great deal of aid.

The modern economy, with its growing focus on knowledge-intensive industries, tends to favor metropolitan areas with highly educated work forces. And highly educated workers also tend to prefer such areas, so the drift of economic opportunities away from small-town and rural America is a self-reinforcing process. Jobs, especially good jobs, are becoming scarce outside the big metros.

The decline in economic opportunity has, in turn, led to a loss of social cohesion. America has been experiencing a rising tide of “deaths of despair” — deaths caused by suicide, drugs or alcohol. Such deaths have gone up everywhere, but the biggest increases have happened in left-behind small-town and rural areas:

 

Despair in the heartland. States with a deeper color experience more deaths of despair.
Commonwealth Fund

While rural woes are real, however, it’s hard to see how supporting right-wing politicians makes sense as a response to these woes. Republicans in Congress have made it clear that if they take control, they will try to slash the safety-net programs that do so much to support rural America. On the other side, Biden administration actions, especially the subsidies associated with climate policy, represent a serious effort — one that has no G.O.P. counterpart — to bring jobs back to declining regions in the heartland.

But what about cultural grievances, the sense of rural residents that urban elites view them with disdain? There’s surely some truth to this sense, although I have never actually heard anyone talk dismissively about “flyover country” — as a 2016 article in National Geographic pointed out, the pejorative is largely used by people who put it in someone else’s mouth, “a stereotype of other people’s stereotypes.”

On the other hand, small-town and rural Americans often trash-talk big cities, portraying them as crime-ridden hellholes, when the reality is that except in New England, homicide rates in 2020 were generally higher in more rural states:

 

Crime isn’t just a big-city problem.
Census, Centers for Disease Control

I don’t know how to make a systematic comparison here, but it’s not at all clear that urban elites sneering at rural Americans is any worse than the calumny hurled in the opposite direction.

The problem is that none of this may matter. When commentators call on Democrats to address rural needs, well, they’re actually doing that — certainly more than Republicans, who are preparing to pull the rug from under programs that rural areas depend on. When people call on urban elites to end their disrespect for rural Americans, well, perceptions about such disrespect may not have much to do with reality.

There have been many articles written about how Democrats need to reach out to rural voters, and of course they need to keep trying. But rural perceptions are so much at odds with reality, and rural America is becoming so monolithic politically, that it’s hard to imagine that they’ll have much success.