George Carlin used to do a bit that went, “Have you ever noticed that anyone driving slower than you is an idiot? …and everyone driving faster than you is a MANIAC!
That’s what the last 4 years have felt like for me. I was surrounded by “idiots” who could not see what an existential danger Trump & co. were to the world, who could not be convinced that he was far worse than even W, who simply bothsides every issue and told me things were not so black and white. And then I’d turn around and there would be some MANIAC who wanted to tear down the entire country in the belief that it was hopelessly corrupt and flawed.
Obviously, there will still be people wishing to be more incremental than I would like, and also those more radical-but my priority would be to take actions designed to alter our fundamentally unfair economy and make it more just, including, but not limited to, raising the minimum wage, increasing workplace safety standards, greater protections for women/minorities/LGBT persons,raising taxes on the wealthy, and especially dear to my heart, increased penalties for white collar crime. All this would be emotionally satisfying and good for the country
In addition, and probably even more important, we need a Manhattan Project level of commitment to reduce carbon emissions, or else all the social justice initiatives on the planet will be moot.
Thank you for submitting your essay! (WG)
Just Some Fuckhead
It’s only an issue if you find yourself simultaneously behind the idiot and in front of the maniac.
Benw
Driving wise I lean idiot, politics wise I lean maniac
eta: nice post VB! So far the guests are batting 1.000
Nicole
Oh, I enjoyed this. Especially as I just came off scrolling FB and read a comment by a hybrid idiot-maniac and thought, “Oy, it never ends…”
Sooooo with you on white collar crime. It’s why I was such a Warren girl in the primaries; I felt like she was the one keeping a spotlight on corruption. They need the threat of jail time. Fines are just cost of doing business.
Matt McIrvin
I increasingly think “both sides are bad because correctness is always somewhere in the middle” and “both sides are bad because correctness is a million miles off in Dimension X” are almost functionally identical positions. Both useless.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Nicole: Warren was the only thing standing between us and a Bloomberg presidency. Hopefully she runs every four years just to sack the assholes.
zhena gogolia
Nice essay.
Parfigliano
Increased penalties for white collar crime? How about a penalty for it beyond the corporation paid a fine but admitted no wrong doing. After all corporations are people my friend.
Van Buren
When I wrote this I thought it was pretty good (or else I would not have submitted it!) but having read the dozen or so guest posts that can before, I am embarrassed to be published. I want to commend the effort of the other posters, who clearly put more thought and time into their work than I did.
In any case, a big thanks to management for posting and to any commenters who have nice things to say.
sab
@Nicole: I am so glad she is still in the Senate. I was Warren all the way in primary but with severe qualms about the Senate. She seems more of a legislator than an executive. So happy about how the election turned out. Biden was squeaky clean on managing the 2009 stimulus.
Nicole
@Just Some Fuckhead: Right? Watching her crush his campaign in the first minutes was one of the greatest moments I’ve ever seen in a primary debate.
I keep telling myself Yang does not have a chance to be NYC Mayor, but then I remind myself we were the idiots who elected Bloomberg THREE times. (I mean, not me idiot, but you know…) NYCers get confused when too much money is waved before them.
mrmoshpotato
@Just Some Fuckhead: She did excellently pants Mikey on live TV.
Nicole
@sab: Yeah, and I was thinking about how Biden didn’t get rich until after he left gov’t in 2017. I wanted a President who would go after corruption, but I am content with one who I feel very confident is not corruptable. He’s going to do plenty of things I disagree with, but I don’t think any of them will be for his own personal interest, or that of his friends’.
West of the Cascades
@Nicole: And NYC voters elected that other guy twice before Bloomberg …
Nicole
@West of the Cascades: Giuliani at least had been a prosecutor going after organized crime before (I just watched a Netflix series about the gov’t going after the NYC mafia and he comes across really well in it, God help us). Bloomberg ran on Rich Businessman, which is a political identity that I wish would get fired into the sun; it’s caused so much damage to this nation.
WaterGirl
@Van Buren: You are in good company!
It’s human nature for many of us to judge our own work more harshly than others do, and certainly more harshly than we would judge if it were someone else’s work.
topclimber
@Just Some Fuckhead: Sadly, I have found myself being both.
zhena gogolia
@Van Buren:
It’s very good!
