King Kaufman

I play music as The King Teen. See links. King Kaufman is my stage name for when I do the journalisms. Bio photo is a famous person who isn't me.

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kingkaufman@sfba-social.mostr.pub

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nprofile1qqs8rhfqhl0vn5v60qaemu68mwq9v27aa6xhmce5ecw0ajc4lwtrelqyznc4u

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npub1w8wjp077e8ge57pmnhe50kuq2c4amm5d0h3nfnsulm93t7uk8n7quu9k3f

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Last Notes

2025-04-02 10:54:05

Target dumps DEI.
Target's foot traffic down for the eighth straight week.
Costco keeps DEI
Costco's foot traffic up for the 13th consecutive week.
It's almost like the policies the gop regime is trying to destroy are astonishingly popular and there's a real opportunity for an opposition party to stand toe-to-toe with it and fight.
https://fortune.com/2025/04/01/target-dei-demise-boycott-foot-traffic-down-eighth-consecutive-week/

2025-03-22 14:13:28

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@nprofile…gu7x
Oh you optimist.

2025-01-22 05:08:11

After listening to this sermon, President Trump issued an executive order rescinding the Bible.
https://www.nbcnews.com/nbc-out/out-politics-and-policy/bishop-trump-inaugural-prayer-service-lgbtq-immigration-policie-rcna188590

2025-01-21 03:27:17

After the pathetic performance of the last few years, I didn't think I could be any more disappointed by the behavior of my lifelong profession, American journalism.
I was wrong. They really really showed their collective asses today.

2024-12-29 14:37:27

"You can't fight in here. This is the Military Bowl!"
https://files.sfba.social/media_attachments/files/113/736/614/625/413/365/original/dd275b4100ceddd3.png

2024-12-13 16:12:11

This will be slide number 3,863,247 in my PowerPoint presentation: Actually, There Very Much IS a Place for Political Violence in America.
https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5038843-jd-vance-daniel-penny-army-navy-game/
https://files.sfba.social/media_attachments/files/113/646/395/058/703/921/original/134fa90dc629e0a5.png

2024-12-11 14:29:56

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@nprofile…kc35
A strange thing about Krugman's column: He doesn't mention 9/11 and, especially, the response, the Orwellian-named War on Terror, the vicious surveillance and militarized police state that arose in its aftermath.
I don't see how you can talk about Americans going from sunny optimists who feel good about our world in 1999 to the angry dystopia we now inhabit without at least mentioning that two-step, which in my view has colored everything.

2024-12-03 16:47:01

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@nprofile…z4t9 @nprofile…taps
They don't. They don't care about bathrooms or women's safety. They also don't care about girls or women's sports.
These are just easy ways to target trans people for harassment.
They don't really care about trans people either. Trans people are just a conveniently powerless minority they can use as a target for hate, which is their real project.
Americans really really really really need to get a LOT better, quickly, at understanding how the authoritarian right wing thinks and acts. Like a lot better.

2024-11-04 19:49:49

Next Attorney General please.
https://www.nbcphiladelphia.com/news/local/f-around-and-find-out-philly-da-election-day-concerns/4017882/

2024-10-26 16:06:27

When billionaire Jeff Bezos bought the Washington Post, it was portrayed as a billionaire doing a civic good, saving a struggling but vital institution. Same thing when billionaire Patrick Soon-Shiong bought the L.A. Times. A positive for the general welfare.
This week should be a lesson, or a reminder, that billionaires don't do things for the general welfare. Ever.
Please remember this the next time a billionaire supposedly does something "to help people."

2024-10-19 12:29:37

This article was published on the 10th anniversary of the article "40 years of tax cuts for the rich failed to trickle down, economics study says."
And on the 20th anniversary of the article "30 years of tax cuts for the rich failed to trickle down, economics study says."
And on the 30th anniversary of the article "20 years of tax cuts for the rich failed to trickle down, economics study says."
And on the 40th anniversary of the article "10 years of tax cuts for the rich failed to trickle down, economics study says."
And on the 15th anniversary of the article "35 years of tax cuts for the rich failed to trickle down, economics study says."
And on the 13th anniversary of the article "37 years of tax cuts for the rich failed to trickle down, economics study says."
And on the third anniversary of the article "47 years of tax cuts for the rich failed to trickle down, economics study says."
And on the 44th anniversary of the article "Six years of tax cuts for the rich failed to tric
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/tax-cuts-rich-50-years-no-trickle-down/

2024-10-06 05:22:36

I for one am happy to see Elmo at Trump's rally, because Trump's about to learn my theory of Elmo, which is undefeated.
https://files.sfba.social/media_attachments/files/113/258/797/761/009/663/original/7e2ae450e24224f6.png

2024-06-28 16:06:00

My mind keeps replaying all the slam dunks that were set up for Biden.
"Golf? He'd kill me at golf. I haven't played a round since I got elected president. I've been busy working hard to get your drug prices down, forgive your student loans, build housing, fight climate change, create jobs. All he did was as president was play golf and cut taxes for corporations and millionaires. We're not voting for golfer in chief here."
He fumbled them all. Every one of them.

