https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/12/20/us/politics/election-hispanics-asians-voting.html

Eh. I’d be interested to know who the extra voters were. I imagine a neighborhood becoming more and more immigrant over time and ticked-off white voters showing up to vote, driven in part by Trumpist rhetoric (and permission to vote their bigotry) and in part by the rate of change in the makeup of their neighborhood, while immigrant voters (particularly Latino) continue their low-propensity trends.

I do agree there’s a pool of social conservatism among immigrant and Black voters, and the Democratic story is lacking when speaking to those voters. This is part of that whole pro-life-movement-being-a-cover-for-racism thing: Dems aren’t fooled, but in fighting the racism, they also wind up fighting pro-lifers, which has a cost in immigrant and Black communities. (Indigenous, too, i guess, so… BIPOC?)

Another, sadder, possibility is that ethnocentrism is a worldwide phenomen, not just white, and immigrants are both voting their own ethnocentrism AND voting their I-got-mine-screw-you feelings. Which I hope isn’t true, but… the problem with humanity is the humans, sometimes. If so, that means we might eventually be heading in the direction of Yugoslavia, with epic ethnic violence. (That would be generations down the road, not in one or two.)

https://digbysblog.net/2020/12/it-takes-a-republican/

Well, here’s a line:

«GOP leaders are now divided between the fearful and the deluded — between those who have lost their nerve and those who have lost their minds.»

Here’s another:

«These Republicans have allowed conspiratorial lies to take root that will encourage extremists for decades and cement the GOP’s image as the party of seditious crackpots.»

(Note he said “cement”, not “create”.)

https://frenchpress.thedispatch.com/p/why-do-they-hate-us

Not sometimes, @DavidAFrench. This is ALWAYS what the modern (white) evangelical movement has been: a smokescreen for racism. You know as well as anyone about that, and your attempts to whitewash it are just continuing the deception.

«Sometimes, however, the world rejects Christians because Christians are cruel. In that case, alienation isn’t persecution. It represents righteous judgment for our own political sin.»

(Also, your use of “Christian” is an attempt to lump yourself in with all other Christians, including mainstream Protestant. Seriously, dude, all this dodging and twisting?)

(Everyone else can see this: https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/05/religious-right-real-origins-107133.)

(Here’s his response to the statement the “pro-life” movement is driven by racism:

https://frenchpress.thedispatch.com/p/fact-and-fiction-about-racism-and

«But the Evangelical South—which followed the pro-life lead of the Catholic Midwest and Northeast—is not pro-life because it was racist. Racism is no longer a factor in its support for religious liberty. Battles over segregation academies are largely looked upon with regret and shame. Rather it became more overtly pro-life as it (slowly and imperfectly) started to shed its racist past.»

Glad to hear the Evangelical South is post-racial, David.)

https://twitter.com/Thom1st/status/1340335132079771648?s=20

Interesting conversation here.

Thom1st (@Thom1st) Tweeted: «People sometimes wonder why I’m so hard on the SBC since I’m UMC. Well, I started off SBC. Got a biblical studies degree from an SBC Univ. While my criticism is not insider criticism anymore, it once was. I once thought I could “save” it. I was wrong.»

(I believe “SBC” is Southern Baptist Church, and I know “UMC” is United Methodist Church.)

https://twitter.com/SethAbramson/status/1340086222438457346?s=20

Redirection is the name of the game.

Seth Abramson (@SethAbramson) Tweeted: But her emails. But Hunter Biden. But a case of voter fraud in Colorado in 1997. But “fuckers.” When did the Republican Party stop doing *any policing whatsoever* of its own conduct—instead answering every substantiated charge of corruption with a *wildly overblown* non sequitur?

Oof.

Rich Holly Jolly Webster (@JustRichWebster) Tweeted: https://t.co/8yexbBR3QV

https://twitter.com/JustRichWebster/status/1340113756769140738?s=20

https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a23471864/devin-nunes-family-farm-iowa-california/

Today’s astonishing fact, from northwestern Iowa (i.e., not close to a big city):

«Most workers start at fourteen or fifteen dollars an hour, the first farmer said. If dairies had to use legal labor, they would likely have to raise that to eighteen or twenty dollars, and many dairies wouldn’t survive. “People are going to go broke,” the farmer said. The story was similar in the poultry, meatpacking, and other agricultural industries in the area.»

Suddenly, a nationwide minimum wage of $15/hr does not seem that unreasonable.

(That whole article was really good, btw.)

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/technology/government-warns-new-hacking-tactics-russia/2020/12/17/bba43fd8-408c-11eb-a402-fba110db3b42_story.html

The joys of operating at the edge of the complexity envelope:

«the hackers moved rapidly from the initial intrusions through the corrupted software patches to collect and deploy authentic system credentials, making discovery and remediation far more difficult.»

https://igg.me/at/ogGz5qKxng4/emal/5641394

I’m in. (Two days to pre-order; maybe one, by the time you see this.)