WaterGirl
@Nicole: How did Biden get rich in 2017? I missed that!
arrieve
@Van Buren: Don’t sell yourself short. I felt the same way about my contribution, and I enjoyed reading this.
Chetan Murthy
@Van Buren: It *is* an excellent post! I mean:
I want all the things Bernie is pitching, and MORE. MORE. But I’m not crazy, and I know that revolutions end badly almost always. Almost. Always. So I want it done incrementally. So it will be (at least somewhat) irrevocable. For some of it, I know that it cannot happen except incrementally: equal civil rights for people of color and women, gay and transgender Americans, cannot happen via revolution: we still need to bring along a big part of America — frankly, I fear, the majority. But incrementalism will get us there: we went from “eww, teh ghey” to “hey, Chasten and Pete are so cute!” in a generation! More of this!
So I think your post was 100% apposite.
P.S. I think others have linked to this post by Bret Deveraux ( https://acoup.blog/2021/01/15/miscellanea-insurrections-ancient-and-modern-and-also-meet-the-academicats/ ) about insurrections in ancient Greece (he also discusses Rome). He makes the point that *escalation* of tactics rarely works to end a period of internecine strife: it just hardens the strife and eventually leads to dictatorship. What works, is restoration of norms and inclusion of those who had previously been left out of the polity. You have to restore the chance of incremental compromise-driven change.
Just Some Fuckhead
@topclimber: Right, and then the only solution is to become an idiot or a maniac, at least temporarily.
Matt McIrvin
@Nicole: And then her evisceration of Bloomberg got criticized as a stab in the back of Bernie Sanders, who needed the Democratic field to remain hopelessly divided in order to eke out a nomination. That was pretty bizarre.
Chetan Murthy
@WaterGirl: The same way Noted Neoliberal Traitor Hillary Clinton did: speeches, books and such. I know: “How can we trust him? He’s a creature of the rich!”
Phein60
@Just Some Fuckhead: Everyone driving faster than ME is a radar detector.
Just Some Fuckhead
@WaterGirl: Biden was one of the lowest net worth Senators his entire career. Sadly, that didn’t stop him from working against the interests of the average voter as the Senator from MBNA. Even so, that Biden is not this Biden
Nicole
@WaterGirl: Lecture tours, etc. A book, too, I think? It doesn’t bother me; I don’t have an issue with politicians getting rich post-politics as long as it’s not via lobbying and things like that. I don’t have issues with ex-politicians getting paid to give speeches.
Just Some Fuckhead
Totally agree. Being able to hoard things – including vast sums of money – is the least qualifying thing ever to hold public office. We’d just as well elect the people on the the television show, Hoarders. Meet Shelley, she owns every edition of Time magazine ever produced. She has some great ideas about the federal budget.
Nicole
@Just Some Fuckhead: Yeah, I didn’t love that about him, either, but he was doing it to benefit the state he elected to represent. Which is what you want your own Senator to do, I guess. I agree with you that I don’t see him doing that as President.
VOR
Whereas Trump approached every decision from the standpoint of “What’s in it for ME?”. Not the country. I’m okay with honest disagreements about what is best for the country.
Yutsano
@Just Some Fuckhead: Indeed. This is the Biden we have now. Suddenly having someone who understands us swamp creatures is injecting me with all the hope*.
*Context: Biden issued this message to all federal employees today. He also rescinded the three EOs directly threatening the civil service. I’m up to seeing what kind of reforms come up for us now.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Nicole: Have you ever been to Delaware? It shouldn’t even be a state. They don’t even have an interstate except for a tiny portion of I-95 that passes through Wilmington at the very tip top of the state. Delaware is basically a large petrochemical factory surrounded by farmland. Pretty sure Joe Biden wasn’t representing their interests.
sab
@Nicole: Didn’t Giuliani go after only the bosses of the mobs that his father wasn’t in?
Kent
But Delaware also gives us 2 Dem senators to counterbalance the 2 GOP Senators from Wyoming so there’s that.
sab
@Just Some Fuckhead: Delaware gets some benefits from almost every major corporation in America being incorporated there.
