Whoever edited this has a sense of humor… don’t miss the deadpan Russian or the elderly Brit…
Crank this up and put on your dancing shoes — one of the world's greatest musicians takes on #COVID19 — "no pata pata". Thank you, @angeliquekidjo ! (Drumming & bass are amazing…Up your subwoofer for this.) https://t.co/KE7rl6VWoZ
— Laurie Garrett (@Laurie_Garrett) May 10, 2020
South Korea and the US had their first reported case on the same day.
Today, South Korea has reduced daily cases by 90%. In the US, 70,000 Americans have died and unemployment has hit 14.7%.
The difference: competent government that heeds experts. Vote for that in November.
— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) May 8, 2020
If you’re wondering here it is pic.twitter.com/gtCGrjzftu
— thegimik (@thegimik) May 9, 2020
… you postadolescent mic-jockey.
President Obama continues to be correct:
Former President Obama slams President Trump’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic as an “absolute chaotic disaster” during a conversation with ex-members of his administration, according to a recording obtained by Yahoo News. https://t.co/6s1HFAZGkM
— The Associated Press (@AP) May 9, 2020
Former first daughter Malia Obama makes a rare appearance on Michelle Obama's Netflix documentary, where she gets emotional after seeing the crowd for her mom's book tour https://t.co/1xJdVQbrQv pic.twitter.com/izDFYOcQ9E
— CNN (@CNN) May 10, 2020
Patricia Kayden
JPL
Good Morning!
JPL
@Patricia Kayden: It’s doubtful that the food supply chain is the only one with problems. When Joe is elected, the republicans led by Fox will blame him. Oh well, all they do is blame and cut taxes for their cronies.
Amir Khalid
Ben Stiller has announced his dad Jerry’s death at 92 from natural causes.
OzarkHillbilly
No Helen, what’s insane is that trump might get reelected anyway.
OzarkHillbilly
@Amir Khalid: A legend. RiP.
WereBear
Sadly, I’ve concluded that nothing less than a global pandemic can shake the Republican Death Cultists among us (whatever their claimed inclinations, that’s who they are.)
I feel we are continually offering the torch of The Enlightenment: science, rationality, flexibility and humanitarianism.
All we can do is keep it lit and marginalize those who prefer darkness. The opposition won, in part, because their tactics to make people feel apathetic and powerless worked on many. I see more people waking up from that because this emergency has shaken us all from our familiar ruts.
It’s never fun, but often necessary.
WereBear
@Amir Khalid: What a fine performer he was!
Kay
We need to fight this. There’s another one, also from Hoover and AEI, that has 18 year olds borrowing 2 years of future Social Security benefits for one year of college tuition.
Conservatives are horrible with money. Having burned through billions and left a staggeringly large debt, they know want to spend the future rock bottom retirement benefits of 20 year olds. Grabbing everything they can.
They cannot bear the thought that there is anything anywhere that they haven’t borrowed on, mortgaged or bankrupted.
Betty Cracker
Biden has an opinion piece in The Post this morning slamming Trump’s handling of the “reopening.” It’s well done, IMO. He points out the admin’s hypocrisy for setting up a stringent testing regime at the White House while telling the rest of us to get back to work/resume normal activities without having the testing, tracking and tracing in place that public health experts recommend.
SFAW
@OzarkHillbilly:
Blech
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@Amir Khalid: I love the “Selected Shorts” program of actors reading short stories on stage. Even heard it live one night at its home in a little theater at 96th & Broadway in New York.
By far my favorite was Jerry Stiller reading a wonderful story called “At the Anarchists Convention.” It’s on YouTube.
It’s not hard to imagine a lot of BJ jackals as characters in that story about 20-30 years from now.
Kay
The borrowing future benefits to spend 10k now is Jared’s idea, but recall that Ivanaka’s idea was borrow future benefits to pay for your own parental leave. So we have borrow Social Security for parental leave, borrow Social Security to spend 10k, and borrow Social Security for college.
The Trump children aren’t coming up with this crap. This is a concerted effort on the Right to cash in future Social Security benefits. The dopes are just parroting what elite Righties tell them is “smart”.
They want that money.
SFAW
Regarding President Obama’s “slamming” of the Murderer-in-Chief’s “response”: I expect that, any day now, we’ll hear a leaked story about how The Destroyer is having Shill Barr look into getting rid of Obama’s Secret Service protection.
I wish I were joking. No, I have no inside info that he’s doing that, but given what a petty prick he is, few things would surprise me less
ETA: I have no idea what the relevant law(s) is/are. On the other hand, when have those evil motherfuckers cared about “rule of law”?
SFAW
@Kay:
Somewhere in Hell, Peter Peterson is smiling.
