So just as I was about to shut everything down for the night my work email crashed. Instead of trying to deal with it tomorrow I’m doing it now. Cranky about it, but it was an easy fix so there’s that. It’s just taking forever to rebuild the data.
Here’s a shiny new thread. Talk about whatever…I’m going to have to wake up the slumbering Dane and convince him it’s time to go to bed.
Music: Cherokee River from the Walela album. I love that album so much I can’t pick a favorite.
Mike J
To sleep–perchance to dream: aye, there’s the rub,
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause.
Frankensteinbeck
The third book of my Please Don’t Tell My Parents I’m A Supervillain series is out today! Yaaaay!
Okay, that’s my Open Thread announcement. I sleep now.
Aleta
@Mike J: nice; thanks for putting those together! made me smile
Origuy
Lunar New Year started five minutes ago here in San Jose. It sounds like a war zone outside. I live down the street from several Asian businesses and many of my neighbors are Asian. I doubt most of them really believe in firecrackers scaring evil spirits away; it’s just an excuse to make noise for the next two weeks.
Brachiator
The NY Times has a story about the Clintons starting shit again. Bill is out accusing Sanders of everything from hypocrisy to sexism. This, after they already had to pull back from having their surrogates Steinem and Albright accuse young women of gender treason for supporting Bernie. The Clintons never learn. This shit backfired on them big time when they tried to sling crap at Obama in the 2008 campaign. But here they are again with the same playbook of slime, along with falsely portraying Hillary as the delicate flower of feminism, gently tapping on the class ceiling that stands between her and her destiny.
Dopes.
EconWatcher
@Brachiator:
I think Hillary really misfired in her in-your-face response to Sanders about her bankster speaking fees. A calm and dignified defense might have worked on this one, but she set herself up for trouble by indignantly suggesting that the mere question was an “artful smear.”
What are the chances that she offered some boilerplate praise for her hosts in her opening remarks, perhaps even suggesting they had been excessively vilified? Pretty high, I’d say. A good speaker almost always begins with some nice things about the audience, and I would imagine that’s doubly so if they’re paying several hundred thou for the privilege. And some boilerplate niceties in the transcript would probably not have hurt too much–if she hadn’t played the Claude Raines act of being “shocked, shocked” that anyone could question her about those speaking fees.
I don’t suppose she’ll ever release those transcripts, but I’ll bet there’s some recording on someone’s cell phone or elsewhere.
Hillary supporters, just curious, are you cool with her handling of this? Do you think Sanders lowered himself by questioning her abot speaking fees from the folks who brought us financial armaggedon, as she said? And how about her suggestion in response to all of this that she couldn’t be part of the establishment because she’s a woman running for president–did Obama ever do anything remotely like that in response to any criticism?
OzarkHillbilly
@Aleta: You can thank Shakespeare. (I cheated- the google is my friend)
Another night of insomnia for me. Woke up at 1:09 with some asshole shoving an ice pick into my arthritic left shoulder. Would not stop it either. So I got up to kick his ass and he was gone. Chickensh!t. By then it was too late, I was wide awake.
Snowing right now. Not gonna add up to anything.
Ruckus
@EconWatcher:
I understand that they are not truly on the same side here, each of them wants the job and obviously only one of them can get it. But if I had my way they would stay positive about each other and let us make up our minds. But there are too many people involved in a race for the office and some of them think that whatever it takes is what you do. And it is after all politics, but I’d like to see a better campaign by both Clinton and Sanders. Whichever one wins the nomination will be shit upon by whatever conservative slug oozes out of their collective slime. Why should we help them do that?
BillinGlendaleCA
@Brachiator: I would take ANYTHING the NYT says about the Clintons, opinion or reporting, with a jumbo shaker of salt. There’s a long history of animosity by the NYT towards the Clintons. More often than not the NYT has been wrong.
BillinGlendaleCA
@OzarkHillbilly: You might want to invest in a better security system to prevent unwanted visitors.
Ruckus
@OzarkHillbilly:
I’ve been told that insomnia is not necessarily normal as we get older but I call BS. Last night I went to bed about 1:30 and laid there wide awake for another hour. And that’s not abnormal. It’s just after one here now and I’d bet that if I go to bed now I’ll lay there for an hour or two anyway. Wish there was a way to fix this, sleep is nice. Maybe as we get older we get more worried about actually waking up.
bin Lurkin'
@Frankensteinbeck: Congrats… Must be a satisfying feeling.
bin Lurkin'
@Ruckus: Our modern way of sleeping all at once is somewhat unnatural, before relatively modern times and available light at night people slept twice with a waking period in between
I do this a lot now I’m old enough to not have much in the way of set responsibilities, sleep early at night, wake for a few hours in the middle of the night and then back to sleep for a couple of more.and rise around dawn.
Some of my best thinking happens around four in the morning.
Ruckus
@bin Lurkin’:
It is thought that people used to sleep in 3 1/2 to 4 hr sleep cycles and that trying to sleep for 8 hrs is not really natural. I’m lucky when I’m able to sleep for 90 minutes at a time, wake up, change position and get another 90 minutes and do this for 6-8 hrs. Still not as bad as a few yrs ago when 4-5 hrs was the max I’d get in a night.
