The one with the blue check is the real one, and maybe those others are marked clearly enough. The third account on that list, if you click through, says, in small print "(parody account lol)."
• Why are you EVEN HERE? SPREAD MORE MAGA BS?
• I think you're an asshole, and I think you don't actually give a fuck what actual scientists say about actual research. I think you're a disingenuous bigot and I think you lack basic human empathy and anything resembling a soul.
• Go away.. like to hell if the devil will have you
• Respectfully, Mr. Vice President, rather than asking us what we think about a ruling that we have no control over, could you please start asking us what we would like to see from our government officials that we pay? I sincerely hope that I get a response….
• They know what we want. They spend their time thinking about how to make it look like they're working on it when in fact they are working on getting more bribes & passing more tax cuts for the rich.
• I think you should take your orange FOTUS and go visit down town Tel Aviv for a few weeks
• You’re a treasonous bigot.
• There’s certainly more scientific evidence to support transgender care than supports your belief in sky fairies.
• It's cool that at a time when the middle east is about to descend into world war 3, you're here trying to trigger the libs.
• Vance is trolling, this guy is pointing and laughing at the replies, exactly as Vance is doing right now with his scumbag friends. He probably bet some finance bro 100 grand he could get 10000 replies on his troll post. It’s 2025, haven’t you worked out social media yet?
• I'd ask you if you have anything more important to be doing at the moment, but I think we all know that you don't.
Okay, now let's reread Vance's salutation: "Hello Bluesky, I've been told this app has become the place to go for common sense political discussion and analysis. So I'm thrilled to be here to engage with all of you...."
Is the thrill gone or is he thrilled to have so easily demonstrated that Bluesky is the opposite of "the place to go for common sense political discussion and analysis"?
Elsewhere, at The Spectator, I'm seeing "Bluesky is dying/Which is a shame, because I don’t want these people back on Twitter" by Sean Thomas, who writes:
If Bluesky dies and the Blueskiers slink back to Muskville, is that a problem? I think it is. For one thing, Bluesky currently functions as a kind of philosophical quarantine zone. It’s a safe place where the most politically infected can stew among themselves... It’s said that during the Black Death, villagers on Dartmoor would leave food on remote rocks – so that the pestiferous people up in the hills didn’t have to descend into the settlements to survive. The plague was kept at altitude, where it belonged. I propose we do the same for Bluesky. Every so often, one of us – the sane, the informed, the occasionally funny – must venture into the eerie cemetery of Bluesky, and leave behind a little sustenance: a decent gag, a nugget of insight. Just enough to keep the infected entertained. Just enough to keep them from returning to civilisation.
Hmm. That went up at few hours before Vance showed up at Bluesky. Did that prompt him to "leave food" for the people in the "quarantine zone"?
పోస్ట్లు
167 కామెంట్లు:
". . . whether JD Vance was able to make himself available for respectful conversation on Bluesky"
AA, respectful? By this point you should know that such a conversation is impossible on a leftist site.
Trump is moments away from bombing Tehran, while the Vice President is shitposting content on Bluesky to provoke liberals. It's like a reverse Dick Cheney, where the Vice President has no influence and is completely sidelined on foreign policy.
I can see that some people are reading that as trolling. It's easy to hear sarcasm.
Sarcasm is the poor man's wisdom.
Trump is moments away from bombing Tehran
Don't you wish!
while the Vice President is shitposting content on Bluesky to provoke liberals.
Not so much liberals but hard-core leftists like yourself, who are so easily provoked...
I thought I read that Sean Thomas piece a few days ago, and that it, itself, was written in response to a Megan McArdle piece descrying the ill health and possible impending death of Bluesky. But maybe what I read was someone else's similar thought about its being a - darn, what was the phrase that stuck in my mind? It wasn't "quarantine zone" but that was the sense of it. A Substack, I think?
Anyway. I love it when we, here, actually have a conversation about things on which we disagree. But I think we'd be lying to ourselves if we pat ourselves on the backs about our "tone" when, pretty often, things descend into the same kind of vitriol. Who's to blame? Well, I mean, you can read the rhetoric in sequence and be able to tell "who started it" ... and I'll admit that sometimes, when one of our lefties makes an arguable point but buries it in "MAGAt" and "Dear Leader" and "moron" and "run back to your orange daddy" (pretty sure I made that last one up), I roll my eyes and scroll down rather than addressing that point, not wanting to provide oxygen.
The left needs its own Althouse commentariat…
I wish I were as sensible and even tempered as Jamie. Seriously.
Blue Cry
"Is the thrill gone or is he thrilled to have so easily demonstrated that Bluesky is the opposite of "the place to go for common sense political discussion and analysis"?"
Sure looks like it.
"Elsewhere, at The Spectator, I'm seeing "Bluesky is dying/Which is a shame, because I don’t want these people back on Twitter" by Sean Thomas..."
They're already all over TwitterX. Many of them put up the same kinds of posts as the responses to JDV. Besides Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, and assorted Congress critters, and let's not forget Gavin Newsom, there are trolls aplenty.
Kak, I don't know why you'd conclude that three posts, one of which is almost entirely a quote, would take up so much time that the VP isn't read in on Iran.
