State of the Discussion

These days, some of them go for $500,000 or higher.

Combines, like cars, are computers on wheels. Or tracks. And almost autonimus. Though the custom cutters may not have cutting-edge equipment, their customers may not have digitized field layouts.

morning all, fair point about the interviewee acknowledging the illegality of hiring, though instead of taking it out on those employers, he's happy for the government to take it out on the ones lowest on the payscale.

Gutting consumer protections, environmental regulations, and financial rules to benefit your billionaire donors while blaming the commoners' problems on poor immigrants is quite the trick. PT Barnum would be proud.

This is another one of those cases where it seems to me that our biggest problem is not one of immigration enforcement, but rather one of how we structure and regulate the economy and distribute the value generated by the work.

Thinking in terms of Kate Raworth's Doughnut Economy schema, these sectors are unsustainable because they are violating the floor conditions of an economy built to protect both people and the environmental limits that we have to take care not to exceed. In this case it's the human side. Record profits should not be accompanied by declining standards of living for the majority of the population. If it is, then start questioning the model and working to rebalance things.

It's no wonder that so many other forms of justice are being eroded when economic injustice has been normalized as the proper functioning state of a capitalist economy.

hsh beat me to it! That's what I understood it to mean too.

On bamboozled, I always thought it meant thoroughly confused, but I see that both meanings are possible. You live and learn.

lj:

That laser focus on the ‘illegality’ of brown folks doing the back breaking labor but total inability to consider that the people who are hiring them are doing something illegal is amazing to me.

In fairness to the interviewee, I took this to be referring to the people doing the hiring, not the workers.

And I couldn’t hire an illegal alien. It just didn’t seem right. And it’s illegal, by the way, but people are getting away with it.

Well, a couple of straws in the wind indicating that, while we probably won't catch up with you UK folks real soon, we may at least start moving in the right direction.

Today both CNN and the New York Times have multiple front page articles on the Epstein saga. I'd like to think they've decided there's blood in the water and (to horribly mix the metaphor) they don't want to miss the boat. I'd like to think that we're close to shifting from "slowly" to "and then all at once" -- or at least an approximation of the latter.

What I don't understand is why more people aren't put off by the sheer chaos and conflict that a tRump presidency brings. I get that some people are fine with it. It's more a matter of how many people are fine with it that confounds me.

Things were far more dull, in a good way, when Biden (or anyone else in my lifetime, for that matter, in varying degrees) was president.

We veer from one stupid, unnecessary, and destructive whim to the next with barely a breath in between. Somehow, a significant minority of people in this country, roughly 40% of them, don't seem to mind.

Even GWB looks like a f**king teddy bear by comparison.

Am I repeating myself repeating myself?

Re: Archie Bunker - when All In The Family first rolled out, some folks saw the Archie Bunker character as a bigoted clown, and some other folks (and not a small number) saw him as their kind of guy. A sort of folk anti-hero.

Plus ca change.

My own sense of what will make folks step away from supporting Trump is that there are two likely avenues:

1. Bad things are done to somebody they know and care about.
2. Discomfort with the egregious violence of the immigration stuff

It's possible that Minneapolis will be Trump's Selma. We'll see.

I agree with the framing given by Nous. Though it is really tempting--I do it all the time--to write off MAGAs as just bad people, in the long run we need to get as many out of the thrall of the Republican party as possible. The thrall is the thrill of victimhood, as conceived of by Goebbels. That thrill is what fuels the love of cruelty, the support for harm to others, the support for attacks on our elections, and the subversion of our institutions into tools for partisanship. As long as Republican voters wallow in the thrill of victimhood, they will support fascism. Trump will stroke out, but they and the party that exploits them will remain.

So give them a way back. "OO ick, weird people don't deserve your support" leaves the door open to join us not-weird people. They won't suddenly become progressives, but maybe they will stop voting for fascists.

I don't doubt it will take time to shift the conversation, or that a shift would not require constant maintenance and defense. We had shifted the conversation on race, and Archie Bunker and other sitcoms took the glamor out of bigotry, but now our social media overlords have brought that all storming back.

But we can't just cede all that ground for fear of offending the gouty toes of the people who voted for the Mandarin Menace. We have to make him look like the pathetic loser that he is, and make them feel as if supporting him makes that stink rub off on them as well. Looking at those approval ratings, this may be our best window for doing something like that.

Not "you are a loser for having been fooled by those guys," but "ick, those guys are all gross and pathetic pedos, do you really want to give them your support?"

>We need to make support of pathetic patriarchies a cause for ridicule.

'support for pathetic patriarchy' describes the fundamental mindset of a very large group of Americans. sadly.

and i think it's the kind of thing that only time can diminish.

i really can't see how anyone is going to get my older relatives, for example, to buy a new narrative.

This interview provides a good overview of what's known and unknown about the Epstein debacle.

