I used to represent a manufacturing client that required every meeting - whether with operational workers, in-house counsel, or C-suite types - to begin with a relevant safety briefing. On the shop floor, it would be about hard hats and eyewash stations. In a conference room, it would be about fire exits and trip hazards. This was, of course, silly in a sense. But it was pretty effective at reminding everyone that safety was a very high priority for the company.
This is why routine, required land acknowledgements are a terrible idea, because they have such a powerful signalling function about priorities. I agree with Ben, and I'm surprised at Josh and Megan's surprise that he found them so offputting.
Suggest substantive policies to improve conditions for Native Americans, absolutely, but the message transmitted by the land acknowledgements is not that.
The funny thing is they're so rote, I don't think they even actually do anything to get people inside the party to think more substantively about those issues, whereas I suspect the safety briefings at least made the office workers a little more cognizant of trip hazards.
this podcast should have a pillar that it will do everything it can to spoil a Newsom nomination. I say this as a Californian. He cannot be the nominee. We will lose be a million. It has to be a Shapiro or Whitmer type.
I don't know that I'm ready to go the full JVL and say it should be knocked down on day 1 of the next administration, but this ballroom is a giant pay to play exercise. Surely none of you are naive enough to think that the "private funding" isn't bribery or extortion?
I doubt that any of you would have defended President Obama, or President GWB, if either of them had up and bulldozed the East Wing, after lying that they would not, and then tried to fund the building of a ballroom by collecing money from people who wanted favors from the Admin or just wanted to stay on the Admin's good side.
I got the sense from the pod that your pro-ballroom stance was a special dispensaton to Trump, as opposed to a believe that future Presidents should also have a free hand to demolish various government structures they don't own (inclduing Trump's ballroom!). It makes me wonder if you in a kind of 5-stages bargaining phase? "Let him have his ballroom to play with if it sidetracks him from his mission to ruin the country?" I could appreciate that if I thought it woulfd work. Unfortunately he has largely delegated the job of ruining the country to people like Stephen Miller, Pam Bondi, and Pete Hegseth.
I'm left to wonder if this is just cynical centrism on your part. Siding with Trump on this one just to not get your podcast categoized as being too left wing.
I don't think anyone is going to categorize this podcast as being too left-wing. The headline topics for the last two episodes have been about how the Democratic party sucks and needs to change to win more often (and not by moving to the left on some issues, good heavens no!). I'm being glib, of course, but I don't think there's cynicism in the way you describe it.
(I don't necessarily disagree with those observations about the Democrats btw)
Anyway, I don't really care that much about the ballroom thing. Yes, there's all sorts of problematic things about it, but given the incessant, daily drumbeat of "Look at me! Look at what I said!" outrages and corruptions bursting from the mouth and mind of the great leader, renovating the White House is pretty far down the list of offences to me.
Partly because of the industry I'm in, the thing that got me the most in this administration was the needless and cruel gutting of USAID. I know foreign aid is not high on the "we need to keep this" priority list of most Americans (people seem to think it's way more costly to the budget than it actually is), but in terms of sheer number of lives affected it's one of the dumbest and most heartless things this administration has done. Maybe that's not politically savvy of me to say -- I feel that "this is morally reprehensible" has pretty low valence as an argument these days -- but I think some things should be beyond politics.
I think the Democratic party is on the verge of sucking its way to national irrelevance, so I agree with you there.
But part of Trump's success is that he is nakedly, openly, brazenly corrupt, in a way that would have made Richard Nixon and Spiro "Taking bags of bribe cash in the White House" Agnew blush (not to mention any of their successors), but he gets a free pass on all of it, even from centrist good government types. The ballroom is open corruption.
I used to represent a manufacturing client that required every meeting - whether with operational workers, in-house counsel, or C-suite types - to begin with a relevant safety briefing. On the shop floor, it would be about hard hats and eyewash stations. In a conference room, it would be about fire exits and trip hazards. This was, of course, silly in a sense. But it was pretty effective at reminding everyone that safety was a very high priority for the company.
This is why routine, required land acknowledgements are a terrible idea, because they have such a powerful signalling function about priorities. I agree with Ben, and I'm surprised at Josh and Megan's surprise that he found them so offputting.
Suggest substantive policies to improve conditions for Native Americans, absolutely, but the message transmitted by the land acknowledgements is not that.
The funny thing is they're so rote, I don't think they even actually do anything to get people inside the party to think more substantively about those issues, whereas I suspect the safety briefings at least made the office workers a little more cognizant of trip hazards.
this podcast should have a pillar that it will do everything it can to spoil a Newsom nomination. I say this as a Californian. He cannot be the nominee. We will lose be a million. It has to be a Shapiro or Whitmer type.
I think you are all wrong on the ballroom!
I don't know that I'm ready to go the full JVL and say it should be knocked down on day 1 of the next administration, but this ballroom is a giant pay to play exercise. Surely none of you are naive enough to think that the "private funding" isn't bribery or extortion?
I doubt that any of you would have defended President Obama, or President GWB, if either of them had up and bulldozed the East Wing, after lying that they would not, and then tried to fund the building of a ballroom by collecing money from people who wanted favors from the Admin or just wanted to stay on the Admin's good side.
I got the sense from the pod that your pro-ballroom stance was a special dispensaton to Trump, as opposed to a believe that future Presidents should also have a free hand to demolish various government structures they don't own (inclduing Trump's ballroom!). It makes me wonder if you in a kind of 5-stages bargaining phase? "Let him have his ballroom to play with if it sidetracks him from his mission to ruin the country?" I could appreciate that if I thought it woulfd work. Unfortunately he has largely delegated the job of ruining the country to people like Stephen Miller, Pam Bondi, and Pete Hegseth.
I'm left to wonder if this is just cynical centrism on your part. Siding with Trump on this one just to not get your podcast categoized as being too left wing.
I don't think anyone is going to categorize this podcast as being too left-wing. The headline topics for the last two episodes have been about how the Democratic party sucks and needs to change to win more often (and not by moving to the left on some issues, good heavens no!). I'm being glib, of course, but I don't think there's cynicism in the way you describe it.
(I don't necessarily disagree with those observations about the Democrats btw)
Anyway, I don't really care that much about the ballroom thing. Yes, there's all sorts of problematic things about it, but given the incessant, daily drumbeat of "Look at me! Look at what I said!" outrages and corruptions bursting from the mouth and mind of the great leader, renovating the White House is pretty far down the list of offences to me.
Partly because of the industry I'm in, the thing that got me the most in this administration was the needless and cruel gutting of USAID. I know foreign aid is not high on the "we need to keep this" priority list of most Americans (people seem to think it's way more costly to the budget than it actually is), but in terms of sheer number of lives affected it's one of the dumbest and most heartless things this administration has done. Maybe that's not politically savvy of me to say -- I feel that "this is morally reprehensible" has pretty low valence as an argument these days -- but I think some things should be beyond politics.
I think the Democratic party is on the verge of sucking its way to national irrelevance, so I agree with you there.
But part of Trump's success is that he is nakedly, openly, brazenly corrupt, in a way that would have made Richard Nixon and Spiro "Taking bags of bribe cash in the White House" Agnew blush (not to mention any of their successors), but he gets a free pass on all of it, even from centrist good government types. The ballroom is open corruption.
The campaign promise should be to rename the ballroom after Alvin Bragg on Day One.