2024-06-28 02:11:08

Daniel Dale is CNN's fact checker. He's fact-checking the debate in real time on his Twitter feed.
There are a couple things Biden's said that Dale says are not quite right, or need some context explained to be technically true.
Other than that, it's dozens and dozens of tweets pointing out Trump's bald-faced lies.
Some reason CNN isn't running this as a Chyron on the broadcast?

2024-06-14 11:58:55

Every other CEO in the world: "Too bad that wouldn't work here."
Ikea’s boss solved the Swedish retailer’s global ‘unhappy worker’ crisis by raising salaries, introducing flexible working and subsidizing childcare
https://fortune.com/europe/2024/06/11/ikeas-boss-solved-swedish-retailers-global-unhappy-worker-crisis-raising-salaries-introducing-flexible-working-subsidized-childcare/

2024-06-11 03:19:58

David Talbot, who founded Salon dot com, and who turned me into a sports columnist, has had a serious stroke. His friends and family have started a GoFundMe to pay for his care, and he and his wife Camille also are in need of housing in San Francisco.
If you ever got anything out of my column, or out of Salon, or just if you want to help someone who means a lot to a lot of us, please consider donating.
https://gofund.me/eff999cb

2024-05-25 14:27:39

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@npub1lzz…jhl3
They're not ill-informed. They're disinformed.

2024-03-11 23:00:58

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@npub1e0s…n6zr @npub16s9…p9wx @npub1gmx…atcq
I love the advice from the quack author:
You want to eat inside at a restaurant. Your husband believes doing so could put him in mortal danger. As wanting to eat inside rather than outside and not wanting to be at risk of death or severe disability are exactly equal, you can compromise by eating outside some of the time, and he can compromise by only putting his life in mortal danger some of the time.
Holy shit.

2024-03-08 16:54:41

Officials say that to avoid "game of telephone"-type mixups, Vladimir Putin and MBS will also be briefed.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/trump-get-intelligence-briefings-classified-documents-criminal-trial-rcna142385

2024-03-07 13:53:48

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@npub18wj…lvmv
My first real job was at a San Francisco newspaper. This was pre-internet so the computer system was all internal.
If I recall you could make a document private or public, but I don't think you could make it private for multiple people. So if two or more people wanted to collaborate on something they didn't want others nosing around in, they would title the document ABAG, which stands for Association of Bay Area Governments.
No one snooping around would ever be bored enough to open that.

2024-03-06 12:32:00

Nikki Haley could single-handedly save American democracy, for the moment anyway, by running as a third-party candidate.
She won't.
I've made a bet that if she doesn't endorse Donald Trump, I'll eat a piece of American cheese. That's how confident I am that she'll endorse Donald Trump.
If I were less sure I'd have just bet everything I own.

2024-03-04 14:25:03

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@npub1hvz…mle9 How many times did you check this post to make SURE it's grammatically correct?

2024-03-01 20:47:11

The First Rule of Donald Trump:
Whatever you currently know about what Trump might have done, it's actually worse than that.
https://polinews.org/damning-new-court-filing-reveals-donald-trump-may-have-hoarded-more-than-5-thousand-classified-documents-at-mar-a-lago/

2024-02-11 13:18:56

Late last night, I checked the New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, the three major legit networks news sites. None of them were treating this as a big story.
The NYTimes and CNN had it near the top of their front page, but with several stories played bigger. None of the others even had the story on their front pages.
A candidate for president, and a former president, saying he would encourage Russia to attack our allies. Not news.
You know what was big news, presented as a bigger story than this, by orders of magnitude? Trump asking where Nikki Haley's husband is.
Your liberal media at work.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-68266447

2024-02-10 14:45:38

Same as always. Someone scratched him.
https://files.sfba.social/media_attachments/files/111/907/721/944/145/121/original/328546df8814a0cb.png

2024-02-06 14:13:31

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@npub1lzz…jhl3
Inability is a flamboyantly wrong word choice here, but I admire the cockeyed optimism of people who say things like "When future historians ..."

