Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

“Cheese and Kraken paired together for the appetizer trial.”

The arc of history bends toward the same old fuckery.

Republicans don’t trust women.

The republican caucus is already covering themselves with something, and it’s not glory.

Following reporting rules is only for the little people, apparently.

Jesus, Mary, & Joseph how is that election even close?

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Innocent people don’t delay justice.

It’s easy to sit in safety and prescribe what other people should be doing.

I see no possible difficulties whatsoever with this fool-proof plan.

“Everybody’s entitled to be an idiot.”

Meanwhile over at truth Social, the former president is busy confessing to crimes.

Optimism opens the door to great things.

T R E 4 5 O N

Whatever happens next week, the fight doesn’t end.

And we’re all out of bubblegum.

There is no compromise when it comes to body autonomy. You either have it or you don’t.

Too often we confuse noise with substance. too often we confuse setbacks with defeat.

Second rate reporter says what?

That’s my take and I am available for criticism at this time.

I really should read my own blog.

“Can i answer the question? No you can not!”

Narcissists are always shocked to discover other people have agency.

Damn right I heard that as a threat.

You are here: Home / Politics / GOP Death Cult / Thursday Evening Open Thread: Top-to-Bottom Sh*tshow

Thursday Evening Open Thread: Top-to-Bottom Sh*tshow

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340Comments

  1. 1.

    Princess

    People who watched the press conference, which he began half an hour late, all seem to say he was high AF during it too.

  4. 4.

    lamh36

    what I think when I see this photo: 1)this folks are idiots, 2)I just can never believe that the same white folks won’t come out before and voted for Chump won’t do so again 3) Karma would be for majority of these unmasked fuq’ers to get COVID, 4) I expect majority white folks to still vote for Chump, so Dems will def need to GOTV in large numbers to offset them and any effort at disenfranchising the vote

     

    https://twitter.com/Acosta/status/1304171374102089733?s=20

  5. 5.

    Chyron HR

    I don’t want to jump up and down and start screaming death, death

    And then Dr. Fauci started jumping up and down with me and we was both jumping up and down yelling Death! Death! Death! Death! and the Nobel Price came over, pinned a medal on me, and said “You’re the bigly boy.”

  6. 6.

    Humanities Prof

    @Dorothy A. Winsor: You know, for a guy who reportedly looks to Richard Nixon as a role model for how to president, Trump didn’t learn anything from Nixon’s demise.  You don’t keep tapes.  There can’t be tapes.

    Richard Cheney is a contemptible piece of shit, but he at least was smart enough not to leave evidence behind.

  7. 7.

    trnc

    As my wife said at dinner, Trump shot 200,000 people on Fifth AvenueMain Street, and now we’ll see if he gets away with it.

  9. 9.

    Mary G

    I’m seeing that Jon Karl had the first question, and he asked “Why did you lie to the American people?”

  10. 10.

    MattF

    David Frum asks:

    So Trump has confirmed in his own voice that he was not self-deluded about COVID. He knew the danger – and still opted to do nothing and instead belittle the risk in public. The question that then follows …

    What on earth did Trump expect to happen next?

    Frum’s answer is good, but I‘d put it a bit differently— Trump has a limited behavioral repertoire.

  17. 17.

    Roger Moore

    “I don’t want to jump up and down and start screaming death, death”

    “We can’t tell the public because it would spread panic” is the absolute worst kind of elitist bullshit.  It’s the lie the elites tell themselves to justify their position at the top, and it’s 100% untrue.  The public has never been any more prone to panic than the elites, and when we’re given an honest assessment and an explanation of the path forward we have always been willing to do our part.  As voters, the public are the final decision makers in our society, and we both require and deserve the truth.  When the elites deny it to us, they are undermining the very soul of our democracy.

  18. 18.

    Mary G

    the deluge of misinformation about wildfires is overwhelming local law enforcement, and they are making pleas on facebook for people to stop https://t.co/KTLOKFjwff— kate conger (@kateconger) September 10, 2020

    People listening to law enforcement scanners hear BLM and are convinced black people came out to the boonies and started fires, when the authorities are actually talking about the Bureau of Land Management.

  19. 19.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @zhena gogolia: I had progressives, but not “office progressives”.  The problem is that to find the sweet spot for seeing the monitor right is an eternal struggle.  I gave up on them and I’ve got “computer glasses” and “outside glasses” now.

  22. 22.

    chopper

    make me wonder if my fundamental analysis of Trump as a good businessman who just tweets too much

    uh, yeah. trump isn’t a businessman, he’s a salesman. the product he sells is the image of him as a businessman.

  24. 24.

    Mary G

    @zhena gogolia: I do and I love them, though when I first got them, they told me some people get dizzy and can’t adapt. It is so nice to be able to read papers on the desk, see what’s on the monitor without cranking up the zoom so all the boxes and tables go wonky, and look out the window disapprovingly at the college kids next door coming and going from their ginormous parties.

  25. 25.

    JoyceH

    @Geoduck: @Princess:  He almost invariably starts these things late. Presumably it’s an intentional dominance thing- “I’m going to make you wait on me because I feel like it.”

    It’s always struck me that a very simple basic bedrock thing that you could do to present at least the appearance of competence is to start a meeting or event at the scheduled time – and this administration can’t even do that!

  26. 26.

    Emma from FL

    @zhena gogolia: Do you mean the ones measured as the distance between your eyes and your PC screen? If so, I do and they are great. I have to wear trifocals and they do not do a great job at that particular distance. My eye doctor recommended the office prescription. It was a bit fidgety to measure but it has helped me immensely.

  27. 27.

    trollhattan

    McCaskill interview is a hoot. “Never mind all the other fatal flaws, he’s too STUPID to be in office.”

  30. 30.

    chopper

    @Roger Moore:

    likewise there’s a massive, massive gulf between jumping up and down screaming ‘we’re all gonna die’ and saying it’s nothing, it’s the flu, it’s all gonna go away next week. i mean come the fucking hell on people.

  32. 32.

    Roger Moore

    @FelonyGovt:

    The real question is why he didn’t actually DO ANYTHING about this fatal pandemic.

    I think the twitter threat by David Frum that MattF: linked to above gets it about right.  Trump didn’t know how to do anything real, and he was unwilling to concede control to anyone else, so he did what he always does: tried to lie his way out of it.

    He genuinely seems to think he can change reality by repeating the way he wishes things were often enough.  And to some extent, when he’s dealing with other people he can.  If he lies enough that a bank gives him money, he stops being broke.  If he praises his ridiculous products enough, people buy them just as if they were actually worth something.  His problem is that COVID doesn’t listen, and his lies just made things worse.

  33. 33.

    Sure Lurkalot

    @Geoduck: So why attend. It’s not a news conference. It’s grievance hour for the WATB.  Time better spent interviewing a Trump voter in the heartland for the thousandth time.

  34. 34.

    trollhattan

    @Baud:

    I began “panicking” when we had the two plague cruise liners (one of which parks in Oakland, 80 miles away) and then the Roosevelt, with the virus essentially mowing down everybody wearing shoes. Sure seems like a long time ago, now.

  35. 35.

    hells littlest angel

    I’m in no position to say if McCaskill was a good senator, but as a TV talking head she’s fucking great.

  36. 36.

    Ken

    @Roger Moore: @Baud: The question I want the press to ask is one that was raised here on BJ just yesterday.  Let’s give him “prevent panic” even though it means ignoring the lie.  But, the tapes show he knew that coronavirus does infect kids, and can kill them.

    So why less than a month ago were Trump, DeVos, and others in his administration insisting that kids go back to school?  By that time everyone was well aware of the virus, so it wasn’t to stop panic.  Why did they endanger the kids?

  38. 38.

    sherparick

    @lamh36: I am afraid you are completely correct. Although to give them credit, I expect the majority  of white women to vote for Biden.  I am afraid the majority of white men just wish they could be as much of a stupid asshole as Trump.  For them he is a role model.

  39. 39.

    trollhattan

    @Roger Moore:

    Yup. After all those many times he “convinced” a woman after she told him to go the hell away, he thinks he can do the same to the country/rest of the planet. No, Donny, means no.

