So I took my daughter’s car to the shop for a very minor repair two days ago, and now we’re up to $1,200. Feckity fuck.
Open thread. Please feel free to use it to berate me for my taste in music.
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[…] afternoon, I was complaining about the rising repair bill on my 16-year-old’s car, which had been in the shop for a few […]
BGinCHI
Why can’t I get what I want?
It would be the first time.
/Mitt Romney sings The Smiths
Duke of Clay
Been there, done that. Truly sux.
mai naem mobile
Hope the cars been good to you so far Betty.
So, we haven’t had an update.on the pups. I would appreciate a tiny little “they’re ok, just no time for more stuff ” from John because,well, it makes me wonder if everything is not okay.
Eric U.
I was on a 600km bike ride last year, and I could have sworn I heard The Smiths a couple of times. Turns out one of my fellow riders had a mp3 player with a small speaker sitting inside a bag on his bike.
Couldn't Stand the Weather
The car drama. So much fun to dish out the cash to the mechanic (and also to the body shop, on occasion).
Hope the repair costs stop before they rise much more, Betty.
Linda Featheringill
I’m behind on the news. Betty, did your daughter get her driver’s license?
Mr. Longform
Cars are like weddings – they are too expensive for regular people to afford, but we go into debt to pay for them anyway. Everything goes easier if you’re handy with money.
Linda Featheringill
BTW, physical rehab exercises are a bitch.
Complain, complain, complain.
MattF
We all know that Germans have unique words for things– Here’s a list of German-only illnesses:
http://mentalfloss.com/article/61140/15-unique-illnesses-you-can-only-come-down-german
Another uniquely-German-word-for-something is
Describes my feeling about Donald Trump.
raven
They are almost done with the last lateral hookup to the sewer and the curb and driveway dudes are putting up the forms for the pour. Nest week they’ll take out a foot or so of the street and repave and then they are done. We were going to have the concrete dudes do a new driveway while they were at it but the pipeline guy thought we’d better check with the city. They said “no way” without a permit. whatevers
Pogonip
@mai naem mobile: Yes, I was concerned that at least one animal had died (possibly eaten by young Thurston) and that John was trying to figure out how to give his readership the bad news.
On the brighter side, maybe he finally found a girlfriend.
sharl
B-J alumnus Freddie deBoer, while definitely not a fan of Jonathan Chait, has written a critique of the critics of Chait’s infamous recent post (discussed earlier at B-J here and later by Elon James White:
https://balloon-juice.com/2015/01/28/jonathan-chait-chaitsplains-political-correctness/).It is getting some positive response on the innertoobz (e.g., Weigel), and while I’ve never been a big fan of deBoer, I can see why.
vheidi
Washington post recommends:
You can sell your poop for $13,000 a year
They oughtta know
the Conster
A few years ago my daughter’s tired 2001 Cherokee was stolen from in front of her house and used as a getaway car in a bank robbery, complete with exploded dye packs. The robbers ripped out the dashboard to get it started. It was even mentioned in the news, because the cops were looking for her car after it was ditched when the dye packs went off. She’s a school teacher living like a church mouse, so we helped her pay for what the insurance didn’t cover, which was a lot, and the car never really ran right again. Throwing good money after bad on a car is something that we’ve all had to do until the tipping point comes, and then the hunt for another decent car that provides reliability and safety for a young woman who does a LOT of commuting in bad weather sucks too. On the plus side, her story has been passed down from class to class of her students, and they never get tired of hearing it.
Cckids
My new upstairs neighbors have a dog! A big, loud dog. They either put in a dog door, or they’ve left the door to their balcony open so he can go outside & bark whenever he wants to. Which is often.
Hopefully this stops. I don’t want my first meeting with thrm to be a bitch session. At least my pup’s mostly deaf, or there would be quite the competition going on.
beth
My daughter had an appointment to get an oil change and got the flu so I offered to take her car in for her. Turns out she needed $900 of repairs. Now we’re negotiating whether this will count as birthday/Christmas gifts for the next year or two. Don’t think I’ll see the actual cash anytime soon. At least I know the car is safe now.
lol
@sharl:
Seems less of a “critique” and more of a “dear god, will someone please stop he’s dead already”.
beth
@vheidi: I know someone who had a fecal transplant. Until then, I had no idea a thing like that existed. Apparently it’s quite an effective treatment for lots of ailments. I read the other day that they’re working on poop pills that you swallow instead.
vheidi
@sharl: me too, thanks for that
Linda Featheringill
@beth:
Good mom!
