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A consequence of cucumbers

We still have time to mess this up!

Is it irresponsible to speculate? It is irresponsible not to.

DeSantis transforms Florida into 1930s Germany with gators and theme parks.

Authoritarian republicans are opposed to freedom for the rest of us.

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

Take your GOP plan out of the witness protection program.

If senate republicans had any shame, they’d die of it.

This really is a full service blog.

Damn right I heard that as a threat.

Wow, I can’t imagine what it was like to comment in morse code.

A sufficient plurality of insane, greedy people can tank any democratic system ever devised, apparently.

Putin dreamed of ending NATO, and now it’s Finnish-ed.

… riddled with inexplicable and elementary errors of law and fact

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Happy indictment week to all who celebrate!

There are consequences to being an arrogant, sullen prick.

A thin legal pretext to veneer over their personal religious and political desires

Come on, media. you have one job. start doing it.

An almost top 10,000 blog!

JFC, are there no editors left at that goddamn rag?

“I never thought they’d lock HIM up,” sobbed a distraught member of the Lock Her Up Party.

The worst democrat is better than the best republican.

The arc of history bends toward the same old fuckery.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Monday Morning Open Thread: International Women’s Day

Monday Morning Open Thread: International Women’s Day

by | 184 Comments

This post is in: , ,

And this is about the best thing I can say on that topic:


… The “American Rescue Plan” advanced by Mr. Biden includes more generous direct benefits for low-income Americans than the rounds of stimulus passed last year under Mr. Trump, even though it will arrive at a time when economic and coronavirus vaccine statistics suggest the broad economy is poised to take flight. It is more focused on people than on businesses and is expected to help women and minorities in particular, because they have taken an outsize hit in the pandemic recession.

Researchers predict it could become one of the most effective laws to fight poverty in a generation. Columbia University’s Center on Poverty and Social Policy estimates that the plan’s provisions, including a generous expansion of tax credits for low-income Americans with children, would reduce the poverty rate by more than a quarter for adults and cut the child poverty rate in half…

…[A]t the bottom end of the income spectrum — and in particular, among Black and Latino families — millions of Americans are still feeling the deep pain of the recession. The economy remains nearly 10 million jobs short of its prepandemic peak, with women of all races and men of color struggling the most to regain employment. The unemployment rate for Black men remains above 10 percent.

Data from the Census Household Pulse survey, analyzed by Lena Simet, a senior researcher on poverty and inequality at Human Rights Watch, shows that the lingering economic distress of the crisis is concentrated among low earners and those who remain out of work. Nearly half of households earning below $35,000 a year reported falling behind on housing payments. One quarter reported not having enough food…

The Tax Policy Center in Washington estimates that the direct payments and expanded tax credits in the bill would, by themselves, increase after-tax income this year by more than 20 percent for an average household in the lowest quintile of income earners in the United States. It previously had forecast that Mr. Trump’s tax cuts would raise that same group’s income by less than 1 percent in the first year…

Rest assured, I’mma do *my* best!…

Also, one suspects, this guy will:

Reader Interactions

184Comments

  1. 1.

    Baud

    MJ has some amazing charts on this bill, especially comparing it to the Trump tax cut.

  2. 2.

    Baud

    In more important news, reading the news reports about the Harry and Meghan interview, it seems like the Queen got off looking good, but everyone else is in the shitter.

  3. 3.

    Nicole

    Thank you, Georgia voters, for making this possible. Now the work is on to make sure you keep that access to the ballot box.

  4. 4.

    satby

    Youssou N’Dour  is a great way to start the day! That Gabriel guy is ok too ?

    I’m so happy at how much this bill will help people.

  7. 7.

    Kathleen

    Republicans have to be in mourning because more children will be lifted out of poverty. Every time a child has access to food and medical care Rand Paul and Ted Cruz tear a wing off of an angel.

  9. 9.

    NotMax

    Just for fun.

    1) Dueling piano.

    2) Bit o’ trivia learned last week:

    Character actor Nat Pendleton (he on the left), usually cast as plebeian sidekick, dim flatfoot or gruff muscle-in-waiting, attended Columbia and also won a silver medal at the Olympics, for wrestling.

  11. 11.

    Baud

    @RandomMonster:

    Heh. Probably. I don’t watch that.  I know there are a bunch of popular shows involving the British aristocracy. I wonder of those shows will take a hit from the fallout.

  12. 12.

    Baud

    Just a reminder, the two best legislative sessions since 1980 have been the first two years of Clinton’s and Obama’s terms, when the Dems controlled everything.  We’re on track to repeat that feat.  I hope we’ve compiled enough evidence to end the debate about the differences between the parties.

  13. 13.

    Frankensteinbeck

    A single tear rolls down Mitch McConnell’s cheek as he thinks about how he could have blocked all those checks if he was still in charge.

    Yes.  Let’s keep in mind, there were months when Republicans could have gained a serious political advantage by issuing more stimulus, larded it with plutocracy gifts, and still McConnell would rather bet his Majority Leader position than help people.  Now that it politically helps Democrats more than Republicans and is an extensive, clever, and effective method of helping the average person, even more so the poor, and even more than that minorities… is it any wonder the whole Republican Senate caucus, even the relatively sane ones, throw up a little in their mouths thinking about it?  This is everything they are philosophically and emotionally against.  Even Mitt ’47 percent’ Romney.
    @Baud:

    I hope we’ve compiled enough evidence to end the debate about the differences between the parties.

    Unfortunately, more than half of white people are clear about the difference between the parties and prefer hurting people to helping people.  Still, I’m hoping legislation like this will motivate our side and that small cadre who don’t pay attention and only knew Trump gave them a check.  Now they will only know the Democrats gave them a ton of stuff.​
    ​
    ​

  15. 15.

    Betty Cracker

    @RandomMonster: The Queen is the only one who never comes across as whiny and self-absorbed in The Crown, but they do portray her as chilly toward her kids and other family members. I don’t know how true that is in real life, but if it’s accurate, maybe it’s a generational thing.

  17. 17.

    raven

    @Betty Cracker: And like Harry in the interview they make it pretty clear these people are trapped. I’m not defending the monarchy but goddam it must suck.

  20. 20.

    rikyrah

    ????????