Nicole
@Just Some Fuckhead: Ha! I grew up in south central PA, so I have driven through Delaware many times on my way to someplace more interesting (Virginia?) and stayed for a day or so here and there. It’s very LLC friendly, so a lot of credit card companies incorporate there, which is what Biden was representing. As a non-resident of Delaware, I disliked that intensely, but I understood why he was doing it, and he didn’t profit personally off of it, as best we can tell.
But yeah, when Cuomo announced the big Northeast governors initiative last spring, DE’s governor just sounded so grateful to even have been invited to the party. It was funny.
PJ
@Nicole: People forget that there are a lot of Republicans in New York. 40% of the state voted for Trump, and his share in NYC in 2020 went up 4.4 percent over 2016, to 22.6 percent. If you get a sane-sounding Republican to run, a lot of otherwise Democratic voters will think about it, which is enough to put them over the top. I mean, people voted in Giuliani twice, for Christ’s sake. (I believe the city is now less racist than it was 30 years ago, but maybe not that much.) A lot depends on who the Republican and Democratic contenders are, of course.
Personally, I don’t think Yang has a prayer, since he seems so detached from how normal New Yorkers live (even Bloomberg rode the subway to work). But there are so many candidates competing for the Democrats, and it will be ranked choice voting, so who knows.
Nicole
@sab: Probably, but “district attorney who prosecuted the NYC Mafia” is, to me, a more plausible argument to make for why people should want you for Mayor than “rich businessman.”
PJ
@Nicole: Credit card companies incorporated there because the state ditched the usury laws in the ’80’s to lure them in. You Pennsylvanians get to piggyback on our tax-free shopping thanks to those banks and all the other businesses incorporated in the state.
Nicole
@PJ: There are a lot of Republicans in NYS, but not so much in NYC; Dems vastly outnumber, except on the benighted Island of Staten. Democratic voters in NYC are willing to cross the aisle for the Mayor fairly frequently, though (see: Giuliani). Possibly less so going forward, but you make a good point about seeing who the Dems end up with due to ranked voting in the primary.
West of the Cascades
@Nicole: I’d forgotten that Giuliani was respectable at one time, before law schools started teaching courses on “Rudy Giuliani and the First Amendment” (for all the times, as mayor, that he was held to have violated that – https://www.nyclu.org/en/press-releases/nyclu-v-giuliani-first-amendment-cases e.g.) and before whatever it is he’s become now. But now I remember that lawn order might have been appealing.
Nicole
@PJ: Former Pennsylvanian. As a current NYer, I started paying sales tax on Amazon before most of the rest of the country. ;) I don’t mind, though.
Nicole
@West of the Cascades: Yeah, the other thing to remember is Giuliani ran and was elected just as the crime wave in NYC was peaking, and we had no way of knowing it was about to start falling dramatically. He had nothing to do with the drop in rates, of course, but that didn’t stop him from using it to his benefit.
Just Some Fuckhead
@PJ: I still haven’t figured out the Yang mystique or what his big constituency is. His presidential campaign looked like a ratfucking operation. His online supporters told me he was an amazing businessman but the facts don’t actually bear that out and even with his net worth, he comes in way, way down the list of other political aspirants. He sounds like a 5th grader giving a book report when he speaks. I dunno, maybe I have higher standards than the average voter.
PJ
@Just Some Fuckhead: Delaware has more people than WY, VT, DC, AK, ND, or SD, and it’s closing in on RI. It’s usually the Republicans who argue that land area should have more representation than people.
Since the ’80’s, the chemical plants and refineries, and the accompanying businesses, (also steel and auto manufacturing) have mostly disappeared, replaced by bank offices. Dupont barely exists now.
PJ
@Just Some Fuckhead: They called him the “reddit” candidate when he appeared. I do think he appeals to that 8th grade level of thinking.
Brachiator
Great description of the problem.
And the Carlin analogy was spot on!
sab
@Nicole: I agree. Too bad NYC press didn’t poke around more.
I miss Steve Gilliard so much. Possibly before your time.
Nicole
@PJ: I have fond childhood memories of the Delaware beaches. That’s where we went for vacation until I read Misty of Chincoteague and begged and pleaded to go there (also very nice beaches).
Just Some Fuckhead
@Nicole: My own personal opinion about falling crime rates is it’s a result of removing lead from gasoline and the proliferation of online gaming platforms giving people a safe place to engage in mayhem.