Tom Levenson
Changed from summer to snow tires on my car last week. (I’d hope the snow drought would last long enough to skip this year’s change. I lost). Next thing I knew — $1200 of brake and suspension work. Feel foolish for letting the shop do that work; my tire guys are good and have a solid reputation for basic honesty. But they are definitely of the “you might have a problem” school, and on reflection, I wish I’d just had them switch out the rubber and taken the beast down to my usual mechanic for a look-see. But at least the car is on good underpinnings.
Betty Cracker
@Linda Featheringill: She did! I am still filled with existential dread whenever she drives off, but I’m getting used to it.
gogol's wife
@Cckids:
You have my sympathies. My neighbors who liked to leave their three barky dogs outside all the time moved away over a year ago. It’s been heaven not having them.
srv
This is what happens when you negotiate with terrorists.
Violet
I live in a construction zone at the moment. Every time I’m home I’m out yelling at some company’s workers for parking on our property, the neighbors’ properties, damaging lawns, fences, garden beds, pulling down electric wires, hitting electric poles, etc. etc. etc. Massive diesel trucks going all the fucking time. Exhaust everywhere. Loud generators. It’s a fucking nightmare. I have the construction managers, superintendent and owners on speed dial. I take pictures and send them off almost daily to the owners. I cannot wait until they are done. Of course then the obnoxious neighbors move in. I’ve already met the rich, entitled people across the street. Ugh.
jurassicpork
Ironically, Andrew Sullivan announced his retirement the day before my 10th anniversary as a blogger, which in internet years I guess makes me the IF Stone of bloggers. And what a long, strange trip it’s been.
MattF
@Violet: I live in an area with a lot of construction going on. The good news is that if they make noise outside of legal hours, you can call the police and they get shut down. The bad news is that during legal hours they can make quite a bit of noise– including people having lengthy ‘conversations’ at the tops of their lungs.
Violet
@MattF: Yeah. My schedule varies so I’m home during the day at times. It’s been a nightmare. No downtime at all. It’s a good thing I’m around, though, because at this point the neighbors are counting on me to document the damage. I have all their numbers and send photos and texts when the trucks are on their property. I’m the quintessential annoying neighbor–to the construction people. Not to my neighbors who seem to appreciate it.
Tree With Water
The Car Guys of PBS once fielded a phone call from a woman who feared that her mechanic was cheating her. She explained why she had brought the car to a garage in the first place, the amount of work thus far done on it, and then asked the brothers if they thought the mechanic was being honest. One of the brothers then asked her if she knew how many more boat payments the mechanic needed to make before the boat was paid off.
Mart
Never could take too much Smith’s. As I recall.. on the cover of Rolling Stone, wearing a see-through shirt, Morrissey had a band-aid on his left nipple. Has troubled me to this day.
Gin & Tonic
@raven: I’m in a small town, but I’ve gotten permits for various things the same day, based on a verbal description. A lot of contractors seem somewhat surprised that I’d want to pull a permit at all. I guess that’s not your situation.
JR in WV
So, Betty, I’m curious, being a car fan, what was the minor repair, and how did they justify charging you $1200 on top of the minor repair?
Not to question your shop’s integrity, it’s easy for a new driver to not notice things gradually becoming less tight (lilke steering linkages) or less effective (like the brakes/rotors) or less powerful (like the alternator/battery) etc.
But it is the kind of thing you lay out there, attract interest, and then you didn’t say a word about the actual work!?
Last “routine” oil change I did also included new brakes and rotors for the front end, on a car with 22,000 miles on it. Truthfully, it is the kind of car you drive ambitiously, or perhaps just fast. And of course the parts fast driving is hardest on is brakes.
And then we put a set of wheels/snowtires on the all wheel drive VW, since we can get snow too deep for – well anything. Over a foot, forget it. You have to wait for someone to clear the roads, and since we’re on the backest of country roads, that can be a long wait. Once the National Guard got us out, after about 20 inches. It was also really cold, zeroish for a week or more.