    New York Times: "Democrats snuck a pension bailout for truckers into the ARP."Joe Biden, wearing a trucker hat and drinking a bottle of Buckler: "And?"— Jordan Weissmann ? (@JHWeissmann) March 8, 2021

  21. 21.

    satby

    @Baud: He said goodbye to the town in an op-ed yesterday:

    Inevitably, I return to an idea that gripped me whenever I looked out of the 14th-floor window of the mayor’s office in downtown South Bend: that every vehicle out there contains someone whose life depends on us in government doing a good job.

  22. 22.

    rikyrah

    The most satisfying thing about this bill is that the Democrats learned from 2009.

    Republicans only negotiate in bad faith, so don’t waste your time. As we see Murkowski getting her amendment, and still Voting against the bill.

  23. 23.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @Baud:

    reading the news reports about the Harry and Meghan interview

    I only know a bit about British class politics, but it was enough that nothing I heard was a surprise.  It may help Americans to understand if you think about the Harry Potter books as not being about race, but about wizards=nobility and muggles=commoners.  Every muggle and a whole lot of wizards are British class stereotypes.  Commoners drink gin, have weird stupid accents, are ignorant, and form suspicious mobs.  The nobility are obsessed with their blood lines and how that makes them naturally superior.  And they are vicious about it.  That Meghan – my god, she’s a brown American actress! – was treated like Hell for marrying a prince is 100% on brand.

  24. 24.

    Ken

    @rikyrah: I find this map fascinating, because I would never have guessed that “truck driver” is (as of 2014) the most common job in most states.  I may have first seen it here on BJ, when someone was talking about the impact of driverless vehicles.

  26. 26.

    Ken

    @raven: And like Harry in the interview they make it pretty clear these people are trapped.

    PIty they can’t convert it to a lottery system, where some random person is chosen as “Queen for a Month”.  The only thing required by the theoretical underpinnings of their government is a warm body that (theoretically, again) has sovereign power but cannot personally exercise it.

  27. 27.

    Geminid

    @Baud: Progress in each of Presidents Clinton and Obama’s first Congres were undercut in the next Congress, when Republicans made significant gains in the midterms. So a key for this president’s success will be the results of next year’s midterms. There was a dropoff in Democratic motivation after the 1992 and 208 elections, but I don’t see it happening this time. I have never seen Democrats more motivated and determined. And the Republican leaders are caught flatfooted with a divided party. Although I won’t count the Republican implosion chicken before it is hatched. The midterm cycle will tell the tale on that one.

    Still, I like our chances to maintain a majority in the House, despite reapportionment and redistricting. In the Senate, Democrats will have to work hard to defend Kelly’s (AZ) and Cortez-Masto’s (NV) seats out West, and maybe even harder to keep Hassan (NH) and Warnock (GA) in the Senate. Republicans have as many vulnerable seats, though, if not more.

    And Happy International Women’s Day, everybody! Even we X-chromosome deficient folks have good reason to celebrate!

  29. 29.

    TS (the original)

    It is impossible to understand why every republican in the Senate voted against this bill.  Just two Senate elections in Georgia – made all the difference to so many American people – but do they even know this?

  31. 31.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @TS (the original):

    It is impossible to understand why every republican in the Senate voted against this bill.

    Bear in mind, they don’t think helping people is morally right.  Now that Democrats gain more from it than Republicans politically, they have no reason at all to vote for this.

  33. 33.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @Ken: ​

    The only thing required by the theoretical underpinnings of their government

    Is for the royal family to be inherently superior beings with a divine mandate to rule. Way too many Brits still have a strong nostalgic attachment to that idea.

  34. 34.

    Baud

    @TS (the original):

    At end of the day, it’s pride. The privileged feel disrespected when they aren’t the dominant force in a negotiation. Similar dynamic to corporations and workers/unions.

  38. 38.

    Dorothy A. Winsor

    A personal aside: I have a review on Goodread to which I would very much like to say “fuck you” but that’s a bad idea. So I’m saying it here where it’s like saying “good morning.”

  40. 40.

    Baud

    @Dorothy A. Winsor:

    So I’m saying it here where it’s like saying “good morning.”

    I’m looking at rikyrah’s daily salutation in a new light.

    Who’s the reviewer? We jackals can find a way to “cancel” him if you’d like.

  41. 41.

    RandomMonster

    @Betty Cracker: I agree, the series does depict a certain chilliness that you have to see as flawed, or maybe a sad consequence of the politics. (I was really just going for an easy joke.)

  44. 44.

    Soprano2

    @rikyrah:  The most satisfying thing about this bill is that the Democrats learned from 2009.

    Also, they went fast and were mostly unapologetic about what they are doing, because it’s needed. Also, there are no bailouts for big business in there.

  45. 45.

    Soprano2

    @Ken:  I may have first seen it here on BJ, when someone was talking about the impact of driverless vehicles.

    Yes, truck driver is a job where a person with only a high school education can make a decent living. Driverless trucks will cause a massive wave of unemployment if they ever become practical. I’ve always thought their most logical application would be to drive from point A to point B on the interstate; once the truck leaves the interstate, and human driver would take over and deliver the “last mile”. I shudder to think how a driverless truck would navigate downtown New York City, for example (wanna piss off a truck driver? Schedule multiple deliveries to downtown New York!).

  47. 47.

    Soprano2

    This story on “Morning Edition” this morning is the suck. https://www.npr.org/2021/03/08/974706002/the-complexities-of-raising-the-minimum-wage-on-the-retail-industry NOT ONCE DID SHE MENTION THAT THE PROPOSED MINIMUM WAGE DOESN’T START AT $15/HR IMMEDIATELY! The whole story is just a big “fuck you” to the proposal. It truly sounded like the person interviewed in South Carolina, for example, thought it would have raised the wage he was paying from $10.80/hr to $15.00/hr immediately.

  49. 49.

    Lacuna Synecdoche

    NYTimes via Anne Laurie @ Top:

    … The “American Rescue Plan” advanced by Mr. Biden includes more generous direct benefits for low-income Americans than the rounds of stimulus passed last year under Mr. Trump, even though it will arrive at a time when economic and coronavirus vaccine statistics suggest the broad economy is poised to take flight.

    And there it is, the New York Times always finds a way to sneak in a right-wing talking point – this one being, “The economy was getting better anyway …”

    Thanks, NYT.

  50. 50.

    Geminid

    @RandomMonster: There is an upper-class English tradition of separation between parents and children. Winston Churchill described how as a child he saw his elegant mother as a shining but distant figure. A governess provided him maternal sympathy. Then he was sent off to “public” school, where a headmaster and teachers supplied paternal guidance. Churchill also described an encounter with a greengrocer’s son who assisted his father every day. Churchill envied the boy, and one of his regrets was that he had not been closer to his father before the man’s early death.

