As a registered Republican who refrained from voting for Trump no fewer than six times (if we’re including primaries), I feel absolutely no qualms about telling Democrats in Maine that they need to suck it up and vote against this pathologically lying brute. Republicans in Louisiana literally handed the governorship to the Dems back in the 90s rather than elect a klansmen. It’s not asking too much to pass on the neo-Nazi in favor of the most liberal Republican senator in the country.
Also, I never want to hear this bullshit about how the GOP “refused to do the right thing” back in 2016 again. The number of prominent Republicans who openly refused to vote for Trump was so long that it has its own Wikipedia page. Compare that to the absolute cowardice the Democratic Party is exhibiting here, all for a man who has done nothing to earn their loyalty and is probably going to lose.
The people making excuses for Platner sound exactly like the people who made excuses for Trump in 2016. I don't understand how so many people are going all in on a guy they know nothing about other than that he's good at saying things they want to hear, when there are so many skeletons in his closet and very very likely to be more coming out once the deadline for switching candidates in Maine passes in July. Are they going to continue to stand by him if there are serious allegations of domestic violence or sexual assault? Can he, like Trump, still have support if he shoots a guy on Fifth Avenue?
Enough people have decided that character no longer matters when it comes to our elected representatives. Nothing has happened in the last decade to convince them otherwise. Why worry about the old rules when the other side isn't?
Seeing as he was apparently very active on a dating site for teenagers, I fully expect there to be a revelation about him dating someone underage in the pipeline. It’ll be fun trying to see Ro “Epstein class” Khanna spin that one.
What "dating site for teenagers"? I don't think this is true. Is this about Kik?
As I understand it's a messaging / social media app that is popular among teenagers, or for shady anonymous stuff in general, but that doesn't mean it's exclusively for teenagers or exclusively for dating.
That seems shady to me, but that's not the same thing as the way you described it.
This guy seems like a lying creep, but let's not exaggerate or lie about him.
I don't understand why people feel the need to do that. It's kind of like with Trump, it seems like no matter how bad someone is or how much solid actual evidence there is of them doing bad things, people still feel a need to lie and make false accusations against them, which does nothing but destroy your credibility and call into question the legitimate allegations.
From what I understand of Kik it's where you go to do really shady stuff because you just need an email address to be on there and none of the other things more reputable sites require for verification. Obviously we don't know (yet) what Platner was doing on there but if he were talking to teen girls on there it wouldn't be a surprise. And given that he's a guy with a Nazi tattoo and multiple allegations of assaulting women, speculating that he might be talking to teen girls on a teen girl site is not exactly smearing him.
it’s interesting to watch Congress do absolutely nothing to stop Trump from basically doing whatever he wants like go to war in Iran and then lie that it’s not a war, and then lie about all sorts of reasons were there. Or look at doge— how was any of that remotely legal and why didn’t anyone do anything about it? Why isn’t Congress doing anything about affordability? It’s all this bullshit.
I think that the Democratic Party has to go a long way to reach the moral morasse of the Republicans and that includes Collins.
This isn't the presidential election, so there's no direct comparison. And the Republicans did elect Trump despite the long list on the Wikipedia page, so they were cowards and didn't do the right thing.
What's my screen name? I accept your apology for the unhinged accusations in your rant. And it sounds like you're awfully defensive about Republicans for someone who allegedly accepts that both parties are awful.
Yes, everyone is acting like the choice is him or Trump. But it's not the choice. The biggest example of Collins "enabling" him was Kavanaugh. And their problem with Kavanaugh is "supposedly" much more nebulous accusations than the accusations against Platner.
My rubicon with Collins, as someone who voted for her in the past although I'm out of state now, is actually her total failure to provide oversight of Trump's wars despite being on several national security committees. And she's voted for the last couple tax cuts that are disastrous for our national financial health. She's had her moments for sure, but Trump and the Republicans have made her take some tough votes and now she's currespondingly less popular.
All that to say, I think we're assuming too much national media narrative about this situation. In real life, people have more concrete reasons both for/against Platner and Collins both.
I live in Maine. I don't love this guy, but nobody here actually believes he's a neo-Nazi. Why? Because most Southern Mainers know someone who has known Platner for years. The state has a pretty small population, and while Northern Maine is different, there is hardly anyone up there, and those who are would probably consider the tattoo a reason to vote for him.
Never have I experienced more forcefully the difference between what's happening in the place I live and the crazy shit people believe about it based on the sketchiest amount of information picked up online. There are reasons to be less than thrilled with Platner. He's a guy with tremendous charisma who seems to have gone through life without suffering much in the way of consequences because of it. He seems reckless and inexperienced to me, but he's not a Nazi.
What outsiders consistently fail to realize is that you are experiencing this campaign indirectly, via news reports and podcasts and online comments, while the campaign itself is all about retail politics. Platner makes several public appearances (town halls, etc.) every single week. I don't know anyone who has not been to one. (I live in a small but fairly blue town.) His local headquarters is always packed with volunteers. Yard signs line the road. There is literally nothing you can say to dissuade them because you mostly don't know what you're talking about. What some pseudonymous rando posts on Substack carries no weight compared to a person's impressions of someone they *have actually met and conversed with.*
Additionally, you seem to think the Democratic establishment supports Platner, when they do not. Just as Republicans are divided over Trump, Dems are divided over Platner, which is why they tried to run Mills against him. The fact that the DNC doesn't like Platner is in fact a major reason why his supporters love him. They view his campaign as a rebellion against the party's leadership. Similarly, negative stories about him in the NYT are viewed as the establishment trying to tear down an inspirational new leader. Plenty of Platner supporters think the paper is doing the bidding of the DNC.
Nevertheless, the voters of Maine chose him in the primary and it doesn't really matter what you or the DNC thinks about that. The lecturing and meddling, even to a skeptic like myself, comes across as ignorant and high-handed, and Mainers absolutely hate people "from away" telling them what to do. So all of this has just cemented his support in many circles.
Because you have no understanding of Maine's politics, you also fail to understand why Platner is possibly the only Democratic candidate who could unseat Collins. I voted for him in the primary for that reason. The swing voters in Northern Maine are the sort of people who may well like Platner's rough edges, the fact that he fucked up in the past and has tried to reform. They really, really, don't like processed establishment politicians.
That said, I agree that a lot of Platner's supporters, particularly the ones outside of Maine, are creepily reminiscent of MAGA in their unflappable devotion and unwillingness to hear criticism of the guy. There's no reason to think he'd be a competent senator, but we all want Collins, who consistently supports Trump when it counts, out.
I don’t think Platner is a Nazi because he has a Totenkopf tattoo. But He is a lying scoundrel who denied he knew full well that that tattoo he had was an icon of the SS. He is a prep school educated person who certainly was aware of WW2 history and most likely saw photos of Heinrich Himmler with the Totenkopf on his hat. He’s a two faced fraud, not a Nazi.
“Lecturing and meddling” lol. Babe, I’m from NY. You think you’re the first person to have people from other states weigh in on your political candidates online? Spare me.
I don't get the "how dare people from other states have opinions about our candidate." I don't care when people have opinions (even wrong ones) about senate candidates where I live, and I'm plenty happy when they criticize our disasterous mayor. I personally would not vote for someone who had a Nazi tattoo for ages, and Platner's particular take on politics has turned me off since the first fundraising text he sent me (if people out of state aren't supposed to have opinions, can we also be left out of the fundraising efforts?).
All this back and forth over the Nazi tattoo. Did he know? When did he know it? etc etc. Then you throw in all kinds of absolute failures of sniff tests on whether he's a decent human being and...
And all I'm thinking is:
The guy has zero background and a Nazi tattoo. Why are we even considering this person?
I'd consider voting for a reformed Neo Nazi who had a history of change over this guy.
And like you said, it's not even like you're choosing between him and some loon like MTG.
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And there's nothing more absurd than a Bourgeoisie Socialist. I mean, seriously? How fake can you get? Just take your business. Distribute it to your works. Fucking Flour companies do it, you can too.
It is unfortunate that Platner is the Democratic candidate in Maine. But all of his deficiencies are outweighed by the need for Democrats to re-take the senate to provide the kind of check on Trump's power that Republicans have failed to do. It's really that simple. It sucks we're in this situation, as a country.
And you really think that Republicans didn’t feel that way in 2016? You don’t think they saw Hillary Clinton as a massive threat to their own beliefs and goals (especially since this was right when the antiwar coalition on the right was ascendant)? It only doesn’t make sense if you believe that Dems are the “good” guys and that Reps are the “bad” guys (and that Reps should just accept that they’re the bad guys because Dems say so).