Gin & Tonic
@Tree With Water: I once had a car break down someplace in Vermont with what I thought was something major. All the locals recommended this one guy, who had a small shop with one assistant. I had it towed, described what I thought was the major problem, and got home. It was a few weeks before he could get to it, but in the end it was relatively minor and cost less than 1/5 of what I’d expected. When I went to pick it up I said “you could have told me anything,” and he replied “I like to be able to sleep at night.” Now I know why his shop was so busy.
Linda Featheringill
@Betty Cracker:
If we assume that I am normal, I can tell you from experience that the “existential dread” will stick around for a long, long time. Sigh.
Linda Featheringill
@srv:
That would be very cool. And it would solve the Gitmo problem.
Roger Moore
@Mr. Longform:
I would disagree. One of the best pieces of money advice I’ve ever gotten is that you should only go into debt to pay for capital items that will outlast the debt. Cars qualify, since a well made car will last for much longer than the term of a typical car loan. Weddings*, OTOH, are over all too soon, leaving nothing but memories, wedding presents, and debt.
*Not to be confused with marriages, which we hope will last for the rest of our lives.
srv
@vheidi:
In classy Texas, poop is free.
Betty Cracker
@JR in WV: We thought it just needed a power steering hose replacement, but it ended up needing a power steering pump, timing belt, new front axle and various other services, including an oil change, fluid replacement, tire balancing, etc. I’m sure I’m leaving stuff out. We’ve used this garage for years, and they seem pretty honest. The dude told me we could wait on the timing belt but explained that it would eventually need replacing and what could happen if it got worse, etc. They always call and provide a detailed estimate and rationale, most of which goes flying over my head.
satby
My Favorite Breed is Rescued! test fundraiser only needs 2 more shirts sold before they’ll print a run. Ends in about 9 hours. And if it fails I will have to pay for the Facebook ads because I CONVINCED my board president this would work. Anyone want to brag about being a fan of pet rescue?
Cacti
I see that the long dry Hollywood fountain of creativity has decided the Ghostbusters franchise needed a “reboot”. The he-men are also angry that the new crew is going to be all women.
I guess my complaint is, why a reboot? Why not just have original Ghostbusters be retired and the ladies as their replacements. Egon is dead, Winston is 69, Peter is 64, and Ray is 62. A little long in the tooth to still be humping around their proton packs, no?
scav
Well, speak of religiously delimited, not quite “NoGo” zones, but zones where the religiously inclined feel free to wander the streets, being all vigilante on people not coming up to their codes of dress and conduct. And the police not exactly enforcing laws against such behaviors. At least the courts are making waving motions.
Israeli city told to pay women damages after failing to remove ‘modesty signs’
Billboards in ultra-orthodox community bar women from certain buildings and pavements and warn against ‘slutty clothing worn in a religious style’
Belafon
@Linda Featheringill: And it will not happen. We have either wanted all or part of Cuba so that we have more than one point to defend as an entrance into the Gulf.
burnspbesq
Chat’s critics have proven his point by lynching him. Who says irony is dead?
Roger Moore
@Gin & Tonic:
The last time I was on vacation in Moab, our rental car started losing air in one of the tires, and thank goodness for modern cars requiring tire pressure sensors that let us know. We were worried that it might be a problem with the sidewall because we could see some obvious sidewall damage. We took it to a shop in town that had good reviews 15 minutes before their listed closing time. They probably could have sold us on replacing the tire, since we were already half convinced that was going to be necessary, but they told us the sidewall damage was cosmetic, the problem was two small punctures in the tread, and had us underway within the 15 minutes before closing and for less than $20. I can see why they had good reviews. I figure they make their real money selling outrageously expensive tire/wheel packages to the off-road crowd that are based there.
Belafon
@burnspbesq: He’s hanging from a tree?
marduk
@sharl: Freddie is still going to be crying about the pantsing he got from Tiger Beatdown long after I’m dead and buried.
http://tigerbeatdown.com/2010/04/09/why-tiger-beatdown-has-jokes-on-it-turns-out-some-motherfucker-had-to-ask-me/
http://tigerbeatdown.com/2010/04/11/boners-for-fun-and-profit-the-extent-to-which-you-dont-care-about-boners-revealed/
The Ancient Randonneur
@Belafon: Evidently strongly worded critiques and hanging from a tree are equivalent. But, I’m not a lawyer so I could be wrong.