Yutsano
@Kay:
Ugh! How much this shit annoys me! We need to call this what it is: destroying Social Security for the future generations. It will absolutely have an impact on the current recipients as well, as it will reduce the amount of benefits available to everyone. One of the first acts of the Biden regime should be to remove the income cap on SS. That would put it on a secure footing for generations.
Okay have accomplished my defecation. Sleep for at least a couple hours is required. Back anon!
EDIT: it is excellent to see you posting here again! Your voice is important. And was missed.
Betty Cracker
@Kay: The vultures who are pulling Javanka’s strings also surely know that post-Boomer generations are woefully unprepared for retirement since few people have pensions anymore and 401ks have taken repeated beatings thanks to Wall Street malfeasance. But yeah, let’s cannibalize Social Security.
debbie
@JPL:
NPR just reported that a lot of it is being exported to China as part of the loosening of tariffs.
Nice tweet from Hillary.
debbie
@Amir Khalid:
SERENITY NOW!
debbie
@WereBear:
I disagree with your first sentence. The only thing that will shake them is when many, many conservatives die.
debbie
@Kay:
At long last, a way around that damnable lockbox! //
Immanentize
@Kay: Truly without shame. The world they will leave behind should this happen is unimaginable. People are terrible at long term savings for retirement. Look at how few people have any — let alone sufficient — 401ks to pull them through retirement. People will almost always take a dollar today rather than put it away for 50 years from now.
If you let people borrow against their SS, they will.
ETA and what B. Cracker said.
raven
@Immanentize: That’s a big issue with reverse mortgages to the point that they only make a percentage of the total funds available for the 1st year. So many people took them and burned through the HECM and then were toast.
Kay
@Betty Cracker:
They do know. Ivanka’s crap plan was developed by a Goldman Sachs alum and the scheme to borrow future Social Security benefits to pay college tuition was put forth by a person from Georgetown.
It isn’t that they’re poorly educated or dumb- they’re bad. They have bad ideas because all their public policy ideas spring from and are constrained by their devotion to financially secure people (themselves), rich people and cutting taxes.
I love the Georgetown genesis , I must say. What’s the tuition at Georgetown these days? 80k? The scheme is to …transfer future Social Security benefits to….. economists at elite universities?
Immanentize
@raven: Ugh.
That seems like a lack of understanding coupled with a payday. “Sailor rich,” my Dad called it. People are desparate these days, I get it. But that will cause them to get whatever they need from wherever they can, consequences be damned. But they still shouldn’t eat their seed corn.
Immanentize
@Kay: So, Social Security should pay for one’s college, child care, and pandemic relief. Next: health care?
I think Yang’s UBI is looking pretty damn good right now.
raven
@Immanentize: From a real salt “That money is burin a hole in your pocket” !
Mustang Bobby
Good morning, and thanks again for those of you who tuned in to last night’s Medium Cool with BGinCHI to talk about playwriting with me. It was fun.
Kay
@Immanentize:
I love that they’ve already spent the same 10k they don’t yet have not once, but three times. Once for child care, again for college tuition and now they’re tapping it for stimulus. Jared wants to make sure he doesn’t miss a rent collection on the slums his dad and mom own.
It’s not even that Democrats are “better” with budgets. It’s that Republicans are affirmatively bad with money. Reckless. Wasteful. Debtors. Bankrupts.
Baud
The problem we have is that we are competing economically with countries with competent governments, so that’s added pressure to just let people die.
raven
@Mustang Bobby: Indeed it was!
Baud
I would support the Social Security plan if I could be 100% sure that the Biden administration could cancel the debt.
Immanentize
AND…. Betty Wright’s died. She sang Cleanup Woman when she was 14 (or younger?)
Her Brother, Milton, was my boss at Roxbury Defenders back in the late ’80’s. Betty came and sang for a small group of us at a church in Roxbury. She had transitioned to almost all gospel and praise music by then. But boy could she belt them out. Milton is a great singer and actor and playwrite in his own right (Wright?)
Immanentize
@raven: I heard that my whole childhood.
MomSense
@Immanentize:
We need UBI for sure, but it’s not a good plan for dealing with automation. Fear not truck driver earning 70k per year here is 1,000 a month.
raven
@Immanentize: We were the war children. . .
Kay
I’m not complaining because we are an “essential” business so never had to close and we’ve actually been quite busy, but it’s complicated. We had a police officer exposed- his wife called me yesterday, they were splitting up the calls to people he met with because (I assume) there were so many. One of our employees just came back Friday and now she’s going to be newly freaked out – she’s a single parent of two grade schoolers she adopted from her drug addicted sister so feels a special duty to …remain alive.