1. In no universe are Graham Platner and all of his failings even comparable the absolute disaster that is Donald Trump.
2. There is no way in hell that the junior senator from Maine is in any kind of comparable position to the President of the United States of America to enact lasting immense damage on the country and the world.
3. Republicans in 2016 may have relied on this lame excuse (truly lame: enduring 4 years of Hillary Clinton for Republicans would be no worse than Democrats enduring 4 years of a John McCain or a Mitt Romney), but how to excuse the ones who voted for him again in 2020 and 2024 even after the disaster of January 6th and all of the grifting in Trump 1.0. and how about all the ones who continue to support him and enable him even now?
Platner may well be an idiot or a jerk... And may prove to be an embarrassment to Maine Democrats. But at the end of the day he will be more like a vote for a Tommy Tuberville than Donald Trump.
100000000% to hear the fucking cowardice of Jessie and Katie saying they would hold their nose and vote for him was satisfying in that it revealed that their standards never existed in the first place.
Thank you, do you have the other half of this medallion that was placed around my neck as a child? I have been behind on the podcast and just listened to this, and I must say I feel the same way. I was always center right, but never a Republican until this spring when I registered to vote against Ken Paxton, who might as well be Graham Planter without the tattoo.
I have dyslexia, please disregard all my other comments. (God, that's so cringe to say, but it's true, and I've probably lost all credibility with this comment section, but whatever.)
There is nothing more entertaining than the bourgeoisie confusedly trying to define working class as exactly that category that includes them and excludes everyone earning more than them.
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It’s decidedly not complicated. Platner is not working class.
Maybe a tangent, but I cringed somewhat when Katie described herself as being from "a different socioeconomic class" than Jesse. I'd argue that they're from different economic strata within the *same* social class. Both have highly educated parents and a familial expectation of academic attainment or intellectual development, even though Jesse's family is almost certainly wealthier.
Katie *loves* pretending to be working class on the basis of having a few service-industry jobs after college. Who can forget when she listened to a single podcast and then confidently lectured Jesse about how the U.S. no longer has any tool-and-die shops? Or when she declared "everyone is broke at 27"?
To be fair to her, I can understand this perception when she’s surrounded by people who are from far wealthier backgrounds and never worked a non-media job at all.
She also loves pretending to be southern when she's from Asheville.
I got into a back and forth with her about the tool and die comment, myself being someone who has worked designing tools and dies in a shitty little office above the tool and die shop. She told me to go listen to the NPR podcast she got it from (because that's where the truth will be found, not from my own lying eyes.)
Her comment was that it's impossible to make things in America because we don't have the knowledge to make things anymore. Well, I listened to the podcast, and the moral of the story is that it's harder to make things in America because of extensive offshoring, but the episode included an interview with a tool and die shop foreman and concluded with the 100% American Made grill scraper going to market... so... she heard what she wanted to hear I guess.
The gist I got from it is our capacity is diminished. That you couldn't just flip a switch and tomorrow scale up to all our needs for domestic production because the pool of skilled labor just isn't there.
Seems foolish anyone would suggest that literally zero of any skill, trade, or hobby is occurring in a country as large as the U.S. Someone, somewhere is doing it.....question is, can they do it at capacity?
Which, I think the answer is absolutely not. It'd take time, probably less than most think but more than you'd hope, to fully transition.
And, of course, that's ignoring the real cost of production for these things if we moved them here.
Personally, I like living better than a King for a fraction of the cost. So I say keep the markets open and bring on the comparative advantage.
Though we should require exporters to meet minimum standards of safety, working conditions, etc.
Yeah, our manufacturing capabilities have taken a hit in ways that have become matters of national security interest. But suggesting we can't or don't know how to do something is another matter entirely. It would certainly take time to scale up production, but her summation of the case (there are things we don't even know how to make anymore) and the actual result of that episode (they made the widget, but it's more expensive) weren't aligned.
"Though we should require exporters to meet minimum standards of safety, working conditions, etc."
It shocked me in one Episode when Katie confidently declared Texas as obviously "white" when it's ranked as the 5th most ethnically diverse state in the union. I guess she naps a lot on those cross-country trips!
There's a perception in the North and West that the South is all White Supremacist and segregated.
And while it absolutely has its racial tensions, it's the most integrated place I've lived and has some of the highest minority populations. Certainly the highest black populations.
It really depends. My two PIs were married and made a household income close to one million a year.
Even modestly paid professors are still, usually, squarely in the upper middle class for their area.
I spot checked a small town, 100k, public university salary for a full professor of literature. It's around 92k/year. So a dual income humanities professors would make 184k in a very _low_ cost of living area.
That household income would be 3.3x the median household income for the area. . . . they'd be considered "rich" by most of their peers.
Yeah, starting at 60k probably means bumping that 90k as a full / tenured professor eh?
Anyway, they're definitely professional class and in most areas are in the same country club (figuratively speaking) as the lawyers, doctors, etc. if a little lower on salary at the start.
Im curious about the students and SNAP. To receive it they’d have to qualify (be actually in need) of they’re committing fraud (lying about being a dependent).
I find most who insist the most that they’re not rich are the ones who use that as an excuse to commit some fraud or another.
Like I know a large, very financially well off family that shuffles assets around the family to make one or the other look poor when it’s time to apply for college. Because they’re also an ethnic minority and send their kids to private schools in prep….its all but guaranteed free rides to Ivy for all the cousins.
People are always going to find ways to game the system. If the rules are too strict that means that people who DO actually need it often get shut out. I didn’t qualify for any financial aid for college until after I was 25 because my father’s income was still considered in my eligibility for aid. We are estranged but he makes north of 100k. I have supported myself since I was 18. My life started to really get on track after COVID tbh. The additional unemployment money helped me turn a lot of things around in my life and set me up for where I’m at now. I’m finishing my bachelor’s, working full time, and I have a skilled trade (massage therapy).
Yeah, this ranks right up there with being a self made man/woman…..with just a little help in the form of private schools, college, and down payment for a home in a HCOL area….but hey! Like, that’s my _parents_ money…not mine….”
I went to school with soooooo many of these kids. Most of them socialists of some flavour or another.
I am self-made other than the $3 million/year revenue business my father gave me an upper management job at and controlling ownership of when I was 25. I did it all myself!
It's like the antisemites who want Israelis to up and leave Israel to the Palestinians while living and going to school on "stolen land" with zero plan to return it to the native Americans.
Except for the Sentinelese who murder everyone who approaches their island, and the words “There is no ethical ABDL roleplay without a free Palestine” mean nothing to them, the lucky bastards.
I love this phenomenon. You find the same thing with the word "rich". Sure we make more than 90% of the country and have a summer home and will retire at 50, but we aren't "rich".
Katie is living in a million-dollar house and Jesse is currently blowing off a book deal to travel around and go to dinner parties with media people. I am absolutely confident they are both in at least the 95th percentile of Americans.
If I recall correctly they also found Jesse's childhood home, and while I love to bust Katie's balls for her salt-of-the-earth act, it's clear that Jesse's family is extremely wealthy.
You can easily figure out how much Jesse and Katie make by multiplying the number of paid subscribers and the cost of the subscription. Both of them are the 1%!
Jessica lives either in Singapore or Hong Kong so she's probably just an hourly contractor. Katie has said in the past she uses a concierge service in lieu of health insurance. Unclear what Jesse does.
I would certainly hope they're putting the Substack revenue into an LLC and are paying themselves a salary out of that, and aren't just splitting it 50/50 into separate personal bank accounts. That would be insane.
Years ago I had a conversation with a young woman bemoaning how she had to get a new dress for every party while her brothers could just wear whatever tux was not at the cleaners. (I came from a middle class family, where state college was the dream).
She was a nice person, but she really had no idea that most people, including me, did not live like this. When she referred to someone else as rich, I finally had to say something, which was, "Mary, YOU are rich." No no no no no, she said. So I tried to get her to define what rich meant, and what we finally got to was that the rich people are the ones who owned original paintings, if you only had signed prints, you weren't rich.
The under discussed scandal is how a guy who's apparently so seriously disabled that he has a 100% VA disability rating is also well enough to run and serve as a senator.
For comparison, Senator Tammy Duckworth lost both her legs in combat and has a 20% VA disability rating.
Yeah that's something to consider about how VA disabilities work. FWIW he hasn't shied away from it. Like it's not a secret to anyone back home that's why he can make a go of it in aquaculture. He talks about it all the time.