Cacti
@The Ancient Randonneur:
Well, extrajudicial executions and mean comments on Twitter are practically the same.
MattF
@Roger Moore: I go by a slightly different rule– ‘good’ debt is borrowing to purchase things whose value will generally hold steady or increase over the long term, ‘bad’ debt is borrowing to purchase things that wear out or get used up over the long term. So, e.g., mortgages are good debt and borrowing for consumption is bad debt. Car loans are somewhere in between, but tend towards bad.
ruemara
@burnspbesq: With a comment like that, you really need to sit down, shut up and think for a fucking hour or two.
I feel your pain, Betty. I realized I had scrimped up a (tiny) fortune with some careful budgeting. And then the check engine light went off. $437. Or about half the savings. And it’s not over. The mechanic told me I needed to replace the lower control arm soon. $730+ dollars-which I don’t have at all. My stepdad says they probably mean the bushings/cv boot. I’m about ready to pour gas on everything and set aflame so I can walk off with just what I can carry but I’m told the establishment frowns on that.
scav
@The Ancient Randonneur: An indecent (ETA Rather like that autocorrect of incident, no?) of public mockery and disagreement with a white male — overtly on social media and other channels no less!!! — is all the evidence one needs for utterly convincing and legally water-tight proof that while males supporting traditional power structures are being utterly and unfairly oppressed and silenced.
Amir Khalid
@Cacti:
Agreed. The Ghostbusters don’t need a reboot. You could just continue the story with a new crew. But a reboot saves you from having to work ut a continuation; you just have to paste in new names on the old origin story, and you’re ready to roll. Because studio bosses love nothing better than a known quantity, no matter how tired people get with the same old shit.
The X-Files min-series that was talked about last week, on the other hand, is not a reboot; they’d tried that on the TV show, and the fans didn’t go for it. It’s a continuation of the old story, with Mulder and Scully now 23 years into an evolving, long-term relationship. I understand the plan is to resolve the alien conspiracy plot. (I hope it comes out n DVD so I can get to collect it.)
Belafon
@MattF: The car itself might be bad from a loan point of view, but it does allow things like me getting to work, going to stores, and taking trips, which are generally pretty good.
Tree With Water
@Betty Cracker: If the garage played square with you for years, I bet they’re OK. I mentioned the Car Guys story only because I just thought it was funny. Fact is, labor costs alone go a long way in accounting for much of your bill. Subtract that, and given the price of car parts nowadays, it actually sounds about right. So let me share with you and your daughter my longtime mantra: if you own a car, you own a headache.
sharl
@marduk: Hah, those posts in response to Freddie BONERS! always come to mind any time his name comes up. And I’ll link them when appropriate, or sometimes just because they still crack me up. But this time his post was thoughtful and based on his own direct observations, and the topic seems kind of important, especially for environments like college/universities where learning and free exchanges of information should not involve a one-strike-and-yer-out policy for those new to certain ideas and their associated vocabulary.
PurpleGirl
@satby: I will buy a shirt when I get home from running errands. (Don’t have the time right just now to buy the shirt.) Hey, BJers, help out Satby and someone buy a shirt. Thank you. (I really like the saying “Rescue is my favorite breed”.)
Elizabelle
I like this song. Ta.
TaMara (BHF)
@mai naem mobile:
@Pogonip:
As the person to a rambunctious puppy (much less 2 and their mom) I can testify that it is not only time consuming, but exhausting. Posting pictures often takes more energy than I have at the end of a day.
My guess is John is in trouble times 3. But I would like a Ginger update because I thought he said he was going to have her tumor/mass/cyst looked at this past week.
Keith G
Ben Smith over at Buzzfeed has written a recollection of his participation in the early days of blogging.
It’s interesting, but it ain’t pretty.
Darkrose
I so feel your pain. Last week my wife took the car in for its 80k mile service on our 2008 Jetta, which was $600. We new we needed a headlight replacement as well, which would have been another $150.
The inspection turned up that we needed rear brakes ($380), a complete set of new tires ($650), new alternator belt ($300) and a carbon flush ($180). This is all on top of the $1,500 we spent replacing the transmission harness last year. We decided to get the brakes and tires done ASAP, even though it meant leaving Shep overnight and getting a rental from the dealer.
