After this morning’s post on granny fetishism, DougJ sent me this definition:
sen (Latin-senex) ROOT – old
a. senile: of, relating to, exhibiting, or characteristic of old age
b. seniority: a privileged status attained by length of continuous service
c. senior: higher ranking : SUPERIOR
(other words: senator, senescent, senate, senility)
And it fits this interview with Ben Nelson (via):
The Nebraska Democrat pleaded ignorance when asked this week whether Congress should cap ATM fees. Nelson said that while he’s no fan of unnecessary fees, he’s unfamiliar with the charges.
“I’ve never used an ATM, so I don’t know what the fees are,” Nelson said, adding that he gets his cash from bank tellers, just not automatic ones. “It’s true, I don’t know how to use one.
“But I could learn how to do it just like I’ve … I swipe to get my own gas, buy groceries. I know about the holograms.”
By “holograms,” Nelson clarified that he meant the bar codes on products read by automatic scanners in the checkout lanes at stores such as Lowe’s and Menard’s.
I think there are many 70- and 80-year olds who are sharper and more well-informed than people half their age. The problem is that none very few of them serve in the US Senate.
Zifnab
Bernie Sanders knows his shit.
Alex
I hear there are rumors about this on the internets.
mistermix
@Zifnab: Fair enough. I changed it.
Gunner Billy K
facepalm.jpg
licensed to kill time
This makes me think of Sen-Sen.
Midnight Marauder
This man is so oblivious and out-of-touch, he thinks a bar code is a hologram? Does he not know what a hologram looks like? Anderson Cooper certainly does.
jl
Also, too. There are some 40 50 and 60 year olds who are sharper and more well informed than people one and a half times, to twice, their age, but very few of them are members of Congress.
We have some kind of age-related problem in Congress, no matter from which end you look.
MikeJ
@licensed to kill time: They’re tryin’ out Bevo, tryin’ out cubebs,
Tryin’ out Tailor Mades like Cigarette Fiends!
And braggin’ all about
How they’re gonna cover up a tell-tale breath with Sen-Sen.
Martin
Well, I think the problem isn’t age but of obsolete experience. How many people in Congress would any of you trust to make good decisions on internet issues? There’s a lot of computer experts that struggle with issues like that, let alone an 80 year old that’s never turned on a computer.
If he’s struggling with ATM issues, what about derivatives, subprime mortgages, and so on?
Zifnab
@Martin:
The internet is not a big truck. It’s not something you can just dump something on.
El Cid
Holographic bar code scanner.
SiubhanDuinne
This sentence is just BEGGING to become a B-J tag. It would make a nice bookend to “I am aware of all Internet traditions,” but it’s just that little bit pithier.
licensed to kill time
@Zifnab: I heard it’s a series of tubes or something.
SiubhanDuinne
@El Cid:
You know, I think if Ben Nelson had meant METROLOGIC MS 7120 ORBIT Scanner, he would have said METROLOGIC MS 7120 ORBIT Scanner.
Ed Marshall
Wow, GHW Bush visited a grocery store in 1992 and everyone made fun of him because he thought the bar code scanner at the register was some sort of new high-tech thing. *That’s* what Ben Nelson remembered because it probably scared him that he didn’t know anything about going to the grocery store either.
That was damn near twenty years ago.
Little Boots
Of course for the ancient Romans, old meant 45 a lot more often than it meant 80. At some point, real honest to god old age takes its toll.
Ash Can
You’d think someone representing an entire fucking state would have a little more experience with the real world than that.
Redshift
You know, I have one simple request. And that is to have sharks with frickin’ holograms attached to their heads…
SiubhanDuinne
By the way, mistermix, fan-fruckin-TASTIC thread title!
Little Boots
Or George W. Bush’s ever wonderful “I hear the voices!”
beltane
When you see the Senate in action it is striking how old they all look, like the crowd at an early bird special. It’s too bad there is very little correlation between age and wisdom; young idiots rarely grow into wise old people.
asiangrrlMN
@Martin: I agree with you. It’s not age so much as what they do and don’t know in addition to what they are willing and aren’t willing to learn. My mom is a technophobe. I know a woman around the same age (a bit younger) who is a technophile. It’s just that the longer you do something, the more difficult it is to change that route in your brain.
@Zifnab: Seconded. But, I would suspect that Bernie Sanders has embraced learning new things all his life.
Corner Stone
I’m in the mood for something a little sweet…yet crude.
Anyone know where I could find something like that?
Joseph Nobles
I almost want to sign up for overdraft fees again so that Chase will stop deluging me with ads to do so. If we take their outrageous ATM fees away from them, too, the banks will just have to shut down, won’t they?
Or here’s a thought – maybe they could start lending money to people and small businesses that need it and charging them interest again. I know, I’m crazy, right?
LT
I commented in another post on this and recommended “I know about the holograms” for the BJ Lexicon. I even helpfully provided a definition:
“I Know About the Holograms” – A derisive phrase used to mock people bizarrely out of touch with what 99.99% of us would call “the real world,” including the man who actually said it, Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb). In a discussion about ATM fees, Nelson had just disclosed that he wasn’t familiar with them—because he had never used an ATM before. As a way of defending himself for being so out of touch, Nelson said, “I know about the holograms.” He meant “bar codes,” which made his being out of touch even farther—and more hilariously—out of touch.
Like I said over there, something should really be in use to be called part of a lexicon—so somebody use it already.
BR
OT: I wrote this in the other thread, but if you have money in stocks, you might get it out, like now. Cash and US bond funds (like FGOVX and the like) are probably safe. But it’s ugly out there.
John Cole
And after shopping, he gets in his horseless carriage and drives home to relax while listening to the victrola and drinking bathtub gin.