Thank you for bringing this up. This is a not a popular thing to discuss, but it also strikes me as pretty suspicious that this guy is so high functioning yet rated as 100% disabled. One thing to consider is that one of his disabilities is PTSD. PTSD, while a genuine condition that can be disabling , is also extremely easy to fake (or by very least exaggerate) because it is primarily based on self-report.
I once went hunting and the ranch hand was on 100% disability for sleep apnea lol. I shot a pig and watched as he dragged it out of the bush and butchered it for me.
I know several vets who are on 100% disability and pay no property taxes but are able to go on all kinds of extreme outdoor adventures and live like retirees in their 30s. I don't believe any of them saw combat.
I hate Platner's guts, but it doesn't take anything to get to 100% anymore. The program is so incredibly broken, and it doesn't help that those of us in the veterans class have decided to throw our morals aside and cheer ourselves on while we fleece the American taxpayer.
I once went hunting and the ranch hand was on 100% disability for sleep apnea lol. I shot a pig and watched as he dragged it out of the bush and butchered it for me.
So jesse thinks that the person accusing the ‘parasitic middleman’ ‘zionist consultant class’ of manipulating the media should be given the benefit of the doubt on whether she’s ‘actually’ an anti'-semite? Fucking really?
‘Look, Katie, I’ve told you before I don’t think it’s charitable to call people racist just because they say we need to band together to protect our women from low-IQ thugs from the Inner City.”
Some additional context that was not provided in the episode about Susan Collins:
1. She voted to convict Trump during his second Senate impeachment trial after Jan 6.
2. She is openly pro-choice despite being a republican. This is part of what got some Mainers really pissed at her after she voted Kavanaugh onto the Supreme Court. Everyone pretended at the time they were made about the guy's allegations, but it's become clear that they expected Collins to try to fight to save Roe. Collins will point out that she voted for all of Obama's and Biden's Supreme Court Justices, and actually voted against Amy Coney Barrett, saying it was too close to the election.
3. She was one of the key votes along with John McCain saving Obamacare during Trump's first term in 2018.
4. She voted against the "Big Beautiful Bill"
5. Trump hates her and said she should "never be elected to office again" after she voted to block him from using military force against Venezuela in January.
6. Colins was photographed holding a MAGA hat in some sort of humiliation ritual the month after that.
7. She is chair of the Senate Committee on Appropriations giving her a huge amount of power to secure Federal funding for Maine projects that Platner will not be in a position to obtain.
I’ll close by mentioning that Collins is often hesitant to make clear how much she differs from the average republican, because she ultimately still relies on votes from Trump-loving republicans to win. Her M.O. is that enough centrist democrats to get her shtick they they vote with her along with republicans, despite overall democratic opposition being strong against her every six years since 1996.
Susan would never approve this message because she is trying to subtly signal to centrist dems that she is on their team, while also signal to MAGA that she is on their team at the same time. She cannot win without the votes of Trump supporters in Maine
I dont hate her. As chair of senate appropriations she prevented the NIH budget from being cut. The Trump administration found ways to prevent the money being disbursed but it is still allocated and after the midterms things may improve in a way they couldn't if Collins hadn't been in that job. She voted witn Trump 95% of the time, but ill bet most voted with him 100% and it mattered which 5% she chose. If she voted against him all the time he'd have found a way to get rid of her.
Thank you, I was too lazy to come over here and type all this out. But she's been arguably the most liberal Republican in the Senate for a long time, and while I understand the argument for voting her out--Nick Catoggio made it pretty forcefully last month--it doesn't make sense to characterize her as basically a Trumper. She votes strategically for obvious reasons, as you and RMC laid out.
She and McCain were the decisive votes that saved Obamacare in 2018. She also voted for tons of liberal Supreme Court justices few other republicans did. She also voted to impeach Trump
Meh... The Obamacare vote was really the only time where she truly put her neck on the line where the outcome would have been different had she voted differently. Sorry, but I'll take an inexperienced, bloviating quasi-communist, possibly Nazi tattoo having dumbass instead of her if he will perform an ACTUAL check on the unmitigated disaster of Trump. I don't care how much pork Susan can bring home..enough to ladle a big slab of belly fat into every Mainer's porridge bowl in the morning. What I really care about is the 51st vote against the next Alito on the Supreme Court, or the 51st vote against Trump's latest grift.
Muslims in general allow cousin marriage. I'm not personally the product of such a relationship, but my cousins are. One of them has had kidney issues since birth and ultimately needed a transplant, and another is so severely disabled he has the cognition of a 2 year old. But people are so blinded by their unwavering faith that they just see it as a challenge from Allah rather than the direct consequence of their own choice to marry a relative. And people blame the parents, often saying they must have committed some sort of awful sin to have such a child. I once asked my uncle who's against cousin marriage why it's so prevalent in an age where we KNOW the harm it can cause, and he just said that it doesn't matter what you tell these people, they will do what they have always done in the name of tradition.
Yeah, it's pretty hard to separate the relatively low risks associated with first-cousin marriage as a one-time thing from the problems that arise when it's an established cultural pattern. But it's pretty interesting to me that kinship marriage is a phenomenon that is followed by tradition in some cultures and eschewed in others.
I still have trouble wrapping my head around double first cousin marriages. Imagine two sisters from one family marry two brothers from another family, those two couples have one kid each, and those kids marry each other. Your family tree becomes a shrub.
Katie's Komplaint Korner is always one of my favorite segments.
Also, fuck every "leftist" who decided that Graham Platner's whole existence wasn't a deal breaker and the Ivy Leaguers who decided to put him forward as a candidate. When I was a boy the left actually had a claim to the moral high ground.
Rewind the clock twelve months ago before anyone has heard of Platner. If someone says "antizionism isn't necessary antisemitism", I'd agree. Well, what are the signs that someone who is antizionist is also antisemitic? I'm very sure that 99% of people would have agreed that one sign that someone who is antizionist is also antisemitic is if they have a Nazi tattoo on their chest for two decades.
Katie. Jesse. If you think that Democrats becoming the party of neo-Nazis is going to hurt the GOP, then it might be time to finally give up weed. I want Platner to lose because I think electing someone like that would be terrible for our country. But Graham Platner winning would be the greatest godsend to the Republican Party since James Comey. The GOP has already been getting increasingly diverse with each passing election. Just imagine what the party will look like once the Dems usher in a new crop of extremists, socialists, and antisemites.
Trump literally dines with neo-Nazis. Platner is obviously not a Nazi. And in this context it s actually kind of funny for you to talk about Democrats becoming the party of the neo-Nazis. I am assuming you are an anti-Democrat partisan.
The left has been calling Trump Israel’s bitch for the past two years. His daughter is Jewish, his grandchildren are Jewish, his son-in-law, who he put in a position of great power, is Jewish. His biggest backers are Jewish. Yes, I think the guy with a Nazi symbol seared into his flesh is a Nazi.
My original comment is currently at the top of the comments section. Maybe you should go read it if you want to understand where I’m coming from.
There is much more to being a Nazi than just being against Jews. Having a bunch of Jewish relatives and living up Bibi's butt does not make Donald Trump into something other than what he is: a proto-fascist authoritarian wannabe who dines with Nick Fuentes, makes excuses for Proud Boys and other white supremacists, pardons traitors, rails against shithole countries, calls the press "the enemy of the people", insults immigrants as invading vermin, spreads lies about Haitian immigrants eating pets, regularly insults his fellow Americans, scapegoats anyone he doesn't like. You seem very fixated in this comment thread to making Graham Platner into the Trump-equivalent Boogeyman of the left. Maybe in the end he is. But so far I'm not convinced. You exaggerate every flaw that any rumor mentions about Platner. But you have zero credibility because you seem to downplay the absolute shit show that is Trump. They are not in any way comparable. Not even close. And Trump's flaws are not rumor. They're playing out right in front of our very faces everyday.
Great. More stuff from the media class about stupid people are in Maine for wanting to vote for him.
I am from Maine So I talked to my family, a lot and people I know there about this and people in Maine are kind of disgusted by the media and the superficiality of what they’re putting out there. Policies matter.
I’ve been talking to Normie Democrats who are supporting him and you can sit around and talk about his dad’s money all you want, but the reality is he’s going around the state and talking to people in an individual level and understands their issues and that’s what matters.
The person who Is full of shit on a more damaging level is Susan Collins but people don’t wanna look at that. The New York Times published a puff piece about her. It’s just so gross. Also, she won’t campaign and talk to voters.
I guess this makes me frustrated about the heterodox sphere. It feels like people question things all in one type of direction.