So the next day I’m at work and I get a frantic call from my wife. While trying to park the rental, which was much bigger than our car, she scraped it along the wheel well of another parked car in our apartment complex lot…to the tune of $1,275. A $750 service has turned into a $3,500 service. The only good thing is that our collision deductible is $1,000, so I just paid the rest to avoid the insurance hit.
askew
So, 9 Senate Dems voted with the GOP to pass Keystone bill. I am constantly amazed by Dems outside of Obama’s inability to learn from past mistakes and to correctly read the electorate. They just spent an entire election cycle trying to be as close to Republicans as possible and got their asses handed to him. Now, they are jumping onboard a stupid bill because it makes them look good to the media and GOP. Dumbasses.
trollhattan
@beth:
They absolutely must come up with a different/better name for the procedure. [ponders] How about FloraShare(tm)?
trollhattan
@Darkrose:
Uh, “carbon flush” is actually installing a drain in your wallet. The rest, well, #$%^ happens.
I love cars right up to when they demand money and attention. It’s part of why I cycle-commute (that and a hundred+ bucks/mo for parking).
muddy
@Gin & Tonic: Maybe it was my mechanic, he does like that.
@Tree With Water: This guy has a handmade sign on the wall stating his hourly rate for the work, for the work if you bring in used parts, and for the work if you want to watch or help. The rate climbs very quickly, but he says sometimes people choose the latter two. He smirked. The standard $65/hr rate is fine by me, and they give you a ride to and from as well.
JR in WV
@Betty Cracker:
That’s all reasonable. Timing belt failures can cause valves to break off inside cylinders, which can ruin an engine block. Much cheaper to replace them than to wait for them to break.
Back in 1972 we were moving from Key West to Pascagoula MS, towing a uhaul with a 1962 Fury, which gave up the ghost in a small town somewhere in the florida panhandle. I was in the USN at the time.
It just quit. We called the local chrysler dealer, who sent a tow truck over to us. The distributer was grinding itself apart, and when enough metal filings accumulated the spark wouldn’t distribute, going to all the plugs at once. They rebuilt the distributer and charged us $19, including the tow. Even back then that was a good deed, probably because we were obviously broke AND a military family.
It works the other way sometimes, too.
Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.)
Here’s a lovely story. I guess it must be so refreshing for these people to have an outlet for their bigotry, now that being an anti-Black racist is socially deadly.
lethargytartare
@sharl:
was it that thoughtful or important, though?
Freddie’s post read like a simple re-statement of Chait’s thesis that we’re supposed to accept now cause Freddie is super serious about being a left winger, and he’s seen the chilling censorship IN PERSON!!!!1111
except, I’ve seen what Freddie considers unfair and chilling censorship, and it amounts to more than one person disagreeing with him at a time.
And I don’t trust a single one of his examples as being an honest rendering of the whole story of supposed “PC run-amokness” because Freddie sees a world full of insufficiently liberal voices trying to silence his brilliant insight, so of course his life is filled with PERSONAL EXAMPLES of PC RUN AMOK!!!!111
The whole thing is so utterly familiar – Freddie is awesome, the world, and particularly the left-wing, is flawed, and why won’t anyone listen to me??
yawn
Peale
Ugh. CNN in the breakroom, enpaneled up to discuss the serious issue of “Romney Swipes at Hillary.” Does this mean he’s s serious candidate? The world wants to know.
Is this really the price other democracies pay to have a vote or are we exceptional.
Belafon
@askew:
If you were an officeholder, would you look at the last election as “Democrats got defeated for not being Democratic enough” or you would you view it as “voters preferred conservative representatives”?
Mike J
@Belafon: Gitmo used to be a coaling station. It’s not needed for that any more, but the utility of the base has no bearing on any debate to give it up.
jl
This will be interesting. If they are honest about and do a good job, might a future for TNR. Let us see.
I do think it is a fitting tribute to Sullivan’s most recent retirement.
The New Republic To Run Cover Story On Its Own ‘Perceived Legacy Of Racism’
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/new-republic-cover-racism-legacy
Might be chance for one more BJ blog Bell Curve bashing festival.
Also, I think Josh Marshall is posting very valuable reports and analysis on the Boehner-Bibi affair.
The only problem is that Marshal is explicitly touting his Jewish and Zionist credentials in his reports.
But is he really Jewish? I thought Peretz writing as TNR editor (edit: or as its publisher? I forget.) excommunicated Marshall some years ago.