Over the months since the election, my husband's brother, his wife, and a dear cousin have stopped speaking to us - not because we've ever said a word about our politics to them, but because they have decided we're the Marching Morons and they're the holders of the moral heights. But my husband has continued to text them anodyne news about our kids, our plans, and so forth, just to invite engagement. Would it be better if he acquiesced to their worldview - that is, that there is no room in either of our worlds for the other?
When Vice President JD Vance said "What do you think?"
...that's when leftist heads exploded.
Maybe he showed up to put it out of its misery? In high school I worked at a fabu wedding and event caterer and when the partiers wouldn’t leave the dance floor at the end my boss would let the all staff out to dance and mingle. That always ended things quickly…
rehajm said...
"The left needs its own Althouse commentariat…"
Nah, they should stay here. Once in a while they make sense, but most of the time they display their disingenuousness, or let the mask fall and resort to unrestrained hate. It's educational.
I do miss HDHouse, though. He had good taste in music. I also wonder about Garage Mahal.
"The left needs its own Althouse commentariat…"
Do Democrats need their own military parade?
He asked them what they were thinking. They told him, then the bosses cut off his contact. Well, until they got caught and reversed course. Don't know if they covered up, but really don't care, so there's that.
It's just that easy. That's the lesson, and the warning. Maybe we'll get serious when necessary. At least that's what I keep telling myself. Fingers crossed.
This comments section is just as open to liberals as it is to conservatives. I'm giving material for discussion that can easily be taken in different directions. I wish that happened more.
They aren't even respectful of fellow leftists! Expecting any respectful discussion with Vance is simply a daydream. Democrats represent the mentally broken, the emotionally-challenged, the confused and the evil stupid. That Coalition of the Crazy is incapable of honest fruitful discourse. This blog is a decade and a half of absolute proof they cannot be civil.
"What do you think?"
Well I never!
Uh huh.
This comments section is just as open to liberals as it is to conservatives. I'm giving material for discussion that can easily be taken in different directions. I wish that happened more.
I've been here for so long that I can't remember what the breakdown was in the early days, but certainly there appears to be a pronounced rightward tilt to the commentariat now, and I think it was the same then, if perhaps not quite so tilted. What I think I recall from the old days was that, as now, many of the lefties flung around the insults du jour (back then they related to BusHitler, the Shrub), rarely trying to argue a point. A few tried to keep things civil and actually engage with the post, as our Robert Cook often does (though Trump seems to trigger him, as with so many), but there was something about being on the left that seemed to encourage ad hominem and thought-stopping language. (We can see that Democrats in public life have decided almost as one that f-bombs signify Fierce Commitment To the Oppressed.)
What I wish I knew is whether the relationship between left-leaving politics and insulting language holds when lefties are in the majority: how do they talk amongst themselves? I need Lefties In the Mist.
I'll point out that Vance kind of dumped on a Bomb Iran guy a few days ago and managed to have a good conversation with him on Twitter afterward. Something like that could have happened on Bluesky.
https://x.com/davereaboi/status/1934980992755699940
I think it's silly to assume someone on JD's staff is leaking. I've always assumed Tucker has Trump Jr's ear.
I'm not on Bluesky, nor do I want to be. Question: were the comments presented here randomly selected, or specifically sorted for vitriol. I seriously don't know the answer.
One think I intensely dislike about the current intellectual climate is the tactic of selecting the most extreme communications of the other side--three standard deviations on the spectrum--and using those to broadbrush the entire viewpoint, reasonable or not.
It is all too common.
Of course I meant left-LEANING politics. And I guess I could take a safari to Bluesky, couldn't I? Into the Heart of Darkness!
And they wonder why they can't find their own Joe Rogan...
forcing the left into the "pro child abuse' corner - works for me.
The American left are like the Islamic Theocracy in Iran.
Why does there have to be only one tone/viewpoint on Bluesky and other platforms? Why don't the platforms provide some sort of filter so you only see messages with the tone/viewpoint you want?
To put it another way, why doesn't X have a "Bluesky" switch you can throw that makes your feed look like Bluesky? Why do users have to go to Bluesky to restrict their feed to allow only anti-Vance posts?
On Reddit, you can do what I am suggesting by subscribing to only the subreddits you want. If you don't like the tone/viewpoint of /r/politics, you can choose to not see /r/politics.
forcing the left into the "pro child abuse' corner - works for me.
Except that nobody is forcing them!
Remember the scene from Blazing Saddles? "Next man makes a move, the n***** gets it!"
"the Vice President is shitposting content on Bluesky to provoke liberals"
I agree that Vance likely made that post expecting it to upset liberals, but it isn't shitposting. The tone of the post follows normal rules of respectful, non-inflammatory language. There are no insults, it cites the substantive text of a court decision as well as the providing a brief breakdown of the main prongs of the argument from the decision. The post's point is that it is very hard for many on the Left, especially in Lefty dominated forums and spaces, to contend with opposing viewpoints. The expected response from the Left, and the one we see from many of the responders, is one of anger and hatred. Many on the Left are bigots in the original meaning of the word.
Althouse is probably as good as it gets in terms of Left/Right dialogue, and sometimes that is just bearable. I admit that there are several posters here that I just skip over. Ann does a good job of bridging the gap. But sometimes I wish there were more on the Left that could give us a good run for our money.