"Attorney Arick Fudali, managing partner at The Bloom Firm and counsel for 11 survivors of Jeffrey Epstein, joins us to break down the latest controversy surrounding the DOJ’s release of millions of pages of Epstein documents. Fudali has said publicly that his clients were never contacted by the DOJ before the recent document dump, calling the rollout a “gross mishandling” that risks exposing survivors while withholding key information. We discuss what the files reveal, what’s still missing, and why survivors’ advocates say the process falls short on transparency, accountability, and basic protections."

Epstein 101 with Arick Fudali

>wondering what is wrong with the US that allows these elite
>rapists and sex pests to continue on without being held accountable.

lacking any criminal charges... https://apnews.com/article/jeffrey-epstein-client-list-sex-trafficking-049c96080a2ca2c12c84ac506437e50b

... that leaves shame as the only way to make anyone step down from anything. and people like Musk, Trump, Gates, etc.. are all rich enough to not have to care about what other people think, and rich enough to scare media owners away.

Trump's also insulated by the fact that the only way to hold a President accountable (other than shame) is via the (very stupid) impeachment process.

Edited version of Alastair Campbell's monologue from The Rest is Politics on the Mandelson/Epstein affair:

I’m having sleepless nights. These usually happen when I am anxious, angry, depressed or confused. There is so much out of the Epstein scandal to make me feel all of the above. It is, on so many levels, almost impossible to process, personally and politically. 
Let’s start with angry. I’m angry at the content and the context of Epstein, which is so disgusting on so many levels, and frankly it gets to the point where you can’t face reading any more of it. 
I’ve heard some MPs, some Tory, some Labour, Nigel Farage, journalists too, call the Peter Mandelson betrayal “the biggest scandal of the century.” Journalist Marina Hyde wrote a brilliant piece in which she said “it’s not even the biggest scandal of the scandal.” She is right about that. The real scandal is the trafficking, the abuse, and the attitudes to women of so many rich powerful men. 
As Amelia Gentleman, in the Guardian, chronicled the way Epstein & Co talked about women in the files. How they see the role of women as being mere logistics, food, drink and sex. It’s horrible. It’s disgusting.
I get angry that we all get tarred with the same brush, now not least because of the Peter Mandelson association, as if anyone who knows him somehow enabled Epstein. It all plays into the narrative that “they’re all the same, all in it for themselves, have no principles.” 
We are NOT all the same. I am very proud of the New Labour project, and many of the things we did, and despite everything believe politics and politicians can be a force for good. 
But this Labour government is now looking like the last Tory one as it lurches from one big bad moment to the next. That makes me angry given the size of the majority the country gave them, the scale of the things that need fixing, and the way so much of the first two years has been wasted.
It’s a week now since we started to take stock of all this, and I still cannot, for the life of me, get my head round how close Peter Mandelson and Epstein seem to have been.
That as I was part of the team trying to advise Gordon Brown after the 2010 election, and in talks with Nick Clegg to see if we could do a Lib-Lab agreement, Peter was talking to Epstein and boasting that he had persuaded Gordon to go. I can’t get my head round him sending Epstein confidential notes about big economic decisions during The Crash. 
I’ve known Peter for more than forty years. We’ve had many good times together, and some bad. Sometimes we’ve gone years without speaking, for example after his second resignation. 
I’ve always known he is tricky, manipulative, can be secretive, as well as charming and clever. But I genuinely cannot fathom some of his exchanges with Epstein. Like when Epstein, on the day he was released, and they were joking about strippers and young girls. Was there nothing in Peter to say “Jeffrey, have you learned nothing?” 
Yet also – and here lies some of my confusion and anxiety – precisely because I have known him so long, I have concern about where this might all end for him. I really don’t get how people can go from boasting of being a “close friend” one day to ”lock him up and throw away the key” the next. 
I was angry and concerned at the decision to appoint Peter as Ambassador to the US. I understood the attraction. He’s a big figure, he had the New Labour connection, he knows trade and the global economy, and Keir Starmer clearly felt he needed more than a conventional diplomat to handle the Trump administration. 
But as risk-reward decisions go, I always had a worry that this would not end well (if not quite like this) and I said so to the people making the decision. Listeners to my The Rest Is Politics podcast may recall how Rory Stewart outed me awhile back because he had heard me talking to one of the decision makers about David Miliband as a prospective ambassador, and I still think that would have been a better call.
And I’m angry with myself maybe. I could have made a big thing about it, but I am conscious, sometimes, of having to balance the public-facing part of my life with the fact I often have privileged access to people who expect at least some element of confidentiality when I am acting either as an activist or being asked for advice, as does happen.
That being said, I’m not terribly impressed with the scale of the dumping and the distancing since the Mandelson scandal broke. Would it not have made more sense for Keir simply to say he made a judgement, in the round at the time, based on the pluses and minuses, which were fully assessed, and it’s now transpired it was a bad judgement, and I apologise?
Putting all the blame on the vetting, and being lied to, is what has made this even more a question of his judgement and also the competence of his operation, with all the inevitable changes now under way.
I’m also angry that so many in the media, along with people like Farage and Michael Gove, who said it was a smart appointment at the time, now say it was obviously a bad judgement call. 
I hate hypocrisy and these people are never challenged over that. And of course the media tend, in the main, only to do one volume – very loud and very anti-Labour – which means anyone who has ever had anything to do with Peter Mandelson is somehow presented as tainted for having failed to know what he was up to and with whom. 
I understand the call from Gordon Brown to clean up politics, and at least he had an agenda about how to address it. But there’s a real risk when he makes that call in the way he did that, just as the expenses scandal harmed the reputation of all, not just the cheats, this too plays into the Reform framing: They’re all the same, everyone is corrupt, the system stinks, nobody can be trusted. Their answer? Trust the man who sold us Brexit on a pack of lies, and is now getting money from home, abroad and crypto and boasting about it, and stick him in Downing St.
One thing that especially riles me up is the way the right wing, here and in America, are getting a free pass on all this. 
I got a message from Tommy Vietor, one of Barack Obama’s former staffers and now a successful podcaster with Pod Save America. He said: “If Epstein forces out Starmer and Trump survives, I will explode.” There are so many scandals in these files, yet the Trump-Bannon-Musk-Howard Lutnick crowd is getting off so lightly. 
And of course I’m angry about the way Epstein and his pals like Peter Thiel boast about Brexit being “just the beginning” and wonder, did Peter Mandelson not realise that this was part of his game too?
As for the anxiety, it’s about what happens next and what it means for politics, and for the country.
If Labour do not get their act together, and fast, then Farage is being gifted power, which I believe would be a disaster for this country.
In that scenario, I fear we would soon see in Britain the kind of things currently debasing politics in Trump’s United States; the victory of slogan over substance; open and brazen corruption; the deliberate stoking of division and hate; threats to free media and the rule of law.
It will be another gift to Putin. Another gift to the tech bros to whom this right wing populism is a route to a world in which they, rather than democratically elected politicians, have all the power.
So I totally understand the calls for Starmer to go. So many MPs are angry, so many members of the public are frustrated and disappointed. Me too.
I have felt for some time Morgan McSweeney’s position was vulnerable because whatever talents he has that helped Keir become leader and then Prime Minister, it’s a big problem if you are the chief strategist and the strategy isn’t working, or you are the Chief of Staff and the operation isn’t working.
But the job of Prime Minister is a whole different level and those urging for change must have some idea of what happens next, and why it would be better. 
People really underestimate the skills you need for the job of Prime Minister. Maybe Keir Starmer underestimated them too. But I am far from convinced by the names currently in the frame. 
And that leads me to the most depressing thought of all. That because of the nature of our politics, the quality of people going into politics, the nihilism of the mainstream media, the anarchy of social media, with dissonance, hypocrisy, short-termism, naivety, industrialised rage and wilful ignorance off the scale, we are becoming ungovernable.
That neither the parties nor the public are really prepared to face up to the big things that need to happen to turn this country round, given the sheer scale of real problems we actually face. 
So that’s the confusion to add to the anxiety. I am normally quite good at thinking ahead. I can usually see a course. Right now, as I write, I feel that is far from easy. 
So no. I can’t sleep. And I know from talking to plenty of other Labour people, I am not alone.