The new publishers might take on TNR’s attempts to censor debate over US policy on Israel, even among the US Jewish community, next. That would be interesting too.
Villago Delenda Est
@Cacti: That would require the creativity that only a member of the potential audience has, not anyone in the writing or executive suites of Hollywood.
askew
@Belafon:
I’d look at it as the strategy we used failed completely as our voters stayed home. Dems and independent leaning Dems didn’t vote because our representatives didn’t give them a reason to. Running away from Obama and trying to be GOP-lite hasn’t worked since 1998 for Dems yet they keep falling for the failed Clinton playbook.
Not Adding Much to the Community
@satby: I pitched in. Good luck.
Peale
@Cacti: I guess I’d rather they would just do straight remake so we don’t have to get all ‘relationship’ oriented because they are women. If the movie is an extension, you know that they would do that. “Wiig is taking over for her father…and has always been troubled by his distance”, “McCarthy is getting over an ex boyfriend and has something to prove”. That kind of thing. I don’t want them to turn the story into a woman’s feature just because women are now in it. I think its good that they just will go back to the original story where none of the men had to explain why they were chasing ghosts on a personal level.
Actually, I wouldn’t mind just having some hot guy subjected to one of the cast members overt horny advances the way Sigourney Weaver was in the original. Just flip the genders and sexes and start anew.
Chris T.
@MattF: The trick is to buy a cheap car (say $12k) and keep making “payments” after it’s paid off, into a “next car” account. Hang on to cheap car for 8+ years … let’s say you’ve paid it off after 4 (paying roughly $240/mo x 4 years = $11520), at the end of 8 years you’re ahead $11k for the replacement car. Buy another cheap car, which this time is (say) $20k instead of $12k, and this time you only have to borrow $8k. Keep paying $240/mo x 3 years and you’ve paid that one off, so at the end of 8 years you have $15k, and so on.
(My first car was $650 but didn’t last 8 years… fortunately I then got my dad’s car cheap, etc. My first major borrowing was for a $17k car, on which I borrowed $5k and had auto-paycheck-extraction of $220/mo that kept going into savings after it was paid off. That worked very nicely. Of course the $17k was in 1991, there’s been some inflation since then.)
Pogonip
@Chris T.: I do this too. By the time your paid-off car starts needing things, those “payments” will have accumulated.
jl
@sharl:
Freddie deBoer,gets points for admitting that Chait both appeared to be, and in many respects was, a clueless ass in his piece on PC.
I am sorry that Freddie does not know what to do about seeing with his own eyes(!) cases where individuals are unreasonable and passive aggressively hostile to any attempts to find common ground and a basis for good faith conversation and debate.
It is very tragic that there are individual privileged liberals who come to public fora with axes to grind and stereotypes to stomp on.
I myself have been called a Nazi for saying that if pseudo-scientific racists are gong to pretend to do statistical analysis proving their false BS, we need to respond directly. I have, myself, been called a Nazi, because I used an example from animal breeding to show how senseless and so bad it was ‘not even wrong’ some pseudo-scientific research was. I was accused of implicitly comparing people of color to animals.
I am sorry that De Boer saw some women run from a room crying. I did not run from the room crying, I said, well, sorry you feel that way, but this is my expertise and I think someone needs to confront claims made by incompetent researchers directly, and that is that. So,we disagree.
And, this PC phenomenon is limited to liberals… how? Look at many youtube clips of teabaggers and rightwing loons and GOP confabs and it is not hard to find equivalents on the other side. This is a big institutional problem, how? Do you see organized liberal movement bogged down in this stuff so badly that they cannot get anything done. Maybe it is true the cannot get anything done, but getting bogged down in endless overly PC squabbles is not the primary reason, as far as can see.
There is a severe problem of all kinds of bigotry and racism and classicism and institutional imperatives to exploit and marginalize all sorts of people in the US, and it has a long history, and it has a powerful legacy. Until these problems are addressed and remedied, it can be very difficult to for people from different groups to be confident that they are talking with each other on an equal basis and in good faith.
So, De Boer needs to ‘man up’. Hope he does not consider that sexist micro-aggression against him.