Nicole
@sab: Someone here pointed me to his writings a year or so ago. Yeah, he was great! What a smart writer. Gone much too soon.
Nicole
@Just Some Fuckhead: I also think it’s the removal of lead from gasoline (and paint, and life in general). The rise and fall of crime rates in the nation aligns so very well with leaded gasoline’s rise and fall. I know correlation =/= causation, but still…
sab
@Just Some Fuckhead: Crime rates in my city are through the roof since every disgruntled adolescent of any race is roaring around in cars with guns because they are sick of being stuck at home and there is nowhere useful for them to go.
Peale
@Just Some Fuckhead: He’s not really a businessman or even much of a VC guru. He just is rah, rah for entrepreneurship. I don’t think he has much of a chance, either. The problem with him is that he seems to be preaching about the superiority of Silicon Valley and I was surprised to find out he was actually raised in Westchester County. I figured he made his success in California and just moved here to run for office. He strikes me as someone who might be wanted by the Manhattanite “why don’t you take Apple Pay or Venmo at this bagel cart?” phone user types, which is a large group, but not large enough to win a primary.
PJ
@Nicole: One of the things Biden did after 2016 after getting his book deal was to buy a beach house at Rehoboth for his family.
Delaware is like most unfamous states. There’s a lot that’s ugly there, and a lot of beauty, too, but you won’t see that from the interstate.
One significant thing about Delaware that I think helped Biden over his political career is that the state is 20% black. Biden realized before he first ran for the Senate that he could not win without black support, and for almost 50 years he cultivated that. A Senator from, say, Vermont, which has almost no black people, would never have to think about getting their votes, and, as a result, might not address their concerns or reach out to them so much.
sab
@PJ: Wasn’t Biden in his youth a lifeguard at a public pool? That let him know who lives in his state, or at least his city.
Chetan Murthy
@sab:
Sssshhh! “Corn Pop” Omerta, yo’!
Nicole
@PJ: That’s a really good observation about the demographic makeup of Delaware and the trajectory of Biden’s career.
And that’s nice to hear about Biden buying a beach house at Rehoboth. My stepbrothers and their families spend a week at Bethany every summer. They love, love, love it.
PJ
@sab: He specifically chose to work at a pool in a black neighborhood to get to know black people better.
Ripley
@WaterGirl:
I agree with you, 73%!
Just Some Fuckhead
Maybe your Garden and Gun subscription will have some nifty tips for dealing with criminals.
Haroldo
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Wilmington is also home of David Bromberg – Fine Violins.
Bromberg’s a fine, fine musician and an expert on American made violins.
schrodingers_cat
Vichy Times has a sad because Biden wore a Rolex. Serious journalism, you guys.
Just Some Fuckhead
I lol’ed.
sab
@sab: When I was in law school in the late 1970s I had Republican classmates who were proud that they had scored lifeguard jobs when they could barely swim. Who does that? Takes a job that if you fail at someone will die? Also, how did they get the job?
I took the Red Cross lifesaving course and test and it was really difficult, and I could swim. That was 40 years ago. Republican governance has sucked for a long time.
PJ
@sab: Where I grew up, you had to pass all of the swim tests, then take a lifeguarding class and pass the lifeguard test to be a lifeguard. You had to be good swimmer, and to be a good swimmer dragging another person, who is fighting you, from the pool.
bbleh
@Van Buren: Best essay yet, and that’s saying something. Pithy & punchy.
Hoodie
@PJ: Some nice shade there for the man from Burlington.
Just Some Fuckhead
Sorta like joining government without believing in government?
sab
@Just Some Fuckhead: I think it is recipes and restaurant reviews and gardening and an occassional hunting story.
My husband will be shocked, but he does love Southern food.He has a Cajun sister-in-law who is an amazing cook.
I also love Southern food but not good at it because my Ohio mom transplanted there hated it and never learned anything down there. Cooked in Florida like we were in Cleveland or Toronto.
Feathers
The thread may be interested in the only worthwhile thing written by Jonathan Chait: Rogue State: The Case Against Delaware. It starts with their outrageously high tolls and goes on from there.
People who think you can shit on your state’s main industry by voting against their interests are children who should eat at the children’s table. Biden seems to have been able to parlay being already beholden to the banks and credit card companies into a long history of honest and humble public service. More power to him.