    Of course, this was in the Victorian era, but the British royal family may still embrace the older traditions.

  51. 51.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @Soprano2:

    Driverless trucks will cause a massive wave of unemployment if they ever become practical.

    A big ‘if’.  It’s one of those things where 99% perfect is not enough.  The hilarious little flaws in machine learning stop being funny when a truck rams a pedestrian whose umbrella makes its mysterious algorithm think they’re five feet away from their actual position.

  53. 53.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @Geminid: ​
     

    Then he was sent off to “public” school, where a headmaster and teachers supplied paternal guidance.

    Of course, this was in the Victorian era, but the British royal family may still embrace the older traditions.

    Pratchett satirized it repeatedly right up to his death, so I don’t think it has quite fallen out of fashion with the nobility.

  55. 55.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    @JAFD:
    If you’re interested in ‘classical music by women composers

    People who know me as a pianist know that I’m a huge fan of Fanny Hensel. She was Felix Mendelssohn’s older sister by 4 years. They learned and performed side by side as child piano and composing prodigies. But Felix was then introduced to a wider audience and given opportunities Fanny never was.

    The family considered it unseemly for a woman to do anything professional in music, so her 400+ pieces were mostly performed at home in private salons. After their father died, she looked to Felix for approval, but he refused. That didn’t stop him from occasionally publishing one of her pieces under his own name.

    When she turned 40, she decided the hell with it and started collecting her work for publication. She also started performing publicly. She was rehearsing for a performance with Felix when she suffered a stroke and died.

    Her work was forgotten for 140 years, only rediscovered after the fall of the Berlin Wall. It’s brilliant stuff. Unfortunately she didn’t bother with titles so it’s hard to cite on a program. Only a few of her pieces have been recorded and I’ve noticed that it’s the few that actually got a title.

  56. 56.

    Amir Khalid

    @Baud:
    One of the things Tom Riddle was bitter about was his ancestry: he was both the last descendant of a Pureblood family ​fallen far from wealth and power and the estranged son of a Muggle aristocrat. And so on both sides of his family he was an outsider looking in. Not that it makes Voldemort any less of a bad person, of course.

  61. 61.

    Just One More Canuck

    @Frankensteinbeck: How does the technology deal with piles of snow on sides of roads? Sudden gusts of wind?, Black ice or pooled water?  What about liability issues?

  62. 62.

    dmsilev

    We’re doomed:
    GOP voters may decide whether U.S. reaches herd immunity

    Margaret, an 80-year-old retiree who lives outside Tulsa, has spent the past year living in fear of the coronavirus. She’s constantly worn masks, toted hand sanitizer and used drive-throughs to run her errands. Her age and preexisting health conditions — including heart failure, diabetes and blood clots — put her at elevated risk if she gets sick. But unlike many at-risk Americans seeking safety and an end to the pandemic, Margaret refuses to get a coronavirus vaccine.
    “There’s too many unanswered questions,” said Margaret, who agreed to be interviewed only if her last name was withheld because of concerns she might be harassed. Margaret also said she’s fearful of possible side effects, like the headaches that some people have gotten from the second shot. “I’d just as soon as not go through that,” she said.
    Margaret is a Republican — a fervent supporter of former president Donald Trump — and polls have repeatedly found that nearly one-third of Republicans share her staunch resistance to the coronavirus vaccines, although for a variety of reasons. Some, like Margaret, worry they were developed too quickly. Others argue without evidence that many vaccines are unsafe or will make them sick. Still more echo Trump’s repeated contention that the coronavirus threat is overblown and simply don’t trust the government’s involvement.
    […]
    While other groups have also been wary about the shots, for instance, communities of color, polling shows that hesitancy has started to wane while GOP resistance to the vaccines remains relatively high. A Kaiser Family Foundation poll released last month found that 28 percent of Republicans said they would “definitely not” get vaccinated, and another 18 percent said they would “wait and see” before getting a shot. As a result, millions of Republicans could remain unvaccinated, a potential roadblock to efforts to achieve the high levels of immunity needed to stop the virus in the United States — an irony that isn’t lost on Trump officials who worked to end the pandemic.

  64. 64.

    mali muso

    Good morning and happy international women’s day! I didn’t get a chance to watch the big interview last night as I don’t have TV but followed along a bit on Twitter. If nothing else, I am even more determined to raise my biracial daughter in such a way that she has the self-confidence to stand up for herself and set boundaries like Meghan Markle has done.
    Now I’m gonna make a steaming hot cup of tea and hunt down the footage on the internets…

  65. 65.

    Cameron

    @Lacuna Synecdoche: This makes no sense – if the COVID pandemic isn’t brought under control, the only “flight” the economy will take is Wile E. Coyote over the Grand Canyon.  Typical right-wing BS: “Billionaires are doing fine!  The stock market is way up!”

  66. 66.

    germy

    Threads on an ignored part of psychedelic history:

    Reading books about Stanley Owsley and early LSD. I am convinced that Melissa and Rhoney, the women, were erased as the real master alchemists. Melissa specifically. Owsley was a big male personality. I’m obsessed with Melissa now.
    — Xeni Jardin (@xeni) March 6, 2021

     

    These are the books I’m devouring. And here’s Melissa now. I am seriously now obsessed with meeting her and learning her story. I believe this woman is the true “Owsley.” pic.twitter.com/ZPUBpqSN8K
    — Xeni Jardin (@xeni) March 6, 2021

  67. 67.

    germy

    @Cameron:   Typical right-wing BS: “Billionaires are doing fine!  The stock market is way up!”

    “And we’ve got more subscriptions than ever! The Sulzberger family is doing well!”

  69. 69.

    JML

    @germy: 

    I can never be certain whether people are being serious when they suggest banning cars…but I’m always afraid they think that it’s a good idea and intend to demand that Democrats support that as a policy position. Because it’s basically the worst politics you could possibly come up with in the USA. 1) we have nowhere near the public transportation infrastructure to make it viable, even in big cities, 2) we have a staggering amount of jobs tied up in the auto industry, and 3) car culture here makes it DOA.

    I get the environmental impacts. But it’s the least realistic idea I’ve heard, and guaranteed to ensure the left never holds power…

  70. 70.