Betty Cracker
@lethargytartare: Agreed that FdB is an unreliable narrator, but that doesn’t mean outrage farmers don’t exist and that they don’t occasionally compost innocent bystanders. From my perspective, the real issue with Chait’s article, aside from general cluelessness and a jarring lapse in logic or two, is that what he’s crying about is just not that big a problem.
It’s like the wingnut War on Christmas — 99.5% nonexistent and an issue that wouldn’t crack the top 10,000 list of issues worth discussing if it didn’t affect those with the most power and the biggest megaphones.
Pogonip
@TaMara (BHF): We always found a litter to be very little trouble; put them in their pen and they’ll keep each other entertained. Raising YOUR puppy is exhausting–but it’s all worth it when he marches across that stage, with his diploma, and then outside to roll in the remains of a dead skunk..
Belafon
@Mike J: The reason I gave is the defense reason, and it was the reason stated in the US foreign relations class I took a while back. I just don’t see the US giving that up any time soon. It’s not like the US has to actually have normal relations with Cuba. We’ve been paying the Cubans rent since we took it over, even if they aren’t cashing the checks.
jl
@jl: It’s also interesting that De Boer doesn’t address any of Chait’s dubious claims about issues that do involve institutions, and really can be considered significant issues. Like, what should be the role of students when the university brass make corrupt bargains without student input to have some random political schmuck represent their university at an important public function.
That is a real issue. What does De Boer have to say about that?
Well, he admitted that he just does not know what to do, so maybe that is his contribution that debate.
Darkrose
@burnspbesq: Oddly enough, Chait appears to be very much alive. Care to rephrase that extremely offensive metaphor?
Linnaeus
@Betty Cracker:
I think Angus Johnston has a decent response to deBoer.
jl
I was also at a conference on stereotype bias, and a speaker was criticized because some person accused all this stereotype bias stuff was really a way for ‘the white man’ to implicitly accuse people of color of failing because they had a ‘bad attitude’.
I am glad the speaker did not run from the room crying. Rather she patiently explained the issue, that white men were manipulated by stereotype bias just as much as anyone else. They had enough power that the effects of stereotype bias often did not result in discrimination against them, but rather to reinforce dysfunctional behavior in organizations.
Eventually she got the vast majority of the audience to agree with her.
Some of the stuff that De Boer just doesn’t know what to about is just the difficult and sometimes ugly process of convincing people in public debate.
Darkrose
@trollhattan: Is it? I know pretty much zero about cars, so I don’t know how to determine what’s a necessary repair and what’s bullshit.
Calouste
@Peale: I think the phrase you want to use is “Is the US an exception” rather than “Is the US exceptional” because that has another meaning that sure as hell doesn’t apply in this case.
The idea that someone would be running for President or Prime Minister while not currently holding an elected office or being a member of the cabinet, let alone for almost a decade, would be laughable in almost all democracies, if not outright impossible.
Betty Cracker
@Linnaeus: He’s exactly right about how a good teacher should handle that situation.
Tenar Darell
I need new all weather tires, any suggestions on saving $ on them? Nothing too fancy, it’s just a nice Toyota Corolla sedan, but driving in NE means lots of potholes and all types of weather. Used to go to usually NTB, but I don’t like them much anymore.
Roger Moore
@MattF:
All of this stuff depends a lot on things like the terms of the loan. If you can get a good, low interest rate car loan, it may make more sense than paying cash. That said, the best plan is to keep your old car once it’s paid off and start saving the money you’d otherwise make on a car payment. Once you’ve saved enough for a new car, you can buy for cash. Of course that only really works if your old car is in good enough shape that you can keep it running and aren’t forced to replace it before you’ve saved for a replacement. If you’re dead broke and need a car to get to work, you don’t have a lot of choice in the matter.
Ayn Randy
I had a discussion with someone IRL earlier about Democrats losing so much ground at the state and county level over the past couple of decades. Basically, this seems to be an irreversible trend.
One thing I never see mentioned is how people who grow up in red areas that are potential Democratic voters wind up moving out of those areas. I grew up in a small rural town that runs blood red through each level of government. Anyone who agrees with me on politics has already left for bluer pastures. The people who are there have already dug in their heels. The people who grow up and stay there reinforce it. Unless Democrats can start flipping rural white voters, the rural/urban divide is just going to get worse for Team Blue.
sharl
@Linnaeus: That IS a good response to FdB. I see that FdB showed up in comments there, but failed to answer the really important question that Angus Johnson posed near the beginning of his post.