Yeah I'm with Somethingsomething on this. I have nothing invested in Platner, but my sense from talking with voters back home in Maine is that their choices are based on perceived material concerns. It's anecdotal, maybe Collins wins in a landslide, but the online conversation is not the real life conversation for the Mainers I've talked too (even if one thinks it should be!). It's one of the more interesting reminders to me lately that online discourse is interesting but is only part of the story.
that’s not what the argument is. I think that I’m surprised about how incredibly uncurious people are regarding maine voters and hold an idea that only media people can really understand what is actually going on.
I'm a Maine voter, and you are absolutely correct. The disconnect between what media/online people confidently believe is going on and what is actually happening on the ground is very striking.
Understanding people's issues is MUCH different than being able to help them. Lefties are good at identifying problems, unfortunately their solutions are terrible because they ignore human nature and foreseeable consequences of policies. Rent control is a good example; it sounds good but doesn't work.
What makes you think that this man who lies about absolutely everything is really going to vote the way he’s claiming he will right now? Weren’t progressives burned enough by Fetterman?
I completely agree that he's a high risk choice for my Maine lefty friends. But he's communicating to people about the things that matter to them, as well as progressive politics to those that care about it. No idea whether he follows through honestly, but just to say why people back home are responding to him.
David Duke also communicated well to the people back when he ran for governor and only lost because he was knee-capped by his party. I don’t see how anyone can excuse someone having a Nazi tattoo for twenty years, but I guess I shouldn’t be so naive.
You don’t seem interested in why people are voting for him. I care about the voters because this is my home state and I think they’re doing a legitimate reasons despite what judgment you have.
it’s not a deflection, but if you wanna think that way, you can because you seem pretty committed in terms of thinking that you are absolutely right and there’s no question about it
Just for what it's worth, I am not a Platner supporter. As a currently non-Maine voter (from there, live elsewhere right now) I have the luxury of shrugging my shoulders about it.
I mean, I worry about the person in Washington, who has actually lied repeatedly and bullshitted like Susan Collins. let her face the voters and earn their vote, but she won’t do it and she won’t deal with the consequences of her own record so I don’t know why I would look at Platner as worse than her.
And if someone said the same thing about a Republican candidate who just so happened to have a Nazi tattoo for twenty years, would you find that acceptable?
but you’re making everything into an abstraction. It’s interesting to think about how much this podcast has talked about simplistic, narratives, and people who are cut off from the way that people think and how that has damaged us in terms of politics.
This seems part of it and the reality is that you’re asking me about somebody who’s abstract and not an actual candidate
Very similar conversations with folks back home about Platner. I have nothing invested in his narrative, but what I hear from people is that he's connecting with progressives on their ideals, and both progressives and non-progressives on their material concerns.
Sam: What is it with these old politicians hanging on to power past their prime? California had Senator Diane Feinstein who her staff had to wheel out and prop up. It's disgusting. I guess a person can't be embarrassed if their brain is fogged up. And Janet Mills is 80!!?? Didn't she see what happened to Biden? And I'm sure that's why Collins is coasting. She can only sit at home and campaign by zoom. No energy…..
if Susan Collins wants to get those voters, she could actually address their concerns. She won’t. She won’t do anything to address people’s concerns, but somehow Mainers are supposed to vote for her
I've voted for her in the past but if I were a Maine voter now I wouldn't. I think she's just coasting on past support and hoping she hasn't alienated too many people. Risky bet imo.
Yeah totally. Not to make everything about the concerns of aging in our public figures but it's huge. A big part of why Platner won the primary was Janet Mills being 80. And Susan Collins definitely presents as having aged significantly since her last election. I'm not sure if that's why she isn't campaigning hard, but maybe.
It also helps Platner that he has no record. Many Mainers blame Mills for various things they don't like that happened during her terms. Often they're wrong. I've seen them claim that the state had a budget surplus under LePage and a deficit under Mills, when in fact the surplus has been larger under Mills, apart from the emergency period during the pandemic. Mills was a good governor, but she's unpopular with the kind of low-info voters who blame the president for inflation, etc. The sort of voters who voted for both Obama (first term) and Trump (first term) could be persuaded to go for Platner as a rebuke to Trump and the general situation. They are grumpy! This is something of a gamble, though. And there was no way Mills could have beaten Collins.
This is just in regard to the Emma and Freddie section. Are we now supposed to believe that the NYT that seems to be the cradle and forward operating base of the activist journalist movement that prizes DEI policies, social justice, trans care for minors and Hamas is in thrall to the Clinton-Obama wing of the party?
It's like when someone says the NYT is really conservative and has been supporting trans genocide.
Correct. Like most things, when the extremes of either side hate you and accuse you of working for the other, you're probably right where you should be
The shit that people on the left are willing to overlook is bad. Really bad. The shit people on the right is really bad too, but we've known that for decades. It's not anti-semitism, it's anti-Zionism; as though anyone anywhere can define what anti-Zionism is. It means anything from being against the Netanyahu regime to wanting all Jews cleansed from the middle east and the world at large. Every day that passes I feel it in my bones, bad times are coming for the Jews. And I'm not even Jewish, I'm just old. There are real bad times coming, and it breaks my heart that all the warning signs are being ignored, all the excuses are being made.
As a registered Republican who refrained from voting for Trump no fewer than six times (if we’re including primaries), I feel absolutely no qualms about telling Democrats in Maine that they need to suck it up and vote against this pathologically lying brute. Republicans in Louisiana literally handed the governorship to the Dems back in the 90s rather than elect a klansmen. It’s not asking too much to pass on the neo-Nazi in favor of the most liberal Republican senator in the country.
Also, I never want to hear this bullshit about how the GOP “refused to do the right thing” back in 2016 again. The number of prominent Republicans who openly refused to vote for Trump was so long that it has its own Wikipedia page. Compare that to the absolute cowardice the Democratic Party is exhibiting here, all for a man who has done nothing to earn their loyalty and is probably going to lose.
The people making excuses for Platner sound exactly like the people who made excuses for Trump in 2016. I don't understand how so many people are going all in on a guy they know nothing about other than that he's good at saying things they want to hear, when there are so many skeletons in his closet and very very likely to be more coming out once the deadline for switching candidates in Maine passes in July. Are they going to continue to stand by him if there are serious allegations of domestic violence or sexual assault? Can he, like Trump, still have support if he shoots a guy on Fifth Avenue?
Enough people have decided that character no longer matters when it comes to our elected representatives. Nothing has happened in the last decade to convince them otherwise. Why worry about the old rules when the other side isn't?
Integrity and rational consistency? But people have rarely given a shit about these things on any side.
And this is how we got ants.
Seeing as he was apparently very active on a dating site for teenagers, I fully expect there to be a revelation about him dating someone underage in the pipeline. It’ll be fun trying to see Ro “Epstein class” Khanna spin that one.
What "dating site for teenagers"? I don't think this is true. Is this about Kik?
As I understand it's a messaging / social media app that is popular among teenagers, or for shady anonymous stuff in general, but that doesn't mean it's exclusively for teenagers or exclusively for dating.
That seems shady to me, but that's not the same thing as the way you described it.
This guy seems like a lying creep, but let's not exaggerate or lie about him.
I don't understand why people feel the need to do that. It's kind of like with Trump, it seems like no matter how bad someone is or how much solid actual evidence there is of them doing bad things, people still feel a need to lie and make false accusations against them, which does nothing but destroy your credibility and call into question the legitimate allegations.
From what I understand of Kik it's where you go to do really shady stuff because you just need an email address to be on there and none of the other things more reputable sites require for verification. Obviously we don't know (yet) what Platner was doing on there but if he were talking to teen girls on there it wouldn't be a surprise. And given that he's a guy with a Nazi tattoo and multiple allegations of assaulting women, speculating that he might be talking to teen girls on a teen girl site is not exactly smearing him.
it’s interesting to watch Congress do absolutely nothing to stop Trump from basically doing whatever he wants like go to war in Iran and then lie that it’s not a war, and then lie about all sorts of reasons were there. Or look at doge— how was any of that remotely legal and why didn’t anyone do anything about it? Why isn’t Congress doing anything about affordability? It’s all this bullshit.
I think that the Democratic Party has to go a long way to reach the moral morasse of the Republicans and that includes Collins.
This isn't the presidential election, so there's no direct comparison. And the Republicans did elect Trump despite the long list on the Wikipedia page, so they were cowards and didn't do the right thing.
I’m talking about elites within the party. Is there really not a single elected Democrat willing to renounce this guy?
What's my screen name? I accept your apology for the unhinged accusations in your rant. And it sounds like you're awfully defensive about Republicans for someone who allegedly accepts that both parties are awful.