I'm often brought back to an old Joe Walsh album entitled, "You can't argue with a sick mind."
Imagine you're on some social media site and what looks like an actual president, vice president or some other powerful personage comes on and starts a conversation.
It would be easy to blow your one chance at writing something that might be seen by a person who could cause some meaningful action in the real world. Do you resist the impulse to call the VP an asshole, or do you choose to say something of substance about the topic at hand?
Jamie said... "my husband's brother, his wife, and a dear cousin have stopped speaking to us - not because we've ever said a word about our politics to them, but because they have decided we're the Marching Morons and they're the holders of the moral heights."
That sucks. Why do people behave like this? Perhaps I'm naive, but I can't wrap my head around that type of petulance.
Money Manager--If you go to the link and read the actual threads, the comments selected are pretty representative. There are a couple of hesitantly curious comments, but they get no traction.
I would like to think that if, say, Tim Walz or Gavin Newsome dropped in on an Althouse thread, at least some of us would have the wit and grace to actually try to engage in a moderately respectful manner. Maybe that's a pipe dream, but I certainly didn't see anything like that on the Bluesky threads.
JD is drawing fire away from POTUS. Is a good use of his time, and so is using all speech platforms that would have him. Good for the VP.
To follow up on my screening suggestion above, it would improve this comment section for me if it were possible to screen commenters somehow. The easiest screen would be to screen out commenters that sound like (or actually are) sponsored talking-point disseminaters/bots.
“And they wonder why they can't find their own Joe Rogan...”
Respectfully, they couldn’t find their own asses with two hands, a map and several clues.
Libs can’t handle the Althouse commentariat.
Wendy Sherman was on MSNBC the other day. She negotiated the JCOP with Iran. Bad case of TDS.
“Do Democrats need their own military parade?”
Send in the clowns…
Blue and polluted Sky is a first-order forcing of catastrophic anthropogenic climate change an inconvenient truth.
Paraphrasing William Buckley (I'm pretty sure), leftists claim to be respectful of differing opinions but are consistently surprised to find they exist, and they react accordingly.
As humans, we all end up trying to make sense of the world. Leftism has answers to all the questions, as long as you are willing to accept the underlying premises. Bluesky is perfect for humans who are incline to accept those underlying premises. Vance was taught all the underlying premises and he has come to reject them. Apostates are never welcome in such company.
I need Lefties In the Mist
That’s very funny on a number of levels.
- Krumhorn
One think I intensely dislike about the current intellectual climate is the tactic of selecting the most extreme communications of the other side--three standard deviations on the spectrum--and using those to broadbrush the entire viewpoint, reasonable or not.
I think of it as being in a baseball stadium. Is it reasonable to demand that all 50,000 fans be polite and well-mannered? How upset should be that a dozen fans regularly say rude things about the umpires visual acuity?
More pessimistically, is it even possible to have a thoughtful discussion among 50,000 baseball fans? Maybe that is asking too much?
Maybe the best we can do is to find a handful of sane people we can listen to and sort things out ourselves. AA is one of the few in my book. I also just ran across Ian Bremmer at GZero who is refreshingly sane too. This is what newspapers used to provide, with regular columnists who reliable provide certain viewpoints.
"I might add that many of those scientists are receiving substantial resources from big pharma to push these medicines on kids. What do you think?" Normally, they'd think Big Pharma = bad. But Thomas + JDV = badder. Therefore, Big Pharma now good. TDS logic.
Jersey Fled said... "...I wish there were more on the Left that could give us a good run for our money."
That would benefit both sides, but don't hold your breath. The cloak of anonymity draws out the worst in those incapable of simple debate.
Slightly OT, apologies: Rehajm says, "The left needs its own Althouse commentariat…" Interesting to contemplate why such a thing might not be possible. A diverse lefty commentariat, following an unorthodox left-of center blogger, arguing amongst themselves though united in opposition to rightist folly, some hard-right commentators not excluded, even some mutual trolling allowed by the host without breakdown. Hard to imagine, no?
Ann, if you've never seen it, you might be interested in Scott Alexander's "Neutral vs Conservative" essay. It has an interesting parallel and mirror with the BlueSky situation.
https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/05/01/neutral-vs-conservative-the-eternal-struggle/
Also depressing--neither Vance nor any of the commenters addressed the real substance of the Supreme Court's holding, which is that it is the legislature's prerogative and responsibility to address the matter, not the Court's.
we all end up trying to make sense of the world
That's so true. We start with faith, deferring to God, government, experts, parents, etc, in a quest to discover the golden philosophy with principles that are internally, externally, and mutually consistent.
Note that numerous Bluesky commenters go full-bore with the "sex with the couch" hoax. And not one commenter calls them out.
it is the legislature's prerogative and responsibility to address the matter, not the Court's
Yes, it is the Court's proper place to rule on matters consistent with the law, not to prescribe its sentiments on what the law should be, thus the separation of judicial and legislative branches as coequal branches of government.
progs create terms like epistemic closure, stochastic terrorism systemic racism to hide unconfortable truth, when I have encountered liberal on twitter, I have found them unable to cope, and often block me after a few posts, greg sargent was one of these, I found him the dimmest of the journolisters, and that is saying something, elizabeth spiers is another who was very gullible, on say questions related to gaza,
they are fragile as the baizuo description, (snowflake in Mandarin, and for the longest time, they were sheltered from reaility, by the corporate press, both print and video additions,
when there were challengers like Rush, they just dug deeper into the burrow, some like Media Matters sought to cancel their advertising, we would never do that,
The Left isn't interested in "respectful intelligent conversation" and never has been. Today, their power is so great, they don't have to pretend anymore. They've thrown off the mask, and this is what they are, and always have been.