  44. 44.

    sherparick

    @Ken: The problem with “trying to prevent a panic” is that for the last 3 months he and the RW noise machine have been trying to gin up a panic about an invasion of “THEM” into the suburbs & a race war so that White Identity politics can get them a Electoral College victory.

  45. 45.

    CarolPW

    @lamh36: What I think when I see that photo is that I hope almost all die of the ‘Rona (not including the facility staff or press).

    Baud: He thought it would be better for us to be dead than for us to be panicked.

    Tired of this shit.

  47. 47.

    geg6

    But back to Claire McCaskill.  I never knew how much I love her until she lost her seat and became one of the most honest and entertaining talking heads ever.  This segment is her tippy top, gold star best, but she’s been really great.  I’d love to have a beer with her.  Heilman and Wallace are both busting a gut there.

  49. 49.

    Emma from FL

    @Emma from FL: P.S.  had her make a pair of backups only for computer work At the first sign of eye strain, they go on. They’re useless for anything else but lord, they really help with the headaches.

  51. 51.

    trollhattan

    Yet again, there’s no defense against stupid.

    Placer County’s public health officer Dr. Aimee Sisson resigned Tuesday in protest over the county’s Board of Supervisors’ decision the same day to declare that the county no longer recognizes COVID-19 as an emergency.

    Sisson, who led the county through the early days and months of the COVID-19 pandemic, submitted her resignation in a letter to county Executive Todd Leopold immediately after the board rescinded the emergency declaration it had passed earlier this spring when the virus first hit.

    “Today’s action by the Placer County Board of Supervisors made it clear that I can no longer effectively serve in my role as Placer County Health Officer and Public Health Director,” she wrote. “I am grateful to have been granted the tremendous privilege and responsibility of protecting and promoting the health of Placer County’s 400,000 residents over the last 10 months.”
    https://www.sacbee.com/community/roseville-placer/article245609865.html#storylink=cpy

    NB Placer County is smart enough to continue sending Tom McClintock to congress, so….

  52. 52.

    JoyceH

    In the clips they keep showing of Trump downplaying the virus when he knew better, there’s that clip where he says it’s all good so “stay calm.” Geez, Trump is one of those guys who believe the way to calm someone down is to TELL them to ‘calm down’ or ‘stay calm’. Could there be anything more enraging?

  60. 60.

    Miss Bianca

    @lamh36: Is it a bad thing when some old honky starts muttering “Death to Whitey” every time she sees one of these Plagueapalooza photos? Asking for a friend.

  61. 61.

    catclub

    @Baud: He didn’t want us to panic.

    I want him to tell about all the staff in his office that knew about it and approved of his plan to belittle anyone making an effort to repsond to it.

  62. 62.

    Miss Bianca

    @Humanities Prof: Apparently, Trump didn’t learn *anything* from Nixon’s example, because even Nixon managed to actually govern and preside over legislation and conduct foreign policy while crimin’ as POTUS.

  63. 63.

    geg6

    @zhena gogolia:

    I am mainly nearsighted, but my optometrist recommended them.  I just can’t adjust to them.  I don’t use reading glasses and the difference between the two different areas in the lens was completely disorienting.  I keep them around as an emergency pair in case my regular glasses get broken or lost.  I can watch tv or drive by making sure to look through the top of the lenses in a pinch.

  65. 65.

    Baud

    We may finally get the vote for white working class union members (via LGM).

    In the interest of promoting workplace “civility,” the Board announced that employers will no longer be restrained from disciplining or discharging stewards or officers who use profanity or engage in other “abusive” actions in violation of an employer’s enforced code of conduct, even when these actions happen in the course of heated meetings with management.

  66. 66.

    satby

    @Sure Lurkalot: Depends on your Rx. Computer glasses are optimized for the average distance a person sits from a monitor, and they’re often a better option than progressives for someone who works primarily on a screen. If that isn’t drastically different than your distance Rx (say within 1-1.5 diopters) you can usually see distance well enough to even drive during the day. I use my computer glasses as my only glasses now that presbyopia has reduced my nearsighted Rx by a lot, and take them off to read.

    satby, once and future optician

  68. 68.

    zhena gogolia

    @geg6:

    I have regular progressives, and I’ve gotten used to them, although they are terrible for playing the piano with sheet music. I have to spend hours and hours on Zoom every day teaching, which seems to strain the eyes more than just meetings or socializing, and it’s causing weird stuff. The doctor said I might want these special progressives (you can’t drive with them) that are just for working on the computer.

  69. 69.

    hueyplong

    As I recall, Trump in fact did jump up and down yelling “Death, Death” during H1N1. And he does it daily about Portland, NYC, the mortal threat to the suburbs, etc.

    I can just tell that his own death will be way too merciful in its execution.

  75. 75.

    Miss Bianca

    @MattF: For a change on a social medium thread, all the comments seem to be sober, on point, and lack in either profanity or misspellings.

    And Frum himself is on point, or at least constructs a compelling narrative. (Fucker was a speechwriter, after all…)

  76. 76.

    zhena gogolia

    @Baud:

    Can’t find it on YouTube.

    There was an ad about how this car (a Lincoln?) had such a smooth ride that an expert jeweler could cut a diamond in the back seat. SNL replaced him with a rabbi doing a circumcision.

  77. 77.

    satby

    @chopper: “office progressives” are a newer kind of lens that can provide a range of vision from reading papers on a desk, to the computer screen, to around an average office. Depending again on your basic Rx they could potentially be all you need for most things except while driving. They were designed for people who use a computer at work, but also read / handle a lot of paper and might be in meetings with people while computer glasses are prescribed pretty precisely for best vision on your pc but not much else.

  78. 78.

    zhena gogolia

    Speaking of old ads, why can’t I find a video of the Wilkinson Sword ad where the narrator intones “Balaklava. Inkerman.”

  81. 81.

    Miss Bianca

    @zhena gogolia: Damn, it took me the longest time to parse what you meant, and I’m still not sure I have – “office progressive glasses” just conveyed some very bizarre mental images to me.

    I think I may just *be* going mental.

  84. 84.

    satby

    @zhena gogolia: They kind of are, because not too many people can afford multiple pairs of progressive glasses. But they can make life drastically better at work. It’s all about what you’re using them for, they’re just tools for your eyes.

    For a long time I had computer glasses and distance glasses, because two single vision glasses were a tiny bit cheaper. I have had progressives, I needed them 20 years ago when I was an optician to read our PD sticks, back when we measured for your glasses with rulers. But in IT, the computer glasses worked better for me.

  86. 86.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    @Roger Moore: Funny thing about that “we didn’t want to create panic” is my memory of the week beginning March 9 goes something like this:

    • on Monday we get back from a weekend away, and tuning into the news hear more and more people talking about closing.
    • on Tuesday I decide maybe we ought to go to the grocery store and pick up some things in case there’s one of those grocery panics. On impulse I pick up TP even though we don’t urgently need it.
    • on Wednesday, Trump speaks.
    • PANIC. That’s when the stock market crashed, that’s when the runs on groceries started, that’s when all hell broke loose.

    So I’m not quite buying that this approach was to head off panic.

    I don’t even remember what he said. I think it was precisely because he said nothing that people realized “oh shit, nobody’s in charge and we are in deep doo-doo.”

  88. 88.

    Gin & Tonic

    @Uncle Cosmo: I’m not up on all the doctrinal issues, but why are evangelical “Christians” doing circumcisions? I thought that was just for the Jooos and the dirty Mooslims.

  90. 90.

    Miss Bianca

    @chopper: That’s kind of where my mind was going – I was thinking, “wait, do I put the glasses on to *find* the ‘office progressives’, or to AVOID them?”

  93. 93.

    satby

    @zhena gogolia: If I was giving you advice, I’d lean toward recommending the computer only glasses rather than the office progressives, because progressives lenses are expensive, and you already have a pair that works for everything except long hours in front of a screen. (Unless you’re constantly looking down to read and back up to the screen to teach. I could do that with my computer glasses, but at the time I had an Rx that would let me).

  94. 94.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    @sherparick: There was a poll here a couple of days ago that showed him losing Christian support, even white evangelical Christians.

    But when you look into the internals, you see that he still has a majority of the white males and the evangelical Christians. “Losing support” in both categories mean’s he’s down to about a 56% majority from whatever majority it used to be.