ETA seems like it’s time to give it another shot for that slumber thing. Ta Ta.
OzarkHillbilly
@EconWatcher: Not a Hillary supporter, more of a Hillary leaner, but I’ll answer your questions.
Why not? How she handles it is up to her. If she finds it insulting to suggest she could be bought for a few paltry hundred thou, doesn’t she have the right to say as much?
It’s politics. Sanders has every right to ask whatever questions he feels are pertinent.
Personally, I think it is a stupid point to make from either party. Pot? I’m Kettle. You’re black. Reality check here: Both of them have been neck deep in national politics for a long time. HRC went to DC as First Lady in ’92 and played a major role in her husband’s administration. Bernie first arrived in DC in 1990 as Vermont’s rep in the House. So please, let’s just bury this talking point. It was dead on arrival.
What? Saying he was not a part of the establishment? Well, he was the Hope and Change candidate.
OzarkHillbilly
@EconWatcher: FYWP, ate my comment, if at forst I don’t succeed…
Not a Hillary supporter, more of a Hillary leaner, but I’ll take a shot at this.
Sure, why not? It’s politics.
Of course not. Bernie gets to raise whatever questions he wants. It’s politics. On the flipside of that coin, if she wants to take umbrage at the mere suggestion that she could be bought for a hundred thou or 2, that’s OK too. It’s politics. And remember, Bernie brings this up for the express purpose of pissing her off, so I;m not sure why you seem upset that his attack has worked.
This is just plain asinine from either one of them. Bernie has been in DC since 1990, Hillary since ’92. By definition they are both part and parcel of the “establishment”. So can we please bury this most idiotic of talking points? It was DOA before it was first uttered.
Like what? Say he was not a part of the establishment? Mr Hope and Change?
OzarkHillbilly
@Ruckus: In my own case, it is pain induced. I have a lot of Itises (Arthur and his sister Bursie and that rat bastard red headed stepchild Tendon) that like to wake me up. Sometimes I can just change position and fall back to sleep but if my brain kicks into gear, it’s game over.
Aleta
@OzarkHillbilly: myself, woke up at 3 with a stone or something in my shoulder . Couldn’t someone invent a mattress with a cut-out piece to drop the shoulder into? I think it would feel good to let it hang, open the joint a little bit.
OzarkHillbilly
@Aleta: That would certainly help, I think. This morn, nothing would. No matter how I held my shoulder the little rat bastard kept jabbing me with the ice pick. Once I sat up, and my arm hung down, then the pain let up. Some any way.
Botsplainer, Cryptofascist Tool of the Oppressor Class
I got news for Berniebots – the transcripts of the speeches are the Long Form Birth Certificate of this election cycle. I see them that way, and it really colors my perception of”high minded” Bernie that we’re here.
What would a President Bernie economic team look like, anyway? Some aging radical sociology professors and a refugee from a drum circle who goes by the name “Captain Frizz”? Because from where I sit having read his stupid health plan and seeing all the thought that went into impacts of the policies, that’s what he’s got.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym
@EconWatcher: I’ll take a slightly different tack than Ozark Hillbilly. I find the Sanders’ camp’s reaction more than a bit too precious. You don’t get to insinuate that someone is corrupt and then complain that they’ve made it personal. If you wanted to play hardball politics, fine, but then don’t start whining when your opponent comes back at you.
No one familiar with the history of attacks on Hilary Clinton should be surprised when she responds to them by going nuclear. It’s a part of her character that I don’t like, but I also recognize how she’s been conditioned to react that way. It’s now a part of who she is. I think she has a lot of positive attributes, but that’s one of the negative ones. I doubt very much that I would like Hillary Clinton, the human being, but I will vote for her to be president, and I think she’ll be a better one than Bernie would.
Applejinx
@Brachiator: On the contrary, they’re formidable adversaries. Like I said in the sad trombone for Bush thread, it’s like trying to run a primary against Nixon.
Guy Kawasaki described competing with Microsoft as ‘put your head in a vise. Now tighten it. Now tighten it more. That’s what it’s like competing with Microsoft’. That’s also what it’s like running a primary against the Clintons. Just breathtaking. They will say, and do, anything. ANYTHING. It’s amazing what’s happening out there.
Aleta
@Ruckus: Such a self-defeating cop out when candidates go negative to differentiate themselves in a close primary. They act indifferent to the effect of differentiating voters to smithereens. Wish they could invent a new strategy that would sew their bases together ahead of time, instead of leaving a bitter mess to fix itself going into the convention. I think Hillary should be trying to differentiate herself from the old Clinton attack machine instead of taking shelter. Instead she further disillusions sanders supporters, when she should be appealing to their idealism too.
Applejinx
@Botsplainer, Cryptofascist Tool of the Oppressor Class: I’d like to see him team up with Mark Blyth, the Brown professor.