PS – It really is a great article, with juicy details about what assholes the DuPonts were during the War of 1812 and Delaware’s Deep South racial attitudes. And a lot of annoyance at tolls.
sab
@Just Some Fuckhead: Yeah. Who does that? Them.
PJ
@Feathers:
If he thinks Delaware is bad, just wait until Chait visits Maryland (or Boston, or NYC, or pretty much any state).
MomSense
@schrodingers_cat:
Fuck the NYT. He wears his grandfather’s Rolex. Meanwhile NYT darling trump had a GD gold toilet which made him a man of the people.
cope
And to complete the Carlin bit, he then says about the people driving exactly the same speed you are, “…they’re the ones you really have to watch out for.”
MomSense
@Feathers:
The Dupont’s summer “cottage” abutted my stepmom’s family’s “cottage”. Not only are they assholes but they are all dumb as a post.
Brachiator
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Wait a minute. Aren’t violent video games supposed to make young men more violent?
Next, you’ll be telling me that X-rated videos are good for people.
sab
@PJ: What an ill informed idiot.
Anyone who has actually talked to southernors knows Delaware doesn’t qualify.
That used to be a big debate in southern circles: south v deep south. Kentucky, Tennesee and Virginia didn’t even qualify for those guys. Nor did Missouri or Arkansas. Nor Florida. Nor Texas.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@MomSense: Wait, you don’t have a gold toilet?
sab
@PJ: Red Cross Lifeguard Test: That was my experience. It was really difficult. Most people did not pass.
bluehill
Depressing, but not surprising. No shortage of work for the Biden administration.
Baud
@MomSense:
I did not know this. He really is a family man.
MomSense
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
Only if the water has too much iron.
Brachiator
@Feathers:
DuPonts. One of the few families which have been continually wealthy in America since Revolutionary days.
Baud
@bluehill:
Apparently, she was not charged with the laptop theft because those facts didn’t bear out, at least not yet.
Just Some Fuckhead
@sab: Oh come on, we Virginians were the heart of the confederacy and produced its best generals. The capital was here. The Shenandoah Valley fed the confederate armies. Without Virginia, the rebellion would have been put down in a year.
debbie
@sab:
Me three, but she would have absolutely killed it as the head of the CFPB. I don’t think anyone else could have done more to correct economic inequities than Warren could have if she were put in charge of the CFPB. But I repeat myself.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Brachiator: I think video games and porn are mostly a force for good. Think of all the technological advancements we made just so people could watch naked people.
sab
@debbie: I agree. Didn’t she invent it?
debbie
@Nicole:
Trump got 9.71% of the vote in Manhattan in 2016. NYCers are always the smartest in the room!
debbie
@sab:
Yes, she wrote the legislation creating it.
Chyron HR
@schrodingers_cat:
Well, I’m sure you’ll find some way to blame Warren for it.
sab
@Just Some Fuckhead: Mississippians and Alabamians do not think your are Deep South. I kid you not. Carolinas and Georgia are controversial.
Glidwrith
@Chetan Murthy:
I have been puzzling over how this applies to our situation. The insurrection we are dealing with are people who are definitely in the polity, for whom restoration of norms is gross prejudice, bigotry and misogyny.
Earlier there was a thread on how with Northern Ireland, they got people to work together who had previously seen each other as evil.
How can we work with people that are fine with killing anyone that doesn’t look like them?
bluefoot
@Chetan Murthy: People complaining about how much money Hillary Clinton makes from speeches is one of my pet peeves. Yes, it’s a frankly ridiculous amount of money, but sadly it’s not out of line for who she is. Former Senator and Secretary of State, policy wonk. At one biotech/pharma company I worked at, we had to do a fair market value assessment to determine how much to offer people to come speak. And we do legal and Sunshine Act review prior to sending the contract. We’ve paid $5-10K plus expenses for half a day for an expert physician to speak. Hillary Clinton was getting, what, $30K for an invite-only talk at an investment firm? Completely within the bounds. Others at her level are compensated similarly.
It’s not Hillary making money that’s the problem, it’s what is considered “fair market value” for someone of her experience to give a speech.
