Biden: "A lot of folks are losing hope … So I'm going to act and I'm going to act fast. I would like to be doing it with the support of Republicans … but they're just not willing to go as far as we have to go." pic.twitter.com/b1XSW5BgJU
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) February 5, 2021
Biden's covid relief package is one step closer to reality as House passes budget measure https://t.co/nM859SzbRp
— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) February 5, 2021
President Biden on Friday sent his strongest message yet that he intends to move forward on his economic relief plan without Republican support, as the House gave final approval to a budget bill that will allow him to do just that.
The House voted 219-209 to approve the budget plan, which the Senate had already passed early Friday morning, beginning the process of turning Biden’s stimulus proposal into legislation. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said Friday she aims to pass Biden’s stimulus plan through the House within two weeks…
Biden’s declaration that he will not wait for Republicans represents a pivotal moment in his presidency, given his pledges restore bipartisanship to Washington. Biden spent 40 years shaping a political identity as a figure who reaches across the aisle — often attracting mockery or derision for it — and he campaigned on pulling the country together after the divisiveness of the Trump era…
“I see enormous pain in this country. A lot of folks out of work. A lot of folks going hungry, staring at the ceiling at night wondering, ‘What am I going to do tomorrow?’ ” Biden said. “So I’m going to act, and I’m going to act fast.”…
… Democrats have been rushing the stimulus package through, in part, because tens of millions of Americans would begin to lose federal unemployment benefits under existing law in mid-March.
Biden on Friday hosted House Democratic leaders, including Pelosi and House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.), at the White House to make the case for swiftly passing the relief effort. He also cited increases in suicides, drug abuse and violence against women during the pandemic.
Pelosi also told House Democrats in a letter Friday that they aim to “finish our work” on the relief package before the end of February. Asked if she could guarantee the legislation would be passed before unemployment aid expires for millions of Americans in mid-March, Pelosi said: “Absolutely. Without any question. Before then.”
“Hopefully in a two-week period of time, we will send something over to the Senate,” Pelosi said, flanked by the Democratic committee chairs. “We hope to be able to put vaccines in people’s arms; money in people’s pockets; children safely in schools; and workers in their jobs.”…
"He didn't run on a promise to unite the Democratic and Republican parties into one party" ?? pic.twitter.com/9AzSugxKZD
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) February 5, 2021
Reporters are so mad Dems have message discipline https://t.co/avlEZ6bcQw
— California Man (@MoonbeamSpecial) February 6, 2021
Baud
Now that there’s a Dem in the White House, the press is no longer into stenography and now provides cynical commentary.
Geminid
So far, both the Republican and Democratic Congressional Caucuses have been very cohesive. Polling shows, however, that some Republican voters are diverging from the leadership’s hard line on Covid relief. If I were a Republican politician I might find this worrisome. But I’m not, and I find this encouraging. My kind of bipartisanship.
mrmoshpotato
LOL Well done, Mr. Sheneman. Well done.
mrmoshpotato
Never seen a dog diapers ad before!
Baud
@mrmoshpotato:
I just saw that too!
ETA: My old dogs needed diapers near the end. Makes me teary.
Booger
Psaki is as close to C.J. Cregg as we can hope to get.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@mrmoshpotato: What have you guys been talking about after dark that a doggie diapers ad appears????
Jeffro
60-40 nation, here we come! And not a moment too soon.
randy khan
It’s kind of reassuring to read the transcripts of Psaki’s briefings. They reek of competence.
The Thin Black Duke
I believe what’s fueling Biden’s determination to get things done now is the realization that he’s going to be a one-term president, so he’s setting up Kamala for her presidential campaign in 2024.
p.a.
Remember Cole’s complaints about a Fresca shortage? (It’s excellent soda BTW). Well I’m dealing with the shortage of Grape-nuts cereal, of all things!???. I mix it with spoon sized shredded wheat & raisins for breakfast.
Baud
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
My guess is that it’s two different conversations that the algorithm merged into one. One of the downsides to not having threaded comments.
OzarkHillbilly
There is nothing for them to worry about. No matter what they do or do not do, as long as they say DEMs are evil and trump is a god, enough of the voters in their gerrymandered districts will return them to DC anyway.
Van Buren
@p.a.: I’m gonna guess that you are not a millenial.
brantl
Jen Psaki has a warrior’s tongue, she just cleaves the bullshit and leaves it laying on the carpet, never slowing down.
NotMax
Weekend respite.
Popcorn and movie theaters. Go together like H₂ and O, right?
Not quite. ‘Twas a checkered courtship.
mrmoshpotato
Fuck ’em!
OzarkHillbilly
Biden’s press secretary Jen Psaki has embraced normalcy – is it working?
MomSense
There is some sort of Twitter kerfuddke brewing about Biden saying it’s likely the $15 minimum wage will be dropped from the Covid relief package which has set of a flurry of scremo progressives complaining about broken promises. Is this just ducking Manchin refusing to vote for the bill if it has the minimum wage increase?
brantl
I think Joe is assuming that anyone smart rides the ticket that they have, not the ticket that they are planning on.
p.a.
@Van Buren: Tail end baby boom (1959).
SiubhanDuinne
@mrmoshpotato:
I’ve been getting that one for about a week now. And I don’t have a dog! (Nor have I searched for or clicked on anything dog-related.)
Sometimes the algorithms are almost uncannily spot-on, as though they can read my mind. Other times, they’re just baffling.
Baud
@MomSense:
Manchin, or may not pass muster under reconciliation rules. Either way, the fault lies primarily with the GOP, which is 100% opposed to the increase.
mrmoshpotato
@Booger:
I need to start watching the press conferences for the information and for entertainment! I love her take-no-shit attitude towards jackasses in the briefing room!
Jeffro
@The Thin Black Duke: maybe.
Maybe he knows Americans need swift action on multiple crises?
Maybe he realizes that the 2022 midterms could result in a return to GQP inaction?
Maybe he realizes political capital isn’t a thing you spend away, it’s a thing you invest to build even more capital & momentum?
I dunno. Not worried about 2024 here, though.
mrmoshpotato
@Dorothy A. Winsor: LOL
MomSense
@Baud:
UGH.
SiubhanDuinne
@p.a.:
You are not alone!
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/29/business/grape-nuts-shortage.html?searchResultPosition=4
OzarkHillbilly
@MomSense: I read that for some reason or other they can’t pass it thru reconciliation. So if the Covid bill is must do right now, they are going to yank it from it.
The Thin Black Duke
Yeah. Joe’s got the political leverage that Obama didn’t have. And after what happened on 1/6, the Democrats ain’t taking no prisoners.
The Thin Black Duke
@Jeffro: How about d): all of the above?
debbie
@MomSense:
I believe it’s more about phasing it in rather than one single jump. Depending on the length of that phasing, it might not be too unreasonable. Small businesses may not be able to afford such a steep increase all at once.
MomSense
@OzarkHillbilly:
Ok, thanks. Jesus the leftier than thou are determined to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.
debbie
I find it reassuring that Colbert still spends more time on Trump than on Biden.
raven
@mrmoshpotato: I still have a bunch. Lil Bit needed them for the last couple of years of her LIl Life. The reusable’s worked better than the disposable.
OzarkHillbilly
@debbie: I wish he wouldn’t. Then I could watch him again.
mrmoshpotato
@p.a.:
That randomly made me think of Nut N Honey cereal which supposedly has been rebranded as Honey Nut Frosted Flakes.
trnc
He reached across the aisle, predictably got his hand slapped and reacted appropriately to that. He shouldn’t be mocked for trying – they should be endlessly harangued for not accepting it in good faith.
Cameron
@MomSense: I thought the problem was that some people thought it would be an immediate increase, whereas the actual plan was to phase it in over several years. Hadn’t heard about the idea being dropped entirely.
Dorothy A. Winsor
The thing that amazes me about Psaki is how calm she appears. I’d be crazy dealing with the bad faith.
mrmoshpotato
@NotMax: Cracker Jack me!
Immanentize
@mrmoshpotato: “What are you eating in there?”. That commercial is an earworm.
brantl
I think Joe Biden has to be a hell of a lot smarter than people give him credit for; this is going to be lethal to his opponents, because he also has the unmistakable, “I-don’t-need-to-lie-about-this, it’s-the-god’-honest-truth” aspect about everything he says, that creates a one-two punch to his opponents’ arguments, pretty much generally kicking their ass.