It’s just hard. Every day it’s complicated. We only have 6 workers here, total. Imagine a larger business.
Immanentize
@MomSense: True. But not everyone replaced in modernization/automation will get no job after theirs goes away. It’s a cushion for some, not an answer to the bigger issues.
Coal mines are going to close and they are not coming back. But a UBI would be better than nothing for some permanently (it’s not called Basic for nothing) and a better bridge than we currently have for others as they move to some other job maybe some other place.
The Thin Black Duke
I think things are getting bad enough where billionaires better get used to the choice of either paying their fair share of taxes now or swing from the end of a rope later.
Yutsano
@MomSense: There is another idea for UBI: giving enough for a middle class income. So a UBI of $50K for the United States for example. It would be expensive but the amount of money just shifting from our 0.1% would cover it. And bonus: they would make even more money from a supercharged economy.
I’m not saying this is viable. But it is a possible idea.
Baud
@MomSense:
I’m not opposed to UBI, but I think we don’t yet have consensus about what purpose it serves. I believe Yang’s idea was that UBI would replace traditional welfare programs, which I think is a bad idea.
Immanentize
@raven: I spent a bunch of time this weekend listening to Van M. Kept playing Sweet Thing just to improve my mood….
Thanks for the link.
raven
@Immanentize: I think the airline industry is totally fucked.
Betty Cracker
@Kay: I agree; the wingnut economists who push these bullshit “solutions” are doing so because they’re terrible people. It’s a smash and grab, and they deserve LESS respect than a common thief who throws a brick through a storefront window. At least the common thief is risking personal consequences; the Heritage Foundation economists don’t risk anything personally. It’s important to point out their greed and willingness to break the social compact for profit at every opportunity. It’s not a simple policy disagreement.
raven
@Immanentize: That was a pretty unknown album. I actually saw him at the Lion’s Share in San Anselmo right after it was released. Snow in San Anselmo has always been a fav.
Immanentize
@Baud: I agree it can’t replace everything, but it could replace all the unemployment paid everywhere with one standard amount. Yang was looking for a cost neutral argument. Not going to happen. But we have unemployment, and special industry specific bailouts (like in coal country and farmers) and and and. Those could all be wrapped up.
Also, a UBI might vastly improve child care options for, especially, single parents.
Immanentize
@raven: And the cruise industry — dammit! Bye bye vacation savings.
Yutsano
@Betty Cracker: Incidentally: I do feel slightly guilty about not wishing you Happy Mother’s Day here. But I did get you on Twitter. I just never linked it here. I also love Opiejeans’s idea of the social distancing picnic!
hueyplong
This borrowing against Social Security is nothing more than telling people: Fuck you. We’ll act as your loan sharks, but nothing more.
There is no floor.
Immanentize
@raven: yeah, I don’t know that album. But I will soon! Thanks.
(P.S. The cover art definitely says, “Raven.”)
Baud
@Immanentize:
Don’t be so sure!
debbie
@The Thin Black Duke:
I’m flashing on The Handmaiden’s Tale myself.
Immanentize
OK friends, I’m off to make a serious final push to finish my taxes today.
Kay
@Betty Cracker:
It’s important to me too to stop putting it all off on Trump voters who are “dumb” or not formally educated. That’s bullshit. Most of these people had the best private education money can buy and they’re all 100% on board with this. This isn’t entirely a “masses” problem. Our elites suck. They’re gross and greedy and coddled.
Tell me that the Georgetown shill didn’t get a proper “civics” education. It isn’t about that. Only about half of people had graduated high school in FDR’s time. The thing was, they weren’t horrible people. They don’t lack degrees- they lack decency. A degree you can fix. This won’t be as easy.
Immanentize
@Baud: well, hope springs eternal….
Gin & Tonic
@raven: Did you see there’s going to be a new release from the vaults of a whole bunch of 1970 Mothers material? This was the George Duke, Aynsley Dunbar, Flo & Eddie era.
OzarkHillbilly
(NYT) Bill Barr Twisted My Words in Dropping the Flynn Case. Here’s the Truth.
MomSense
@Baud:
Oh it doesn’t solve anything except giving people who already work more of a chance to pay their bills each month.
There are problems bigger than automation on the horizon. Here’s one that has been bothering me for 25 or so years. We need five or six more planets worth of raw materials to sustain our consumer based economy. I don’t see any alternatives to the consumer based economy being workshopped by thought leaders, let alone any planning being done by governments.
Betty Cracker
@Yutsano: No worries — saw it on Twitter! :)
The Thin Black Duke
@Kay: But the problem is, the Trump voters think that the monsters proposing this bullshit are on their side.