I had assumed – apparently incorrectly – that the things FdB witnessed were in student/activist meetings rather than in the classroom. If FdB did in fact allow stuff like that to happen in a class of his without intervening, he fucked up bad by allowing the verbal abuse to go on, rather than making such incidents the teachable moments they should have been.
And now that Mr. Johnson mentions it, my past issues with FdB have invariably involved whining on FdB’s part.
sharl
@sharl: Well, in reading Angus Johnson’s post and its comments more closely, it may in fact BE mostly outside-of-class stuff that is involved. FdB still should address if and how he (and others) intervened to prevent the bullying he witnessed, and if he didn’t intervene, why didn’t he? Teachable moments happen outside of classrooms as well; probably more so.
trollhattan
@Darkrose:
Just my guess–probably one of those services they’ll sneak into a larger list of repairs, and likely involves running a buck’s worth of solvent through the fuel system to “clean the injectors and dissolve carbon from the valves and cylinders” or somesuch. This can very occasionally be of benefit to cars with so much extra crap in the cylinder heads the engine is detonating (knocking), but most of the time…not.
A little the the “paint and leather protection package” they try to sell with new cars. What’s another five-hundred when you’re already spending thirty large?
ThresherK
@Roger Moore: There is also “opportunity cost”, i.e. what one would otherwise be doing with the $$$ they’d buy a car with, instead of financing it for a few years.
(I’m not saying “it’ll earn money into a bank”, because it won’t.)
And there is a great benefit of being able to consider these things. I won’t say “I bought a used Model T for $5, without any tires, just drove it on the rims for two years, and when it fell apart I was out the 10 gallons of gas I’d just put in it”.
But I have been in a position of not turning down a repair that is a big percentage of an old car’s worth, and it isn’t fun. Now to find some Austerian to say to the 19-year-old me, “Why don’t you just get a great loan to buy a new car? It’s much more sensible than putting $250 into your beater.”
raven
@Gin & Tonic: Yea, the guys were here ready to start pouring and I really didn’t want to screw with it. I went to the office and, when I got back, they had broken a water line that the city had said was way deeper than it was and the concrete truck ripped down my tenant’s cable and we can’t get that fixed until tomorrow. I was already going to knock some dough off her rent next month, now fo sho!
dww44
@raven: O/T questions for you, Raven. What was the name of that fried chicken eatery in Thomson that you mentioned a couple of weeks ago in a thread here? have some nearby friends here who want to know, as do I, truthfully.
JGabriel
@Linda Featheringill:
Well, let’s see: you post comments on the internet, to a political-humor blog, which are generally well-thought out, rational, sane, and intelligent.
So, no, we really can’t assume you’re normal, can we?
Gin & Tonic
@raven: Sounds like a hell of a mess.
catclub
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal-a/2015_01/all_shook_up_in_oklahoma053935.php
Lots of quakes in Oklahoma. I think that if the model quake in this region is the gigantic new Madrid quake of 1818 – and then very quiet for along time, then lots of little quakes may reduce the likelihood of such a devastating quake.
I would trade a LOT of magnitude 3 quakes to avoid a New Madrid Quake every other century.
reality-based
@Tenar Darell:
well, My brother-in-law pulled of a tire miracle for me by watching craigslist like a hawk – he found somebody who wanted to put new, fancier wheels/tires on the car he had just bought, and sold him 4 new tires for my car – just tires, not rims, of course – for $200. My sainted BIL put them on my rims and balanced them for me, and I got 4 BRAND NEW top-of-the-line goodyear – so new they still had nubs on them – for $200.
just saying – it can be done1
satby
@PurpleGirl: Thanks!
And to all the rest of you who clicked and bought. We’re at 13, so they’ll print. So we’ll break even on the marketing test and I’m telling the board president my mysterious network is off limits for blegging. Balloon-Juice has been very good to me, thank you!
You guys rock.
GHayduke (formerly lojasmo)
I brought my car in to get the steering rack replaced.
$3000 dollars later, I have a steering rack, ball joint, rf hub, clutch, transmission, tranny mounts and shifter mounts.
Betty Cracker
@GHayduke (formerly lojasmo): $3,000! OMG, what a nightmare.
catbirdman
@BGinCHI: Vulture capitalism pays his way but it corrodes his soul.