    However, he’s way underwater with every other group, including white women.

  95. 95.

    Gravenstone

    @lamh36: One benefit of no minor league baseball this year. We don’t have to hear about the exploits of that sanctimonious prick as he toils away in the Mets farm system pretending he can have a career as a baseball player.

  96. 96.

    HinTN

    @zhena gogolia: Yes and yes. If by office progressive you mean what my optician called computer glasses. They’re my prescription from reading out to about ten feet. Love ’em!

  98. 98.

    satby

    @HinTN: Two different things, computer glasses are single vision, office progressives are for an *inside* range of vision from near to about the distance of an average office. Though I bet a lot of places mix the terms up. Also about a $250 difference in price ?

  99. 99.

    Miss Bianca

    @trollhattan:

    No, Donny, means no.

    For some reason that got me thinking about this old commercial from the 70s that always ended with the intonement, “It’s not NICE to fool Mother Nature!”

    I think it was for margarine. Which Trump has both the color and general consistency of. He’s margarine. Ersatz butter, completely unappealing in taste and texture in its natural form, so dyed to resemble that which it is not, and doing a poor job of it. It will fool some of the people some of the time, it will do just fine for others, but those who appreciate the difference between butter and margarine ain’t having it any more.

    And looks like Mother Nature ain’t having it, either. COVID isn’t the only disaster Donnie is currently bungling – all those wildfires out West in “blue states” are burning out his base as well.

    Let it be so.

  100. 100.

    bemused

    Oh great, super spreader trump is coming to Bemidji, MN, Sept 18, “Great American Comeback” tour.

  101. 101.

    J R in WV

    @geg6:

    @zhena gogolia:

    Mine do not.  They give me a headache.

    Then there is something wrong with either your prescription or the lenses cut according to your prescription. See your opthalmologist asap!

  102. 102.

    PST

    Anyone remember the Steve Martin film, LA Story? He’s a weatherman who gets away with taping his full week’s segments every Monday because the weather is so constant (except for fires, of course). I thought of that when I read the Daniel Dale tweet above:

    During a White House campaign speech disguised as a “news conference,” the president is saying false things.

    He could tweet that every day and run little risk of being wrong.

  103. 103.

    A Ghost to Most

    @Gravenstone:
    Why not baseball? He pretended to be a pro qb. He’s a sick asshole with the worst throwing motion I’ve seen.

    Eta: except Howard Wolowitz

  105. 105.

    Miss Bianca

    @Baud:

    I’d be more interested in glasses that identify who the Trump supporters are.

    Around here, you don’t really need glasses for that… :/

  106. 106.

    misterpuff

    @Chyron HR:

    I don’t want to jump up and down and start screaming death, death

    And I started jumpin’ up and down, yellin’ “KILL! Kill!” and he started
    Jumpin’ up and down with me, and we was both jumpin’ up and down, yellin’
    “Kill! Kill! Kill! Kill!” and the sergeant came over, pinned a medal on me
    Sent me down the hall, said “You’re our boy”. Didn’t feel too good about it

  108. 108.

    Jeffro

    @trollhattan: 

    There are so many flaws to choose from it’s hard to pick the top one – corruption, ties to Russia, racism, A history of sexual assault – but honestly his sheer stupidity always stood out, as it is just so incredibly obvious to anyone with two ears

  110. 110.

    Jeffro

    @Ken: because if the schools don’t reopen as normal, everyone knows that something is majorly wrong… And they start asking why

  111. 111.

    FelonyGovt

    @Gravenstone: As a Mets fan I heartily concur. They clearly bring him back to spring training every year to sell tickets, not because he has any hope of making the team.

  113. 113.

    RobertB

    @zhena gogolia: I tried them a few years ago.  My boss liked them, but I had to get the glasses redone because they were unwearable for me.

     

    I think my problem was that at the time, the style was for glasses with small lenses, and I had to hold my head at one very specific angle to see through the very small part of the lens that was for viewing monitors.  Big bugeye lenses might work, to give you more slack in how you position your head.

  117. 117.

    Ohio Mom

    Zhena gogolia

    I wonder if part of your eye strain is that your eyes are dry. People tend to not blink often enough when staring at screens, and blinking is what keeps a nice even coating of tears over the cornea. Dry eyes make for blurry vision.

    I use OTC moisturizing eye drops (be careful not to buy the “get the red out” ones if you want to try this) and hot compresses (a washcloth that’s been rinsed with hot water and wrung out).

  118. 118.

    Jeffro

    @Calouste: maybe it’s time to bring in John Kasich* to run both domestic and foreign policy for this WH as VP, which would free up a trumpov to REALLY get focused on “making America great again”… Clearly, Pence is not up to the job

    *per 2016 reporting

  119. 119.

    BruceFromOhio

    During a White House campaign speech disguised as a “news conference,” the president is saying false things.

    Stone the fucking crows, they are finally FINALLY starting to understand what the hell is going on, after 3-point-too-many years of normalizing this fucking monster.

    Still gotta deal with the death cultists, but we just MIGHT save this flailing, stumbling republic after all.

  121. 121.

    Kay

    Dave Wasserman
    @Redistrict
    ·5h
    It’s hard to recall a candidate whose support was more concentrated among 50-64 year olds than Trump’s has been all year.

    This is 1. true and 2. kind of horrifying, because it’s so specific. This 14 year range, my friends, is the problem :)

    I don’t think it ‘s happened before. It isn’t even “seniors”, mind you- “seniors” are + Biden.

  125. 125.

    David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch

    @Jeffro: Though Tricky Dick religiously watched “School House Rock” and “Scooby Doo” on Saturday mornings.

  126. 126.

    Jeffro

    @BruceFromOhio: oh I know that…I’m still just shocked that it never registered with Republican voters just how dumb trumpov was/is and and just how uninterested he was in actually governing

  128. 128.

    Ohio Mom

    Kay:

    So people born between 1956 and 1970.

    What was their shared traumatizing event, that scared them into suporting the likes of Trump?

  129. 129.

    Jeffro

    @Kay: I am telling y’all, this is the Reagan babies and their last desperate gasp

    my fellow GenXers…they really, really disappoint…

  135. 135.

    debbie

    @zhena gogolia:

    Like VDE, I have computer glasses and trifocals. My computer lenses are basically all mid-range. They’ve worked great for me. I used to stagger out of work all bleary-eyed and my eyes wouldn’t focus; now, my eyes may still be tired, but I can see very well. I’ve also forgotten to switch back to my regular glasses from time to time, and driving’s been perfectly fine.

    In the good news department, I counted 43 Biden signs on a 28-minute walk!

  137. 137.

    Kristine

    @Kay: That’s my age bracket. The only thing I can figure is that for the most part they’re more financially secure than the age cohorts on either side. Kids are out of the house. It’s their time to be selfish.

    Or not. Damned if I can figure out how anyone could possibly vote for that clown.

  138. 138.

    Kay

    @Ohio Mom:

    I don’t know but this absolutely tracks with my informal and very discreet Trump-likely observations in my office. That’s the main base. Look at the rallies, too! Just look at the people.  It’s like once you see it you can’t unsee it. The pattern was there all along!

    In a way it’s really convenient for the opposition because it’s such a defined group of people- white, 50 to 64. Weird, right? They’re particularly attracted to…..what? Liars?

    The more you look at Trump the more strange and terrifying the whole thing becomes :)

  139. 139.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    @Ohio Mom: That covers me and all my siblings, and as far as I know none of us voted for or will vote for Trump.

    So there’s some other element at play that infects certain baby-boomer brains.

    Something to do with how you think about Vietnam or hippies? But on the lower end of that scale, if you were born after 1967 your first political awareness might be of Ronald Reagan.

  141. 141.

    piratedan

    @Ohio Mom: wish I knew…. as I was being formed as a person I watched the end of Vietnam yet the registration/draft was a thing we discussed as adolescents… and Watergate was happening at that time, every day home from school it was on….then the oil crisis, Disco, SF Movies go mainstream, Iran, Reagan, New Wave/Punk Rock, Title IX, Computers come home….