OzarkHillbilly
“F*ck Elon Musk.”
-Lorena S Gonzalez,
“Mama, Labor Leader turned CA Assemblywoman [and] Progressive Latina Democrat”
raven
@Gin & Tonic: Cool!
Kay
@The Thin Black Duke:
Right but there’s this whole theme on the liberal side that this is somehow attributable to a lack of “education”. Barr is educated. Miller is educated. Jared bought his college degree, but we do know he went to an expensive high school. It isn’t an education problem. They are not only formally schooled, they have the best education money can buy. Still. They lobby for things like “telling 18 year olds to borrow their retirement safety net for college”. They’re bad. Another credential won’t fix it.
Elizabelle
@Kay:
Your comments today are why I come to this blog. But wow, the latest proposed diversion (perversion?) of Social Security: what a horrible thing to learn about before coffee!
Decency can be an excellent subtext for the 2020 election. And lack of it underscores a lot of what bothers us about politics today, and explains why some people on Facebook are so appalling. (Usually friends of friends.) I often thought it’s because some peoples’ premises are so off that you cannot meet to discuss a topic.
But it is an underlying lack of decency.
And it starts at the top in the Republican/plutocrat sphere.
It’s interesting that some of the people churning the anger and misdirection are turning on … Bill Gates these days. He is showing the rest of them up.
The Thin Black Duke
@Kay: Unfortunately, most black people know that the Trump voters who buy into this nonsense do so because they hate everybody else who isn’t them. The lack of education ain’t got nothing to do with it.
Brachiator
@Kay:
What the hell? The Trump government is becoming a bunch of payday loan grifters.
mrmoshpotato
@Baud: Discount cruises? Did they advertise them as Plague Ship Prices?
EmbraceYourInnerCrone
@Kay: Thank you, most of the Trump voters in my area (southern New England) are NOT uneducated. Most have at least a Bachelors, many have a Masters, a couple have a PhD (or two). They are fundamentally selfish, and in many cases racist. It may not be the blatant, in your face racism of the Deep South but they are just as racist. My father was and so is my brother-in-law. They both had a LOT more education that me. Can we please bury this idea that Trump voters are poor uneducated rubes. They aren’t. If they don’t see that the “plans” of the Masters of the Universe will affect them and their kids too, it’s because the CHOOSE not to see it.
danielx
@mrmoshpotato:
special historical voyage on the Middle Passage!
EmbraceYourInnerCrone
@Brachiator: Becoming a bunch of payday load grifters? It is what they ALWAYS were, particularly Trump and Jared the slum lord.
Soprano2
Oh, absolutely we need to fight this with everything we can, because if you give people the opportunity to do this I can tell you from experience they absolutely will. I spent about 6 months selling a product that allowed you to save as little as $10/mo toward a retirement account. It was stunning to me how many people were afraid to put even that much money in an account where they couldn’t instantly get it at the first sign of financial trouble. It’s an indicator of how, even in the early ’90’s, there were many people living on the knife’s edge, and there are many more of them now than there were then (and right now many, many, many more). Many of these people erroneously think (due to decades of talk about dumb concepts like lockboxes) that there is an account with their name on it called “SS” somewhere, and that the money is just piling up for them. They don’t realize that the money they’re paying in now is being used to pay current benefits. So, many people would believe they were totally justified in borrowing “their own money” from “their own account”. I think the people who propose things like this know that, and want to take advantage of it to “free” that money for other purposes – mostly lining their own pockets. It’s a terrible, terrible idea that would assure that many people were impoverished in their “golden” years.
Dorothy A. Winsor
Oh holy shit. Open thread? Scalzi is going to let me post about the book coming in June in his Big Idea series. I’m hyperventilating.
I’m interrupting. I’m sorry. Now I’ll read the thread.
mrmoshpotato
@Brachiator: Who says you can’t teach old con artists new grifts?
Fuckers.
EmbraceYourInnerCrone
@mrmoshpotato: Truth in advertising! I told my husband years ago I would never take a cruise after seeing the state of repair a couple of cruise ships were in when in dry dock for refit/repairs. I have never seen anything to change my mind. From the way they are currently treating their employees (trapped on ships, not being paid) to the number of Norovirus epidemics they have had in the past. to the number of COVID-19 infections. Nope nope nope.
57,000 cruise ship crew members still trapped in Limbo
EmbraceYourInnerCrone
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Yay Scalzi! Congrats!!
Yutsano
@Immanentize: LUUUUUUUUCK! Feel free to drop me an e-mail if you need help.
mrmoshpotato
@danielx: Ouch. Or to the bottom of the sea. Titanic sightseeing!