The fact is, you can't have a "respectful" conversation with a leftist for 1 minute, before they get upset. They have their sacred cows, and don't want them touched. That's why they hate free speech and like echo chambers. The left is all about "party lines" and "concensus" and "Getting rid of wreckers and counter-revolutionaries".
They may pretend to Thomas Jefferson or Thomas Paine, but they're really Joe Stalin.
on blogs that were center right, or even sympathetic to that point of view, they spam long tracts,
have people on the right been mistaken on occasion, I'll admit some of the arguments re Iraq might have been mistaken, but even the source is often misrepresented
take Curve Ball Rafi Alwan, he was a German intel source
who did not communicate with Americans, so few could not determine his veracity,
"I might add that many of those scientists are receiving substantial resources from big pharma to push these medicines on kids. What do you think?" Normally, they'd think Big Pharma = bad. But Thomas + JDV = badder. Therefore, Big Pharma now good. TDS logic.
Yes. It truly is amazing to watch them pivot and spin.
they are actually weaker in some respects, the carriers of their propaganda, are less well regarded even though the certainty of their conviction is more impervious
I noticed that some of my podcasters who talk about SF, Literature, Star Trek, etc. All left twitter the second Musk took over. These people weren't leftwing obsessive but they'd always take shots at trump/republicans etc. And always in the dumbest manner possible. To them, leaving Twitter was showing everyone else, they were a good little leftist, who follows the party line. If tommorrow the word came down, "Go back on twitter, and push our message" they would.
but they have gamed out the 'manufacturing consensus game'
with global warming, they were pushing it from sagan's authoritative side, and slowly trickling it in with strieber and kinetka, (yes the ufo guy) in fiction, then in 1992, with 'after the warming' james burke, stopped being skeptical and pushed the whole package,
Gerda, thanks for the Reference to GZero. After reading one column it seems worthy of more exploration.
Note that numerous Bluesky commenters go full-bore with the "sex with the couch" hoax. And not one commenter calls them out.
Playing Devil's advocate, so what if it was true? Are we supposed to be concerned about non-consensual sex with inanimate objects? That seems extremely prudish, which is to say, a pose and not at all what Leftists actually believe. They would celebrate David Hogg fucking his La-Z-Boy lounge chair! You know they would! Democrats are the party of Drag Shows for Preschoolers after all. So you think a group willing to let men shake their barely-covered penises in the face of innocent frightened children is squeamish about poking the furniture?
Do you really? So is fucking on a table out too, now?
its really become a facile trope 'chill winds' Tim Robbins, or
'i'm being silenced' james hansen, they never shut up, of course when the New York Post was basically proscribed, they pretended it wasn't happening and it was good it was happening,
The transgender spectrum: homosexuals, the purer mode of bisexuals, and simulations through medical and surgical corruption.
BTW, so get tired of people showing up on center or right wing blogs and complaining "This is an echo chamber" or "We need more debate". Go to leftwing blogs and say that. Oh right, you don't. Because the Leftist wont tolerate rightwingers on their platform. That's why JD Vance got the response he did.
Its no different then complaining that "Fox News" needs to be more balanced. We have 7 liberal/left news organizations on TV, almost none of balanced. But the one conservative one, has have more liberal/leftists on. No, Fox News is the balance. Rush limbaugh was the balance. And as stated above, the liberal/left pressured his advertisers to take him off the air. And even lied to the advertisers.
they wanted to set the frame, a young man from coal country, would naturally do that, even though he proved his worth as a Marine, as a scholar et al,
JD challenged the bonafides or Rory Stewart Foreign office mandarin (all but admitted spy) son of a spymaster, academic, who pushes the 'replacement theory' which he denies and also affirms is good, (michael anton had a word for this duality)
Whether Vance was sarcastic is beside the point, isn't it? The real point is the people of bluesky reacted exactly as you, I, and Vance knew they would.
They were given the opportunity to have a serious discussion about a serious topic and they threw it away over cheap potshots at a hated political opponent. Because that's the kind of people they are.
Pedophilia, a queer sexual orientation, is transsocial, is licit under Democratic law. #NoJudgment #NoLabels #LoveWins
The democratic majority still oppose its progress. Haters.
Of course he's trolling. That's the best way to identify those who rise to the bait. It's a winnowing process. The funny thing is is people think it's a bad thing, LOL.
I don't think Vance was trying to troll, just my two cents. And I think they took his account down, and then realized how bad it made them look, such a quick reactive move, so they restored it and claimed it was a technical error.