Yes, everyone is acting like the choice is him or Trump. But it's not the choice. The biggest example of Collins "enabling" him was Kavanaugh. And their problem with Kavanaugh is "supposedly" much more nebulous accusations than the accusations against Platner.
My rubicon with Collins, as someone who voted for her in the past although I'm out of state now, is actually her total failure to provide oversight of Trump's wars despite being on several national security committees. And she's voted for the last couple tax cuts that are disastrous for our national financial health. She's had her moments for sure, but Trump and the Republicans have made her take some tough votes and now she's currespondingly less popular.
All that to say, I think we're assuming too much national media narrative about this situation. In real life, people have more concrete reasons both for/against Platner and Collins both.
I live in Maine. I don't love this guy, but nobody here actually believes he's a neo-Nazi. Why? Because most Southern Mainers know someone who has known Platner for years. The state has a pretty small population, and while Northern Maine is different, there is hardly anyone up there, and those who are would probably consider the tattoo a reason to vote for him.
Never have I experienced more forcefully the difference between what's happening in the place I live and the crazy shit people believe about it based on the sketchiest amount of information picked up online. There are reasons to be less than thrilled with Platner. He's a guy with tremendous charisma who seems to have gone through life without suffering much in the way of consequences because of it. He seems reckless and inexperienced to me, but he's not a Nazi.
What outsiders consistently fail to realize is that you are experiencing this campaign indirectly, via news reports and podcasts and online comments, while the campaign itself is all about retail politics. Platner makes several public appearances (town halls, etc.) every single week. I don't know anyone who has not been to one. (I live in a small but fairly blue town.) His local headquarters is always packed with volunteers. Yard signs line the road. There is literally nothing you can say to dissuade them because you mostly don't know what you're talking about. What some pseudonymous rando posts on Substack carries no weight compared to a person's impressions of someone they *have actually met and conversed with.*
Additionally, you seem to think the Democratic establishment supports Platner, when they do not. Just as Republicans are divided over Trump, Dems are divided over Platner, which is why they tried to run Mills against him. The fact that the DNC doesn't like Platner is in fact a major reason why his supporters love him. They view his campaign as a rebellion against the party's leadership. Similarly, negative stories about him in the NYT are viewed as the establishment trying to tear down an inspirational new leader. Plenty of Platner supporters think the paper is doing the bidding of the DNC.
Nevertheless, the voters of Maine chose him in the primary and it doesn't really matter what you or the DNC thinks about that. The lecturing and meddling, even to a skeptic like myself, comes across as ignorant and high-handed, and Mainers absolutely hate people "from away" telling them what to do. So all of this has just cemented his support in many circles.
Because you have no understanding of Maine's politics, you also fail to understand why Platner is possibly the only Democratic candidate who could unseat Collins. I voted for him in the primary for that reason. The swing voters in Northern Maine are the sort of people who may well like Platner's rough edges, the fact that he fucked up in the past and has tried to reform. They really, really, don't like processed establishment politicians.
That said, I agree that a lot of Platner's supporters, particularly the ones outside of Maine, are creepily reminiscent of MAGA in their unflappable devotion and unwillingness to hear criticism of the guy. There's no reason to think he'd be a competent senator, but we all want Collins, who consistently supports Trump when it counts, out.
Also, and again: Platner is not a neo-Nazi.
I don’t think Platner is a Nazi because he has a Totenkopf tattoo. But He is a lying scoundrel who denied he knew full well that that tattoo he had was an icon of the SS. He is a prep school educated person who certainly was aware of WW2 history and most likely saw photos of Heinrich Himmler with the Totenkopf on his hat. He’s a two faced fraud, not a Nazi.
I've said it before and I'll say it again, the tattoo doesn't crack my top 3 reasons not to vote for him.
Most politicians are two-faced frauds.
Someone on the Reddit thread of this ep said it best: he's not a Neo-Nazi, he's just a good old-fashioned Edgelord
“Lecturing and meddling” lol. Babe, I’m from NY. You think you’re the first person to have people from other states weigh in on your political candidates online? Spare me.
Babe, I also used to live in NYC. Glad to know that you have realized how uninformed you are about this.
I don't get the "how dare people from other states have opinions about our candidate." I don't care when people have opinions (even wrong ones) about senate candidates where I live, and I'm plenty happy when they criticize our disasterous mayor. I personally would not vote for someone who had a Nazi tattoo for ages, and Platner's particular take on politics has turned me off since the first fundraising text he sent me (if people out of state aren't supposed to have opinions, can we also be left out of the fundraising efforts?).
"I live in Maine" - Just because a cat had its kittens in the oven don't make 'em biscuits.
This post reminds me of all the out-of-staters rallying behind Sarah Gideon.
Exactly this.
All this back and forth over the Nazi tattoo. Did he know? When did he know it? etc etc. Then you throw in all kinds of absolute failures of sniff tests on whether he's a decent human being and...
And all I'm thinking is:
The guy has zero background and a Nazi tattoo. Why are we even considering this person?
I'd consider voting for a reformed Neo Nazi who had a history of change over this guy.
And like you said, it's not even like you're choosing between him and some loon like MTG.
------
And there's nothing more absurd than a Bourgeoisie Socialist. I mean, seriously? How fake can you get? Just take your business. Distribute it to your works. Fucking Flour companies do it, you can too.
Neither of your analogies fits here.
It is unfortunate that Platner is the Democratic candidate in Maine. But all of his deficiencies are outweighed by the need for Democrats to re-take the senate to provide the kind of check on Trump's power that Republicans have failed to do. It's really that simple. It sucks we're in this situation, as a country.
And you really think that Republicans didn’t feel that way in 2016? You don’t think they saw Hillary Clinton as a massive threat to their own beliefs and goals (especially since this was right when the antiwar coalition on the right was ascendant)? It only doesn’t make sense if you believe that Dems are the “good” guys and that Reps are the “bad” guys (and that Reps should just accept that they’re the bad guys because Dems say so).
1. In no universe are Graham Platner and all of his failings even comparable the absolute disaster that is Donald Trump.
2. There is no way in hell that the junior senator from Maine is in any kind of comparable position to the President of the United States of America to enact lasting immense damage on the country and the world.
3. Republicans in 2016 may have relied on this lame excuse (truly lame: enduring 4 years of Hillary Clinton for Republicans would be no worse than Democrats enduring 4 years of a John McCain or a Mitt Romney), but how to excuse the ones who voted for him again in 2020 and 2024 even after the disaster of January 6th and all of the grifting in Trump 1.0. and how about all the ones who continue to support him and enable him even now?
Platner may well be an idiot or a jerk... And may prove to be an embarrassment to Maine Democrats. But at the end of the day he will be more like a vote for a Tommy Tuberville than Donald Trump.
But the point is about trading electoral success for dubious morals. Autumn is basically right.
How about we have some integrity and principles? It’ll be a pyrrhic victory if we take the senate back with this knob.
That will bite the country in the behind as it widens the partisan divide and knocks down barriers to rapists and Nazi supporters in public life.
Flight 93 election rationale's are hardly ever apt. Here maybe least of all. But if that's the price for your integrity 🤷🏼
100000000% to hear the fucking cowardice of Jessie and Katie saying they would hold their nose and vote for him was satisfying in that it revealed that their standards never existed in the first place.
Yeah. That was tremendously disappointing.
I have just given on voting altogether
At least show up and do a write-in, even if it’s for Mickey Mouse, in order to lower the proportion of the total vote that the nuts get.
Thank you, do you have the other half of this medallion that was placed around my neck as a child? I have been behind on the podcast and just listened to this, and I must say I feel the same way. I was always center right, but never a Republican until this spring when I registered to vote against Ken Paxton, who might as well be Graham Planter without the tattoo.
I think you misread my comment.
I did. My bad.
I have dyslexia, please disregard all my other comments. (God, that's so cringe to say, but it's true, and I've probably lost all credibility with this comment section, but whatever.)
It’s okay. Mistakes happen. I appreciate the apology.
There is nothing more entertaining than the bourgeoisie confusedly trying to define working class as exactly that category that includes them and excludes everyone earning more than them.
———
It’s decidedly not complicated. Platner is not working class.
Maybe a tangent, but I cringed somewhat when Katie described herself as being from "a different socioeconomic class" than Jesse. I'd argue that they're from different economic strata within the *same* social class. Both have highly educated parents and a familial expectation of academic attainment or intellectual development, even though Jesse's family is almost certainly wealthier.
Edited for public thread.