Betty Cracker
@Brachiator: I think that’s a brilliant way to describe them: payday loan grifters.
MomSense
@Soprano2:
We also need to fight what they are doing to our postal service. They are trying to steal generations of infrastructure investment to give to one of their cronies who will kill the union and make a Fucking fortune.
Kristine
@Elizabelle:
I believe this is one reason why they’re going after Biden in the way they are. They feel decency is one of his strengths, so they will seek to undermine it. I’m glad Biden is hitting back by highlighting their incompetence. He’s going to need to hit multiple targets.
Kristine
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Congratulations! Looking forward to it!
Brachiator
@EmbraceYourInnerCrone:
The 2016 exit polls indicated that 61 percent of non-college educated white voters cast ballots for Republicans. They are not necessarily totally ignorant rubes, but the degree gap is real. And we seem to be seeing that a lot of these people are happy to wallow in their belligerent stupidity.
Elizabelle
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Big news! Wow!
Now, read the thread. There will be a quiz.
Nicole
God almighty; the endless free money given to the wealthy and to corporations, vs we have to rob Peter to pay Paul for us working stiffs makes me SO FUCKING ANGRY. The fact that they’re proposing this RIGHT AFTER this massive giveaway to the corporations… ugh.
My only bright spot today is a friend telling me her die-hard Libertarian cousin sent her a photo of himself holding his new voter registration card- registered Democrat. Her mother, a lifelong Republican, jumped ship to the donkeys after 2016. They’re both in Florida, too. I guess some working stiffs are capable of seeing that the fix is in with the GOP.
Well, and
@Dorothy A. Winsor: ‘s news is pretty great, too. So two bright spots.
hueyplong
Seeing as trump is likely to order a plague ship not to allow anyone to disembark in order to “keep his numbers down,” part of me wants to call the whole cruise ship thing a Darwin Awards experiment that we should allow to proceed.
Someone tell Steve Hasty of Murfreesboro and his Kameraden that the cruise ship allows endless free refills.
mrmoshpotato
@EmbraceYourInnerCrone: I personally see cruises as being trapped on a boat for days. I’ll lub me some land, thanks.
Elizabelle
@mrmoshpotato: I have been amused to see emails from both Royal Caribbean and Norwegian very recently, promising a trip to paradise.
Are they trolling? Or just real slow on the uptake?
If they start offering cruises for “warriors”, we will know.
mrmoshpotato
@Betty Cracker:
Department of Redundancy Department
Van Buren
@EmbraceYourInnerCrone: It’s comments like this that make me wish BJ had an upvote button.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@raven:
Did you see the pictures of that completely full United flight this weekend? I was shocked.
JPL
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Interrupting what? Congrats and that’s pretty important news to share.
mrmoshpotato
@Nicole:
It’s the Rethuglican way! Fuck you, Ronnie and your trickle-down bullshitonomics.
Elizabelle
@Dorothy A. Winsor: No. Was it the one of medical personnel being flown somewhere? I think someone was complaining, after the fact, about the close quarters …
JPL
@Elizabelle: Forbes has an article about the flight.
Citizen Alan
@Kay: I’ve said for years now that I genuinely don’t think Conservatives have souls. For some reason, they were born without whatever it is that gives human beings the possibility of decency and grace instead of acting like rabid baboons that have been strategically shaved.
charluckles
@EmbraceYourInnerCrone:
Humanity is weird , but I think America is really having a problem with it’s “elites,” it’s leadership. I worked for many years at a facility training some of the “best and brightest” minds in the country. People from wealth and status with an alphabet after their names.
They’d get sucked into training in their specialty and think that their expertise now applied to the entire world. Didn’t help that large part of their education directed them so be sure of themselves even under questionable circumstances.
The real lesson for me was how many of these brilliant incredibly capable people seem to have completely missed the important lessons of kindergarten. Basics like treating other people with respect, being forthright in your communication, how to cooperate etc. These were just foreign concepts.
Elizabelle
@JPL: Yes! That’s exactly the photo I saw.
Reading your Forbes link now. Thank you.
Brachiator
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
Congratulations!
Xentik
@mrmoshpotato: It’s the rise of the MBA class. They’re all taught to squeeze everyone for every last cent continuously, and they’ve infiltrated every corner of our society from industry to academia to the gov’t.
To quote Ambrose Bierce (apocryphally):
M.B.A., n. A degree in remedial math and advanced sociopathy.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@EmbraceYourInnerCrone: @Kristine: @Brachiator: @Nicole: Thank you. Now I have to write it. Ok. I can do that!