One thing I've found about really smart people, some of them, is that they are often exceedingly nice in their demeanor. They've found that it opens too many doors to ignore, too many interesting opportunities become available when you're nice to all people as a general life principle. I put Vance and his wife in this category. He seems almost unflappable, even-keeled, in spite of a pretty good amount of hardship in his life. And there are some that are triggered by niceness - they interpret it as insincerity, sarcasm or biting wit, somehow.
The problem with Bluesky is that it's become a perfect Petri dish of progressive liberalism. They're not competing with anybody, nobody at all wants any part of it - unless they're progressive liberals. Nobody has contested the space - they've been left completely unbothered, as the normies and the dreaded conservatives obviously prefer 'X' overwhelmingly.
Have you ever seen a wave tank at a research facility? They generate waves under controlled conditions, they propagate and hit the opposing walls, and reflect back, intersecting new waves. Bluesky saw the waves and interpreted sarcasm and trolling. I think Vance is just trying to be a good leader.
Newscorp has other issues, as I've pointed out, Murdoch wanted to be as populist as Hearst, but as respectable as Luce, (the latter was ill regarded by progs like Swanberg, the source of Citizen Kane)
MIC, PIC, and SIC with DIC patronage.
Vance can snark with the best, that wasn't it,
there are some sacred cows, like the ones I've labeled above
Speaking of trolling...
Happy Juneteenth everybody!!!
"Trump is moments away from bombing Tehran, while the Vice President is shitposting content on Bluesky to provoke liberals. It's like a reverse Dick Cheney, where the Vice President has no influence and is completely sidelined on foreign policy."
Somebody forgot to leave Kak the basket of boiled turnips he's grown accustomed to find on Unself Aware Peak. It was you, narisco, wasn't it? Come on, 'fess up.
you would think they would appreciate a discussion about real science, but thats what its about,
on the question of so called Palestine, the three Ottoman Sanjaks, the narrative took a little time to form, the nakbah
was first stated in 1948, the details were spelled out slowly,
and then all at once, the tragic events of say Deir Yassin were writ large, as was the fratricide of Shatila, this was by the 80s (between Maronites and Fatah) this when Le Carre nee Cornwell, got into the picture,
Naw I just showed up here,
when our President, commits to something, he tells you in 32 font bullet points, he doesn't the ferris bueller telephone tag,
honestly its like ground hog day sometimes, when they say 'mostly peaceful' its means its going to he a 'hot time in the city' to quote john sebastian,
"they threw it away over cheap potshots at a hated political opponent"
You mean like Drago and his cute names for people here?
Or just straight insults like Rusty?
Or being equated to a fascist like Achilles is prone to do?
I could go on, but y'all seem to gloss over regulars here doing the same thing.
we should celebrate the emancipation not the date it was received by a certain community,
we know what progs do when they swarm, blue sky is the Alien hive, as Daily Kos was before them,
Jamie said...
Of course I meant left-LEANING politics. And I guess I could take a safari to Bluesky, couldn't I? Into the Heart of Darkness!
Mr. Kurtz replied…
"The horror! The horror!”
we have seen how certain persons, maybe they are wonderful in person but they can display political psychosis, specially defending the 100 million dead, that littered the last century,
I have ventured into their with waders, the non political posts are ok, but I marvel how did you come to this conclusion,
Blue hive at the Borgsky. You will be assimilated or aborted. Her Choice. Resistance is futile.
@Mark, did you read Money Manger's comment, too?
"...One think I intensely dislike about the current intellectual climate is the tactic of selecting the most extreme communications of the other side--three standard deviations on the spectrum--and using those to broadbrush the entire viewpoint, reasonable or not.
It is all too common. ...."
We haven't heard from Drago in quite a few days now - he was recovering from serious liver surgery if I read it correctly.
so the people who chant 'no kings,' like wicker man cultists, celebrated obama like a god, so no sale,
they didn't see the irony of a guy, who looked slightly stoned looking like a stock character from python, that was 'insurrectiony'
Juneteenth? The day Democrazis fell to the blue wave, now the red wave through reverse cultural appropriation.
they will believe the most ridiculous things, like benghazi where a compound was burned down, and an ambassador was suffocated and violated, well that was just some irate film goers,
celebrated obama like a god
Take a knee and bray to the one true... who will relieve your "burden". Cyanide is a Choice, available through Planned Petitionhoods.
where as most of us, see Trump as a blunt instrument, same with Musk, we have done everything every which way, lets try something new,
but that notion is so foreign to many progs, that their heads might explode like the opening to scanners,
cause and effect, often eludes them, say putin invades during obama and biden term, in the second example, very early into the second year,
https://twitchy.com/dougp/2025/06/19/ny-gov-kathy-hochul-says-people-who-follow-the-law-should-be-allowed-to-stay-in-the-us-illegally-n2414462
i would give her the benefit of the doubt, but she doesn't deserve it,
Mark said...I could go on, but y'all seem to gloss over regulars here doing the same thing.
We're not talking about regulars on a blog, dumbass, we're talking about the vice-president of the United States.
Can you spend even just 1 minute reflecting on how extraordinary an opportunity these people were given, and how embarrassed they should be by what they did with it?
The problem for the left isn’t that they need a place to feel safe from the icky rubes. Their problem is that they can no longer control the speech of the icky rubes on every major social media platform. When Bluesky couldn’t take out X, it’s popularity started to fade away.