lj, it's all of those things except, as you say, 2. The Tories have got a fucking nerve, after the corruption of BoJo, not to mention the PPE/Covid VIP lane scandal

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controversies_regarding_COVID-19_contracts_in_the_United_Kingdom

which is estimated to have cost the nation about £1.4 billion.

CaseyL: hard agree with what you say. Apart from the man that nous so memorably calls the Clementine Caligula, I am still amazed that, for example, Bannon's involvement in trying to rehabilitate Epstein's image has not done more damage to MAGA.

I'd say it is critical mass.
In Europe the Epstein associates are a tiny minority while in the US they occupy many positions of power (in and out of official politics) that allow for stonewalling and mutual support. Plus the tradition in the US not to hold the powerful accountable. So, in Europe it does not undermine the system to go after at least some prominent culprits. There simply is no long row of domino pieces to fall. In the US* Epstein seems to have (deliberately) infected the system itself with a rot so widespread that he probably hoped it would forever protect him. He is gone but the rot remains and fully uncovering - let alone thoroughly removing - it would shake the system to the core, which is why it is unlikely to happen.

*and, so some info I've seen but can't judge the veracity of says, in Israel

Props to the UK for at least finding it scandalous.

Here in the US it's more like a national exercise in "la la la la I can't hear you"

I would guess it has no impact on the special relationship. Or what's left of it these days.

Trump has no loyalty to others, so the fact that, in the UK , other Epstein buddies are getting taken down? Not going to matter much.

Provided they don't say anything bad about him. Anyone who does that is beyond the pale. If it's a UK media, he'll maybe trash them. But if it's anyone in government, the UK joins his enemies list.

Apparently some big officer guy in Germany is forcing all the men under him to view Melania. We need to do some purging here of wackos and nutcases.