    I think it’s mostly white people being in charge has always been their normal and they are loathe to see that end… maybe one too many societal changes for a generation that has seen so much happen…?  I dunno, just spitballing

  144. 144.

    Patricia Kayden

    Meanwhile in Oregon:

    So white armed men are now running militia style checkpoints the kinds we see on TV on highways leading in and out of places like Baghdad, Mosul, and Damascus? So that's what we got here now? Is this what MAGA style AmericanISIS look like? https://t.co/lwRLliNSlE— Murshed Zaheed (@murshedz) September 10, 2020

  145. 145.

    Kay

    @Kristine:

    Me too. I wouldn’t think it was weird if it was “voters over 55”, but 50 to 64? It feels…medical. Like a specific toxin or something.

  146. 146.

    James E Powell

    @Ohio Mom:

    So people born between 1956 and 1970.

    What was their shared traumatizing event, that scared them into supporting the likes of Trump?

    Black people everywhere, having to push 1 for English, not being allowed to smoke everywhere, a black president, gays & lesbians no longer required to lead secret lives, rap music, heavy bass, tomatoes that have no taste, the designated hitter . . .

  147. 147.

    Sab

    @zhena gogolia: I think I had them. Are they the ones aimed at more reading close and at computer monitor distances, and less for further back. I didn’t like them at all. I could barely recognize my bosses when I saw them in the hall or at my office door. It was weird

    ETA: I really like regular progressive glasses. I just didn’t like losing the the not very distant part.

  148. 148.

    Chetan Murthy

    @geg6:

    But back to Claire McCaskill.

    Senator McCaskill!  She was a stalwart on the ACA, a stalwart on women’s rights.  She was a crafty politician — remember her shenanigans to ensure that Todd “legitimate rape” Akin was her opponent in the general election?  Sigh, I was sad she lost last time, and would dearly like to see her back in office.  Sigh.

    I remember one Senate hearing where she ended up banging on the desk about the ACA (I think it was).  Stalwart, she was.  Stalwart.  And she was from a pretty red state, too, so that counts for something.

  149. 149.

    Roger Moore

    @Ceci n est pas mon nym:

    “Losing support” in both categories mean’s he’s down to about a 56% majority from whatever majority it used to be.

    I’ll take it.  We don’t have to beat him in every possible category.  We just need to chip away enough at his support that we win bigly in November.

  150. 150.

    Kay

    @Ken:

    That whole lead analysis is completely fascinating. “You know what? They’re making you dumber and more violent with this”. Shocking.

  151. 151.

    trollhattan

    CSU already throwing in the COVID towel for spring ’21.

    All 23 campuses in the California State University system will primarily deliver courses virtually in the spring semester, according to an announcement from university officials.

    “This decision is the only responsible one available to us at this time,” said CSU Chancellor Timothy White. “And it is the only one that supports our twin North Stars of safeguarding the health, safety and well-being of our faculty, staff, students and communities, as well as enabling degree progression for the largest number of students.”

    White said the decision was made after extensive consultation with campus presidents and other stakeholders.

    https://www.sacbee.com/news/local/education/article245640510.html#storylink=cpy

    Pretty relieved now the kiddo didn’t opt for Cal Poly (which I was lobbying for TBH).

  153. 153.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @Gin & Tonic: How the fuck should I know “why”? I walked out on Roman Catholicism 6 weeks after my Goyishe Bar Mitzvah and henceforth restricted my appearance at various “houses of doG” to nonparticipatory attendance at friends-or-family-centric celebrations. Fairytales about a conjectural Big Daddy In The Sky & details of the cockamamie rigmarole He/She/It allegedly demands from humankind have never much interested me.

  154. 154.

    trollhattan

    @Chetan Murthy:

    She threaded a damn fine needle being a Dem senator for Missouri and I thought was very effective and always on her game. I’d like to think of her as Katie Porter’s spirit animal. :-)

  155. 155.

    Patricia Kayden

    Liar.

    Trump: "After the last administration nearly killed the US auto industry, I saved the US auto industry."This is a particularly heavy carry in Michigan, where Obama and Biden have always gotten credit for the auto bailout – Biden emphasizing it yesterday being flanked by Jeeps.— Dave Weigel (@daveweigel) September 10, 2020

  158. 158.

    mrmoshpotato

    @trollhattan: Yawn.  Let me know when someone calls him “a traitorous, Soviet shitpile mobster conman who’s been sucking the Kremlin’s asshole since at least 1987 when he returned from his first trip to Moscow and took out full page newspaper ads trashing the NATO alliance.”

  159. 159.

    Kay

    @Patricia Kayden:

    Eric lied in the intro. Said they brought back plants. Nope. Lie.

    It seems unfair that Donald Trump has the entire Trump Family to lie for him- it’s like cloning the asshole 5 times. On the flip side if we beat him his entire family is unemployed and utterly humiliated, so there’s an incentive.

  160. 160.

    Ken

    @mrmoshpotato: took out full page newspaper ads trashing the NATO alliance

    Speaking of which, how’s progress on that plan to pull out of Germany?  Did the military just wait out the two days it takes until he forgets his big announcements?

  164. 164.

    Steeplejack (phone)

    @Kay, @Kristine:

    Whole thread is interesting.

    They’re kind of the donut hole between educational debt / lack of opportunity that millennials face and the deathly covid danger that the elderly see more clearly.

    — kathleen (@kskdc6) September 10, 2020

  167. 167.

    sdhays

    @Ceci n est pas mon nym: Wasn’t that when he announced a travel ban (and trade ban that he didn’t mean) on European countries that don’t have Trump properties? Which then carpet bombed NYC and other major international hubs with COVID 19?

  173. 173.

    Roger Moore

    @Kristine:

    I think the thing with the 50-64 year old group is that Trump has always primarily appealed to the older, whiter, more racist generation, but his mishandling of COVID has lost him the votes of the people who are old enough to be in greatest danger from it.  That leaves only the people who are old enough to pine for the old racist days but not old enough to be scared to death to go outside.

  174. 174.

    Kay

    The Lead CNN
    @TheLeadCNN
    ·2h
    “I guarantee you, I will be totally transparent in terms of my health and all aspects of my health,” Joe Biden says.

    I understand they have to ask Biden questions and I knew it would feel unfair because Trump either tells them to fuck off or lies, but it is REALLY a detriment for Trump’s opponent that they never even tried to figure out how to handle the incessant lying. It is a WILDLY unequal playing field when one candidate lies with absolute impunity and the other is held to the normal presidential standard.

    There is no other contest like this, where one side utterly ignores the rules and the other is held to them. This happens in no other competition.

    I was thinking about if trials were operated like this- where it was just understood that one side could introduce completely false statements and evidence and the other side could not and the judge enforced that unequal standard. Disastrous results. A fucking train wreck of injustice.

    That’s our playing field. Jesus.

  178. 178.

    trollhattan

    @Martin:

    Thorns (NWSL) match scheduled for Saturday was just pushed back to the 15th. FWIW

    I just saw an AQI from Oroville, CA of 647 this morning. I’m out of can’t evens.

  182. 182.

    Sab

    @Kay: Gen X. My sister and BIL are that age. They missed the whole Civil Rights and Vietnam eras. Ronald Reagan convinced them that civic mindedness was for chumps, but he put a smiling face on it.

  183. 183.

    Baud

    @Sab:

    My impression is that, except for Raven and a couple of other dudes, all the white Vietnam vets were die hard Republicans.

  185. 185.

    zhena gogolia

    Thanks to everyone for advice on glasses, and on finding the SNL circumcision skit.

    Now where’s that Wilkinson Sword ad?

  187. 187.

    Chetan Murthy

    @Sab:

    Ronald Reagan convinced them that civic mindedness was for chumps,

    Ages 50-64 were 10-21 in 1980.  I’m goin’ with your diagnosis.  Sure, lead was around then, but most of these white people weren’t living where the pollution was rampant.  They all lived thru that time, when everybody started to think they could get rich on the backs of others, and government was the problem, not the solution.  It was a greedy, greedy time.

  188. 188.

    WaterGirl

    @Ken: Then lead wold have been in gasoline and paint for the people older than they are, also.  I don’t think that’s it.

    I do think lead changes was a big contributor to the crime rate going down.

  191. 191.