    Ken

    @Soprano2: I shudder to think how a driverless truck would navigate downtown New York City

    10 SOUND HORN
    20 ACCELERATE
    30 GOTO 10

    (I may have used this before.)

  71. 71.

    Booger

    Slightly off-topic, but open thread.

    I seem to recall that back in the eighties or nineties, the GQP started an initiative (which the Democratic party never seemed to match) to run candidates in every race at every level and build a deep bench.

    The idea Stepford candidate possessed local-newscaster looks–both men and women—such as ideally wearing a blue suit/white shirt/red tie with flag lapel pin, unmemorable haircut, no facial hair for men, generic makeup for women with country-club jewelry, and solid links to generic protestant/evangelical religion. Once found, they were sent to the various right-wing veal pens to be fattened on a steady diet of ALEC-drafted initiatives, polished by apparatchiks schooled at Liberty and Regents and Bob Jones and Patrick Henry (and George Mason University, to be honest) and all the other intellectual backwaters designed to enforce right-think.

    The most prized attributes beyond their bland car salesman appearance was (1) an infallible ability to parrot verbatim whatever Karl Rove/Frank Luntz-crafted phrases were piped down the trough to them that morning, and (2) an absolute absence of curiosity, creativity or insight which might ever cause them to deviate from (1).

    So we are now facing the weird evolutionary result of this breeding program, exemplified best by little Davey Cawthorne and Barbie from Colorado: A multi-generational cadre of elected officials bred to engender nothing beyond sound bites and perpetual outrage, with neither the skillset nor the interest necessary for actual governing…and no institutional memory whatsoever of peers who once actually did their jobs. Their history begins with Gingrich and ends with Reagan; the only objects in their field of vision are tax cuts, guns and fetuses.

    So how do we go about simply making them irrelevant, and do more actual governing by simply walking around them—as Schumer just did–while they make their performance art for the masses?

  72. 72.

    germy

    @JML:

    I thought he meant on the busy city streets where they want pedestrians to wear sensors.  Not wide open spaces or everywhere in the country.

    A few days ago a vehicle slammed into an outdoor eatery set up for the pandemic:
    7 injured after van hits car, smashing outdoor dining structure in New York City

    I don’t think the Democrats are going to ban cars.  The point is to offer more choice in transportation.  Buttigieg has said that’s his goal.

    Rather than adding more lanes, widening roads, and giving pedestrians sensors.

  73. 73.

    WereBear

    @Betty Cracker: I don’t know how true that is in real life, but if it’s accurate, maybe it’s a generational thing.

    All I know is my extensive lifelong watching of British shows and reading British literature :) but it’s a repeated thing that children of the aristocracy are raised by a stream of nannies who get fired as soon as they get close, then the children get sent to boarding schools where they suffer abuse.

    Upper-class Twits of the Year are made as much as born.

  75. 75.

    germy

    @WereBear:

    George Orwell wrote about his experiences in boarding school. He really captures the squalor, ignorance and general cruelty he endured.

  76. 76.

    Geminid

    @Geminid: Another strong English tradition that affected Churchill was primogenture. His father was second son of a very wealthy man, so Churchill had to earn a living, and did so with adventurous journalism in his early years, and after still needed to write to support his upper middle class life.

    But Churchill believed in himself. At table, he once said of himself: I know I am but a worm. But I believe I am a glow worm.”

    This and other anecdotes are found in Violet Bonham-Carter’s Winton Churchill: An Intimate Portrait (1965). Bonham-Carter was the daughter and confidant of Liberal Prime Minister Herbert Asquith. Besides stories from her friendship  with Churchill, she gives some insider accounts of the mismanagement of the Gallipoli campaign, and the formation of the Coalition Government in late 1915.

  77. 77.

    Soprano2

    So, here’s what our governor in MO is doing https://www.kansascity.com/news/local/article249718218.html He bragged that a whole  5,000 doses of the next 50,000 will be going to KC and St. Louis, while thousands of doses are going unused at these rural mass vaccination sites. Luckily very little is wasted; you’d think they would learn from this, but it appears they haven’t. He’s rewarding his voters, just like De Santis is.

    Mass coronavirus vaccination events in rural Missouri regularly end with hundreds of remaining vaccines, records obtained by The Star show.

    While the records show unused doses get redistributed to other providers and very few go to waste, it calls into question whether the state’s plan to have mass vaccine events in rural areas has been an efficient method to administer vaccinations.

    In all, 28 mass vaccination events between Feb. 22 and Feb. 27 in rural Missouri resulted in 7,735 doses that remained unused after the events ended, compared to 47,143 vaccinations that were administered, according to records from the Missouri Department of Public Safety.

  78. 78.

    germy

    President Biden will sign an executive order on Monday establishing a Gender Policy Council in the White House.

    The council will report directly to the president, making it the most powerful body of its kind to date. https://t.co/XzEulCuV7y

    — The New York Times (@nytimes) March 8, 2021

  79. 79.

    zhena gogolia

    @NotMax:

    You didn’t know about Nat Pendleton? Wow, I knew something about an old movie star before NotMax did.

    And Barton MacLane was a football star at Wesleyan University.

  80. 80.

    JAFD

    @Ceci n est pas mon nym: Unfortunately I don’t see any works by her on the playlist for today (if you’re a contributor, they email you the day’s planned music every morn)

    Mayhaps you’ll wish to gently chide them for this omission.

  81. 81.

    Soprano2

    @Frankensteinbeck: That’s why I say “if”. I learned not to question driverless vehicles with certain people, because they become extremely angry when you bring up all the obvious flaws in their execution.

  84. 84.

    Ken

    @Spanky: BASIC, not FORTRAN.  And yes, we’d be doomed if this were entirely up to the programmers.  But fortunately the lawyers and the financiers are also involved, so… um.

  90. 90.

    Geminid

    @Geminid: Winston Churchill was a thinking man, and according to Bonham-Carter this sometimes made him less than convivial on social occasions. She describes a luncheon when, lost in thought, his silence frustrated the young woman seated next to him so that she picked up her plate and took it to a sideboard to finish. Then she stalked off, possibly to hit some croquet balls really hard.

    Afterwards, Churchill asked Bonham-Carter, “Who was that jolly trout at the table today?”

  91. 91.

    sdhays

    @germy: Yeah, after I wrote that I thought, “No, she knows very clearly how worthless she is on her own. That’s why she brings up her parentage like Rudi-9/11 would bring up 9/11 (before he became the Former Guy’s stupidest lawyer).”