"Kak, I don't know why you'd conclude that three posts, one of which is almost entirely a quote, would take up so much time that the VP isn't read in on Iran."
Because Bich couldn't walk and not chew gum at the same time himself.
"I'd ask you if you have anything more important to be doing at the moment, but I think we all know that you don't."
To be fair, he is the Vice President, so this comment was probably pretty accurate.
I would concede that there is too much vitriol, name calling and unproductive sarcasm here on Althouse for my tastes. That said, it's still a far more respectful and interesting comment section than any other that I know of.
Oh, he was definitely trolling the BlueSkykies. Anyone with an IQ above body temperature knows the very first claim of Vance's post, that BlueSky is a place of reasoned debate and analysis, is 100% false and Vance is much smarter than a 99 IQ.
Kakistocracy said...
Trump is moments away from bombing Tehran, while the Vice President is shitposting content on Bluesky to provoke liberals. It's like a reverse Dick Cheney, where the Vice President has no influence and is completely sidelined on foreign policy.
The reason you are losing is because you classify what Vance posted as shit posting. His arguments and posts are level and valid opinions held by most Americans and they are put in the most polite way possible.
You, people are just vicious and stupid.
well that was a little trolling, but it was a test and they failed,
"it would improve this comment section for me if it were possible to screen commenters somehow."
I have the opposite view. Some commentators here have taught me that there are people who believe some incredible things. I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't seen it with my own eyes. That said, there are a couple I routinely skip.
"What I wish I knew is whether the relationship between left-leaving politics and insulting language holds when lefties are in the majority."
The first blog I ever did much commenting on was Kevin Drum's Political Animal in the early 2000s (2002, I think it was). It was 99%+ far left commenters- it was full of leftist nonsense and invective- think a comment section full of Garage Mahal's to get the picture.
what was that Roy Batty line in 'Blade Runner'
I'll admit some times people on my side, are a little too vociferous, i'm not pointing to any one person, but thats what an open forum is about,
"it would improve this comment section for me if it were possible to screen commenters somehow."
There are ways, apparently, of doing this even in Blogger but I would never use such a thing myself.
Bluesky--the place for Never Trumpers to find agreement with others who share identical thoughts. And not to be troubled with anything that might conflict with their world view. I've got a Never Trumper friend who simply can't believe anything positive about Trump or his administration.
Just as Althouse reading NYT so we don’t have to, Kak’s presence here saves us from going to Yahoo News, Mediaite, etc., to read lefty mindlessness.
As for why Althouse's comment section has evolved the way it has;
My theory, which I have offered before, is that Althouse never censored based on political direction. Conservatives are used to swimming in a lake full of progressives- the same doesn't really hold for the reverse- if the leftists can't get the blog's owner to ban people then they start to leave the blog.
there is o'sullivans war, that seems to operate, in these circumstances,
OTOH, lefties may be getting it together. We still have Biden’s 8-10 mostly unvetted illegals in country, but I haven’t seen a king in days.
like the bear tax on the Simpsons,
Ann Althouse said...
This comments section is just as open to liberals as it is to conservatives. I'm giving material for discussion that can easily be taken in different directions. I wish that happened more.
The majority of what's wrong with the Left is summed up in this. Because the modern Left is religious lunacy. It's not "open to the Left" because you allow heretics to post "bad thoughts" and disagree with the Left. That keeps the Left from coming here because it is fundamentally impossible for a "good Leftist" to engage in honest debate.
Why?
1: Many of their beliefs are "luxury beliefs". They know the beliefs are crap, and that's the POINT.
2: The NYT article about "how did the ACLU & Trans community screw things up with Skremeti" included this line: "speaking on the condition of anonymity for fear of blowback from students and colleagues."
The Left is a swarm of rats in a pit. They could work together to all get out, but they don't WANT to get out. So instead they focus on pulling down anyone who tries to climb out (think for him/her self).
I wish you could get some sane Lefties to come here and actually debate. But sane Lefties who are actually willing to think about things get pushed in uncomfortable directions, and apparently there's not many of those left.
I have been reading a history of the American civil war. What stands out is that the two sides had irreconcilable core beliefs. There is no middle ground. The Republicans believed that all people had the right to freedom. The Democrats believed that only white people had the right to freedom. I see a similar irreconcilable differences today: all people have inherent rights or rights are contingent on utility.
Is the thrill gone or is he thrilled to have so easily demonstrated that Bluesky is the opposite of "the place to go for common sense political discussion and analysis"?
I'm guessing B
Old and slow said...
I would concede that there is too much vitriol, name calling and unproductive sarcasm here on Althouse for my tastes. That said, it's still a far more respectful and interesting comment section than any other that I know of.
Just as in matters of war in politics you must be able to discern between the opponents and the assholes.
I can disagree with most of the people in here on issues like abortion or taxation or the death penalty, and in the end, most of us will go along with the consensus that is reached at the end of a political process.
The left cannot do that. And just as all their political organizations are running out of money because the federal spigot has been turned off. The reason is that their entire existence is only possible if they are able to take other people stuff whether it be through taxation or just thuggish confiscation.
What Vance is doing here is showing the world that the left are not political opponents. They are assholes in the assholes have to go.
10:29 Greg.