Katie *loves* pretending to be working class on the basis of having a few service-industry jobs after college. Who can forget when she listened to a single podcast and then confidently lectured Jesse about how the U.S. no longer has any tool-and-die shops? Or when she declared "everyone is broke at 27"?
To be fair to her, I can understand this perception when she’s surrounded by people who are from far wealthier backgrounds and never worked a non-media job at all.
She also loves pretending to be southern when she's from Asheville.
I got into a back and forth with her about the tool and die comment, myself being someone who has worked designing tools and dies in a shitty little office above the tool and die shop. She told me to go listen to the NPR podcast she got it from (because that's where the truth will be found, not from my own lying eyes.)
Her comment was that it's impossible to make things in America because we don't have the knowledge to make things anymore. Well, I listened to the podcast, and the moral of the story is that it's harder to make things in America because of extensive offshoring, but the episode included an interview with a tool and die shop foreman and concluded with the 100% American Made grill scraper going to market... so... she heard what she wanted to hear I guess.
I vaguely remember that episode.
The gist I got from it is our capacity is diminished. That you couldn't just flip a switch and tomorrow scale up to all our needs for domestic production because the pool of skilled labor just isn't there.
Seems foolish anyone would suggest that literally zero of any skill, trade, or hobby is occurring in a country as large as the U.S. Someone, somewhere is doing it.....question is, can they do it at capacity?
Which, I think the answer is absolutely not. It'd take time, probably less than most think but more than you'd hope, to fully transition.
And, of course, that's ignoring the real cost of production for these things if we moved them here.
Personally, I like living better than a King for a fraction of the cost. So I say keep the markets open and bring on the comparative advantage.
Though we should require exporters to meet minimum standards of safety, working conditions, etc.
Yeah, our manufacturing capabilities have taken a hit in ways that have become matters of national security interest. But suggesting we can't or don't know how to do something is another matter entirely. It would certainly take time to scale up production, but her summation of the case (there are things we don't even know how to make anymore) and the actual result of that episode (they made the widget, but it's more expensive) weren't aligned.
"Though we should require exporters to meet minimum standards of safety, working conditions, etc."
That's the rub, isn't it?
If we did enforce that though, it wouldn’t make us competitive…..it’d still be much cheaper to outsource.
Yep, didn’t surprise me one bit when both of them said on the Afroman episode that they’d never been to the Rust Belt.
At least when Jesse said he was familiar with Texas, he had the good sense to sheepishly clarify he’d only been to Austin.
It shocked me in one Episode when Katie confidently declared Texas as obviously "white" when it's ranked as the 5th most ethnically diverse state in the union. I guess she naps a lot on those cross-country trips!
There's a perception in the North and West that the South is all White Supremacist and segregated.
And while it absolutely has its racial tensions, it's the most integrated place I've lived and has some of the highest minority populations. Certainly the highest black populations.
Totally agree. Her parents are professors! It’s not about dollars.
professors don’t make lots of money but they do have prestige
It really depends. My two PIs were married and made a household income close to one million a year.
Even modestly paid professors are still, usually, squarely in the upper middle class for their area.
I spot checked a small town, 100k, public university salary for a full professor of literature. It's around 92k/year. So a dual income humanities professors would make 184k in a very _low_ cost of living area.
That household income would be 3.3x the median household income for the area. . . . they'd be considered "rich" by most of their peers.
the starting salary near me is $60k but I live in a LCOL. I’m an adjunct prof so I make less than $20k but obvs her dad is a full prof
Yeah, starting at 60k probably means bumping that 90k as a full / tenured professor eh?
Anyway, they're definitely professional class and in most areas are in the same country club (figuratively speaking) as the lawyers, doctors, etc. if a little lower on salary at the start.
Im curious about the students and SNAP. To receive it they’d have to qualify (be actually in need) of they’re committing fraud (lying about being a dependent).
I find most who insist the most that they’re not rich are the ones who use that as an excuse to commit some fraud or another.
Like I know a large, very financially well off family that shuffles assets around the family to make one or the other look poor when it’s time to apply for college. Because they’re also an ethnic minority and send their kids to private schools in prep….its all but guaranteed free rides to Ivy for all the cousins.
But it’s ok, cause they’re not _really_ rich.
Me too … it is fascinating!
The rules for CalFresh eligibility are apparently really loose when it comes to students:
https://www.getcalfresh.org/en/students/
I personally feel like that benefit should be for people who really need it, but apparently a lot of people have no qualms about gaming the system.
People are always going to find ways to game the system. If the rules are too strict that means that people who DO actually need it often get shut out. I didn’t qualify for any financial aid for college until after I was 25 because my father’s income was still considered in my eligibility for aid. We are estranged but he makes north of 100k. I have supported myself since I was 18. My life started to really get on track after COVID tbh. The additional unemployment money helped me turn a lot of things around in my life and set me up for where I’m at now. I’m finishing my bachelor’s, working full time, and I have a skilled trade (massage therapy).
Those look reasonable enough…I didn’t see anything about being a dependent though.
Thats the only condition id consider gaming….if you have rich parents and are a dependent, it should be under their income not yours.
Are CalFresh into prepping too?
I propose the label “hobby poor.” Like Jarvis Cocker sang in “Common People,” “If you called your dad he could stop it all.”
That's exactly what I thought of during the discussion about rich parents!
Laugh along with the common people
Laugh along, even though they're laughing at you
And the stupid things that you do
Because you think that poor is cool
Yeah, this ranks right up there with being a self made man/woman…..with just a little help in the form of private schools, college, and down payment for a home in a HCOL area….but hey! Like, that’s my _parents_ money…not mine….”
I went to school with soooooo many of these kids. Most of them socialists of some flavour or another.
I am self-made other than the $3 million/year revenue business my father gave me an upper management job at and controlling ownership of when I was 25. I did it all myself!
literally the first thing I thought of too! If he called his dad, he could stop it all...
Trustafarian is my favorite term for the unwashed wealthy.
God, an all-time classic song. When the song gets to the climax and he screams "You will NEVER understand..." I always get chills
We used to call that “slumming it.”
"hobby poor" and perhaps "class tourist"?
It's like the antisemites who want Israelis to up and leave Israel to the Palestinians while living and going to school on "stolen land" with zero plan to return it to the native Americans.
Like the fifth column said…..you know how many people on earth don’t live on colonised land?
Zero.
Except for the Sentinelese who murder everyone who approaches their island, and the words “There is no ethical ABDL roleplay without a free Palestine” mean nothing to them, the lucky bastards.
Very good chance that they were not the first people there.
Humanity's second chance lives on North Sentinel island!
I love this phenomenon. You find the same thing with the word "rich". Sure we make more than 90% of the country and have a summer home and will retire at 50, but we aren't "rich".
Katie is living in a million-dollar house and Jesse is currently blowing off a book deal to travel around and go to dinner parties with media people. I am absolutely confident they are both in at least the 95th percentile of Americans.
Katie lives in a million-dollar house?
Yeah, it was posted on Kiwi Farms.
If I recall correctly they also found Jesse's childhood home, and while I love to bust Katie's balls for her salt-of-the-earth act, it's clear that Jesse's family is extremely wealthy.
Curiously, whats extremely wealthy? Like a 5 milly home? 10?
There's a KF thread on Jesse & Katie, that's all I'll say.
If it's the one I see for sale, I wouldn't call them extremely wealthy.
They've probably had it for decades and should do well on the appreciation.
Looks upper middle class to me (if you define upper class as the capital class).
Okay, Katie.
You can easily figure out how much Jesse and Katie make by multiplying the number of paid subscribers and the cost of the subscription. Both of them are the 1%!
Ive been curious what their expenses look like….they do have staff. Full time, i assume benefits.
Jessica lives either in Singapore or Hong Kong so she's probably just an hourly contractor. Katie has said in the past she uses a concierge service in lieu of health insurance. Unclear what Jesse does.
I would certainly hope they're putting the Substack revenue into an LLC and are paying themselves a salary out of that, and aren't just splitting it 50/50 into separate personal bank accounts. That would be insane.
They’re probably giving it to the merch manager for safe keeping.
I'm quite sure that they've mentioned before that the podcast is technically owned by an LLC.
I don't disagree at all.
Years ago I had a conversation with a young woman bemoaning how she had to get a new dress for every party while her brothers could just wear whatever tux was not at the cleaners. (I came from a middle class family, where state college was the dream).
She was a nice person, but she really had no idea that most people, including me, did not live like this. When she referred to someone else as rich, I finally had to say something, which was, "Mary, YOU are rich." No no no no no, she said. So I tried to get her to define what rich meant, and what we finally got to was that the rich people are the ones who owned original paintings, if you only had signed prints, you weren't rich.