  92. 92.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    @Ken:

    10 SOUND HORN
    20 ACCELERATE
    30 GOTO 10

    That’s the NYC cabbie algorithm. If it works for them, why not driverless cars?

    There’s also the “create a new lane where none existed” move.

    They’d be ideal for Boston traffic too. The whole secret in Boston, I learned, is to not make eye contact. Well, a driverless car can’t make eye contact! Eureka!

  93. 93.

    Ken

    @Immanentize: When a human driver hits someone or causes damage, they’re liable.  The legal situation is not clear with autonomous vehicles.  That really needs to be put into statutes. I can’t imagine that insurance companies are eager to rush into the market until that’s been done.

  94. 94.

    snoey

    @Ceci n est pas mon nym: 
    Back then my BIL was a bike messenger in both NYC and Boston.
    He said that NYC was ok because half of them were scared of the other half and you could use them for cover. All the Boston drivers are crazy.

  95. 95.

    sdhays

    @Immanentize: If driverless cars do the same thing – hit pedestrians, lose control, smash into other vehicles when there is bad weather – what is their benefit? We were told a decade ago when driverless cars were to be perfected in just “5 years or so” that they would make roads much, much safer. That claim really isn’t holding up right now, with basic technology unable to plainly “see” people right in  front of them (which no amount of software is going to fix).

    So, now we’re back to “things will be great if the public invests billions of dollars to completely change public infrastructure to support driverless vehicles and we train pedestrians to behave differently”. That’s…not an attractive proposition, and I say this as someone who hates driving.

  96. 96.

    Immanentize

    @Ken: The legal system will make it as clear as it currently is with humans.  The owner will be the driver and liable if negligent or worse.  All the other issues of contributory negligence, punitive damages, etc. will remain unchanged. The tort law angle is the biggest red herring of all in driverless car issues.

    If you don’t like the idea, just say you don’t like it.  But it all smacks of the same luddite arguments made about every new piece of technology in history.

    Damn those horse drawn buggies!!!

  97. 97.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    @JAFD: ​
      If you look at the pictures on this page, she’s in the upper-left corner.

    Maybe she’s listed as “Fanny Mendelssohn” or “Fanny Mendelssohn-Hensel”?

  98. 98.

    Ken

    @Ceci n est pas mon nym: There’s also the “create a new lane where none existed” move.

    That certainly simplifies the programming, especially if they paint a bright yellow stripe down the exact middle of the lane. It could also clarify the legal issues; for example it could be similar to the rail laws, where the train always has right-of-way.

  99. 99.

    Immanentize

    @sdhays:

    what is their benefit?

    The same benefit of all technologies — cost and efficiencies that will allow people to spend more time on more productive endeavors than driving a couple of hours a day to and from a place of work to name one. Better transportation systems for all citizens. And yes, safety. The driverless car and truck world will likely be not perfect, but could in fact be a much safer world with far fewer road deaths and injuries.

    Sounds good to me.

  100. 100.

    Ken

    @Immanentize: The owner will be the driver and liable if negligent or worse.

    Not the company that programmed it?  There’s an argument (and precedents) for that, if you could establish that they released the software knowing that it had flaws.  I guess they could try attaching an EULA to the car software.

  101. 101.

    schrodingers_cat

    The British Crown has overseen genocides of millions, and has been the reason of untold misery for at least the last 200 years on a global scale with many parts of the world still reaping the fruits of their so called benevolence. Racism was the rationale of their Empire. I am surprised that people are surprised at Megan’s treatment.

    The Queen wears the Kohinoor in her tiara, stolen from Maharaja Ranjit Singh, the last Sikh ruler of Punjab. She is the living symbol of oppression to millions worldwide. A living monument to the bloody Empire. All the whitewashing in the world is not going to change that.

  102. 102.

    Immanentize

    @Ken: That would be a product liability law suit, already covered by existing tort laws.  No change needed there at all.

  103. 103.

    germy

    One interesting example of our unwillingness to face facts and our consequent readiness to make gestures which are known in advance to be useless, is the present campaign to Keep Death off the Roads.

    The newspapers have just announced that road deaths for September dropped by nearly eighty as compared with the previous September. This is very well so far as it goes, but the improvement will probably not be kept up—at any rate, it will not be progressive—and meanwhile everyone knows that you can’t solve the problem while our traffic system remains what it is. Accidents happen because on narrow, inadequate roads, full of blind corners and surrounded by dwelling houses, vehicles and pedestrians are moving in all directions at all speeds from three miles an hour to sixty or seventy.

    If you really want to keep death off the roads, you would have to replan the whole road system in such a way as to make collisions impossible. Think out what this means (it would involve, for example, pulling down and rebuilding the whole of London), and you can see that it is quite beyond the power of any nation at this moment. Short of that you can only take palliative measures, which ultimately boil down to making people more careful.

    But the only palliative measure that would make a real difference is a drastic reduction in speed. Cut down the speed limit to twelve miles an hour in all built-up areas, and you would cut out the vast majority of accidents. But this, everyone will assure you, is ‘impossible’. Why is it impossible? Well, it would be unbearably irksome. It would mean that every road journey took twice or three times as long as it takes at present. Besides, you could never get people to observe such a speed limit. What driver is going to crawl along at twelve miles an hour when he knows that his engine would do fifty? It is not even easy to keep a modern car down to twelve miles an hour and remain in high gear—and so on and so forth, all adding up to the statement that slow travel is of its nature intolerable.

    In other words we value speed more highly than we value human life. Then why not say so, instead of every few years having one of these hypocritical campaigns (at present it is ‘Keep Death off the Roads’—a few years back it was ‘Learn the Kerb Step’), in the full knowledge that while our roads remain as they are, and present speeds are kept up, the slaughter must continue?

    – George Orwell, 1946

  104. 104.

    Just One More Canuck

    @Immanentize: I’m in a job that is lawyer-adjacent, and a lot of what I do is help untangle liability issues.  I don’t think that any of the problems I mentioned are unsolvable, but we are still not very close  to resolving things to the point where driverless cars and trucks are commonplace

  105. 105.

    Phylllis

    @zhena gogolia: Yes, I’ve been dragging my feet on completing the investigator training because 1. it’s a nightmare and 2. the chatter we were hearing from our federal programs national association is the plan is to roll back those regulations.