I learned a lot about Joe Biden I didn’t know, watching him debate Stump, and so did America-at-large, I think. He really seems to have no tolerance for bullshit, but still seems to know how to deal with it in the most efficient way possible.
Immanentize
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Psaki was on Wait Wait Don’t Tell me last weekend and said that when she gets really aggravated, she forces herself to slow way down. She said Dana Perino used to flip the bird under the podium.
brantl
Dana Perino // Jen Psaki : lying sack of shit // national treasure.
Ken
@p.a.: If you kept up with cracked.com, you would have known about the Grape-Nuts shortage nearly a week ago. I think it’s caused by Midwestern schoolteachers telling kids to buy the cereal to pressure Wall Street traders, but I may have mixed up a few of their stories.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Immanentize: The first time I ever heard Barak Obama speak it was on Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me. I somehow missed him until then. He impressed me even though it’s a comedy show
CarolDuhart2
@p.a.: Drank lots of Fresca when I was working, and miss the taste a lot. Better than 7up or Sprite. Wanted plenty for lockdown, but after several tries never could get it delivered.
Biden watched Obama try fruitlessly to get Republican buyin for his-well-anything. And they still wouldn’t vote for his initiatives despite things designed to do just that. Biden is saying “fuckem”. Things are even worse than 2009 when all we had was a financial plague to deal with.
And I think we-and the Republicans-have yet to realize how the ground has shifted since January 6th. I think the Republicans are on the back foot on anything, and the Democrats have lost whatever fucks they may have had regarding the Republicans. Nearly losing your life-and a few people did-makes the performative outrage of the Republicans regarding anything moot.
And Biden’s 78. He knows he doesn’t have all the time in the world to get something done. He may or may not run at 82. It depends on where he is in a couple of years. So he’s governing as if he doesn’t have another term in him.
NotMax
@p.a.
Back when part of the duties of the department where I worked at a big ad agency was TV ad placement, there were two different two-letter codes assigned by General Foods (owner of the brand at the time) for Grape-Nuts TV ads, GN and HG. (And woe betide anyone who omitted that hyphen when writing out the brand name.)
The first for run of the mill Grape-Nuts ads, the latter for wintertime when some markets were selected to run ads for Hot Grape Nuts.
Trivia:
Old joke:
Q: Why does Euell Gibbons have purple children?
A: Grape-nuts.
Baud
@Ken:
LOL.
SFAW
Did he pledge bipartisanship? Or “unity”? (Which is not the same, of course.)
Baud
@SFAW:
You hit the nail on the head.
Betty Cracker
This gladdened my heart:
Source: The Post. Team Biden was probably also worried that Trump would sell us out (some more) for personal gain. He’s got big money troubles.
Have y’all seen the dumb edicts Mango Mussolini issued under letterhead that says “Office of the 45th President” — as if that were an actual thing? The letterhead even has a fake presidential seal featuring an amateurishly designed eagle that someone hilariously described as looking like a seagull that picked up some trash.
dr. bloor
@The Thin Black Duke: He has a razor thin margin in both houses of Congress. If he doesn’t go big, that’s gone in two years.
Hell, it’s probably gone anyways. It’s now or never, however you look at it.
SFAW
@NotMax:
I knew this was one of yours before reading the nym/nom.
Geminid
@OzarkHillbilly: Most Republican Representatives are protected by gerrymandering. Some, including most of those who flipped a dozen seats last month, are not so much. And the 2018 midterms showed a limit to the power of gerrymandering in the face of demographic and political shifts. In Virginia, Congresswomen Wexton, Spanburger, and Luria flipped seats that had been Republican for decades, with districts drawn by the Republican majority General Assembly in 2011. And the twenty-two Republican Senate seats up in 2022 cannot be gerrymandered. In Pennsylvania and North Carolina, for instance, Republicans can afford hardly any defections. Same for Georgia, where Senator Warnock will face an election for a full term.
brantl
Biden was very plain about saying that he would try to work across the aisle, if possible, but that he was making promises to the american people, and would keep them, however he had to. I think this was born of more moxie than anyone gives him credit for.
NotMax
@mrmoshpotao
Heh. I was a Jujubes guy. Sometimes, for a change of pace, Nonpareils.
SFAW
@Betty Cracker:
I saw that, too. The next step is to root out Shitgibbon loyalists in the DoD and Derp State, because it would not surprise me to find out they’re feeding him (or a surrogate with an IQ higher than room temperature) classified info.
brantl
@Betty Cracker: Now BC, you have to come up with pictures of that trash-seagull shit, you know you do. Somebody’s got to get that printed on toilet paper!
Dorothy A. Winsor
@brantl: When he lays out his priorities like that, his choice is obvious. Bipartisanship is not an end in itself. It should be a means to the end of serving the people
Betty Cracker
@SFAW: Team Biden is moving pretty aggressively on that score too, from what I’ve read. Good.
WereBear
I don’t know how many of the press corpse know how to cover grownups actually getting things accomplished… it’s been a rough four years and they weren’t that good at it before…
brantl
@Dorothy A. Winsor: So far, he seems to have a very good handle on that.
mrmoshpotato
@Immanentize: Yup.
Lymie
Does anyone know where Echidne has gotten to? No posts or twitter since September last year.
WereBear
@p.a.:
AKA Generation Jones (plus me & President Obama…)
There’s simply no comparison between the experience of the early baby boomers and the ones lumped in with them as also-rans. By the time we got there, all the plums had been plucked, that bulge had ransacked the infrastructure, and we got our teens during the ’70’s: earth shoes, disco, glitter tees–
It has its compensations (the FUNK! the MOVIES!) but one bunch got the Sixties and we got… well, not at all the same thing.
NotMax
@Lymie
Was thinking the same thing about Bella Q just the other day, although i don’t believe her absence has been as prolonged.
SFAW
@Betty Cracker:
Yes, I saw various news snippets about “nominations” (not really, but I forget which word they used) being put on hold, withdrawn, or otherwise stopped.
It is SO nice to have the adults back in charge.
MomSense
@CarolDuhart2:
I live in Maine and we had organizers from all the unions here and OFA in 2009 and 2010 because we had 2 Senators at the time who were in play. We were part of a larger group and had regular conference calls. We even met up in DC and the unions paid for it. Some of the other states with the same increased level of organizing were Nebraska, Indiana, Montana, North Dakota – basically states with blue dog Senators. Reid didn’t support ending the filibuster (he didn’t have the votes for it anyway). Obama wasn’t just trying to be bipartisan, he was giving cover to conservadems who were just as fucking difficult.
I’m getting tired of the revisionist history and the way we keep trying to paint Obama as naive. Not directing this at you. This criticism of Obama has become the conventional wisdom.
The Democratic Party has moved left. A majority of the public is desperate enough to not care about bipartisanship right now because we are in the middle of multiple crises.
SFAW
@Booger:
West Wing trivia: Sorkin originally wrote CJ as a redhead.
No, I’m kidding. But CJ is definitely of whom I think when watching her briefings.
Chyron HR
I’m sure Dickless here would feel better if our “go-to dodge” was calling him a enemy of the state and mailing pipe bombs to his office.
mrmoshpotato
@Betty Cracker:
Both hilarious and pathetic.
zhena gogolia
@Betty Cracker:
OT, but apropos of Christopher Plummer’s death, have you ever seen Wind Across the Everglades? Young Christopher Plummer, evil Burl Ives, Gypsy Rose Lee, and Florida scenery in an eco-thriller from 1958, directed by Nicholas Ray.
The Dark Avenger
@MomSense: One can forgive Obama for his freshman year mistakes, but after Mitch McConnell made his statement about limiting Obama to one term, the writing was on the wall for all to read, even the originator of the PPUS(Post Partisan Unity Shtick) meme
As my mom used to say, tell the truth and shame the devil.
NotMax
@SFAW
May she never have to face a situation analogous to the one Jerald ter Horst did. But should that arise am confident she has the backbone and the grit to stand as tall and do as right.