Could not have said it any better.
they had their chance, 'there their sign' the reverse is what they pulled in 2020 on, the collusion of Dorsey and Zuckerberg, and other parties, which extended into 2021, with 'the insurrection'
and the attempted purge of the armed forces,
I think JD Vance was trolling…by asking an interesting and provocative question about big pharma keeping people on medication for the rest of their lives. I glanced through the opinions (non-lawyer who admires lawyers’ ability to read these things thoroughly.) I was pretty stunned by the logic of the dissent’s foremost argument comparing girls receiving female hormones vs boys not being able receive same. If that’s the level of discernment they apply, it’s rather horrifying.
"The expected response from the Left, and the one we see from many of the responders, is one of anger and hatred."
Which isn't doing them any good with the normies. People instinctively shy away from people like that. Who needs that in their life?
"America Celebrates Juneteenth, The Day Republicans Freed All The Democrats' Slaves"
true, but whats the bigger picture, they want to replace the Founding, as with moving 1776 to 1619 why do that, because if the root is corrupt, the tree falls,
you can't see the last 5-10 years as other than the result of this thinking, it became shibboleth among a cohort in this country,
https://www.theblaze.com/news/illegal-alien-accused-of-threatening-to-slit-throat-of-bondi-appointed-us-attorney here's where this thinking leads
Iconochasm--I read the Alexander piece. Thoughtful-sounding but either blind or hopelessly clueless. He insists that the "conservative" media and sites are "awful" and "wrong" but fails to cite a single example. Vox (Vox!?, fer chrissake) is cited as a "neutral" site. The Mexican-American kid at graduation deserves sympathy, but he and his parents, and the parents of all of those other grads, aren't entitled to get righteously angry that they have to be subjected to blatant liberal hate speech at what should be a celebration of a great accomplishment. The fact that academia is almost 100 percent left and is engaged in an ongoing purge of the tiny minority of holdover conservative voices is dismissed as a matter of perceived bias due to the obvious wrongness of the conservatives (again--no examples).
One of the commenters got it right. He can't bring himself emotionally to admit that "liberalism" is no longer liberal.
But it is good to see that there are commentators of the left who are trying..
Greg The Class Traitor said...
I wish you could get some sane Lefties to come here and actually debate. But sane Lefties who are actually willing to think about things get pushed in uncomfortable directions, and apparently there's not many of those left.
The problem here is one of definitions.
I am your sane leftist. I am for drug legalization pro-choice protectionist pro taxation of capital etc.
Until we get rid of the vicious thugs who just want to control everyone and take their stuff though I am going to vote for the people closest to Pinochet.
https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2025/06/19/ex-rochdale-mp-says-labour-party-told-him-not-to-mention-ethnicity-of-grooming-gangs-for-fear-of-losing-votes/
JD AdVanceIng
since then, the Chavez Morales of the World sought to purge the military of dissident elements first in 2002, and then about a decade later, they disarmed the people in the interim, of course, they don't need any guns, the Sebin as much as nurtured the Tren De Aragua,
on the question of so called Palestine, the three Ottoman Sanjaks, the narrative took a little time to form, the nakbah
was first stated in 1948, the details were spelled out slowly,
and then all at once, the tragic events of say Deir Yassin were writ large, as was the fratricide of Shatila, this was by the 80s (between Maronites and Fatah)
My old man was a friend of Dany Chamoun going back to the 50's. Lebanon lost a chance to get their shit together when he was assassinated.
as we speak, they are trying to depose one of the only leaders in Europe, that has a lick of sense in Orban,
Mark was exactly one of the evil lefty bomb-throwers I was thinking of when I posted my first comment on this thread at 7:22 this morning. Exactly. And then he shows up to prove me prescient.
The guy some here call "Dumb Lefty Mark" posted lies about me, beat the straw man with indignation that he created, and refused to apologize when I called him out. That's why I enjoy reading Drago drag him around like ragged cat toy. And it's why the best course is to (usually) ignore him.
But this was a good opportunity to enjoy his participation today.
Achilles said...Until we get rid of the vicious thugs who just want to control everyone and take their stuff though I am going to vote for the people closest to Pinochet
Since roughly Obama's first term, we have been in a weird place where, if you want to call yourself a liberal, you first have to abandon all liberal values. If you actually hold liberal values, you vote Republican.
labour-party-told-him-not-to-mention-ethnicity-of-grooming-gangs-for-fear-of-losing-votes
DEIversity
"Or just straight insults like Rusty?"
I'm blushing.
BlueSky is a site that was specifically created by and for people who felt that Twitter/X was not censorious enough. It was not created for a free exchange of ideas, but rather as an echo chamber, not unlike Reddit, which will downvote your karma to oblivion if you express conservative views. Unless you are marching in lockstep with the BlueSky narrative, you will be unwelcome there, as Vice President Vance found out.
May the humans on Blue sky be as pleasant to Joe Dirt Vance as the folks on the Althouse comments are to dissenting voices.
One other reason this blog comment section leans right is that it has been linked to by Instapundit many times. It's been donkey's years, but I suspect that is how I originally found myself reading Althouse. I haven't been inclined to real Instapundit in years.