    Sab

    @Baud: My late brother in law, and my husband’s parochial classmates who went to Vietnam sure aren’t/ weren’t. The ones that managed to avoid Vietnam or the draft, on the other hand…

  197. 197.

    Chacal Charles Calthrop

    @Ohio Mom: Ronald Reagan’s election meant they never had to learn any of the new stuff being taught in school, care about black people, or worry about the environment, nuclear war, or trying to get into college

  198. 198.

    Kathleen

    @Mary G: One of my cousins who lives in Wyoming is married to a retired BLM employee and I learned from her that BLM is enlisted to fight forest fires I did not know that. He’s retired so he’s no longer able to do that.

  200. 200.

    Ruckus

    @chopper:

    He isn’t a salesman either, he’s a con man..

    If he was a salesman you’d get something in the transaction.

    Being as he’s only a con man, the only think you get in the transaction is fucked.

  201. 201.

    Immanentize

    @Immanentize: That’s not true.  More Viet Vets are Trump supporters than I would expect.  But fewer than older vets (Korea, WWII,) As my Dad said — you don’t become conservative untill you have things to conserve.

  202. 202.

    Kay

    @JPL:

    He’s a good sport about it but  come on- brutally unfair. So strange that all this time we were relying on some shared notion of halfway decent behavior – no incessant, blatant lying- and all it took was one malicious person to blow that whole implied agreement up. We still don’t have any tools to handle it. I don’t know how to fix it.

  203. 203.

    trollhattan

    @Immanentize:

    Her comment returning from the recruiting trip was “Everybody there seems happy.” She also liked that it was sunny and warm on the ocean in January. It ultimately was nixed due to not being comparably strong in her intended major, a decision I may or may not have been able to make at her age. The coastal draw is strong. :-)

  204. 204.

    Chetan Murthy

    @Steeplejack (phone): Goddamn!  That’s the stuff!  Fuck Joe Fucking Lieberman with the many-thorned cock of Gulbuth the Rampant.  May he be shish-kebabed on there next to Rush Fucking Limbaugh and Roger Ailes!

    Apropos of, I just sent my contribution check off to Sara Gideon.  Gideon for Maine!  I left it way too late, but I kept on delaying b/c I didn’t want to walk down to the Post Office and the mailman doesn’t pick up from my house, etc.  But today I wrote out and mailed all my political contribution checks.   It might be too late to have as much of an effect as desired on the campaigns, but at least I can fund their lawyers when the fucking GrOPers come out with all their damn legal challenges.

  205. 205.

    Chief Oshkosh

    @Ohio Mom:

    So people born between 1956 and 1970.

    What was their shared traumatizing event, that scared them into suporting the likes of Trump?

    They are the half generation to witness their fathers no longer being able to be the breadwinner/sole supporter on a blue-collar salary. They are the half generation that Springsteen wrote about in his early work; they are the kids that sat on dad’s lap as they drove through ‘My Hometown’. They are the ones that saw all the privilege (though they thought it was just the norm, back then) evaporate.

    The racism was always baked in. Some saw it for the false excuse (false god?) that it is, and moved past it to enjoy a better humanity. But so many others, through laziness, or dullness, or both, took that easy, slithery path to blind hatred; the easy target, the restful, peaceful…lie.

  207. 207.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    @Bill Arnold: Thanks. I went Googling for it and was totally unable to find the key words to find it.

    And you’re right, the questions were about approval, not about who they were voting for. And only 28% of the evangelicals approve of Biden.

    If you look down at the bottom of the full survey you see a head to head comparison of Biden and Trump. Biden leads in approval in every category except white no college degree (42% vs 48%), white evangelical (26% vs 56%) and white males overall (42% to 50%).

  208. 208.

    Cheryl Rofer


    Not only the fires, but self-appointed gun-carrying dudes are stopping evacuees to check if they are antifa arsonists. That seems to be correlated with color of skin.

  209. 209.

    Immanentize

    @trollhattan: My son thought the students were one dimensional.  They were ‘this.’  Or they were ‘that.’  CA Poly is fabulous.  But not for all.  Love your daughter for her perceptive nature.  If she could get in there, regardless where she went, she is and will be fabulous!

  212. 212.

    Chetan Murthy

    @Ruckus:

    If he was a salesman you’d get something in the transaction.

    I spent a lot of years in “enterprise I/T software”, and worked with a number of gifted sales(wo)men.  The truth is much, much worse.  As we used to say, “they thought they were buying enterprise-quality web-application middleware, but when it arrived, it was [name of product omitted] in the box”.

    The business of sales is far, far closer to a con-job than you might.  A little story.  So when my former employer rolled out this new software in the late 90s, they  put this guy Chris in charge of getting the first 50 big customers onboard.  He went out and basically promised whatever-it-took to get them to sign.  I was one of the last-resort troubleshooters, and we used to bitch and moan to each other about all the lies he was telling, the promises that were literally unfulfillable, that he kept on making.  And we had to clean up the messes, convince the customers that no, this was *impossible*, and that they didn’t need it anyway, etc.

    But it turns out, that that was all part of the business model.  And that pretty much, it was part of the business model at every enterprise software company, everywhere.  Basically, if you’re in that business, you MUST promise your customers things that you cannot deliver to them, in order to stay in business.

    To borrow a phrase: “It is the way it is”.

    So yeah, actually, Lord Dampnut *is* a salesman.  And actually, a gifted salesman [slowly entering dementia, but still has the gift.]

  214. 214.

    Ruckus

    @Miss Bianca:

    Nixon actually had an IQ higher than a fruit fly. He had no idea how to do anything positive with it but still, he was smarter than a fruit fly. shitforbrains, not so much. The dumbest fruit fly would give shitforbrains a run for his money – which is at best $1.95.

  215. 215.

    Alison Rose

    @trollhattan: I didn’t go to school there but had a few friends who did and I spent a lot of time in the area many years back, and damn do I miss it. Not sure if it would feel the same now at 40 (going on 78) than it did in my late teens, but I just adored the town, and the “SLO life” as they called it. Too bad the school itself wasn’t the right fit for her, but I’m sure she’ll do well wherever she’s going :)

  217. 217.

    trollhattan

    @Immanentize:

    Three weeks on campus, in a dorm, even taking outdoor classes in person, she’s very happy with her school. Fingers crossed they keep the bubble intact. It’s a long time ’til Thanksgiving.

    Oh yeah, got her running swag yesterday. Talk about affirmation. :-)

  223. 223.

    Bill Arnold

    @Ceci n est pas mon nym:

    the questions were about approval, not about who they were voting for. And only 28% of the evangelicals approve of Biden.

    Yes, though 77 to 56 (DJT approval) is a big slide in several months. I’ll take it. It can be converted to some votes with some effort, I think well spent since most of the grifty White Evangelical leaders have hitched themselves (superglued themselves) to Donald J. Trump. (I consider many of them e.g. the Prosperity Gospels leadership, to be abominations, TBH.)

  224. 224.

    Philbert

    @Ohio Mom: How about the Iran Hostage taking? That enraged people like I have never seen. “Nuke em till they glow and shoot em in the dark’ started then. Different than  rational enemy, like the Cold War.

  225. 225.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    In other news, I got my first Biden-Harris merchandise today, ordered from the Biden store the day after the official Kamala Harris announcement. An envelope came with my bumper stickers.

    Still waiting for a lawn sign and a face mask.

  228. 228.

    trollhattan

    Might be a little on the nose right now, but The Big Burn by Timothy Egan chronicles the monstrous fire of 1910 and how it affected Roosevelt’s commitment to creating federal land. The description of he and Gifford Pinchot with their maps spread across much of the White House is particularly fascinating, and only touched upon in Roosevelt bios I’ve read.

  229. 229.

    aliasofwestgate

    I’m part of the Xennial group, born in 77 myself.  It’s definitely the erosion of privilege that has the older Gen Xers in a tizzy. Makes me mad at the idiots.  Nothing i can do about it but to keep on chugging along myself.  I’m a racially mixed kid, and growing up in the 80s as such was interesting. It’s not until recently i realized i’d put up with tons of microaggressions from everyone around me for years. They had frustrated me at the time, and make me angry now.  But my existence  is part of why some of them are pissy. I’m adult, educated and far too aware of my ability and lack of ability to do things.  Also not afraid to talk about it. Hence i vote Dem, not just because of my working class familty either.