Gvg
@MomSense: I think people overlook chronology and cause and effect. In my opinion Biden and the current democratic Congress are able and willing to ignore bad faith offers of bipartisan ship because of what we remember happened in 2009 and after. For Obama and our Congress back then, these things hadn’t happened yet. For the public, they hadn’t happened yet. In addition, Covid and the helpless lazy do nothing Trump administration with the GOP led Congress accomplices hadn’t happened yet. Enough more of the public learned so that Biden has a very different hand.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
It’s been a story percolating nationwide literally since the plague began. Andy Cohen of all people had an Instagram piece on it last fall.
Tons of speculation ranging from shortage of artificial sweetner (because apparently like everything else, we got that from China and the Chinese weren’t shipping for various trade issues stemming from the reign of error of the previous (mal)administration.
Sweetner Shortage
Then last August it became available again and this guy’s “reporting” indicated it was a can shortage:
Fresca Shortage due to cans
There’s such a demand for cans, manufacturers are focusing on their mainline products.
Fresca was available in 2 liter bottles right before xmas. Not anymore.
When we’ve seen it (original flavor, not the godawful other flavors they’ve rolled out from time to time), we don’t buy all of it but we stock up.
WereBear
@zhena gogolia: I only know about it because I’m such a Peter Falk fan.
Geminid
The Democratic House majority may be down to five. Yesterday Judge Scott DelConte ordered that the New York 22nd District election be certified, with former Republican Congresswoman Claudia Tenney on top by 109 votes out of over 300,000 cast. The other former Representative, Anthony Brindisi, will appeal, but Tenney will most likely be seated. New York will lose another seat in upcoming reapportionment, and the Democratic legislature may draw a more Democrat friendly 22nd for 2022. Just adding Ithaca would tilt it blue. Some of the other five Republican New York representatives will be in trouble if the state legislature is aggressive on the Democratic side in redistricting.
MomSense
@The Dark Avenger:
I give up. I think if people went through the list of Senators to get to 60 they would realize the issue wasn’t Obama’s “rookie” mistakes.
Here’s a starter list
Kent Conrad
Max Baucus
Ben Nelson
Evan Bayh
Joe Lieberman
CarolDuhart2
@MomSense: Obama knew he would have some opposition simply because of what and who he was. I don’t think he was truly prepared for the vehemence. The Republicans in Illinois were of the Chamber of Commerce kind who would at least agree to something if it didn’t cost too much and there was a buck in it. With those types the Culture War was was more for show than belief-enough to get enough rube votes to do what you really wanted to do-grift off of everyone.
Yes, we were organized, but we also had a lot of survivors of the Republican beatdown of Carter, Mondale, and Dukakis, and lthe previous generation of Dems who refused to realize that the Solid Democratic South wasn’t really coming back. So there were some limits.
Lets not forget that the public has moved far left too. The day that gay marriage was made legal by the Supreme Court, the silence was deafening. When Trump’s constant bellowing about Antifa, BLM and riots fell on deaf ears. Suburban housewives was more received in laughter and headshaking. The caravan threats didn’t keep the House in Republican hands either. Simply put, the old culture wars that the Republicans rely are on gone. Some of it is the aging and dying of the insecure Archie Bunker generation, others is the integration of the suburbs, and the second generation immigrant kids who now sit with Becky in the classroom. Not that it all has gone away, but is no longer working as well as it used to.
And the Republicans have nothing else. Nothing. Unemployed? Need health care? Don’t fear your different neighbor? Nothing for you.
NotMax
@zhena gogolia
Ever see Ordeal by Innocence? Not even Plummer could redeem what is probably the worst Agatha Christie adaptation ever.
mrmoshpotato
@NotMax: Jujubes – good for getting stuck in your teeth.
zhena gogolia
@NotMax:
I’ve seen two versions of it but not that one. Maybe you should see the recent one with Bill Nighy before you decide.
zhena gogolia
@WereBear:
I totally forgot he was in it.
zhena gogolia
@MomSense:
THANK YOU
MomSense
@Gvg:
He could have waited until July instead of February to pass the Recovery Act when we finally and briefly had 60 Dems (counting Lieberman who campaigned for McCain and called Obama anti American). Instead he passed what he could get with Republican votes. I personally had phone banks in my house 2x per week calling Collins and Snowe’s offices. We needed those Republican votes. Can you imagine where the economy would have been if we waited six more months to pass economic relief? Why are people dissing Obama for trying out of necessity to be bipartisan instead of all the Senate Dems who insisted on keeping the filibuster even after McConnell said what he said on inauguration day?
Amir Khalid
@Betty Cracker: Also too, ex-POTUSes receive intelligence briefings so they can add an informed/experienced perspective to the national security conversation. Ex-POTUS Trump has no such perspective to offer. Aside from the obvious security risk, keeping him briefed in is pointless.
ETA: Biden made this point in passing, so it might easily be overlooked.
The Thin Black Duke
@MomSense: May the Goddess bless you.
Omnes Omnibus
@Gvg: This.
MomSense
@CarolDuhart2:
I heard what he said on the conference calls with us in 2009 and 2010. He was absolutely aware of the situation. Nancy LeTourneau, formerly Smarty Pants, wrote an excellent piece on conciliatory rhetoric as ruthless strategy. She nailed it.
Ken
@NotMax: I’ve never been satisfied by any of the adaptations of And Then There Were None, but that’s because I want one that ends like the book.
germy
I agree for the most part, but I think guns and abortion are still valuable tools for Republican culture wars.
JMG
Biden met respectfully and, to hear Susan Collins tell it, cordially with the 10 Republican Senators who made that $600 billion dollar offer in writing. Through the meeting and after he said, “sorry, nowhere near good enough, I’m sticking with my plan.” Did the Senators then up their bid? They did not. That in fact is all that bipartisanship can be when there are major differences. Listen to the other side, presume they are making a good faith case, then stick to your guns and put it to a vote if the gap can’t be bridged.
What’s really odd is that the pundits and cable news talking heads who make a fetish of bipartisanship would HATE it if it ever came to pass. If legislation was passing 94-6 in the Senate, what would they have to comment on?
Ken
Not entirely. I for one would love to see him talking about his conversations with Putin, though I expect the testimony would be sealed.
MomSense
@Gvg:
When you look at the history of progressive legislation,it’s only in times of crisis or immediately following disaster, that we are able to accomplish big things. Then we get hit with blow back and unceasing attempts to repeal or sabotage those gains.
MoCA Ace
@WereBear:
I hear you. I’m in the Gen-X inaugural class! WTF did we get… wasted away our teens in the 80’s
The Dark Avenger
@MomSense: They did all they could to compromise with the Republicans on the ACA, and in the end not one Republican voted for it. That was an unforced error.
”Unhappy is the land without heroes.”
“No, unhappy is the land in need of heroes.”
Galileo, Bertold Bretch
MomSense
@WereBear:
The baby boom/X dates changed about 10 years ago. The end point for baby boom used to be 12/31/1959. I have a friend who used to do fundraisers for his organization on his birthday and he used to joke about how weird it was to be a last day boomer when his experience was definitely X. I think 1959 is a better endpoint.
Edmund Dantes
@MomSense: Obama was a great president but also let’s not ignore the stuff he did either.
The only thing stopping his administration from naively bargaining away Social Security, Medicare cuts and similar stuff in his grand bargaining was a refusal of the GOP to say yes.
he also did plenty of other stuff that wasn’t just him giving cover too conservadems.
Again. Great president but he had a lot of warts that weren’t just the fault of others. But that’s normal. However let’s not pretend like he had no choice, his hands were forced, etc. That does a disservice to his own ideas and desires and it also ignores the work that lots of activists had to do to prove to him and other Dems that those were bad ideas.
and once again for those not paying attention. Great president. I’d take him again if I could have (since he seems to have a learned a lot just like any good politician).
Omnes Omnibus
@The Dark Avenger:
Baucus and Lieberman were Republicans? Most of us were alive and sentient during the Obama administration. Biden’s play these days can be praised without false comparisons to Obama’s actions.
Mowgli
@mrmoshpotato: It’s the equivalent of a person that was recently fired from their last job leaving their old title on their LinkedIn profile to avoid being labeled as unemployed. At least in that case there is a stigma that is often unearned, because companies make dumb decisions all the time. In this case, the decision was smart, he deserves age worse then firing, and it only make him more pathetic.