2024-01-18 05:20:06

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@npub1wmy…gr4n
Private Equity Firm CEO's Assistant: Sir, the hospitals we own are harming patients.
Private Equity Firm CEO: WHAT? That's horrible! How can this happen? How do we fix it?!?
PEFCEO'sA: [Taken aback] I ... I don't know sir. I'll look into it. I ... Well sir, if I may, I'm pleasantly surprised you're so concerned with the welfare of the patients.
PEFCEO: Patients? Oh for heavens sake who cares. I thought you said patents!

2024-01-16 16:37:54

We no longer have political coverage.
We have an extended immersive theater performance of Waiting for Godot.
https://files.sfba.social/media_attachments/files/111/766/600/488/741/923/original/52258e3ee2653ee2.png

2024-01-15 14:49:18

Today is the day we Americans commemorate the idea that we admire people who stand up for equality, justice and human rights.
As long as they do it in the past.

2024-01-07 18:05:44

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@npub1npa…m8hp @npub1grx…uxfe
There's a whole ex-evangelical community that can explain this to you. Just search for that word and you'll find lots of information.

2024-01-07 14:09:31

The Civil War, now in its 163rd year, has emerged as an unlikely talking point on the GOP primary trail.

2024-01-03 18:44:55

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@npub1j46…3gm7
Is the collection visible somewhere?

2023-11-19 17:34:24

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@npub1je3…qpn2 @npub17ha…t8va
Don’t be so sure. I was at Salon for many years and it was an obsession of its founder and editor, David Talbot, to find a smart, reasonable conservative columnist. It would sometimes be a staff project for everyone to be on the lookout.
Never found one. He kept defaulting back to David Horowitz — an absolute lunatic but a former lefty and a nice guy in the room — until he’d write or say something so unhinged Talbot would have to fire him again.

2023-11-10 15:02:48

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@npub1hyk…3p33
"But this impulse to play shell games runs up against the hard limits of physical reality: grocers just can't send an army of rollerskated teenagers around the store to reprice everything as soon as a wealthy or desperate-looking customer comes through the door."
Can't they?
I've never thought about it before, but after reading this paragraph, I'm now AMAZED that the big grocery chains haven't replaced those little price signs on the shelves with digital displays of some kind, so that they can adjust prices on the fly.

2023-11-08 12:49:54

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@npub1eet…79q6
This is kind of a deep thought but don't authoritarians become authoritarians BECAUSE their ideas are unpopular?

2023-11-04 22:08:41

Yeah we should chain people to their oars for way longer.
Or, crazy idea, billionaires and corporations could pay their fair share of taxes and there’d be plenty of money for Social Security and Medicare.
Just kidding. BACK TO WORK GRANDMA!!
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/26/opinion/social-security-medicare-aging.html

2023-10-02 13:59:48

New York Attorney General Letitia James said in a short statement Monday morning, "My message is simple: No matter how powerful you are, no matter how much money you think you may have, no one is above the law."
No matter how much money YOU THINK YOU MAY HAVE, no one is above the law.
Chef's kiss.

2023-09-21 20:30:42

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@npub19fc…ay3c @npub1uuv…zpxv
As a career journalist, I’ve always heard it talked about that mainstream journalism is pitched to roughly 6th grade reading level, not high school.
That tracks with the age at which, in my pre-internet childhood, teachers began using newspapers as a teaching tool. I was a good reader but nothing special and I didn’t find the reading level challenging.

2023-09-15 17:36:20

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@npub189n…satx
It’s not that hard.
Except: If they’re killed by an unregulated driverless car does that count as “surviving” climate change just because they died before the final inferno?

2023-09-08 13:38:37

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@npub18wj…lvmv
Really hard to build a political movement out of hurkle durkle. I have some experience trying to build one around procrastination.

2023-07-18 15:06:38

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@npub1u6c…uwj7
I wish the headline hadn't normalized, for want of a better word, Trump's plans as normal U.S. politics. Trump is planning to try to turn the presidency into a dictatorship. The "strategy" is authoritarianism. The headline soft-soaps it more than the story, but the story doesn't frankly and truthfully call it what it is.

2023-06-25 13:43:19

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@npub16gl…syzj
Fair point, and one I usually use as a guide, but on this particular issue, I think it's not just right-wing lunatics like Haley who have this "it was better way back then" view. It takes lots of different forms for lots of different points of view, and it's often just as toxic.
I'm speaking to my people here, not hers, and I think the risk of giving her a King Kaufman-sized boost — ~400 followers, probably all inclined to think of her as an utter numbskull with or without me saying anything — is acceptable to me.