    If we do have a complaint, we have a group we can outsource the handling of it to while the current regulations are in place.

  107. 107.

    Brachiator

    @Baud:

    In more important news, reading the news reports about the Harry and Meghan interview, it seems like the Queen got off looking good, but everyone else is in the shitter.

    Very smart. I hope that Will and Kate, if mentioned, also come off well.

  110. 110.

    Geminid

    @Booger: The way to deal with the Congresswoman from the Colorado 3rd is to send her packing after one term. She only won by 6% in last November’s election, after sneaking up on the Republican incumbent in a primary. Cawthorn’s race was not as close, but he is still beatable, depending on next year’s political climate in North Carolina.

    M. T. Greene’s 14th Georgia is a district in which no Democrat has won more than 30% of the vote since it was created in 2012. There she is vulnerable only to a primary challenger. Georgia has a primary runoff, and Greene beat a solid conservative candidate in her runoff by over 10 points. And he was a longtime district resident, while Greene was a carpetbagger from the Atlanta suburb of Alpharetta. Her father, though, was a big commercial and residential contractory during Atlanta’s boom years, so she had several hundred thousand dollars to lend to her campaign.

  111. 111.

    Ken

    @Cameron: I suggest setting up a sub-committee, staffed with any Republicans who happened to get on the council, to focus solely and entirely on plastic toys. The rest of the committee can look at the less-important issues involving humans.

  112. 112.

    Ken

    @Betty Cracker: I’ve driven extensively in both NYC and Boston, and Boston is by far the worst, IMO.

    I’ve never had the pleasure of driving in either, but I imagine Manhattan’s grid is easier than Boston’s non-Euclidean horror.

  113. 113.

    Brachiator

    @sdhays:

    So, now we’re back to “things will be great if the public invests billions of dollars to completely change public infrastructure to support driverless vehicles and we train pedestrians to behave differently”. That’s…not an attractive proposition, and I say this as someone who hates driving.

    Roads that previously were designed to deal with horse drawn wagons are now engineered to accommodate trucks and autos.

  114. 114.

    Spanky

    I think the simplest solution to the liability problem is to make it illegal for a pedestrian to impede a driverless vehicle.

  116. 116.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    @Ken: And if that’s not enough to keep them busy, we can form a full-time Commission to investigate whether the Seuss Publishing Company has the right to decide what books to pull out of print. They can spend their time reading “Green Eggs and Ham” and the rest of the catalog that wasn’t actually affected by the decision.​

  118. 118.

    mrmoshpotato

    A single tear rolls down Mitch McConnell’s cheek as he thinks about how he could have blocked all those checks if he was still in charge.

    @Kathleen:

    Republicans have to be in mourning because more children will be lifted out of poverty. Every time a child has access to food and medical care Rand Paul and Ted Cruz tear a wing off of an angel.

    All of this is true because the Rethuglican party hates Americans.

  120. 120.

    Ken

    @Ceci n est pas mon nym: I must admit I stole the idea from Pratchett, I think The Last Hero, where there’s some huge emergency and everyone thinks they can Make Valuable Contributions. The Patrician forms them into a committee, waits for it to start spawning subcommittees, then takes the four people who actually know how to fix the problem to another room.

    Hmm, Biden as the Patrician.  Kind of works, though I can’t see him sentencing mimes to the scorpion pit.

  121. 121.

    Spanky

    @Ken:

    though I can’t see him sentencing mimes to the scorpion pit.

    If he did that, the overwhelming majority of people would make him Benevolent Dictator for Life.

  122. 122.

    germy

    Scientists talk about the different Covid-19 vaccines the way that parents have to talk about their kids. “They’re all great. No, seriously. There isn’t one I love more than the others.”

    — JEN KIRKMAN ??‍? (@JenKirkman) March 7, 2021

    Pfizer is the oldest and overachieves. Moderna a is the middle child, emulating Pfizer but not as good. JJ gets Bs instead of As like Pfizer, but as the baby is better adjusted and gets along with people easier.

    — ghost in boots (@ghostinboots) March 7, 2021

  123. 123.

    Nicole

    So word on Twitter is that Roy Blunt has announced he’s not running for reelection next year.

    Good- he’s a GOP

    Bad-  Missouri.  While I am prepared to Postcard to Voters to Missouri next year, I am not real confident that a Dem has a legit chance to pick up the seat.  Missouri residents who read B-J, please feel free to set me straight if I’m wrong.

  125. 125.

    cain

    @Soprano2: 

    Also, they went fast and were mostly unapologetic about what they are doing, because it’s needed. Also, there are no bailouts for big business in there.

    Helps that they know bipartisanship is dead, and that there was insurrection that put their lives in grave risk. That gives you a moment of clarity like non other.
    Democrats have never been shrinking violets when shit goes down.

  126. 126.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Nicole: another fucknozzle running away from the mess he made

    even Johnson was making those noises last week

  129. 129.

    Immanentize

    @Nicole: Missouri will be super tough, no doubt.  But any race without an R incumbent is easier than running against one.  More things can happen.  What’s McCaskill up to?

  130. 130.

    Betty Cracker

    @Omnes Omnibus: I know nothing about WI politics, but it seems logical that a Dem running against Johnson would have an easier time than running against someone who hasn’t said so many crazy/dumb things publicly.

  132. 132.

    Dan B

    @Baud: I’m amazed but not shocked that people find racism and insulation in the institution of the monarchy to be news.  Don’t people have eyes, ears, and a brain?  Or do they have to be reminded that God/FSM gave you a brain – use it!

    Has anyone in the media pointed out that the remnant of colonialism would have horrible echoes to this day?  There are so many issues but the biggest elephant is the seeming blindness to institutional rot, not just in the Royals but in many of our hallowed institutions.

    I believe some people said “Form a more perfect union.” Not, this is fine don’t change anything, look the other way.

    Am I the only one who thought almost every minute of Harry and Megan’s interview was lame.*  They seemed self centered and unaware of the larger world.  There is more to life than tabloids and a stodgy monarchy.  There are other people in the world.

    *My partner wanted to watch.  I spent most of the time reading.  The first minutes made Meghan seem shallow.  Repeatedly whining about not feeling “protected” while injustice is rampant in the world – blech.  You have been mistreated, yes.  Get some perspective, please.

  134. 134.

    Brachiator

    @Ken:

    I’ve never had the pleasure of driving in either, but I imagine Manhattan’s grid is easier than Boston’s non-Euclidean horror.