MomSense
@The Dark Avenger:
I went into this ad nauseam the other morning. Yes, what you say is factually correct but it doesn’t begin to describe what actually happened.
What if just accepting lessons learned based on a really inaccurate and incomplete analysis of what happened doesn’t actually lead to better practices and outcomes?
I should just disengage. This issue is personal for me. I worked my ass off on the ACA while learning to walk again after major surgery.
geg6
@WereBear:
Me too. 1958. It sucks being lumped in the same category as my older siblings when I got few of the advantages and a completely different social and political atmosphere than they had.
Miss Bianca
@zhena gogolia: I’m still trying to wrap my head around the concept of “evil Burl Ives”. He and Mitch Miller pretty much summed up the “anodyne older folk singer character” for me.
Baud
@Edmund Dantes:
If we’re going down the road of revisiting the Obama years, we’ll also have to examine all the people who undercut him from all sides. I don’t think it’s helpful to our present fight to open that Pandora’s box.
Uncle Cosmo
**I** believe what’s fueling Biden’s determination to get things done now is the realization that shit needs to get done now if not sooner in order to solve the multiplicity of crises Agolf Twitler left the nation with. And not incidentally to set up the Democratic Party for the massive victories in 2022 and 2024 that will be crucial for driving the GQP slithering back under its flat rocks for a decade or more.
And that that , IMHO, is what drives his sense of urgency more than any desire to lay down the burden after a single term – not to mention (given his age, and the ubiquity of lethal weapons and loons Qrazy enough to use them) the very real possibility he might not even finish that out.
I’d bet good money my beliefs are nearer the truth than yours, Dukie.
(ETA: Visual window problems resurface. And the text window keeps fucking up the paragraphs, requiring repeated editing, Intermittent failures, aaaaargh!!)
Cameron
@Miss Bianca: Didn’t he also play Big Daddy in Cat on a Hot Tin Rooof?
MomSense
@Edmund Dantes:
Rolling my eyes so hard at your second two paragraphs.
Can we also refrain from using the word “naive” about the first black president? You don’t become the first black president in a country as racist as the United States if you are naive.
Miss Bianca
@Cameron: Did he? I blush to confess that I’ve never actually seen the movie – or if I have, it was so long ago that I no longer remember any of the casting beyond Elizabeth Taylor and Paul Newman.
Cameron
@Baud: Agree. This is a very different situation. The pandemic makes the two presidencies hard to compare, so I’m not going to bother.
The Dark Avenger
@Omnes Omnibus: if that’s what you’re getting out of what I said you’re wrong. Dissing Obama doesn’t change whatever Biden does now. I’m sorry, but it took some time for Obama to realize his strategy of compromise, that worked in his previous positions, meant nothing to the opposition of the Republicans in Congress. He was a man, not a plaster saint.
Geminid
@germy: Gun rights are still an important issue with which to rally Republicans, but this issue seems to be declining among voters in general, especially in suburban districts. Most of the Democrats who flipped Virginia legislative districts in 2017 and 2019 ran as advocates for gun safety measures. Last year the General Assembly passed six gun safety laws, and Wason Center polling before the session showed 75+% approval for these among registered voters. As last year’s session began, over ten thousand gun toting protesters showed up in Richmond. The Democratic majority had already banned firearms from the Capitol grounds, so the protesters had to mill around and gripe from a distance. When the new gun laws took effect in July, though, there were few if any protests.
Cameron
@Miss Bianca: Yes – I didn’t trust my memory even though I saw that version about 2 years ago, so I just went and checked it out.
The Dark Avenger
@MomSense: He certainly demonstrated naïveté with his Grand Bargain proposal, buying into Republican rhetoric. Thank goodness the Republicans never took him up on that offer. You’re offering a version of the hoary favorite, “No true Scotsman”.
Miss Bianca
@geg6: Sounds like you and I had similar generational experiences – I am number six (Number Six! Getting Prisoner flashbacks!) of seven kids, spanning an entire generation – almost 20 years’ age difference between my eldest sister and my younger brother. 1945 (so just pre-Baby Boom) to 1964 (the tail end). The oldest sibs all had a much different job arc experience than the youngest.
Baud
@Cameron:
Besides, as long as Manchin and others oppose filibuster reform, Biden will be compromising with the GOP too, if they are willing, if he hopes to get anything through Congress over the next 2 years.
geg6
@MomSense:
Not sure I would agree, based only on my own anecdotal evidence. I was born in 1958 and my 1977 high school graduating class was the largest ever at the school, 535. My younger sister was born in 1964 and her 1982 class was smaller but still pretty big at 430 or so. My older sister graduated in 1972 and she had only about 240. So in my area, 1957-58-59 may have been the peak birth years and it tailed off pretty quickly after my younger sister was born. Differences in birth rates based on where you are looking makes pinning down these generational lines imprecise.
Jeffro
It has been an amazing shift in the past decade, that’s for sure!
Truth. Dems should bring it up at every opportunity. The GOP offers absolutely nothing to anyone but the very rich. No solutions to anything.
geg6
I was number 5 of 6. My next oldest sister was five years older and my oldest brother eleven years older. We grew up in totally different worlds.
ETA: And my youngest sister had a totally different experience than I did, being almost 6 years younger than me. More GenX than Boomer, but not exactly. She’s kind of in between generations like me.
CarolDuhart2
@germy: But 95% of those people already vote Republican. It doesn’t add additional voters.
PST
@mrmoshpotato: I’m surprised he isn’t calling it “Office of the Once and Future President”.
dmsilev
The LA Times ran (on the front page) an actual “Republicans in Disarray” story.
While Biden pushes crisis response, Republicans go to war — with themselves
WaterGirl
@Baud: Truer words were never spoken.
At least not since yesterday, when your first comment was undoubtedly just as true and just as pithy.
Honus
@p.a.: if you’re short of Fresca you can always go to a mexican place and get a Squirt.
sab
@SiubhanDuinne: No dog diaper ads for me, and my old guy needs them.
WaterGirl
@Booger: “Oh, it’s the plane of today!” is very C.J. Cregg-like.
dmsilev
@PST: I would accept “Anti-President”. Mar-a-Lago is like Avignon, right?
The Dark Avenger
@MomSense: I volunteered for the McGovern campaign when I was 13, so find someone else to impress with your activism. It doesn’t change the truth of what I said.
Immanentize
@geg6: Safe, ubiquitous and available birth control certainly helped lower those big graduating class sizes.
WaterGirl
@The Thin Black Duke: I think what he’s doing is making sure we win in 2022. With redistricting, it does not look good for us.
On Pod Save America this week, I forget what the numbers were, but it seemed like Republicans will control something like 3x as many of the redistricting processes as compared to Dems, which does not bode well for our side in the House.
The 3x number may not be right, but it was so discouraging that I turned off the podcast, thinking that I would never get to sleep if I kept listening to that.
Immanentize
@Baud: speaking of which, Larry Summers was on Weekend Edition this morning. The host read ol’ Larry Senator Schatz’s tweet:
Omnes Omnibus
@Miss Bianca: @geg6: My experience is nearly the opposite. I was born in 1964 – the first child of parents born in the 40s. I had aunts and uncles who were early boomers. My brother was born in ’71, a clear Gen-Xer.
Kristine
@WereBear: Yuppers. ‘Nother Jonesy here (1958).
Though tbh, after growing up in 1960’s Florida and watching how my parents struggled, I think I got a taste of what was to come. Florida was Right To Work For Less before it became a GQP mantra.
Immanentize
@dmsilev: I think Mar a Lago should be renamed Elba.
Omnes Omnibus
@Honus: Squirt is available and reasonable popular in WI.
Uncle Cosmo
@SiubhanDuinne:
As we said back in the day,
FTR for nearly all of 2020 (cursed be Its name) it was next to impossible to find my customary fastbreaking food, ordinary bran flakes, in any of the 4 supermarket chains I frequent. Meantime there would be at least 2 and more often 4 different varieties of raisin bran on the shelves. So it wasn’t like they were out of feedstock – the fucking late-stage capitalists just figured they could make more $$$ by putting the raisins in. Bastards.
debbie
@SFAW:
Particularly when they define unity as “our way.”
trnc
@Immanentize:
What was Larry’s response?