2023-06-25 12:28:23

"Do you remember when you were growing up, do you remember how simple life was, how easy it felt? It was about faith, family, and country. We can have that again, but to do that, we must vote Joe Biden out."
— Nikki Haley
Here are photos taken when I was 6 to 12 years old.
https://files.sfba.social/media_attachments/files/110/604/744/708/720/608/original/0aebf1f1f88c61d0.jpeg
https://files.sfba.social/media_attachments/files/110/604/745/075/193/256/original/c3ec95019da70ddd.jpeg
https://files.sfba.social/media_attachments/files/110/604/831/484/737/724/original/6c967ed9bf4443a8.webp
https://files.sfba.social/media_attachments/files/110/604/844/261/199/511/original/8b4a5d29e6d9ca2d.jpeg

2023-06-22 13:36:23

Every conversation about companies wanting their workers to return to the office goes the same way.
The bosses say it's VITALLY important for people to come into the office. It's what's best for the business.
And lots of ideas are tossed around about how to convince workers to return to the office.
Well, usually it's one idea: Threats. If you don't come in we'll fire you. We'll give you a negative review.
This article includes the wildly generous idea "We'll toss 10 bucks to the charity of your choice."
The idea that never comes up: Pay people.
Pay workers for the commute time that the last few years have shown them they've been donating to your company. Pay them for the childcare or elderly care that they now understand they've been subsidizing your company by paying so that they can come into the office.
It's not even an idea that's considered and dismissed. It's literally never mentioned.
Pay your workers for this vital thing they're doing for your company — showing up.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/20/business/return-to-office-remote-work.html
https://files.sfba.social/media_attachments/files/110/588/117/684/700/231/original/6ca330aa28ca86c9.png

2023-06-10 17:29:36

Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber, has died.
Here's an episode of Not Your Century where I talked to Yale Professor Tom Tyler, who while teaching at UC-Berkeley received mail from the Unabomber.
It wasn't a bomb. It was essentially what later came to be known as the Unabomber Manifesto. The Unabomber wrote to Tyler that he disagreed with something Tyler had said in the San Francisco Chronicle about bombers like himself and Timothy McVeigh.
Tyler said that while the Unabombers actions were vile, he made some good points in his writing, and that the approach was like a fellow academic debating a point with a colleague.
Not Your Century was a daily history podcast. Episode is 7 minutes long. Enjoy.
https://pod.fo/e/10e43
https://files.sfba.social/media_attachments/files/110/521/097/515/240/864/original/09cd541bbc6c2a9c.jpg

2023-06-10 16:14:17

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@npub1jtm…rxtn
I'm no architect but I believe those are called windows.

2023-05-07 16:25:01

Hail and farewell, Vida Blue.
I just found this in a box the other day and put in on IG. Me applauding Vida at the end of an inning on Aug. 28, 1976. He took a no-hitter into the 9th inning but lost it when Mickey Stanley hit a home run with one out. He finished with a complete-game 1-hitter, a 5-2 win over the Detroit Tigers.
After the game he told reporters he wasn't sad about losing the no-hitter because he'd thrown one before. Paraphrasing from memory:
"There's only one thing I like doing over and over and we're all men here so we know what that is."
For much of his career, he wore the name Vida, not Blue, on the back of his jersey.
Years after this, I interviewed Vida, retired by then, for a story about off-field injuries. He said "I can't tell you why, but I'll just say there ought to be a clause in the basic contract that you can't make love more than three feet off the ground."
https://files.sfba.social/media_attachments/files/110/328/312/272/498/091/original/a172d58849c835ce.jpeg

2023-05-02 14:45:49

But you — you there — wash your clothes in cold water.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/may/01/private-jet-sales-likely-to-reach-highest-ever-level-this-year-report-says
#climate #PrivateJets
https://files.sfba.social/media_attachments/files/110/299/616/894/500/797/original/23da233f5576a0c8.png

2023-04-22 15:44:48

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#[0]
The headline gets an A in "not the odds, but the stakes."
The story a C-minus.
Trump's ideas are described as conservative, but different from Reagan's small-government vision.
The word "authoritarian" appears twice, once describing people Trump admires, once in a quote where someone mentions "Trump and authoritarian populists like him." It's never used to describe his authoritarian ideas. Neither are any synonyms, unless you consider "conservative" a synonym for authoritarian, which I pretty much do, but I don't think the writers do.