    In my Southern California youth, we had high school driver training class, with on the road training. Never been to Boston, but when I lived on the East Coast, I would never even try to drive in Manhattan, and used subways, buses, cabs.

    Not just the roads. I didn’t think that East Coast people really knew how to drive.

  135. 135.

    Nicole

    @Immanentize: I have the thought of, “Whatever R Missouri votes in is likely to be crazier than Roy Blunt,” which is not comforting, but then again, the nutty ones are good at getting press coverage, but not legislation passed.

    Which reminds me, why is NO ONE referring to Rep. Cawthorn as “Son of Crazy, ” seeing as how his first name is “Madison”?

  137. 137.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Betty Cracker: ​
      The odds are that any other candidate wouldn’t be as dumb. They might be more awful in other ways, but dumber than Johnson means forgetting to breathe. Of course, the GOP could surprise me.

  138. 138.

    cain

    @germy: ​
    Rather than adding more lanes, widening roads, and giving pedestrians sensors.

     

    Portland metro is looking to widen I-5 and of course they have reached out to the black community for some sensitive approach – Portland has in the past ran I-5 through a black district screwing it over. Now they are trying to sell something else showing false pics of what it would look like.
    A mostly white backlash happened on twitter, and I was proud to see it. No one is going to put up with shit like that going forward. There is absolutely no reason to expand the number of lanes in I-5. Expand public transport options in the city. Adding more lanes just puts more cars on the road – it will never be enough.

  139. 139.

    Barbara

    @Betty Cracker: Well, I did once read an assessment of the queen’s parenting style that included the comment that maybe if she spent as much time on her kids as she had on the pedigree of her horses and dogs they might have been less emotionally needy.  She seems like someone who positively takes refuge in doing her duty as a defense against doing things that come less naturally, the same way many people retreat to work rather than confront a difficult family situation.  And like a lot of people, she might be a much better grandparent than parent.  I didn’t watch the interview.  I read the highlights, and some of the treatment was probably par for the course (“hey this is what you signed up for get over it”) and some of it was chilling and horrible, especially that things took a big turn for the worse when she became pregnant and all that implied.

  140. 140.

    Brachiator

    @Baud: ​
     

    Just a reminder, the two best legislative sessions since 1980 have been the first two years of Clinton’s and Obama’s terms, when the Dems controlled everything. We’re on track to repeat that feat. I hope we’ve compiled enough evidence to end the debate about the differences between the parties.

    It was never a serious debate.
    But point noted.

  141. 141.

    Geminid

    @Betty Cracker:  Republican Congressman Mike Gallagher (WI-8) is said to intend to run for Johnson’s seat whether or not Johnson runs. Age 37, Marine veteran Gallagher is a young man in a hurry.

  142. 142.

    Immanentize

    @Nicole: I suppose your Gov. will run.  That is why he is giving the rural folks too many vaccines and the city folks not enough?

  143. 143.

    Immanentize

    @cain: Houston has proved your conclusion over and over.  More lanes, no reduction in traffic jams or travel times.

  144. 144.

    Nicole

    @Immanentize:

    I suppose your Gov. will run.  That is why he is giving the rural folks too many vaccines and the city folks not enough?

    My gov?  Cuomo?  I don’t imagine he’s planning on running in Missouri.  Or anywhere else in the future, if accusations keep piling up.

  145. 145.

    karen marie

    @Frankensteinbeck: I’m baffled that neither saw this coming.  Harry knew who they were.  He had a choice – his birth family or Meghan.  Given William has an heir and a spare, what was the point in sticking around in the first place?

  146. 146.

    J R in WV

    @Ken: ​

    @Soprano2: I shudder to think how a driverless truck would navigate downtown New York City

    10 SOUND HORN
    20 ACCELERATE
    30 GOTO 10

    (I may have used this before.)

    Code reusability is a long-term highly sought goal of the software industry. ;~{ )

  147. 147.

    Barbara

    @Dan B: The essential problem is that the royals don’t deserve their status as a result of talent or personal accomplishment.  Some of that is almost certainly due to the fact that they aren’t really allowed to take up anything real, but when you add someone who really is talented and accomplished to the mix, as Meghan Markle was when she met Harry, even if not exactly an “A” lister as an actress — and then add foreign (American) and biracial — God, that’s like being confronted with way too many implied challenges to your standing in the world.  How much of a personal wall do you have to build up as a royal to overlook the profound unfairness of your position, that you, who have done nothing in your life to deserve this, are treated at taxpayer expense as if you are the most worthy person in the nation?

  150. 150.

    Brachiator

    @Dan B:

    Am I the only one who thought almost every minute of Harry and Megan’s interview was lame.* They seemed self centered and unaware of the larger world. There is more to life than tabloids and a stodgy monarchy. There are other people in the world.

    Didn’t watch the interview.

    But in the past, Harry and Meghan both did a lot of charity work all around the world.

    Not exactly in a bubble.

  151. 151.

    J R in WV

    @Ceci n est pas mon nym: ​

     

    @JAFD: ​
    If you look at the pictures on this page, she’s in the upper-left corner.

    Maybe she’s listed as “Fanny Mendelssohn” or “Fanny Mendelssohn-Hensel”?

    BUT:

    The second highlight mentioned below the set of pictures is:

    Fanny Mendelssohn: String Quartet in E-flat Major

    Quatuor Ébène

    Looks like she’s being suitably honored.

  152. 152.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Barbara: I could never quite grok why it was a scandal that two second-tier ribbon-cutters wanted to switch to part-time work. Margaret was a scandalous for footnote decades. Does anybody think Prince Edward, much less the cousins mentioned so contemptuously in The Crown, the “Kents” and the “Gloucesters”, are living off what they earn? And one person I suspect really wishes the royal family had worked harder to keep things quiet: Andrew.

  153. 153.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @Baud:

    Unpossible! All of the supermarket rags assured me that the Queen despised Meghan for being literally worse than Hitler. She should know, she was there! /s

  154. 154.

    schrodingers_cat

    I mean seriously the British Crown is guilty of many of the same things that the Nazis did, they were smart to keep their blood lust outside Europe to the lesser people (as deemed by them and other Europeans)

    Genocide – Check

    Stealing art and precious jewels – Check

    Concentration camps – Check

    Dubious race science to justify blood lust and killing millions -check.