Immanentize
And, to show it is working a bit — a poll just found that Biden has higher favorability rating than …
Governor Abbott.
In Texas.
narya
@Miss Bianca: That movie is well worth seeing (despite eliding the bits that are about homosexuality). There is a lot of scenery chewing, but damn, it goes 100 mph. Another one like that for me is The Long Hot Summer (screenplay by Faulkner, IIRC). Love them both–Newman is outstanding, and both Taylor and Woodward more than meet him.
patrick II
@p.a.:
I use craisens (cranberry raisens) instead of regular raisens fo a little stronger taste. Then I take a handful of walnuts, break them up in my hand, and add them in. Then milk. A very filling and somewhat healthy breakfast.
Immanentize
@trnc:
“With all due respect, I wrote a memo… Blah blah blah, trouble with Senators … Blah blah blah.”
That guy never shuts up.
LurkerNoLonger
@Edmund Dantes: Fuck off with that shit.
WaterGirl
@Betty Cracker: I can’t recall where I read this, but I’ll share it anyway. The policy of previous presidents being able to get the intelligence briefings is so the previous president can be knowledgeable and up-to-date enough to be able to advise the current president on something when needed.
So that is intended to be for the benefit of the current president – it’s not a perk for previous presidents.
Trump is NEVER going to be asked for advice. I was glad to see Joe’s more common sense answer though.
Soprano2
@MomSense: The O Guys talked about that on their last podcast. They said people have forgotten how conservative some of those Democratic senators were, and they also mentioned that they only had 60 votes for 4 months, which a lot of people don’t remember.
debbie
@geg6:
I don’t know if class size is an accurate measure. I graduated in a class of 41 back in the dark times; now, the school’s graduating class size is more than 100.
Apologies if I misunderstood your post.
narya
@geg6: I was born in 1958 (HS grad 1976), and I would say that the biggest sea change I saw was that the class before me, the jocks and stoners were different groups that didn’t mix, the class after me, the jocks and cheerleaders also got high. My class didn’t know WHAT to do.
Kristine
@Omnes Omnibus: Squirt was my first soda pop (born in western NY), and I’ve nursed a deep and abiding love for it ever since. I’ve spotted it here in NE Illinois.
JML
@MomSense:
I think part of the problem was at least the public perception was that Obama was making concessions on things like the ACA in order to get GOP votes in the measure…and then every time they’d make one, the GOP would demand another one, and another one…and another one, and in the end they still didn’t vote for it. It’s hard to know for sure how many of those concessions were keeping blue dog democrats on the team and how many were just thrown away chasing a bi-partisan vote that never materialized. I don’t think it’s unfair to criticize the Obama administration for (at least publicly) chasing that kind of bi-partisan vote to it’s own detriment.
As big a problem for the Obama administration was a) democrats inability to celebrate achievement and declare victory (something we still struggle with) so that they’re running on accomplishments rather than apologizing for incremental legislation not being good enough, and b) Obama’s campaign & political operation’s inability to build infrastructure and support for anything that wasn’t Obama. As someone who was working on a campaign in 2008 & in 2012…this was a real thing. OFA vols were often useless for a coordinated campaign, because they literally wouldn’t learn the names of other Democratic candidates on the ballot. Obama struggled to turn his own personal popularity into a sustained political movement to elect more democrats.
trnc
@Immanentize:
Thanks.
Omnes Omnibus
Or chose to ignore.
Jim Appleton
@WaterGirl: It’s not a policy, it’s a courtesy extended at the discretion of the incumbent. BBC has a front page on this today, on phone so no link.
NotMax
@Honus
Oh my. Talk about a comedy straight line. Can almost hear Bud Abbott saying that.
:)
Chyron HR
@Edmund Dantes:
@The Dark Avenger:
My god, Bernie losing twice* just destroyed your brains, didn’t it?
* Three times if we count his aborted 2012 primary challenge, and I don’t see why we shouldn’t.
frosty
@WereBear: Late Boomers – Back in the 70s I heard someone describe it as “used weird”. Also the Decade That Taste Forgot.
Also, Fender and Gibson changed how they were making guitars and screwed them up. Worth much less on the vintage market.
MomSense
@JML:
The concessions he made that pissed people off like the cornhusker kickback and the no abortion funding (even though Hyde already prevented it) were both for Democrats.
ETA: I can tell you for a fact that the Senate Finance Cimmittee bill was better because Snowe pushed for thibgs that Baucus and Nelson wanted to get rid of. That’s the version fo the bill that became law. Like I said the other day, Snowe was trying to keep the public option over the objections of Baucus.
Miss Bianca
@Omnes Omnibus:
@Kristine: I’ve always liked Squirt better than Fresca, personally.
germy
Did they all come from the same sperm bank doctor?
germy
@Miss Bianca:
I’m so old I remember when they banned cyclamate, and people lined up in the grocery store to buy up all those diet soft drinks before they were gone.
Baud
@germy: Cloning.
WaterGirl
@MomSense: 60 democrats in 2009 =/=60 democrats in 2021.
It’s a miracle that Obama got anything done at all with so many blue dogs.
I wish people could find a way to praise Biden without dissing Obama. Biden – and all of us – lived through 8 years of Republican intransigence so we have the benefit of hindsight.
And Biden has the benefit a Dems with a much more progressive view of the world.
zhena gogolia
@Miss Bianca:
Oh, then you have to see this movie. He’s terrifying.
And haven’t you seen Cat on a Hot Tin Roof?
zhena gogolia
@MomSense:
THANK YOU You are channeling my thoughts
zhena gogolia
@The Dark Avenger:
Unlike Bernie.
Kristine
@Miss Bianca:
I always like the softer carbonation and the lemony bite. It always struck me as very different from other sodas.
Jeffro
@germy: is that what was in Tab?
I still have one of those hourglass-shaped Tab glasses! =)
The Dark Avenger
@Chyron HR: I was a Warren supporter, but your attempt at mind-reading is certainly risible. Do you do card tricks and balloon animals as well?
The Dark Avenger
@zhena gogolia: I was never a Bernie supporter. You need to work on your telepathic abilities.
Uncle Cosmo
Maybe she’s taken the old Elvis Costello trope to heart:
IMO she’s trying her best not to laugh in their faces. Three (non-exclusive) personality types what can’t abide being ridiculed: Narcissists, authoritarians, and the pompous arses of the Casa Bianca press corpse.
The Dark Avenger
@WaterGirl: Tell the truth and shame the Devil.
NotMax
@zhena gogolia
Ives had a whole mini-career portraying, shall we say, ethically ambiguous characters on the big screen.
Cameron
@germy: Harlan Hill? All that calls to mind is Harold Hill, and he’s fictional.
WaterGirl
@The Dark Avenger: Do you find that being condescending is a good way to get your point across?
WaterGirl
@Omnes Omnibus: I haven’t had Squirt in years, and I’m not sure it’s even available here.
But Squirt was 10x better than any of the other “clear” carbonated beverages.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
I’ve always meant to but so far never got around to watching the Paul Newman / Elizabeth Taylor film of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, though I’ve seen clips from time to time. Burl Ives plays Big Daddy, who I understand is no sweetheart.
Edit: I see that many, many jackals got there before me.
Some actors are really effective playing against type. Robin Williams in One Hour Photo and Insomnia and John Lithgow in Cliffhanger come to mind as particularly chilling.
NotMax
@Cameron
I thought Harlan Hill was the nearest neighboring plantation to Tara.
;)
L85NJGT
It’s still the USA, and his Y chromosome and lack of melanin allow him benefit of the doubt.
Having said that, there is more going on here than some career hack always finding the middle of the Democratic Party. There is an (understandable) tendency to view aging as loss, rather than an opportunity for growth and change. 1988’s Joe would have fucked away this election. 2020’s Joe would have wiped the floor with Bush.
germy
WaterGirl
@Jim Appleton:
Completely agree. I couldn’t come up with a good word, so I added policy. Should probably have said practice instead.
Geminid
@WaterGirl: The upcoming reapportionment and redistricting would be a good topic for a post. A lot of ground to cover: which states will lose seats, which will gain; which states have independent redistricting commissions, which are done by legislatures, and of what party; the effect of laws, like Ohio’s new statute, that restrict gerrymandering. A big task, but not too big for the Sage of Champaign.