Dorothy A. Winsor
@JPL: @Brachiator: I’m pretty excited. Maybe you could tell.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Brachiator: Is there a U-shaped curve on R voters? That is, non-college grads at one end and wealthy people at the other? Your comment supports the non-college educated premise, but what about the other end? It used to be that D’s were working class and R’s were bankers, etc, but maybe the educated end has shifted away from the current lunatic version of the R party.
Immanentize
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Isn’t that an Algonquin table joke?: “I’ve just finished my latest novel. Now all I have to do is write it.”
Congratulations. What fun!
NotMax
Memo to self:
Birthday greetings and felicitations.
Immanentize
@NotMax: Enjoying the successful conclusion to another trip around our friend, the sun! Congratulations! Have a cigar.
Gin & Tonic
Memo to NotMax:
Sto lat!
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Immanentize: I’ll let you all know when it happens. But you knew that. :-) I’m sorry to hear about your vacation money sailing away. And about the loss of that vacation with Immp too.
@NotMax: Happy birthday!
Brachiator
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
Not really. As a 538 story indicates, the dividing line is education, not income, for white voters.
One analysis.
And I am not disregarding non-white voters. For non-college white voters, it is clearly tribal.
Non-white voters of all education and income levels see Trump and his crew as vile and dishonest.
Elizabelle
@NotMax:
Have a splendid birthday and upcoming year. Hey, you’ve got us.
Jeffro
Ay-men! We have to point out the pattern, each and every time they try crap like this. GOP greedheads are thieves, pure and simple, capable of doing nothing that would benefit anyone but themselves.
Elizabelle
I have just seen a jackal elsewhere refer to the Reopen and Branch Covidian types as the Flu Klux Klan.
It is perfect.
snoey
@Xentik:
There is one basic part of their education missing: How society works and interconnects.
Eisenhower talked about enlightened self interest with regard to the Marshall Plan. You can’t sell something to people who don’t have the money to buy it. Even Henry Ford figured that out.
As the apocryphal German business man put it: “I pay a lot in taxes because I want to live in a rich country”.
Jeffro
@Xentik:
That’s just excellent! Thanks for sharing.
laura
@NotMax: many happy returns of the Day!
rikyrah
Good Morning, Everyone ???
The Very Reverend Crimson Fire of Compassion
@NotMax: Happy Natalversary!
thalarctosMaritimus
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
Nice! Congratulations!
OzarkHillbilly
What a way to bring a man down. ;-)
@NotMax: Happy Bday.
Baud
@rikyrah: Good morning.
Baud
@NotMax:
Memo approved.
Brachiator
@NotMax:
Hoppy Birt Dey!
satby
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Congratulations!
@NotMax: a fellow Taurean! Happy Birthday to you???
schrodingers_cat
@NotMax: Happy Birthday.
OzarkHillbilly
The Guardian:
jeffreyw
Good morning! I was reading this account of George Harrison’s visit to an area town a long time ago and discovered that one of the men I worked with played bass in a band that George jammed with.
SFAW
@NotMax:
As dey say in Noo Yawk: Happy boitday!
SFAW
@Elizabelle:
I thought you wanted him to enjoy his birthday.
artem1s
@Immanentize:
I’m old enough to remember when SS and Medicare weren’t separate items on your pay stub. In fact, SS survivor’s benefits is already a thing for kids under 18 who lose their parents.
if we were to remove the income cap on SS contributions and add capital gains income and CEO stock options and bonus to what counts as income – we would have plenty in the SS pool to enact that ‘free college’ program that all the millenials want. Also, I would love to see SS take over the college loan program. Take that cash cow away from the banks – they’ve been abusing that cash flow for too long.
The counter argument we should be using is – the GOP is trying to charge you interest on YOUR money. IF the rich were paying their fair share in taxes, we’d have money for all those things that you should be getting interest free! Do you want single payer M4A? tuition free education? a secured SS net for the next 100 years? ENACT THE WARREN 2% TAX NOW!
NotMax
A favorite to get those beginning of the week corpuscles energized.
Brachiator
@artem1s:
I am not sure that the numbers would add up, and it is probably a bad idea to divert what is supposed to be retirement income for other purposes.
Social Security is hitting a payout problem because the pool of younger workers is decreasing and the pool of people over age 65 is increasing.
Removing the contribution cap is interesting, but would you also increase the pensions for higher income people, or cap it so that they can never recapture their contributions?
The entire tax system needs an overhaul, but I have never been much sold on the Warren 2 percent tax.
NotMax
Gracias a todos arriba.
Wishing y’all quadruple the celebratory mood here.
zhena gogolia
@NotMax:
Oh, Happy Birthday! I hope you can celebrate with some truly terrible B-movies.