Boatbuilder - I agree that Alexander's position is far to kind to the left. But that was written almost 10 years ago. I think there's an interesting parallel that back then, conservatives were self-segregating because they were being repressed and censored in most "neutral" spaces, whereas now the progressives are self-segregating because conservatives AREN'T being repressed and censored on Twitter.
This just in… Ayatollah Arseholah comes clean on the BIG SURPRISE…
https://x.com/Osint613/status/1935480055414530483
Mark assured us Twitter/X was doomed. It was his hobby horse.
A poster with the handle "Tea Bag" submits complaint about civility. Too funny. And pathetic.
How’s Drago’s recovery progressing and where is Lilly a dog?
"May the humans on Blue sky be as pleasant to Joe Dirt Vance as the folks on the Althouse comments are to dissenting voices."
Dissenting voices? All you bring is snark. What's to discuss?
tea bag hag teh slag
the lies fly as the tail wags
she’s kind of a drag
Original Mike @1:10 re:TeaBagHag at any time, exactly. TBH was one of the commenters to whom I was referring in my first comment, with whom, on the off-chance they voice an arguable point, I tend not to engage because it's so buried in invective.
I have to confess to the inability to resist a good bit of sarcasm.
"Joe Dirt Vance" is not bad, though. Credit where credit is due.
Quoted from Instapundit, but it bears repeating:
The progs didn't move to Bluesky because Twitter was censoring them. The progs moved to Bluesky because Twitter stopped censoring you.
May the humans on Blue sky be as pleasant to Joe Dirt Vance as the folks on the Althouse comments are to dissenting voices.
And here's another person who can't tell the difference between blog commenters and the sitting Vice President of the United States.
And you're not a dissenting voice. You're a vicious (bleep) who adds nothing to the conversation but insults.
I have elevated Kakistocracy to "frenemy" and have to say, I don't read every post he writes, but they make a lot more sense than they used to. My judgement re Trump was so wrong. I thought that the way they went after him so hard was evidence that he really did oppose the deep state war mongers, now give me an honest war monger like Joe Biden any day, and a slimy weasel like Trump.
"than a slimy weasel like Trump."
"Joe Dirt" is totally cool.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i2lA7KeO1dg
You wish you could be as cool as Joe Dirt.
Anyone else read Brewsky and Gardedly think climate change? I know, sequester the thought.
Lefty Mark, as a follower and commentator of Prof. Althouse's blog for over a decade, I can say unequivocally that all the descriptions and appellations of the leftist trolls here are well-earned, and probably a lot more appropriate than the alliases they and your violent Bluesky transurrectionist buddies use in your NAMblA Discord chat.
TeaBagHag said...
May the humans on Blue sky be as pleasant to Joe Dirt Vance as the folks on the Althouse comments are to dissenting voices.
So, you pick a name like "TeaBagHag", then you insult people rather than engaging with their points.
After that you complain about how people are "mean" to you.
Are you really that stupid?
Jaq said...
I have elevated Kakistocracy to "frenemy" and have to say, I don't read every post he writes, but they make a lot more sense than they used to. My judgement re Trump was so wrong. I thought that the way they went after him so hard was evidence that he really did oppose the deep state war mongers, now give me an honest war monger like Joe Biden any day, and a slimy weasel like Trump.
You were never really much of a reasoned thinker anyways so this makes sense.
Listen to Steve Bannon at the Christian science monitor breakfast yesterday. He talks about the mass mobilization of us assets to the Middle East from a historical perspective. He supports Trump in that this gives him what he called optionality.
He also felt that Israel tried to sucker Us in to the fight by invading Iran without having all of the requisite weapons to complete the job thus requiring the United States to step in.
Bannon says we can use the bunker Buster's anytime we want but we don't need to do it right away there's nothing pressing right now to blow up those facilities.
Vance and Joe Dirt are both hillbillies, both have great hair, both have hot women and both have had successful movies made about them.
Hard to argue with TBH* on this one.
It's always hard to argue with TBH, but for different reasons.
Thought experiment: four bullets labeled liberal (or progressive), conservative, neutral, and nasty under each post and each comment instead of like or dislike with the number of responses under the bullets and the winner bullet colored. I suppose it could still be gamed so maybe you could be banned if you put to many responses, but it could provide information about bias and what people actually think about the offering.
"Do Democrats need their own military parade?"
They have one, in Red Square. Every year.
"You were never really much of a reasoned thinker anyways so this makes sense."
I have to admit that this is true. I trusted Trump. He fooled me. He used the same trick on me that he used on Iran, pretending that he was interested in peaceful resolution of a conflict, to lull them off their guard, then BLAM! He did the same thing to me, pretend to be a peacemaker until he was safely elected.
"I was the first person to say "America first" and I decide what it means..." - Trump
America first means many wonderful things, including" bombing the shit out of Iran for Israel. - Trump
How long will you accept being lied to? How long will you be happy being spoken to like a kindergartener?
How long will you accept being lied to? How long will you be happy being spoken to like a kindergartener?
You are lying to yourself.
You have worked yourself up into a fantasy world where you make up fake quotes for Trump and you yell at the clouds about war.
Please give us some details about how much we have put into this war. How many missions have we run? How many troops have died?
Just curious if you have a shred of honesty in you. I remember what a dishonest piece of shit you were during COVID and demanding lockdowns.
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