Just Some Fuckhead
@sab: Well we aren’t the Deep South of course, but there was just as much inbreeding going on here as there. Those ingrates should be thrilled we made the tragic decision of throwing in our lot with them.
zhena gogolia
@Yutsano:
So nice.
sab
@schrodingers_cat:
There is a reason I don’t pie Chryon. It is like watching a clock tick, so predictable, almost soothing.
zhena gogolia
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Wow. That’s remarkably unfair.
They have an excellent university, for one thing.
Ruckus
@Van Buren:
It’s always good to remember that George was wise beyond his years and humanity.
This is a thing that needs to be said every so often. After the last four years of maniac rushing head long into catastrophe, full stupid on the speed dial, it is a good thing to remember once again.
Chris Johnson
@Matt McIrvin: Not as bizarre as you’d think. Warren was being targeted by Russia, who’d backed Sanders without telling him about it in 2016.
He became less useful to them when he wouldn’t play along and run third party, when he backed Clinton and then backed Biden etc etc.. But he remained sort of the figurehead for Russia’s ability to feed information to the Left.
That’s where I picked up on what they were doing to Warren. It was bonkers, completely unmotivated, but coordinated and vicious. They probably cost Warren the nomination: the Russian fake Left HATED her, they were going after her way before anybody else noticed anything was going on. I saw progressive sources I used to trust, show their true colors by kneecapping Warren, and they doubled down and continue to combat electoralism and horseshoe around to make arguments for Trump. Mind-boggling.
So, it only seems bizarre if you don’t know the context. Warren was being targeted by Russia and their troll armies. It didn’t matter what she did, it was gonna get spun as a stab in the back of Bernie, because that was the prescribed narrative. You just saw it go public.
Why hate Warren? Because she’s effective, and would have helped. Remember it’s war, and anything helping America is against the rules. They had to stop anybody who looked like they’d be effective, to the maximum extent they could. This turned out to be significant but still limited.
David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch
@Baud: Bidens all holding hands. It’s like they’re a real family or something (photo)
Just Some Fuckhead
@zhena gogolia: That’s like when you describe an ugly person as having a great personality.
trollhattan
@Baud:
I have my grandad’s Hamilton, but the fuckin’ thing has yet to write a single musical.
Baud
@David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch:
If they are a real family, why hasn’t Biden hired them to be his advisors?
zhena gogolia
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Delaware is very nice.
Van Buren
Getting published just became only the second coolest thing to happen today. Elder son just got anacceptance letter for a PhD program in Chemistry.
Benw
@Van Buren: huzzah! Here’s to the future Dr. Elder Son Van Buren
Brachiator
@PJ:
A former girlfriend was a lifeguard in Southern California. She would relate how sometimes some male lifeguards would watch her competently do lifeguard stuff and still voice doubts about her. Just stupid.
VeniceRiley
@Van Buren: Very cool! Congrats on that exciting news.
trollhattan
@debbie:
Have not encountered one New Yorker in the last forty years with a good thing to say about Trump. I suspect daddy Fred salted the fields way back when and then Donny shows up, a worse version of Fred, which they did not consider possible until he gave them his Little Lord Fauntleroy act.
gbbalto
@Feathers: The Delaware I-95 tolls are just for out of staters. I believe that everyone there knows the detours to bypass them. Perfect! A lucrative revenue source that doesn’t affect Delawarians.
Baud
@Van Buren:
Whoa. You need to be smart to get that.
trollhattan
@Van Buren:
A Big Biden Deal! Congrats! What a week you must be having.
debbie
@trollhattan:
Oh, yeah, as far back as forever, when I moved there. He was in the society pages (Liz Smith, Page 6) every day, doing his fucking obnoxious dance at every party he could wangle his way into.
Just Some Fuckhead
@bluefoot: It’s paying for personality, not for her Senate and SoS bonafides. Guiliani was charging between 100K and 200K per speaking engagement same era.
zhena gogolia
Alexander Vindman is publishing a book with Harper.
MomSense
@Van Buren:
Hooray!!????
debbie
@Just Some Fuckhead:
I remember the uproar when Ronald Reagan got $3 million to give a speech in Japan.
eclare
@Van Buren: Congratulations to Elder Son!
Van Buren
@Baud: My father had a BS in Chemistry and an MS in EE. Brains skipped a generation, because I essentially flunked out of Chem 101 and majored in History.