Emma from FL
@Dorothy A. Winsor: YEAH! *does happy little dance for you
NotMax
@zhena gogolia
Hmm. Shall have to choose carefully. Maybe The Big Clock (technically an A minus, but open to rounding down into the B’s for the occasion). Always fun to see Charles Laughton oh so subtly masticate the scenery.
;)
Plans consist of listening to the original London cast album of Littl;e Mary Sunshine (with Patricia Routledge as Mary) to ensure a smile is in place and play the day by ear from there on.
artem1s
Don’t think about it as a diversion, but a lowering of the age you can access the funds. Think of Social Security as part of the social safety network – as it was intended to be – rather than some separate thing for the olds.
We are essentially proposing to do this (ACA has done this) for health care to enact universal access to medicare and medicaid. The only way we can have universal coverage is to put more revenue into the system. Social Security is long overdue for revenue overhaul too. Think of the borrowing power you could give to those at the lower end of the income spectrum. There has been a movement to let the postal service act as a lender so we can eliminate the cost to the community for having predatory lending companies fill that roll – that’s an example of shifting purpose to meet the needs. We need to broaden our thinking about the power of the cash flow of Social Security funds or the private sector will keep whittling away at it until it is as dead as the people who will never collect it. 2% tax or not, we need revenue reform or we are all going to lose what is left of the New Deal programs.
Make it work for the people for their whole lives and they will want to protect it for their whole lives.
Steeplejack (phone)
@NotMax:
Happy birthday! ???
montanareddog
@NotMax: Charles Laughton was not a scenery-chewer (exception granted for the Hunchback of Notre Dame); he was a well-cured ham, delicious to savor
zhena gogolia
@NotMax:
We tried to watch Car 54, Where Are You? last night. It had funny moments, but since the whole conceit was that Toody and Muldoon were going to drive JFK from the airport instead of the Secret Service, it was a little too creepy for comfort.
zhena gogolia
@montanareddog:
Peter Ustinov does a great impression of him.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u3nrheg0In0
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Emma from FL: @satby: @thalarctosMaritimus: Thanks! I went for a walk to work off the adrenaline a little. It’s amazing how much one good thing can count.
Calouste
@Kay: They’re not elites, they’re upper class. As in they haven’t achieved anything to get where they are, they were born into it.
JPL
@NotMax: Happy Day! ??
Steeplejack (phone)
@Gin & Tonic:
I presume you saw this: “Skadden Said to Have Paid $11 Million to Settle Ukraine Dispute.” (NYT)
trollhattan
@MomSense:
John Oliver did his deep dive last night on the USPS. Very informative while cranking up the inner rage machine–he goes into detail about the 2006 bill that set off the Destroy the USPS dominoes. It has features I did not know of.
NotMax
@zhena gogolia
Only mentioned in the theme song, and you can easily flash forward past that.
Gobs of the comedic gold yet glistens (granted, some few parts have not aged quite as well); the ensemble worked like like a dream.
Aleta
@NotMax:
? ♬♫♪♪♫♬ ? ?
♬♫♪ Happy Birthday !!!! ♪♫♬ May the sun always find you.
trollhattan
@zhena gogolia:
Theme song literally contains “Khruschev’s due at Idlewild,” the former name of Kennedy Airport.
NotMax
@montanareddog
And for Abbott & Costello Meet Captain Kidd.
;)
Capt. Kidd (Laughton) : I hate fat men.
Someone else: But you’re a fat man.
Kidd: I hate myself.
jeffreyw
new tablet, who dis?
WaterGirl
@Elizabelle:
Oh my god.
NotMax
Code fix.
@zhena gogolia
Paraphrasing from memory.
Sgt. Schnauser (Al Lewis): But Captain, I can’t work extra shifts this week. My last sister’s wedding is this weekend and we’ve got to keep the groom drunk until then. Seven sisters and I’m considered the pretty one.
Steeplejack
@NotMax:
Season 2, episode 1, “Hail to the Chief.” Entire episode is about Toody and Muldoon being assigned to drive President Kennedy to the U.N.
Steeplejack
@jeffreyw:
What did you get? I’m not quite in the market for a new one, but I could be swayed.
Elizabelle
@trollhattan: Thank you for info re John Oliver and USPS. Will check it out.
Tenar Arha
@Dorothy A. Winsor: OMG sooo cool! Yay you!!!
NotMax
@Steeplejack
Like with Vaughn Meader’s First Family albums, one can appreciate it as a bittersweet artifact of the time.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Tenar Arha:
Scalzi’s blog is a big score for a little fish like me. It’s hard to explain to anyone who doesn’t follow SFF.
Tenar Arha
@Dorothy A. Winsor: It’s a major jackpot to get Big Idea space at Whatever. I’m like really happy for you.