Uncle Cosmo
Vögelumdrehung, dem Podium drunter! Ich habe es sehr gern!
I like the noun form even more:
BruceFromOhio
@MomSense:
This.
The Dark Avenger
@WaterGirl: I’m not the one trying to minimize Obama’s mistakes here.
Baud
@BruceFromOhio:
I prefer to remember how articulate he was.
WaterGirl
@germy:
I just had to see that again.
Baud
BTW, at this point y’all are just letting a single commenter get under your skin.
WaterGirl
@Baud: Clean, too!
edit: all we need now is for some of these folks to refer to Barack Obama as “boy”.
NotMax
@WaterGirl
Trivia:
Before it became 7-Up, the soda was marketed under the name Bib-Label Lithiated Lemon-Lime Soda
The Dark Avenger
@BruceFromOhio: Being African-American is not determinative.
One could also make the same statement about Clarence Thomas, and be just as wrong.
debbie
@Ceci n est pas mon nym:
It’s definitely worth watching. I used to hear terrifying stories about one of my Southern great-grandfathers and see a photo of him sitting in a rocking chair on the veranda, and he will always be Big Daddy in my mind. He’s not on the veranda here, but I think you get an idea of what I mean. Shudder.
WaterGirl
@NotMax: score one for the new marketing team!
WereBear
It seems the best villains are the people who are essentially “good,” and so have no qualms about playing a bad person.
It’s the assholes who insist on playing the hero, without nuance, and regardless of what the work requires.
debbie
@germy:
I have a working theory that Stephen Miller is Q. Am I wrong?
WereBear
And that didn’t go over? Hmm, puzzle :)
The Thin Black Duke
The people who are more pissed off at Obama than Republicans confuse me.
Omnes Omnibus
@L85NJGT: I think that Joe being at the center of the party is much, much more than than him being a career hack with a survival skills. I think he is someone for who Democratic Party ideals and life experience has legitimately always placed him there. It is part of what makes him a great fit right now.
The Dark Avenger
@Baud: That’s what happens when one lacks facts and reasoning in their argument. In the end, Obama is a human with limits, just like all of us.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@Baud: Apparently a well-practiced troll game. Keeps tossing out the bait and I’ve found my fingers twitching a couple times, though I know better.
The Dark Avenger
@The Thin Black Duke: Would Republicans had been as open to bipartisanship as Obama. The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
The Dark Avenger
@Ceci n est pas mon nym: Hit me with your best shot.
Ken
@Geminid: Also, whether the current census numbers will be accepted, or whether there will be a push to say “Trump f*cked this up too” and either continue counting or start from scratch.
Ken
The only way to find out is to waterboard him until he confesses.
(OK, technically there are other ways.)
PST
@Ceci n est pas mon nym:
Or Steve Martin in The Spanish Prisoner and a couple of others.
WaterGirl
@The Thin Black Duke:
Offering an amendment for your consideration.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@WereBear: A more recent example that just came to mind is Chris Evans in Knives Out. I loved that movie, it felt like everybody was having a great time.
Suffice it to say that Chris Evans’ character was not Steve Rogers.
I even enjoyed Daniel Craig’s painful attempt at a southern accent. the whole thing felt like a repertory company just having a blast.
BruceFromOhio
@The Dark Avenger:
Thank you for this comment. I was really trying to understand where you are coming from, and what might be motivating you to write the comments that you’ve shared in this thread. This clarifies it very efficiently.
Uncle Cosmo
Warn’t just a one-off: cf. Cat On A Hot Tin Roof (1958): Burl Ives as the quintessentially evil Big Daddy.
(ETA: Cameron got there zackly 100 posts above, goddamnittohell.)
Ken
@Baud:
Speak softly to your little boy,
And beat him when he sneezes.
He only does it to annoy,
And because he knows it teases.
— Lewis Carroll
The Thin Black Duke
How do you put folks in the pie filter? I forgot.
BruceFromOhio
@The Thin Black Duke:
You are very generous. They irritate the living fucking shit out of me.
Cameron
@debbie: That sounds plausible. Perhaps too plausible.
germy
@debbie:
I don’t know.
Q is into all sorts of subjects. Miller seems obsessed with only immigration:
Geminid
@Ken: Yes, all the reapportionment parts won’t be in place for a while, maybe later than sooner. My state of Virginia may have to hold this years House of Delegates elections with the old districts. Virginia just adopted a new system under which an independant commission composed of legislators and citizens will draw the new districts. While some Democratic politicians tried to head this off, the constitutional amendment passed by a 2-1 margin.
BruceFromOhio
@Ceci n est pas mon nym:
@WereBear:
Justin Beiber on an episode of CSI? OK, maybe that’s a bridge too far.
Kathleen
@MomSense: It’s what they’re paid to do.
scribbler
@Ken: There is a 2015 BBC miniseries version that I believe includes the original extremely bleak ending from the novel.
Immanentize
@Miss Bianca: of course you (we) preferred Squirt over Fresca. Squirt had sugar in it.
jeffreyw
Several times lately I’ve clicked on refresh and was taken to the top of the page.
Brachiator
Coming late to the thread and am off to work. Will try to read comments during break. But for now.
I approve this message.
I see pundits and economists trying to nibble at the relief package, and even the Democrats are buying the false message that stimulus checks need to be targeted more. I think this is wrong, but will not have a problem if the maximum amount of money is sent to lower income citizens. The main thing is that I don’t want to see the total package reduced.
And people should keep pushing back by noting that the GOP never, never seriously balked at the size of their tax plans or relief packages.
And just as important, those costly packages did not negatively impact the economy.
LadySuzy
@SFAW: The national pundits are so obsessed with Washington politics that they equate “unity” with bipartisan bills in Congress.
President Biden will have to explain over and over and over again that “unity” means stopping the vitriol, and debating your ideas with respect. “Unity” means you don’t HATE pour political opponents. You debate them, you push for your ideas but you don’t put pure hate in your heart. “Unity” among political adversaries means decency, empathy, adherence to basic norms and to the TRUTH.
Last note: Another thing that the punditry has to understand is that respect, and reject of hate, don’t mean you give a pass to people who break the law or don’t follow basic norms in political behavior. “Unity” must be around the basic principles that make a political system, and a whole society, functional.
BruceFromOhio
@jeffreyw: I’ve found that happening also when clicking on the timestamp link back to the individual comment. Also, the Visual tab function comes and goes. And my shoulder hurts. I do not think it likely these are all related, though it is possible.
zhena gogolia
@debbie:
Ask Adam. Adam is the expert on Q.
Omnes Omnibus
@Immanentize:
Diet Squirt exists.
Ohio Mom
Lymie @66:
I don’t stop by Echidne’s place very often but I also noticed she was MIA a couple of months ago.
She’s always been very good about keeping her IRL identity secret so there is no googling her real name (in comparison to John Cole, whom I had been able to identify via google way before he posted his first selfie and came out of anonymity).
My favorite autism mom recently pulled her internet presence—her twitter and her Facebook page are no longer, just kept her blog that she stopped updating long ago. Leaves me with an itch I can’t scratch, and a worry about what is going on behind the screen. But none of these people owe us anything.
Immanentize
@Omnes Omnibus: I saw that! Now called Squirt zero sugar. It must be a coca cola product?
Jinchi
Biden doesn’t look like he thinks he’ll be a one term president and I’d give better than even odds that he’ll serve out two.
He probably is very aware that 50-50 margins in the Senate are fleeting and he may only have 6 months to get legislation passed. His success or failure as a president could be defined by what he’s able to push through right now.
(Plus there’s also this pandemic thing going on.)
Kathleen
@Baud: We white people have no concept of the tightrope he had to walk as the first Black President (“Beware of Angry Black Guy” trope) and the abuse he endured that we never heard about. I attribute the media’s lack of comprehension about this and its desire to constantly undermine to racism.
Geminid
@narya: The Long Hot Summer (1958) is a dynamite movie. William Faulkner was not the screenwriter, but the script was based on three of Faulkner’s works, and set in his fictional Missisippi county. Orson Welles got to ham it up as family patriarch Will Varner. I think Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward first met working on this movie.