They learned it from Bernie.
And AOC.
The under discussed scandal is how a guy who's apparently so seriously disabled that he has a 100% VA disability rating is also well enough to run and serve as a senator.
For comparison, Senator Tammy Duckworth lost both her legs in combat and has a 20% VA disability rating.
The Economist had a good article a couple years ago about how VA benefits and disability ratings are out of control. https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2024/11/28/american-veterans-now-receive-absurdly-generous-benefits?giftId=MjE1MTRjMTUtMmUxOC00MTliLWIwNDgtMzgxYjc4MjY4NWNh&utm_campaign=gifted_article
Yeah the whole program needs to be cut in half at minimum.
Yeah that's something to consider about how VA disabilities work. FWIW he hasn't shied away from it. Like it's not a secret to anyone back home that's why he can make a go of it in aquaculture. He talks about it all the time.
I would not be surprised if Dad also paid for a lawyer to appeal his rating for him.
Thank you for bringing this up. This is a not a popular thing to discuss, but it also strikes me as pretty suspicious that this guy is so high functioning yet rated as 100% disabled. One thing to consider is that one of his disabilities is PTSD. PTSD, while a genuine condition that can be disabling , is also extremely easy to fake (or by very least exaggerate) because it is primarily based on self-report.
Most VA disability claim lawyers work on a contingency basis.
I once went hunting and the ranch hand was on 100% disability for sleep apnea lol. I shot a pig and watched as he dragged it out of the bush and butchered it for me.
VA disability? Because I'm about to cash in if not...
I know several vets who are on 100% disability and pay no property taxes but are able to go on all kinds of extreme outdoor adventures and live like retirees in their 30s. I don't believe any of them saw combat.
I hate Platner's guts, but it doesn't take anything to get to 100% anymore. The program is so incredibly broken, and it doesn't help that those of us in the veterans class have decided to throw our morals aside and cheer ourselves on while we fleece the American taxpayer.
But also, fuck Platner.
I'm pretty sure I have family who's 20% are more disabled from the VA with 100% of their limbs. It's a thing.
I once went hunting and the ranch hand was on 100% disability for sleep apnea lol. I shot a pig and watched as he dragged it out of the bush and butchered it for me.
So jesse thinks that the person accusing the ‘parasitic middleman’ ‘zionist consultant class’ of manipulating the media should be given the benefit of the doubt on whether she’s ‘actually’ an anti'-semite? Fucking really?
The length Jesse goes to in not considering someone antisemitic is quite impressive at times.
It’s fun listening to Katie yell at him.
She’s a psychotic Jew-hater.
‘Look, Katie, I’ve told you before I don’t think it’s charitable to call people racist just because they say we need to band together to protect our women from low-IQ thugs from the Inner City.”
He is pathologically incapable of seeing antisemitism even when it is screaming in his face.
Some additional context that was not provided in the episode about Susan Collins:
1. She voted to convict Trump during his second Senate impeachment trial after Jan 6.
2. She is openly pro-choice despite being a republican. This is part of what got some Mainers really pissed at her after she voted Kavanaugh onto the Supreme Court. Everyone pretended at the time they were made about the guy's allegations, but it's become clear that they expected Collins to try to fight to save Roe. Collins will point out that she voted for all of Obama's and Biden's Supreme Court Justices, and actually voted against Amy Coney Barrett, saying it was too close to the election.
3. She was one of the key votes along with John McCain saving Obamacare during Trump's first term in 2018.
4. She voted against the "Big Beautiful Bill"
5. Trump hates her and said she should "never be elected to office again" after she voted to block him from using military force against Venezuela in January.
6. Colins was photographed holding a MAGA hat in some sort of humiliation ritual the month after that.
7. She is chair of the Senate Committee on Appropriations giving her a huge amount of power to secure Federal funding for Maine projects that Platner will not be in a position to obtain.
I’ll close by mentioning that Collins is often hesitant to make clear how much she differs from the average republican, because she ultimately still relies on votes from Trump-loving republicans to win. Her M.O. is that enough centrist democrats to get her shtick they they vote with her along with republicans, despite overall democratic opposition being strong against her every six years since 1996.
I am Susan Collins and I approve this message. (Legally required disclaimer.)
Susan would never approve this message because she is trying to subtly signal to centrist dems that she is on their team, while also signal to MAGA that she is on their team at the same time. She cannot win without the votes of Trump supporters in Maine
I dont hate her. As chair of senate appropriations she prevented the NIH budget from being cut. The Trump administration found ways to prevent the money being disbursed but it is still allocated and after the midterms things may improve in a way they couldn't if Collins hadn't been in that job. She voted witn Trump 95% of the time, but ill bet most voted with him 100% and it mattered which 5% she chose. If she voted against him all the time he'd have found a way to get rid of her.
Anyway. Don't hate her as I say.
Thank you, I was too lazy to come over here and type all this out. But she's been arguably the most liberal Republican in the Senate for a long time, and while I understand the argument for voting her out--Nick Catoggio made it pretty forcefully last month--it doesn't make sense to characterize her as basically a Trumper. She votes strategically for obvious reasons, as you and RMC laid out.
She only votes against him when she knows the vote won't be decisive.
She and McCain were the decisive votes that saved Obamacare in 2018. She also voted for tons of liberal Supreme Court justices few other republicans did. She also voted to impeach Trump
Meh... The Obamacare vote was really the only time where she truly put her neck on the line where the outcome would have been different had she voted differently. Sorry, but I'll take an inexperienced, bloviating quasi-communist, possibly Nazi tattoo having dumbass instead of her if he will perform an ACTUAL check on the unmitigated disaster of Trump. I don't care how much pork Susan can bring home..enough to ladle a big slab of belly fat into every Mainer's porridge bowl in the morning. What I really care about is the 51st vote against the next Alito on the Supreme Court, or the 51st vote against Trump's latest grift.
Yes, I understand your perspective very directly
We are 100% gonna see a pic of this guy’s wang by the end of the summer.
Ugh, no, I stand with Katie against dick pics!
(I fear you're correct. The only way you'll be wrong is if the oppo researchers wait till later in the fall to leak it.)
Muslims in general allow cousin marriage. I'm not personally the product of such a relationship, but my cousins are. One of them has had kidney issues since birth and ultimately needed a transplant, and another is so severely disabled he has the cognition of a 2 year old. But people are so blinded by their unwavering faith that they just see it as a challenge from Allah rather than the direct consequence of their own choice to marry a relative. And people blame the parents, often saying they must have committed some sort of awful sin to have such a child. I once asked my uncle who's against cousin marriage why it's so prevalent in an age where we KNOW the harm it can cause, and he just said that it doesn't matter what you tell these people, they will do what they have always done in the name of tradition.
Yeah, it's pretty hard to separate the relatively low risks associated with first-cousin marriage as a one-time thing from the problems that arise when it's an established cultural pattern. But it's pretty interesting to me that kinship marriage is a phenomenon that is followed by tradition in some cultures and eschewed in others.
I still have trouble wrapping my head around double first cousin marriages. Imagine two sisters from one family marry two brothers from another family, those two couples have one kid each, and those kids marry each other. Your family tree becomes a shrub.
High trust societies don't need cousin marriage. It's a tribal mentality.
Katie's Komplaint Korner is always one of my favorite segments.
Also, fuck every "leftist" who decided that Graham Platner's whole existence wasn't a deal breaker and the Ivy Leaguers who decided to put him forward as a candidate. When I was a boy the left actually had a claim to the moral high ground.
One of the "percentage voted with Trump" stats miss, is they don't show things that don't get to a vote because there's no support.
Like she didn't vote against Gaetz for AG but her opposition was key to getting rid of him.
I've got the black lung, Pop.
Rewind the clock twelve months ago before anyone has heard of Platner. If someone says "antizionism isn't necessary antisemitism", I'd agree. Well, what are the signs that someone who is antizionist is also antisemitic? I'm very sure that 99% of people would have agreed that one sign that someone who is antizionist is also antisemitic is if they have a Nazi tattoo on their chest for two decades.
Just finished the episode.
Katie. Jesse. If you think that Democrats becoming the party of neo-Nazis is going to hurt the GOP, then it might be time to finally give up weed. I want Platner to lose because I think electing someone like that would be terrible for our country. But Graham Platner winning would be the greatest godsend to the Republican Party since James Comey. The GOP has already been getting increasingly diverse with each passing election. Just imagine what the party will look like once the Dems usher in a new crop of extremists, socialists, and antisemites.