Miss Bianca
@Mustang Bobby: I missed it in real time, unfortunately – have your play on my list to watch. After I get done with the David Tennant “Much Ado”, that is, which is so far not impressing me overmuch. Betting I’ll like your production better!
Miss Bianca
@Dorothy A. Winsor: YAY!! Congratulations, you!
debbie
@Kay:
Thank J.D. Vance for pushing that misperception.
debbie
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
Nice!
jeffreyw
@Steeplejack: It’s a Samsung S3. Not really new but I just wanted to get the cookie for a new browser app. Going with Samsung’s Internet as my default browser.
Gin & Tonic
@Steeplejack (phone): I did, thanks. And sorry for the late response.
Steeplejack
@jeffreyw:
I have found that I really like the Samsung Internet browser on my cell phone (Galaxy S10e).
Although just this morning I got an upgrade that has already shown an annoying bug: if you highlight a block of text and select cut, it copies the text to the clipboard instead and deletes only the last character. WTF?!
Steeplejack
@Gin & Tonic:
No problem. Somebody sent me a link to a May 5 article in the Kyiv Post about Tymoshenko getting $5.5 million, and I found this morning’s Times article after that.
J R in WV
@Kay:
You left out the best word for this scum: THIEVES
Any large stash of valuables is prone to being targeted by people who won’t work to earn their own stash but prefer to steal other’s hard-earned stash. We’ve seen this with pensions, workers for a bankrupt company are last in line to collect what they are owed.
Best case they get a tiny portion of what union contracts called for, which can never go up to deal with rising costs of living, etc. Wife is there right now.
They stole people’s homes and home equity in 2008, same thing, rich get richer, working people wind up homeless.
Right now people can’t work without dying of Trump’s Plague, and so are about to lose everything.
The postal workers have a huge pension fund built up, billions and billions of $$$ — and OH, LOOK, the USPS is about to fail, and all that money will be stolen.
Everyone who ever worked has a stake in Social Security, Trillions and Trillions of $$$$$$$$ — ooh looky there ~!!!!~ The biggest stash of cash for Republicans to steal evah!! So their smarter thieves are working on numerous varied ways to steal it in smaller tranches, so it won’t be so obvious what is going on.
The hate the idea that everyone can be reasonably well off, they want a huge group of people to be starving and homeless, it makes them feel good about their wealth and power. Feudalism if where they’re headed. If you want to eat, swear total fealty to me, and, oh, by the way, send those virgin daughters over tomorrow night!!!
No, I’m not kidding.
One of the only hitches in the plan is the number of firearms in the hands of people who they plan to steal from, so they have to convince all those red necks that all their problems are because of the liberals, the democRATS, the people of color, and more recent immigrants before they start stealing.
Well underway at this time, right now, led by the New York Times and most TV networks.
J R in WV
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
Holy crap, that’s wonderful~!!~
He’s such a good guy, so open to helping other writers and lifting people up. AND a great author to boot. I follow his blog almost as regularly as this one!
Congratulations~!!~
J R in WV
@Kristine:
Glad to follow your linked ‘nym and find a SFF author at the other end. Have purchased a couple downloads already to try out.
Thanks for letting me/us know… you do know there are occasional author events around the blog? Don’t be a stranger!
Take care, stay safe!
Another Scott
@Kay: Plus, it’s stupid in its own terms.
There isn’t a Social Security bank somewhere with a mountain of money just sitting around waiting to be spent. Social Security is a bunch of entries in a COBAL spreadsheet somewhere. It’s a promise that crosses generations – you pay the taxes now (to pay for current retirees benefits now), and you’ll get the benefits in the future.
Having young people “borrow from their Social Security” is no such thing. It is a cut in future benefits. It is also an increase in current liabilities for the system, meaning taxes need to go up NOW to pay for it. If taxes need to go up NOW to pay for it, why not use those new taxes to pay for the proposed current benefit and leave Social Security out of it?
Why? Because it’s not about “letting people borrow from their retirement”, it’s about cutting Social Security.
And that’s what it’s always been about (as others point out above) – bad people wanting to gut the safety net (and grab a vig of monopoly rents (“service charges”, “management fees”) in the process).
(Calling it “borrowing” or a “loan” doesn’t matter, because people on the edge aren’t going to be able to pay it back – so their benefits will be cut.)
Grr…
[eta]: Or what Soprano2 said above.
Cheers,
Scott.
Another Scott
@Another Scott: s \COBAL\COBOL
(sheesh)
Cheers,
Scott.
SWMBO
@NotMax: Happy Birthday! May you get all the wonderful things you wish for yourself!