Kathleen
@MomSense: This! His awareness of that was factored into every move he made. He has tremendous self awareness and emotional intelligence.
J R in WV
@WaterGirl:
Really~!~ I have Dark Avenger pied (do you wonder why?), and had to go back and toggle to see what you meant.
Really~!~
Ken
Hmm, that’s right. And have we ever seen Adam and Q in the same room?
gwangung
@The Dark Avenger: Don’t be stupid and ignore the effect of race on both the populace and the individual.
You’re smarter than that.
Uncle Cosmo
IIRC that ban was based on some pretty skeevy test results that our Good Neighbors To The North never bought into – and IIUC cyclamates are still available Up There and no mass increase in Northern Exposure to cancer has been observed.
Brachiator
@WereBear:
@Ceci n est pas mon nym: Some actors are really effective playing against type.
I’ve have seen actors note that the are not trying to play a “villain.” Their character believes in his or her plans and designs. They are their own hero.
I also run across a lot of people who insist that they must “approve” of the hero in order to enjoy a movie or other show.
But I try to point out that one of the reasons why a work like “Richard III” is so captivating is that the audience may hate Richard, but they understand what he wants and are intensely curious to see if he gets it.
And early on Richard just mows through all the “good” people who try to stop him.
WaterGirl
@The Thin Black Duke: Look for the tiny cherry pie that is between the top part of the post and the comments. It hangs out with the circle that displays the # of comments.
Click on the cherry pie, and either select your person from the list or start typing their nym in the search field
Click the x to close the window, and your person will be replaced with the likes of catcake, pupcake, and other sweet desserts.
mrmoshpotato
@PST: “Office of I’M STILL PREZNINT! I’M STILL PREZNINT!”
debbie
@zhena gogolia:
I want to, but I’m usually asleep by the time he shows up.
EmbraceYourInnerCrone
@Booger: I think so too, don’t want to “TV show” the Biden administration because really running the country and balancing the 3 sides of government is extremely more complicated than TV makes it appear. But the current Press Secretary does seem to have CJ Cregg’s combo of quick, smart and snark. The press really does not appreciate the snark but, too bad!
debbie
@germy:
There’s science in immigration? Who knew? //
The Dark Avenger
@gwangung: Was racism the reason Obama felt it necessary to offer the Grand Bargin?
zhena gogolia
@debbie:
Me too.
Chief Oshkosh
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: I thought I was the only one to be jonesing for the Fresca. I prefer cans, but the 2L bottles will do–if I can get them.
J R in WV
@The Thin Black Duke:
At the bottom of the full original post, and right before the comments start, there’s a small image of a (cherry?) pie. Click on that, and you get a list of all those commenting so far. Pick the one you want to pie, and then click where it says “click to pie”! Done…
You can also select a list of everyone you have pied (the “Filtered” list) so far, and un-pie one of those just as easily. It’s pretty user-friendly, actually, once you know to click on the Pie image to start the process.
ETA: Darn, WatergGirl, author of the pie filter in it’s current manifestation, beat me to it. That’s OK, she wrote it!!
Jinchi
@debbie:
I think you’re wrong. Stephen Miller isn’t subtle and can’t spout more than one absolutist line. Q has to be subtle enough that their readers have to “interpret” the meaning behind any message and adaptable enough to change the story when events intervene.
My guess is Q is not just one person, but an original poster with several like-minded trolls.
WaterGirl
@EmbraceYourInnerCrone: I had to manually approve your comment. Should that be EmbraceYourIinnerCrone? I think you might be missing an R.
WaterGirl
After getting sucked in myself, I feel the urge to post this ever-timely comment from over a year ago:
EmbraceYourInnerCrone
@LadySuzy: You are correct, they also refuse to admit that for the last several Republican administrations unity/bipartisanship has meant “give us everything we want or we burn it all down” as in cut all these programs from the budget or we don’t sign off on it and the government shuts down and we blame it on you.
Amir Khalid
@NotMax:
I will never forget Orlando Jones and the 1990s “Make 7-Up yours!” campaign.
Belafon
@The Thin Black Duke: He’s also smart enough to realize that Democrats need to go big, and let the voters decide, not Republicans in Congress.
EmbraceYourInnerCrone
@WaterGirl: Yes thanks! I will see if I messed it up and saved the wrong nym on this laptop, not my usual device and I am super tired today.
WaterGirl
@EmbraceYourInnerCrone: Okay, I went back and corrected that in your 3 comments.
Doc Sardonic
@The Dark Avenger: No. He probably offered the Grand Bargain to try to thread a needle with no eye and get the recalcitrant conservadems and maybe a moderate Republican or 2 to go along. He also was trying to deliver on his campaign promises of hope and change. However, here we are 14 years later, in a different time and place and comparing apples to fucking prickly pears to rehash history is about as useful as dentures for a duck. So perhaps flogging this expired equine when minds are already made up is pointless.
Oh and before you ask, I don’t use condescension to make points, I use it because I am an asshole on good days. Today is not one.
Brachiator
@WaterGirl:
You probably know this already, but Firefox is now updated to 85.01
Jinchi
My understanding is that Manchin makes a good show objecting to specific proposals, but is always looking for an out. For example, he is opposed to a passing a $15 minimum wage (today), but if he can talk the Senate down into passing a $9.50 minimum wage (followed over time by scheduled increases to $11, $13, $15) he’ll declare victory as a negotiator and retain his good standing status as a Democrat.
StringOnAStick
@PST: John Lithgow was the only good thing about Cliffhanger, a truly bad movie in every other aspect. The rock climbing community was so excited because so many climbers got stunt work on the film and at the time climbing was definitely a small subculture. Then we all saw the film and howls of outrage and disgust ensued. I understand from insiders that Black Diamond was pissed when the first scene centred around showing their harness hardware fail so the chick could plunge a thousand feet and die (while holding a teddy bear that she was carrying for some utterly unknown reason). Also, climbers who worked on the film noted what an egotistical wanker Stallone was.
WaterGirl
@Brachiator: I did not know that!
Is it still doing the “can’t comment from visual mode” thing with that new version
holding my breath, waiting for the desired answer.
sab
@J R in WV: I love the toggle switch on the pie filter.
mrmoshpotato
@germy: Oh, I’d forgotten that that Nazi shitpile uttered that line.
The Thin Black Duke
@WaterGirl: Ah. Thanks.
sab
@The Thin Black Duke: I think I might embroider a sampler with that statement, and hang it in my living room.
The Dark Avenger
@J R in WV: Funny how you continue to bring facts and reasoning to the argument.
Brachiator
@WaterGirl:
Still a problem.
The Dark Avenger
@Doc Sardonic: Perhaps in the words of his fellow African American, Obama should’ve realized that when somebody tells you who they are shows you who they are, believe them.
Brachiator
@StringOnAStick:
“Cliffhanger” inspired a great comment from Siskel or Ebert:
“They often say that if you’ve seen the trailer, you’ve seen the entire movie. With “Cliffhanger,” if you saw the trailer, you saw a better movie.
I agree that it was very bad.
catclub
Why not make it a very high tax on employers that do not provide $15/hr to employees. taxes are allowed in reconciliation.
catclub
@WaterGirl:
Wow! pre-pieing! All the newest techo wizbangs.
Edmund Dantes
@Chyron HR: have never been and never will be a Bernie supporter. People need to stop thinking everyone that disagrees with them is loony left.
catclub
@MomSense:
I was amazed Joe Lieberman held with the caucus when they needed 60 votes.
Geithner was one of the Obama own goals.
karen marie
@patrick II: I’m a dried cranberry convert. I’ve been making scones with dried cherries and recently ran out. Given my tenuous financial situation I economized, buying dried cranberries instead of dried cherries. Wow! They are much more zippy in my scones! So much so, I chop them up and add them to my granola. I’m not sure what I’m saving when I’m expanding applications but …
Kent
Better actually.
By now C.J. Cregg would have said some inappropriate snark in response to some of those inane questions and then Bartlett would have had to have a gentle discussion with her about her role or some such. Psaki is absolutely unflappable.
catclub
@WaterGirl:
When Doug Jones won statewide election in Alabama, he lost 5 of six congressional districts. And Alabama never even comes up in lists of egregious gerrymanders.