Scott
Fuckin’ holograms, how do they work?
Ash Can
@Corner Stone: Walk southeast till your hat floats.
MikeJ
@Scott: I don’t wanna talk to a scientist, Y’all motherfuckers lying, and getting me pissed
ThresherK
“Help me Obi-Ben Sen-nobi, you’re my only hope. All right, now what do I click?“
Alex
It’s all about the holograms, bay-bee.
Violet
John McCain is aware of the internet.
El Cid
@SiubhanDuinne:
Hell, if Metrologic had given Nelson a bunch of money, he would have required several billion dollars go to it in the health care bill.
Alex
Also, OT, but http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/20/opinion/20chafets.html?hp this puts the “F” in NYFT, as well as the FFFFFFFF in “puff piece”.
Litlebritdifrnt
OT and I hope John reads this, do not use landscape fabric. The stuff is all fine and dandy to begin with but is a total nightmare in the long term. Use any kind of organic mulch that you have around. The grass clippings will be fine so long as you fertilize because I believe as they break down they will leach some nutrients from the soil. The best solution would be to see if your area has a “recycling” yard that the City or County maintains. Most areas do, where you can go and pick up lots and lots of well matured compost for free. Use that as a weed suppressant, it serves two purposes, it amends the soil and feeds it and stops the weed seeds from sprouting by depriving them of light.
We now return you to your regularly scheduled programming.
me
@John Cole: He then goes to the post office and asks about the 4:30 autogyro to Siam.
Martin
@asiangrrlMN: And that’s the nut of the ‘elitist’ charge by the right – these people are sufficiently privileged that they don’t need to know about things like ATMs and barcode scanners and how many homes they own. Of course, the teabaggers are comparably elitist, just on other issues – like evolution, urban social issues, and so on.
But as soon as someone babbles out a statement like this – left or right – the public is right to question how in touch they are with the issues of the masses. If they don’t know about ATMs, how can they know how hard it is to get a job, understand the fine print on a mortgage application, etc. Sad that its from someone from Nebraska, where day to day issues are pretty standard fare.
Ella in NM
And it’s also mainly because they actually had to live in the real world instead of the bubble of a perpetual schmoozing and pampering called the Senate. When was the last time Ben Nelson had to do ANYTHING that didn’t involve a 20 something assistant wiping the drool off his chin in the process?
Terms limits are the only solution here, but the Catch-22 is the losers who’d have to find work elsewhere are the ones who will block them ever coming into effect. A government that is made up of self-entitled 80 year-old Lords and Dukes can no longer have any reflection of the day-to-day lives of it’s people. We do not have the essential elements of a democracy necessary for it to function effectively.
RSR
ha, my tweet from earlier today:
Help us, O-Ben Nelson; you’re our only hope. #hologram
asiangrrlMN
@Martin: Well, I would hazard to say that many of the old-timers in Congress, regardless of party are pretty out-of-touch as to day-to-day issues of the so-called real world. Let’s face it–they don’t have to know ATM or work a computer or anything like that. Most of the lifers in Congress have no fucking idea.
Bill Murray
Are you sure Ben didn’t use hologram to approximate a three-dimensional bar code. Holography is also often used on bank notes (although not yet on US currency) and credit cards. Also at post offices to measure package size. So Ben is either a dumbass or at the bleeding edge of technology. If he’d only helped Al Gore invent the internet we’d know for sure
Also, the ” ORBIT MS 7120 is the ideal Presentation Scanner for retail convenience liquor and specialty stores.” So I’m guessing Ben has some experience with them
Midnight Marauder
@Scott:
@MikeJ:
So much win in these two comments. So much win.
Violet
@Ella in NM:
Gasp! Are you trying to harm the comity of the Senate? Shockhorror.
kdaug
@me: Good lord, didn’t we already go over this on the Face-Book?
Jrod
This is exactly why we need to repeal the 17th amendment!
Paris
This has always been my main justification for public financing of elections. It will improve the quality of the candidates. No sane reasonable person would jump the hurdles that are our current political election process.
joe from Lowell
I know about the holograms.
I know.
RJ
@Ed Marshall:
Of course, the unfortunate thing for Nelson is that no one really needed to think to hard to remember the Bush incident, and can compare the two.
Kinda reminds me that John McCain’s 2008 campaign tried to claim credit for the invention of the blackberry – and everyone mocked it for being similar to the zombie story about Al Gore claiming to have invented the internet. (I’m sure it was somehow excellent news for John McCain).
RJ
@Violet:
He is aware of all internet traditions.
dnelson
All folks in DC need to be retired around 70, these guys are so out of touch with the public. I do not have a beef with the women as much, (with the exception of virginia foxx and bachmann) but the old men, hello, are way to slow. I will draw the line between northern and southern men. The old southern men are so brain dead and hopelessly out of touch with america and reality. When bush was president, rove said the polls do not matter and can be manipulated, now what do we have, a poll by every tom dick and harry, every day claiming it to be gospel. Rasmussen is so dishonest, but it drives the daily news. Not only drives it, but starts early on c span, local radio, local tv, and then cable. I live in Sac Cty, there is no progressive radio, it is all hate radio or gospel. I do not comment usually, but my dad is 84 he is from MN and his cold shaky hands can run the atm quite easily. This country is changing, the old dc folks have to go. The polls do not reflect cell phone people. There is change going on, and the D triple c and the establishment will be challenged. Oh, and off topic, I wish someone would embed (I do not know how to do it), ha ha, seriously, KD Lange Hallelujah, when she is barefoot. It is gorgeous.
pattonbt
I know I am easily amused, but the use of “the” in the statement just makes it that much more hilarious to me.