    I may have grown up in Reagan times, but i was far too young to get just how shit a president he was. My first vote was for Clinton. *grins*  Trump is an absolute horror and i’m doing what little i can do to make sure his ass is out on the curb after November.

  230. 230.

    Odie Hugh Manatee

    @Ohio Mom:

    They’re getting old. They’re reaching the end of their sex lives (or already have). They fear their own mortality but are not smart enough to do anything to prolong their lives until it’s too late for them. They feel that their lives have been one huge failure after another because something or someone has always been keeping them down while giving free shit to the undeserving. I could keep going on and on but I think you get my point. I cruise a few conservative “zoos” online and it’s clear that they are a bunch of virtue-signalling white men who have in most cases done much better than others in life, yet hate most of those who have it worse than themselves.

    Forget about reaching them, they’re a lost cause until they realize that they have been fucking stupid and need to stop. They are stupidaholics and they’ve got a death grip on their habit.

  232. 232.

    TS (the original)

    @Ohio Mom:

    So people born between 1956 and 1970.

    They were born at a time when middle incomers (well the  white families) had it all. Unions provided the support, labor was well paid, taxes were high and governments actually provided services.  Middle income families could easily buy a home. Women knew they stayed at home & raised the family. Everyone was working to give their children more than they had, the US was still on a high from WWII & these people grew up with it all.

    Trump promised to let them go back to those days.

  233. 233.

    Barbara

    @Ohio Mom: I could have told you, because I have been out of step with the critical mass of my generation my whole adult life. But yes, they came of age when they voted for Reagan, and their generational cohort has not budged all that much over the last 30-40 years.

  235. 235.

    laura

    @Ohio Mom: the 24/7 economy, AM talk radio Newt Gingrich and enhanced interrogation. Also, midlife crisis. A too big portion are experiencing an undeniable loss of buying power and nothing but shit jobs that dont pay and are convinced it’s the fault of everyone but white men despite all evidence to the contrary. And some are glad to be an out and proud shite-bag.

  236. 236.

    Sure Lurkalot

    @satby: Thanks so much for sounding in with your expertise! As I remember, I think my optometrist was recommending computer only glasses as my appointment was to get new progressives.

    And though expensive, I love my new progressives. I still wear my old ones when I do something sweaty, and there’s no comparison. I am 6ish nearsighted with pres.  The shop did a good job.

  237. 237.

    Martin

    @trollhattan: The Big Fire was 3 million acres. CA has already passed that this season. I said earlier that 4 of the 10 largest fires in CA history were currently burning. I was wrong, it’s 5 of the 10 largest.

    My sense here is that we simply don’t have the resources. Normally we don’t get 1000 fires in 24 hours, so we normally knock a lot of them down before they get out of hand, but once we got behind they could grow and now only good fortune can stop this. And now there may not be enough resources to throw at this because these fires are so widespread and so out of hand.

    What happens when the real fire season arrives? Down south here we haven’t had winds, but we’re gonna – and soon.

  239. 239.

    Amir khalid

    @KenK:

    Mohels and their Muslim equivalents have been circumcising boys for thousands of years — they have no medical training, but plenty of practice.

  240. 240.

    bluehill

    lol. Nobody voting for Trump cares about the hypocrisy. It’s just about winning and s**ting on everybody else.

    After criticizing Joe Biden for reading a teleprompter, President Trump learns something new about what his administration has done mid-speech while reading a teleprompter, and then asks the teleprompter operator to back up so he can see the words again

    Josh Campbell

    https://twitter.com/joshscampbell/status/1304209415504101376

  241. 241.

    Sab

    @zhena gogolia: My guess is that if you are only going between the text on your desk and the computer monitor you will like them. If you use them for anything broader ( distance) you will be unhappy.

    All day at Zoom teaching with a text seems ideal.

    I did tax prep, so most of my day was looking at client data and entering it on the computer. Perfect for that. But another 25% of my day was interacting with co-workers and bosses sticking their heads in my door, and the visual failure there made me dizzy.

  242. 242.

    Barbara

    @Chief Oshkosh: This is so true. I saw my home town go from prosperous union jobs to the bottom falling out, basically between middle school and graduating from college in 1982. We also were in the vanguard of the first generation of children of more likely to be divorced parents. I can’t say why that led so many in the direction of Reagan, but maybe it was the sunny face validating their desire to blame other people for what happened, culturally and economically.

  243. 243.

    The Moar You Know

     

    So people born between 1956 and 1970.

    What was their shared traumatizing event, that scared them into suporting the likes of Trump?

    @Ohio Mom: School desegregation and busing.  Not de jure (that was earlier, obviously) but de facto.  It was implemented, deliberately IMO, to be as disruptive and traumatizing to that cohort of kids as possible

    My fellow Californians by and large didn’t have to go through that.  My family members from the South did.  Guess which group is voting for Trump?

  244. 244.

    WaterGirl

    @Martin:

    It’s a sad state of affairs that there are two huge life or death things associated with the same city.  In this case, the fires and the terrible police response to the  protests.

  246. 246.

    raven

    @Barbara: People here went apeshit when I recommended “Mrs America” but it’s a really well done overview of the ERA fight and how Schalfly twisted shit for her advancement. One saving grace was how Reagan dumped her sorry ass after she used her influence to get him elected.

  249. 249.

    piratedan

    @The Moar You Know: I also think that is the last generation to know life before Watergate and the realization that while politics is politics, one party leader was more than willing to break the law to stay in power.  The Dems saw this as a parable, the GOP apparently took the lesson as an instruction manual and the kids of that timeframe 14-19 could have been blissfully unaware of what was going on (whereas I grew up in DC metro, so it was EVERYDAY), so they would have been ripe for maintaining their ignorance…

  250. 250.

    Kay

    @bluehill:

    Sometimes when I want to make myself unhappy I recall that the Bush supporters didn’t abandon him until halfway thru his second term, and only because the economy started to tank. People say it was Iraq but in conservative areas they all supported  the Iraq invasion. They didn’t abandon him because of Iraq. That’s what it took to take him from 50% to 25%. When they all started to get laid off and could no longer make those truck payments. Me, me, me. Has to be THAT personal.

  252. 252.

    Sab

    Talked to my brother today about a not urgent family issue. He works in SF and lives in Marin. Utterly uninterested in the fires. Baby great nephews and grown up nephews breathing in smoke all weekend and he doesn’t care.

    I grew up with him before he aspired to be an oligarch. I am actually surprised at his indifference. What did I not notice in our childhoods together?

  257. 257.

    Ken

    @Sab: I am actually surprised at his indifference. What did I not notice in our childhoods together?

    I assume you’d have noticed the obvious signs, like mistreating animals?

  258. 258.

    Chief Oshkosh

    @Barbara: Yep. No unions = no societal prosperity. It’s what differentiates us from France and Germany, though they of course have their own problems.

    And the racism. Always the racism. Just absolutely baked into the American pie.

  260. 260.

    Amir Khalid

    @Gin & Tonic:

    My laptop crashed the other day. I had to reset the machine and reinstall Windows and re-enter all my passwords and retype my nym. The lower case k is a typo that I will need a front-pager’s help to fix.

  261. 261.

    Martin

    @Ohio Mom: Baumol’s cost disease. 

    Baumol’s cost disease (or the Baumol effect) is the rise of salaries in jobs that have experienced no or low increase of labor productivity, in response to rising salaries in other jobs that have experienced higher labor productivity growth. This pattern seemingly goes against the theory in classical economics in which real wage growth is closely tied to labor productivity changes. The phenomenon was described by William J. Baumol and William G. Bowen in the 1960s.[1]

    The 60s and 70s and 80s were a period of tremendous increases in productivity in manufacturing. It was sort of the end of the labor era – which was always cemented in manufacturing/construction and transportation – but because you could make so much more stuff per worker, or more so much more due to containerization – their jobs became more advanced (and paid better) but there were WAY fewer of them. A lot of people in that generation got squeezed out of industries that they expected to be able to employ them.