Nicole
@debbie: Oh God, and when Ivana found out about Marla Maples? Remember the “Best Sex I Ever Had” on… I think it was the NYDN, but might have been the Post? Which, of course, it later came out Marla never said.
I’m so glad he’s moved to Florida and NYC’ers don’t have to deal with him skulking around his apartment here anymore. I mean, sorry for Florida but no backsies.
debbie
@Van Buren:
Congratulations to your son!
debbie
@Nicole:
Ha! He would never be able to handle The Manhattan Treatment! Those tiny hands waving accordion-like, crying, “Leave me alone!”
Nicole
@debbie: One of my fondest memories of the dark days right after November 2016 was taking the subway with my then 6-year-old, coming up at Columbus Circle, and, as was my wont, giving a hearty middle finger to Trump Tower as we reached the sidewalk. A man walking by stopped, bent down, looked my son in the eye and said, “You have a great mom.” :)
geg6
@PJ:
That was true here, too. My first job was as a lifeguard and I had to pass that Red Cross lifeguard test. It was really hard and I was a competitive swimmer.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Nicole: One of my great memories was taking my eight year old son to vote with me in the general election in 2008. We were accosted by a Republican booster on our way in to the polls. I took five minutes to scream at him about what absolute shitbags Republicans are. The boy was horrified. Not long after, I was leaving Kroger through the side entrance, which takes you right next to the Planned Parenthood clinic and I stopped the truck, rolled down the boys window, called the protesters over and told them what shitbags they are. I’m proud to say we raised two liberals.
debbie
@Nicole:
?
Matt McIrvin
@Nicole: My parents used to go to Lewes, Delaware (near Cape Henlopen) for a week or two every summer, and contemplated going there to retire–they eventually went to Colonial Beach, Virginia, which is sort of like a sleepier version of Lewes.
Geoduck
@MomSense: Do you have a source on the watch belonging to his grandfather? A quick Google search doesn’t turn up any mention of it.
Nicole
@Just Some Fuckhead: That’s awesome. Good for you.
geg6
@Nicole:
Ha! My sister was hired, along with her chef, to cater a party at Mar-a-Lago before that all came out. They caught Trump in the big kitchen cooler, having some kind of sex (they didn’t stick around to notice the details) with who they later realized was Marla Maples. Ivana was at the party taking care of their guests. I knew he was scum way back then.
Nicole
@Matt McIrvin: I was mulling and I think my earliest beach memory must be the Delaware beaches. Whichever the ones that aren’t too far from Ocean City are.
Matt McIrvin
@Nicole: Bethany, York Beach and Fenwick Island are right there (the literal Fenwick Island is the island Ocean City is on, but it continues north of the state border). We went to Fenwick Island one summer when I was a kid.
J R in WV
@Haroldo:
My next door neighbor [fiddle/banjo player and instrument rebuilder] has shipped violins to Bromberg to seek his opinion on their provenance, and what neighbor should do to repair them to the best possible playable condition. Always a helpful and friendly response from Mr Bromberg.
I understand Bromberg is now ready to tour again, once the plague is over. Can’t wait, he is a gift from the musical angels~!~ A huge talent!
Nicole
@geg6: Ew. Walking in on that would be equal parts hilarious and horrifying.
J R in WV
We liked Rehobeth Beach the one time we spent there. Great food, great art galleries, nice boardwalk. It was September and cool and windy, so we never got into the salt water, but it was really nice to visit and walk around.
catclub
lol. I figure the idiots will prefer the tall fat ‘businessman’ over the short Jewish one. So Bloomberg = Trump2
catclub
I think the new high grade vioiins being made in the US today will rival the famous old ones. I also believe that the famous old ones cannot be detected by the audience, but the player can tell them. There are some prestigious quartets that get all their instruments made by the same person.
Zelma
@gbbalto:
It’s not the Delaware tolls that drive me crazy. It’s the continual construction! I’ve been driving to DC for a decade and I swear 95 has always been under construction. I haven’t driven it since last Christmas. Maybe they’ve finished whatever they’ve been doing by now.
Steeplejack (phone)
@Geoduck:
“Is that a Rolex on Biden’s wrist?”
Tom Fitz
@mrmoshpotato: “Pants” doesn’t quite cover it. She bit the head off a live chicken and took him out.