But pretty much any Keynsian who understands that you run a deficit to get the economy more active so you can expand your GDP relative to other countries, especially if they’re trying to contract and be austere.
The main problem is that the finance sector’s made up imaginary money thirty times the value of everything on earth, and all the bankster bailouts etc. are trying to keep that house of cards from collapsing, and they get bailed on the backs of regular citizens to preserve ‘confidence’. We can’t get around that, but we can still get the real economy roaring simply by putting people to work on infrastructure projects and letting them be paid and buy things with their wages. This is not complicated nor is it hard.
If the framing is ‘taxes have to always go down, forever, plus you can’t ever print money/run a deficit’, well, you know whose rules those are, and where it’s got us. Nope. Hiring people and putting them to work is worth violating those ‘principles’ and is something a nation can ALWAYS DO unless it doesn’t control its own money supply. The US not only controls its own money supply but is the world’s reserve currency.
This is not complicated.
Aleta
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym: good points
bin Lurkin'
Ooops again… One of the reasons Obama did as well as he did is that he didn’t have a lengthy record in the public eye that could be dissected for errors. Hillary is not so lucky.
“Bring them to heel” is such a remarkably unfortunate yet memorable turn of phrase when an ultra privileged blonde haired blue eyed white lady is speaking about minority youth.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@bin Lurkin’: I would have bet you were pointing us to 25 or 6 to 4.
Cheers,
Scott.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@bin Lurkin’: Yeah, just look at that huge list. There must be some fire there because, begging the question, smoke is always caused by fire.
Cheers,
Scott.
(Who knows politics isn’t bean-bag.)
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
What, nobody has suggested “Get a Mac!” or “Crashing doesn’t happen with Linux!” yet? What’s going on here?!?!
;-)
Cheers,
Scott.
Just One More Canuck
@Frankensteinbeck: excellent – we have the first 1 – my daughter is reading it now
FlipYrWhig
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym: The Bernie Sanders camp whines and moans about every blessed thing: “NO FAIR she’s so MEAN and all we said was that she’s corrupt and would say anything to be president and she said THINGS BACK TO US!” It’s obnoxious. Frankly the Obama camp did the same thing in 2008.
bemused
In a GOP debate thread someone commented on the audience not knowing whether to cheer Trump or not when he said we’re not going to let people die on the street in any city in this country. I had to watch that and it was worse than I imagined. It sounded like one person clapping. They really do want to see people who can’t afford health care die.
gvg
@Frankensteinbeck: I have almost finished the first book. I am enjoying it, so much I stayed up too late Saturday night and was a bit sleepy all day Sunday.
Wag
@EconWatcher:
Hilary is every bit as much a part of the establishment as Maraget Thatcher was.
rk
@EconWatcher:
As a Hillary supporter I’ll answer that. Yes, I’m perfectly fine with it. She’s a senator from New York, she’ll speak to Wall Street guys. And she’s right, why should she release the transcripts?
He didn’t lower himself asking that question. But the implication is that she did something wrong by speaking to them and she’s corrupt because she did.He should either have the balls to come out and say it or shut up about it. Actually the person who Bernie should be railing against is Obama. Because last time I checked it was Obama who bailed out Wall Street and none of the banks were held accountable for their wrongdoing. But, I’d like to see how Bernie becomes the nominee by constantly criticising Obama.
I hate the way Bernie supporters criticise Hillary in the exact same way, using the same talking points as Republicans. She’s unlikable, corrupt, dishonest etc. Then whine like babies when they get push back. I’ve even read that “she shouted at him”. This from fans of a candidate who comes across as an angry old curmudgeon
Paul in KY
@Applejinx: The freaking problem is that investment income is taxed as 15%, so it makes economic sense for those with this kind of income (real rich hedge funders, etc.) to keep their money in that pool.
That tax has got to be raised, to get them to do other, more beneficial to society, things with their loot.
Paul in KY
@rk: I wish she’d given that money to charity (a non-Clinton Foundation charity).
J R in WV
@Applejinx:
There! Fixed that for you. Dunno what to do about someone naive enough to be amazed by an American political campaign, maybe some age and experience will fix it naturally.
No offense, just amused a little by your perspective. I hope Hill gets the nom, and then the Presidency, just because I like her. Hard to believe, huh? 65 y o male, finding Hillary likable!
Applejinx
@Paul in KY: Absolutely. I’m on board with that. In fact either Bernie or Hillary raising that tax (and not even to Eisenhower levels) would do a world of good.
People behave like there is no money. There’s loads of money. You just have to be prepared to look at people who have money.
I talked to my accountant (tax-filing guy: I do run a small business so I need one) and mentioned how Social Security is clawing back around $2800 from me, and how I’d come to an arrangement to pay it back slowly. He says he’s seeing a LOT of this and has been involved in attempts to cut deals for people. Often the deals fail because the people promise to pay and then don’t even make payments.
I was more interested to learn that Social Security is going on a claw-back spree. Apparently the government wants to be funded off the poor and disabled. Bernie Sanders can’t get elected nearly soon enough o_O
(since when do we even HAVE money to take? have some common sense)