    Instead, people like me from that generation went to college, either bypassed those industries or went in as professional managerial classes – engineers, MBAs, etc. often with the task of reducing labor and automating. If you wanted a coal job in the last 20 years, you pretty much had to have a mining engineering degree. These weren’t the kind of blue-collar jobs from the 60s and 70s. Mind you, a lot of that blame falls on Reagan for busting the unions and making that process one that fucked over wage labor pretty badly.

    But if we think of the ‘conservatism consists of one principle’ formulation, it basically suggests that there must be an over/underclass. That’s a core belief. There’s a group of people that have jobs and are deserving of those jobs and a group of people that are taking those jobs and are undeserving of them (because reasons). Same for housing and basically everything else.

    If you believe there’s not enough going around, if you believe you’re entitled to that thing your parents had, and so on, then the solution is to target a group of people that shouldn’t benefit. And those undeserving could be anybody – blacks, immigrants, gays, Californians, coastal elites, you name it. The only thing that MUST be true is that someone else is less deserving, and something must be done about those people.

    See, people like me, who went to college destroyed those factory jobs. And that’s not wrong – we did – because that how economics works. Now, it doesn’t matter that Democrats were trying to protect those labor rights, or anything else. The point is that harm was done, and something must be done, and Trump promises to do something. He’ll punish the bad people. It doesn’t even matter that he is a bad person, but it’s 100% clear that he’s on THEIR side, he’s willing to hurt US, and as such balance the scales, as they see it.

    That’s why Dem’s let’s help everyone message doesn’t work – they think that’s impossible. In order for there to be winners there need to be losers, and it becomes really important that they not get suckered into being in the loser camp.

  263. 263.

    Misterpuff

    @Kristine: Born in 1956 here. Graduated in 1979. First job summer of 79; let go summer of 80 due to economic downturn. Perhaps others in my cohort felt the pain and then the healing presence of St Ronnie. That’s how my sibs in the age range grew up in the Reagan Era.  I, somehow got radicalized in the late 60s ( as a teenager) and was impervious to the “charms” of The Gipper.

  265. 265.

    raven

    @Misterpuff: Van Morrison had some things to say about the 60’s
    Did you ever hear about the great deception
    Well the plastic revolutionaries take the money and run
    Have you ever been down to love city
    Where they rip you off with a smile
    And it don’t take a gun
    Don’t it hurt so bad in love city
    Don’t it make you not want to bother at all
    And don’t they look so self righteous
    When they pin you up against the wall

  266. 266.

    L85NJGT

    “Look at this—an entire generation of Cinderellas, and there’s no glass slipper.”

    Elaine Miller – Almost Famous

  268. 268.

    RaflW

    @Mary G: Aha.
    Some mouthbreather hopped on my twitter TL today claiming that Antifa had started seven of the west coast fires. I knew it was nuts, but didn’t want to go looking for the origin of that nonsense. This could be it.

  269. 269.

    Miss Bianca

    @Kay:

    I was thinking about if trials were operated like this- where it was just understood that one side could introduce completely false statements and evidence and the other side could not and the judge enforced that unequal standard. Disastrous results. A fucking train wreck of injustice.

    But there *were* trials conducted like this. Witch trials. If you float, you’re a witch, if you sink, then you’re dead anyway. If you tell the truth, you’re told you’re lying. If you lie, then you’re dead anyway.

  274. 274.

    TS (the original)

    Is Dr Fauci now supporting trump on Fox?  What does trump do to people??? They ALL come to grief through the association.

    QUESTION: Did you get any sense that President Trump was downplaying the coronavirus. "No, no, I didn’t. I didn’t get any sense that he was distorting anything." – Dr. Anthony Fauci pic.twitter.com/tkky8f7RWz— Francis Brennan (@FrancisBrennan) September 9, 2020

  275. 275.

    Sab

    @Misterpuff:Born 1954. My first grownup job got terminated in the Volker Recession. I understand why Volker did it ( actual economics) but I never understood why Reagan thought the utter upheaval in my life from a government instigated recession was okay.

  277. 277.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @Martin: I can tell you that down the valley in Tracktown, USA, the smoke is heavy, and the eastern edge of Springfield (Home of the Simpsons!) is under Order One protocol.  The McKenzie highway east of Springfield, up the river and over the Cascades, is closed due to wildfires along the route.  We’ve got fire to the west, too.  Farther up the valley is in worse shape, Salem was sporting 500+ 2.5 ppm air, very bad.  A major issue is that wind shifts may change the fires, but the smoke is everywhere around Tracktown.

  278. 278.

    Steeplejack (phone)

    @raven:

    That’s because both versions of your nym have been passed by a front-pager at some point. Nyms are case-sensitive. But Amir definitely should be able to enter a comment with his “correct” nym, since it was previously passed.

  279. 279.

    WaterGirl

    @Amir Khalid: I think you should be fine, because you have previous comments with the capital K.  But I just changed you to a capital K in a comment in this thread.

    See if you can post a comment with the capital K because of that.  If you can’t, I can approve your comment right away.

  280. 280.

    Sab

    @Ken: Yes indeed. You did not want to be a ray fish or a toad and come within his orbit.

    But his manners today are impeccable, much better than mine.

  284. 284.

    Jeffro

    @Kay: I think the toxin is called “Reaganism”, followed by Newt Gingrich’s specific brand of insane toxicity.

    Glad to see some serious Biden (and Webb!) ads on during the game tonight!

  286. 286.

    Kay

    @Miss Bianca:

    It would be difficult for me to stay engaged because there’s a sense of futility. Does it matter what he says? The question was “will you be transparent about your health?” Is he thinking “well, yeah, I guess but the other guy wasn’t and no one did anything, but sure, why not”?

    Like the witch trials. “Oh, sure, dunk me but we all know it doesn’t matter if I float or sink, so why bother?”

  293. 293.

    Miss Bianca

    @TS (the original):

    Trump promised to let them go back to those days.

    Yeah, but any idiot ought to know that he had no power to do that. He can’t “bring back the jobs”. He can’t even “make Mexico pay for it”. Mere assertion of white supremacy being ENOUGH for my age cohort to follow him in such droves is what’s got me flummoxed.

  296. 296.

    J R in WV

    @Baud:

    My impression is that, except for Raven and a couple of other dudes, all the white Vietnam vets were die hard Republicans.

    I never went overseas, but also was never, NEVER a die hard Republican!! USN from 1970-73. All the vets I know in the neighborhood are liberal Dems!

  297. 297.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @Ohio Mom: I was born in ’57, the year of Sputnik, and I was never a Reagan fan.  Nixon turned me off Rethugs forever.  Yet, in 1979, I got a commission in the Army and spent a decade in uniform under, yes, Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush.  If anything, the Army convinced me that “socialism” has a lot of merit, where grubbing for money isn’t the be all and end all of existence.

  302. 302.

    Martin

    @?BillinGlendaleCA: Yeah, essentially. I mean, that’s clearly their view of economics and has been at least since Reagan. But I think they see it even broader than that – there’s a kind of culture and social economy as well that they also believe is zero sum. Every taco truck displaces a greasy spoon. Every same-sex marriage displaces a cis-marriage.

    I mean, all of these things existed before – we simply didn’t recognize them. Somehow recognizing them displaces something they value in their calculus.

    And there is a bit of truth to that. CA’s 500,000 renewable energy jobs is of small comfort to a guy in West Virginia who only knows how to mine coal. But Democrats don’t believe that those renewable jobs don’t provide enough economic benefit to make the coal miner whole – only Republicans seem to believe that. So they vote for Republicans, they still lose their job, and now they get nothing because they thought the corporate taxes were protecting their job, not protecting them from the inevitable loss of that job.

    But this is why we should all expect the deficit being the most important thing ever should Biden win. GOP dollars do more economic work than Dem dollars, because reasons.

  303. 303.

    Kay

    @Jeffro:

    I had an after hours appt way out in the country so was in the car  and I caught the regular ABC radio “news” they play on the hour. I was pleasantly surprised! They did a straight up piece on Trump lying about the virus with a clip of him woodenly reciting what seemed to be fatality rates for children? Maybe not. Something about children and 2%.  Anyway, then a lively rebuttal from Kamala and that was the whole thing. Just the clips.  No opportunities for excessive lying.