WaterGirl
@Brachiator: I love how you broke that to me so gently. :-)
WaterGirl
@catclub: I’m not sure what you mean by that.
catclub
@BruceFromOhio:
 
Once you accept Ted Danson as something other than a bartender, the guardrails are off.
Geminid
@catclub: Congresswoman Terry Sewell of Birmingham is Alabama’s sole Democratic Representative. Were it not for the 1965 Voting Rights Act her district could be gerrymandered to ensure six Republican Congressional districts. Parts of the act are still in force, and a federal court in Virginia mandated a redrawing of Virginia’s 4th Congressional District. Congressman Donald McEachin then won the seat in 2016. Alabama may lose a seat in the upcoming reapportionment, but Sewell’s seat is thought to be safe.
Brachiator
@catclub:
The first time I noticed Ted Danson was when he played a tap dancing prosecutor in the 1981 film “Body Heat.”
Brachiator
@WaterGirl:
Sorry. I know it’s frustrating.
WaterGirl
@Brachiator: I was just teasing.
It’s frustrating for me in a different way than it is for everyone who uses Firefox and can’t use the fucking visual tab.
I am not a Firefox user, but I can certainly identify with how you are all feeling. I am sure it’s maddening.
Thor Heyerdahl
@WereBear: I’m reminded about this comment from Sergio Leone who had discussions with Henry Fonda about playing the role of Frank in “Once Upon a Time in the West”.
Ken
I’d think that would be harder to pass, though I like the idea — especially for companies that have more-or-less admitted that they expect their employees to rely on food stamps and Medicaid.
Uninvited Guest
@The Dark Avenger:
Yes.
catclub
@Geminid:
This is not how I understand gerrymandering at all. You ensure that 5 districts are 60% GOP, but the 6th is 85% Democrats. If you make them all 53% GOP, then there is a risk of losing many of them in a wave election.
wvng
@MomSense: yes. Obama has to get the votes of conservative Dems in hand before even considering republicans.
The Pale Scot
@WereBear:
I’ve said this before, if you didn’t have a drivers license during the oil embargo, you’re not a boomer. Or as someone here replied, if you didn’t have to worry about getting drafted to Vietnam
The Pale Scot
@comrade scotts agenda of rage:
As I sit here sipping wild berry (slightly sweet) Fresca with a splash of Polish vodka, allow me to offer that all of them aren’t so bad
Geminid
@catclub:I understand the gerrymandering dynamic you speak of. It really depends on the actual numbers, though, and I have not looked at the Alabama map, nor looked up the vote totals for it’s central and northern districts. You may not have either. I just remember that a state political news journal, probably Yellowhammer News, had an article about the ramifications of the upcoming reapportionment. The author stated that the Voting Rights Act would protect Terry Sewell’s seat. From that I inferred that the seat could be vulnerable without that protection.
The Pale Scot
@Uncle Cosmo:
Agolf Twitler
I haven’t heard that before.
Keeper fer sur’
smedley the uncertain
Current FF and visual no worky. Using text.
Starboard Tack
Fresca – the Wonder Bread of carbonated bevvies.
Reeds – Good
Vernors – Better
Cock & Bull – ne plus ultra
The Pale Scot
@JML:
Well he shot down that horse when he dismembered Dean whathisname 50 state get out the vote op. THAT was to me a very suspicious action
A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)
@WaterGirl: Right! Kennedy consulting with Eisenhower about foreign policy, that sort of thing.
A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)
@Jeffro: Wow, that takes me back. I drank a lot of Tab in HS (graduated in 1969). Do they even make it anymore?
The Pale Scot
@WaterGirl:
I see him as a Slitheen, a Whovian alien family (Raxacoricofallapatorians) that murders human politicians and then wears their skins to assume their ID and manipulate people into destroying the world
satby
@WaterGirl: It does that in other browsers than FF. I mainly used my Kindle because it’s always been a reliable way to read the blog, but I irregularly get (and have always since the upgrade) the text, not visual box. And I have to manually refresh constantly now, this is the only website that never auto refreshes at all, no matter how long it’s been open in a window. Plus the duplicate comment thing even if I happen to switch devices so it can’t be holdover from a previous comment.
A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)
@Ceci n est pas mon nym: I saw Knives Out and it was OK but I had been expecting more from all the good press. This is a problem for me – I read how great a movie is and then it doesn’t (IMHO) live up to the hype. (First movie I remember having this problem was Forrest Gump. I was NOT impressed).
Of course, I missed some of the movie because I dozed off at a certain point. A few years ago I started dozing off in some movies (and in front of the TV at night). Something about sitting very still in a comfortable chair in a darkened room (and getting older). In fact that is now one of the ways I rate movies – did I stay awake for the entire movie? Green Book passed. Knives Out didn’t. And that Southern accent of Craig’s was silly, if you ask me. Ana de Armas was good, though. I’ve liked her ever since War Dogs (also a movie I stayed awake through) :-)
Lymie
@Ohio Mom: Completely agree on not owing us anything, but after you have been reading someone for years and like and are interested in what they have to say it is only natural to be concerned and think of them as “friends”.
Geminid
@Geminid: Correction: Alabama now has seven Congessional districts, not six. That may go to six after reapportionment. Terry Sewell’s district is the west central portion of the state, with a slender projection going northeast to Birmingham, and a wider projection going east to Montgomery.
Ruckus
@brantl:
I don’t want anything of any kind coming anywhere near any part of my body that has anything to do with the last person who was squatting in the oval office and crapping all over the US that he supposedly worked for. There is no joke funny enough for that.
Ruckus
@CarolDuhart2:
The reason that republicans have nothing to say other than bullshit is that if you remove their bullshit reasons the rest boils down to stealing everything not tied down and not being prosecuted for it.
We are back to pre 1929 bullshit, with some slightly better protections but still with the concept that capital trading is the economy, not jobs, not people, making money is trading money and consolidating what business that remains. And it’s become very, very profitable for a few and reasonably profitable for their enablers, and has screwed the rest of us massively as well as making us a far weaker economy in the world.
WaterGirl
@smedley the uncertain: I assume you are now on version 85.01 and it’s still not working. I am bummed about that.
Ken
@WaterGirl: I’m on FF 85.0.1 and the visual tab is not working. Same symptoms as before.
No One You Know
@OzarkHillbilly:
@Geminid:
I’m wondering if gerrymandering isn’t the very thing fueling the GQP lurch into authoritarianism. The unintended consequences of successful gerrymandering is that political ghettos form. From those ghettos candidates have to distinguish themselves somehow and they’re only one way to go… extreme.
Meanwhile, the extremism creates work, and revenue, for infotainment media, and the feedback loop starts spinning. Confirmation bias sets in.
Concentrating political points of view into specific Congressional districts stops working when there aren’t enough numbers to support the minority.
I’m not sure what happens after that.
Geminid
@No One You Know: I first heard of One Virginia, the outfit that led the successful campaign to put redistricting in the hands of an independent commission, from a retired cardiologist who was a Wall Street Journal type Republican. He said pretty much what you say, that gerrymandering was driving the Republican party too far to the right. This was soon after Eric Cantor had been primaried out of his suburban Richmond Congressional seat, and the Republican VA 5th and VA 2nd Representatives retired at relatively young ages. These were both wealthy businessmen, and I suspect they did not want to run the tea party gauntlet to keep their seats. This was at a time when Virginia elected Democrats for statewide office and President, but the Republican drawn congressional map yielded 8 Republicans and 3 Democrats. So this moderate conservative cardiologist and his buddies wanted a more neutral system that hopefuly would elect more moderate Republicans and Democrats.
Ironically, Virginia’s Congressional delegation now has seven Democrats and four Republicans, and the state House of Delegates has gone from 35 Democrats, 65 Republicans to 54 Democrats, 46 Republicans, on a map drawn by Republicans in 2011. Part of this shift was due to demographic change, but a lot of it was the result of hard right Republicans alienating moderate Republican and independent voters.
The constitutional amendment setting up the independent redistricting commission passed last year by a 2-1 margin. Some Democratic party leaders tried to head this off, believing that now their party should advantage itself through redistricting. But most of my Democratic friends voted for the independent commission, as did I.