Trump literally dines with neo-Nazis. Platner is obviously not a Nazi. And in this context it s actually kind of funny for you to talk about Democrats becoming the party of the neo-Nazis. I am assuming you are an anti-Democrat partisan.
The left has been calling Trump Israel’s bitch for the past two years. His daughter is Jewish, his grandchildren are Jewish, his son-in-law, who he put in a position of great power, is Jewish. His biggest backers are Jewish. Yes, I think the guy with a Nazi symbol seared into his flesh is a Nazi.
My original comment is currently at the top of the comments section. Maybe you should go read it if you want to understand where I’m coming from.
There is much more to being a Nazi than just being against Jews. Having a bunch of Jewish relatives and living up Bibi's butt does not make Donald Trump into something other than what he is: a proto-fascist authoritarian wannabe who dines with Nick Fuentes, makes excuses for Proud Boys and other white supremacists, pardons traitors, rails against shithole countries, calls the press "the enemy of the people", insults immigrants as invading vermin, spreads lies about Haitian immigrants eating pets, regularly insults his fellow Americans, scapegoats anyone he doesn't like. You seem very fixated in this comment thread to making Graham Platner into the Trump-equivalent Boogeyman of the left. Maybe in the end he is. But so far I'm not convinced. You exaggerate every flaw that any rumor mentions about Platner. But you have zero credibility because you seem to downplay the absolute shit show that is Trump. They are not in any way comparable. Not even close. And Trump's flaws are not rumor. They're playing out right in front of our very faces everyday.
Internet comment rankings do not impress me.
The point is that you don’t need to scroll to find it, friend.
Great. More stuff from the media class about stupid people are in Maine for wanting to vote for him.
I am from Maine So I talked to my family, a lot and people I know there about this and people in Maine are kind of disgusted by the media and the superficiality of what they’re putting out there. Policies matter.
I’ve been talking to Normie Democrats who are supporting him and you can sit around and talk about his dad’s money all you want, but the reality is he’s going around the state and talking to people in an individual level and understands their issues and that’s what matters.
The person who Is full of shit on a more damaging level is Susan Collins but people don’t wanna look at that. The New York Times published a puff piece about her. It’s just so gross. Also, she won’t campaign and talk to voters.
I guess this makes me frustrated about the heterodox sphere. It feels like people question things all in one type of direction.
This argument is essentially "you don't understand how mad we are"
And I'm sure when you look back at your life, I'm sure you think that the decisions you made when you were really mad were the best.
Yeah I'm with Somethingsomething on this. I have nothing invested in Platner, but my sense from talking with voters back home in Maine is that their choices are based on perceived material concerns. It's anecdotal, maybe Collins wins in a landslide, but the online conversation is not the real life conversation for the Mainers I've talked too (even if one thinks it should be!). It's one of the more interesting reminders to me lately that online discourse is interesting but is only part of the story.
that’s not what the argument is. I think that I’m surprised about how incredibly uncurious people are regarding maine voters and hold an idea that only media people can really understand what is actually going on.
I'm a Maine voter, and you are absolutely correct. The disconnect between what media/online people confidently believe is going on and what is actually happening on the ground is very striking.
Understanding people's issues is MUCH different than being able to help them. Lefties are good at identifying problems, unfortunately their solutions are terrible because they ignore human nature and foreseeable consequences of policies. Rent control is a good example; it sounds good but doesn't work.
What makes you think that this man who lies about absolutely everything is really going to vote the way he’s claiming he will right now? Weren’t progressives burned enough by Fetterman?
I completely agree that he's a high risk choice for my Maine lefty friends. But he's communicating to people about the things that matter to them, as well as progressive politics to those that care about it. No idea whether he follows through honestly, but just to say why people back home are responding to him.
David Duke also communicated well to the people back when he ran for governor and only lost because he was knee-capped by his party. I don’t see how anyone can excuse someone having a Nazi tattoo for twenty years, but I guess I shouldn’t be so naive.
You don’t seem interested in why people are voting for him. I care about the voters because this is my home state and I think they’re doing a legitimate reasons despite what judgment you have.
This is a deflection. We all know what your answer to my hypothetical would be. There’s no point in pretending otherwise.
it’s not a deflection, but if you wanna think that way, you can because you seem pretty committed in terms of thinking that you are absolutely right and there’s no question about it
Just for what it's worth, I am not a Platner supporter. As a currently non-Maine voter (from there, live elsewhere right now) I have the luxury of shrugging my shoulders about it.
I mean, I worry about the person in Washington, who has actually lied repeatedly and bullshitted like Susan Collins. let her face the voters and earn their vote, but she won’t do it and she won’t deal with the consequences of her own record so I don’t know why I would look at Platner as worse than her.
And if someone said the same thing about a Republican candidate who just so happened to have a Nazi tattoo for twenty years, would you find that acceptable?
but you’re making everything into an abstraction. It’s interesting to think about how much this podcast has talked about simplistic, narratives, and people who are cut off from the way that people think and how that has damaged us in terms of politics.
This seems part of it and the reality is that you’re asking me about somebody who’s abstract and not an actual candidate
Abstractions are how you build principles for when events happen. Otherwise you're just starting afresh every time you encounter a situation.
Very similar conversations with folks back home about Platner. I have nothing invested in his narrative, but what I hear from people is that he's connecting with progressives on their ideals, and both progressives and non-progressives on their material concerns.
Sam: What is it with these old politicians hanging on to power past their prime? California had Senator Diane Feinstein who her staff had to wheel out and prop up. It's disgusting. I guess a person can't be embarrassed if their brain is fogged up. And Janet Mills is 80!!?? Didn't she see what happened to Biden? And I'm sure that's why Collins is coasting. She can only sit at home and campaign by zoom. No energy…..
Yeah man, it's weird. I LIKE Janet Mills, I think she did a fine job as governor. And when she announced for Senate at age 79 it was like "must you?"
if Susan Collins wants to get those voters, she could actually address their concerns. She won’t. She won’t do anything to address people’s concerns, but somehow Mainers are supposed to vote for her
I've voted for her in the past but if I were a Maine voter now I wouldn't. I think she's just coasting on past support and hoping she hasn't alienated too many people. Risky bet imo.
I think that she’s also simply unable to campaign, and I don’t know if that’s a good thing because she seems too detached from the electorate
Yeah totally. Not to make everything about the concerns of aging in our public figures but it's huge. A big part of why Platner won the primary was Janet Mills being 80. And Susan Collins definitely presents as having aged significantly since her last election. I'm not sure if that's why she isn't campaigning hard, but maybe.
It also helps Platner that he has no record. Many Mainers blame Mills for various things they don't like that happened during her terms. Often they're wrong. I've seen them claim that the state had a budget surplus under LePage and a deficit under Mills, when in fact the surplus has been larger under Mills, apart from the emergency period during the pandemic. Mills was a good governor, but she's unpopular with the kind of low-info voters who blame the president for inflation, etc. The sort of voters who voted for both Obama (first term) and Trump (first term) could be persuaded to go for Platner as a rebuke to Trump and the general situation. They are grumpy! This is something of a gamble, though. And there was no way Mills could have beaten Collins.
Certain sections of the "heterodox" community
Trump's sexual assaults: 🥱 thats just TDS
Platner sexting: 😡😡this absolute piece of shit should be put to death
This is just in regard to the Emma and Freddie section. Are we now supposed to believe that the NYT that seems to be the cradle and forward operating base of the activist journalist movement that prizes DEI policies, social justice, trans care for minors and Hamas is in thrall to the Clinton-Obama wing of the party?
It's like when someone says the NYT is really conservative and has been supporting trans genocide.
The New York Times is whatever people want it to be at this point.
Correct. Like most things, when the extremes of either side hate you and accuse you of working for the other, you're probably right where you should be
Or you're just an inconsistent pile of crap?
Re: Jewish genetic diseases, my Ashki husband and I were carriers for DIFFERENT genetic diseases so our kids are all good. Jackpot!
The shit that people on the left are willing to overlook is bad. Really bad. The shit people on the right is really bad too, but we've known that for decades. It's not anti-semitism, it's anti-Zionism; as though anyone anywhere can define what anti-Zionism is. It means anything from being against the Netanyahu regime to wanting all Jews cleansed from the middle east and the world at large. Every day that passes I feel it in my bones, bad times are coming for the Jews. And I'm not even Jewish, I'm just old. There are real bad times coming, and it breaks my heart that all the warning signs are being ignored, all the excuses are being made.
I see that too. I am scared for Jewish people everywhere right now.
The body does not keep the score.