  304. 304.

    WaterGirl

    @gin & tonic: I did a search and there were 1100 or so comments, though some were replies.  I looked at the last page, thinking maybe you started as little g, but nope.  I was too lazy to go through all the pages though.  But that’s how WordPress functions, so you must have been lower case at some point.

    You just passed your 10th anniversary at BJ!

  305. 305.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @Martin: Alternatively, I have relatives who waited since the 60s for the steel mills to come back. They were out of work while three generations of their own family had their own careers and some of them quite successfully. They could have easily voted for Trump knowing he would be a disaster so they would have excuse for their own failure to adapt to the changes.

  307. 307.

    Kent

    @Ohio Mom:

    So people born between 1956 and 1970.

    What was their shared traumatizing event, that scared them into suporting the likes of Trump?

    I’m white male and I’m smack in the middle of that age range being born in 1964.  And I got nothing.   We missed all the big wars, far too young for Vietnam, too old for all the Gulf wars.

    But I tell you, a shitload of my former HS friends who I look up on FB are complete MAGA tools these days.  Nothing but cammo and guns and MAGA hats and poses in cammo in front of fish they’ve caught and deer they’ve shot on FB interspaced with bullshit memes about standing for the pledge and all that cramp.

    And I grew up in suburban Oregon near Eugene, not rural Iowa or something.  In fact I grew up in a blue county.

    I think it’s basically a general sense of being pissed that you aren’t important anymore. Your tastes in music and food and fashion and everything else just aren’t important or even relevant.  No one cares about Springsteen or Rush.  No one cares what you think about gay marriage or whatever.  The world has moved on.

  308. 308.

    Martin

    @Villago Delenda Est: My dad is in Florence, and its been bad even over there.

    Looks like the Riverside and Beachie Ck fires are going to merge tonight. Also looks like a spot has shown up about 5 miles east of Oregon City. Holiday Farm seems to be growing in every direction right now, based on the difference between the satellite data and the extent maps.

  310. 310.

    Jeffro

    @Kay: Maybe everyone’s just sick of it…of things Not Working For Most Of Us.  Maybe we’re aging out of it (except for that blessed ‘donut hole’.  Maybe Dems are finally learning how to play this game, on multiple levels.

    I dunno.  But it’s certainly encouraging!

  312. 312.

    Kent

    @Baud:

    @Sab:

    My impression is that, except for Raven and a couple of other dudes, all the white Vietnam vets were die hard Republicans.

    But the Vietnam vets are also much older.  If you were 18 in 1970 when the war was well on the way to winding down you would be 68 today.  That’s much older than all these pot belly assholes marching around in cammo fondling their weapons.

  313. 313.

    Jeffro

    OT but I have to say: I could watch Mahomes and Hill and Kelce and Edwards-Helaire all season long (and will, knock on wood).  Go KC!

  314. 314.

    Citizen Alan

    @Gravenstone: Is Tebow playing baseball now? I’d not hurt that. Personally, though, I hope he stays in sports forever, because every day he’s a sports star (or even a talking head on ESPN) is a day he’s not running for political office. Fundie’s love that amiable dunce, and he could probably get two terms as Governor of Florida if he got the right backing.

  315. 315.

    tom

    @Chief Oshkosh: I am 64 and the oldest of four – my youngest sib is 56. All of us despise DJT, even my brother-in-law, a 70-year-old Vietnam vet and retired cop. We will do anything to see that Joe is elected, and the Senate flipped.

    There is a real intra-generational gap that I frankly don’t understand.

  317. 317.

    Sab

    @Kent: That’smy point. Viettnam era people had to make choices. The next group didn’t. No repurcussions for white people when Reagan stuff began.

    ETA: Typing with thumbs is hard.

  319. 319.

    SFBayAreaGal

    My sibs and I were born 1956-1960. All of us have voted Democratic Party since we could legally vote.

  320. 320.

    WaterGirl

    I wonder if the break is actually where it appears to be.  If the age 64 cutoff is where the pollsters draw the distinction, it seems possible that the age cutoff could be a bit earlier or later.  Maybe they never look at the group that only goes to age 62 or goes to age 66.

  321. 321.

    Kay

    Doug Heye
    @DougHeye
    This is a really good
    @JakeTapper
    interview with Biden. Tough, fair questions, and Biden is hanging it well, especially re health.

    Well, “fair” as between Biden and Tapper but not as between Biden and Trump since Trump won’t be asked these questions and if he is he will shut them down or lie. Has. He has never actually answered why he was rushed to the hospital last year.
    But I suppose it’s necessary we go thru this charade. And we’re learning a lot about Joe Biden!

  322. 322.

    Sab

    So our new public health director, stolen from South Carolina, used to work in Indiana, born and bred and mostly trained in Ohio, quit within 12 hours of her appointment. Good job Ohio. Good job Gov DeWine.

    As an Ohioann, this makes me urky about our future. Stay inside grandkids! The powers that be do not give a rat’s ass about your survival.

  323. 323.

    Citizen Alan

    @Kay: Personally, I still say what finally tanked Shrub was immigration. He couldn’t thread the needle between the xenophobe base and the cheap labor base, so he went with the latter (since, as a plutocrat, he himself was a part of that base). And the xenophobes never forgave him for it.

  325. 325.

    Kent

    @Chyron HR:I WILL NEVER NOT CARE ABOUT RUSH

    Yeah, but the kids don’t and that’s my point.  My teen daughter who is very into classic rock has all my 60s albums.  Beatles, Stones, Who, Dylan, etc.  And then she skips up to the 80s with stuff like Talking Heads, Clash, REM and so forth.  About the only thing she listens to from the 70s is Queen and that’s only because of the movie.

  328. 328.

    mrmoshpotato

    @Sab: So our new public health director, stolen from South Carolina, used to work in Indiana, born and bred and mostly trained in Ohio, quit within 12 hours of her appointment.

    WTF?  Seriously?  What bullshit is going down in Ohio that would make someone go “Nope!” after 12 hours?

  329. 329.

    Kent

    @Citizen Alan:@Kay: Personally, I still say what finally tanked Shrub was immigration. He couldn’t thread the needle between the xenophobe base and the cheap labor base, so he went with the latter (since, as a plutocrat, he himself was a part of that base). And the xenophobes never forgave him for it.

    I think he was actually smarter than that on this one issue.  Being from TX he knew that there was no way the GOP could survive forever as a white party.  Your average TX Hispanic family lives in a suburban ranch, works in the trades or has a small business, drives a big pickup, has kids in the local schools, and goes to a Catholic or Evangelical church.  They are very easy pickings for a GOP without the racism and culture war bullshit.

    What tanked him was the trifecta of war-weariness, Katrina and the economic collapse.

    Ted Cruz actually knows the same thing, at least about immigrants.  As vile of a pile of rancid flop sweat that Ted Cruz is, he doesn’t really do the racism.  He says the same GOP bullshit about BLM and so forth.  But didn’t run a racist campaign in 2016.  So they went with Trump instead to get the real thing.

  333. 333.

    philostopher

    @topclimber:

    It’s “young boomers” to “old GenXers” – there are some post-Viet Nam boomers in the mix. I’m on the cusp, so I fall dead center in this demo. Some cultural historians call it the “Jones generation” because we’re the first generation that had to realize we weren’t guaranteed we’d have it better than our parents did, if we just did the best we could. All the assholes where I live who refuse to wear masks at the store are white people within five years of my age, one side or the other, which neatly fits this band. Also, they’re probably more religious than those younger.

  334. 334.

    Ken

    @mrmoshpotato: What bullshit is going down in Ohio that would make someone go “Nope!” after 12 hours?

    Hopefully, her contract didn’t have a non-disclosure clause and she can tell everyone.  Otherwise we just have to speculate that the state told her to lie about the numbers.

  335. 335.

    MoCA Ace

    @Villago Delenda Est:

    Diito on the progressives.  The sweet spot is so small I get a stiff neck and a headache trying to adjust.  Got computer glasses and just take them off for walking around the office or just go full Chuck Schumer.

  339. 339.

    debbie

    @Sab:

    I wouldn’t blame DeWine. More likely that she got a welcoming death threat or two, and thought better of taking the position.

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