    In India alone the benevolent British rule killed close to 50 million (rough estimate) in genocidal mass starvation events.

    Take a tour of the current global hotspots for a tour of their handiwork.

    Has the Crown ever apologized? Not in my recollection.

  155. 155.

    Dan B

    @Ken: Truck driver is an economically important way to support a middle class life with only a high school diploma, if that.  There are jobs in wind, solar, battery delivery and installation, and more.  They require some community college.  Repairing roads and other transportation infrastructure is another avenue to maintaining a dignified working class.  It’s no wonder the GQP don’t want a dime for infrastructure.  If they lose the white working class to the Dems they are toast for decades.

  156. 156.

    germy

    @cain:  Adding more lanes just puts more cars on the road – it will never be enough.

    Yes.  And planners have  a name for that.  I don’t remember what they call it, but it’s been observed.  The more lanes you add, the more traffic appears.

    I was glad to see the ideas of our new Secretary of Transportation.

  157. 157.

    J R in WV

    @schrodingers_cat:

    I so agree with your opinion on British history, mores and class structures. They are despicable for the most part, and I agree that no amount of paint can cover up that historical taint.

    I’m surprised she and Harry even attempted to make a go of it embedded into the royal class system, and not shocked that they ran into classic racism nearly immediately.

    Perhaps they should have emigrated to California and married in a tiny ceremony at City Hall, or a small Episcopal church in a small town? I feel sure ICE would have allowed Harry to live in the US while seeking Green Card status while married to a US citizen.

    Is she still a US citizen? Foolish to give that up in hope that the Royal System could be navigated successfully by Megan…

  158. 158.

    Three-nineteen

    @Dan B:

     

    You think a woman who 1) grew up mixed race in LA  2) was raised by an African-American single mother and  3) made it as an actor in Hollywood is “unaware of the larger world”?

  159. 159.

    cain

    @Immanentize: ​
     

    @cain: Houston has proved your conclusion over and over. More lanes, no reduction in traffic jams or travel times.

    Ultimately, more pollution, more taxes, and zero relief. Waste of time. Better to spend about a couple 100 billion and get some serious public transport with hyperloop jump points. We could have some serious movement that will help.
    GOP only think of cars as some kind of the ultimate freedom of the road. Not much freedom when you’re stuck in traffic, assholes and you can keep adding but you’re just taking valuable city land to do it (and likely from undeserved neighborhoods)

  161. 161.

    cain

    @J R in WV: ​
     

    Is she still a US citizen? Foolish to give that up in hope that the Royal System could be navigated successfully by Megan…

    You can be a dual citizen with both British and U.S. passports.

  162. 162.

    Ken

    @germy: And planners have a name for that.

    It’s probably not the name the planners use, but I’ve seen it compared to solving your obesity problem by buying a larger belt.

  163. 163.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    Ayesha A. Siddiqi @AyeshaASiddiqi
    british people reacting to american pharmaceutical ads during the harry/meghan interview (thread)

  164. 164.

    Ken

    @cain: hyperloop jump points

    Every time I hear that, I think it’s a portal to Alpha Centauri.  The reality is less exciting, although last I checked still as much science fiction.  (Checks Google…) OK, a bit further along in the prototyping stage than stargates, but still needs work.

  165. 165.

    Ken

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: I thought this reaction was interesting:

    how are the side effects of the medicine in American ads more lethal than the thing they’re treating???

    It made me realize that one somewhat-positive thing about the ads is that they do have to list all the possible side effects and other complications.

  166. 166.

    Geminid

    @schrodingers_cat: And the Engish had plenty of practice on the Irish before they exported their cruelty the wider world. As late as the great Potato Famine of the 1840s, the English exported grain from Ireland even as people there starved. Some of the grain fed English horses.

  167. 167.

    Tenar Arha

    @snoey: Oh, we definitely take “defensive driving” very seriously in the Boston area. The jokes about the street layout are all valid.

    More seriously, I’ve been very pleased that some of the major streets in town, even though it can be a problem w snow removal, are now being reworked so the parking lane is set out from the sidewalks, so the bike lanes are sandwiched by the parked cars & the sidewalk. Also, that people are using & wearing their effing bike lights (I’m terrified of not seeing someone riding on the side of the road). I always want to shout bravos out the window for people with lights on the front & back of their bikes.

  168. 168.

    Brachiator

    @J R in WV:

    I’m surprised she and Harry even attempted to make a go of it embedded into the royal class system, and not shocked that they ran into classic racism nearly immediately.

    It is sicker than that. The British people, and most everyone else seemed to accept the couple. But the Daily Mail and other right wing publications decided to go after them. There were clearly Palace insiders behind this.

    The crazy thing is that the Daily Mail would post comments from American racists. It got so bad that even DM readers would ask why they were posting crap from non-Brits. The Daily Mail and other papers kept at it.

    There’s more, but it gets boring.

    In the US, high society is the equivalent of an aristocracy. Until recently, no black or mixed race person was ever allowed to sneak into the upper class social set.

    ETA: The Guardian recently posted a story about a UK travel company which told employees not to accept reservations from people with Irish names or Irish accents. UK bigotry is persistent and deep.

    Also, some aristocrats looked down on Churchill because his mother was an American. And some weird Brits love William more than Charles because Diana had deeper connections to old English kings than the German Windsors.

  169. 169.

    Nicole

    @Geminid: 

    And the Engish had plenty of practice on the Irish before they exported their cruelty the wider world.

    A comment I read on another site made a derogatory comment about the English sitting back and swilling “their” Guinness and I was like, dude… the Republic of Ireland would like to have a word and may I introduce you to the phrase “To Hell or Connaught?”

  170. 170.

    J R in WV

    @cain:

    @J R in WV: ​

    Is she still a US citizen? Foolish to give that up in hope that the Royal System could be navigated successfully by Megan…

    You can be a dual citizen with both British and U.S. passports.

    Yes, indeed… you can also be bullied into giving up your US citizenship by some royal hanger-on genealogist you need to give you permission to marry Harry, also, too. Just asking, I was…

    Google thinks she is still a US citizen… evidently marrying an heir to the throne doesn’t render you a UK citizen any quicker than any other immigrant.

  172. 172.

    Brachiator

    @J R in WV: 

    Google thinks she is still a US citizen… evidently marrying an heir to the throne doesn’t render you a UK citizen any quicker than any other immigrant.

    The UK class system is strange. Same is true of some other countries with peerage.

    Being married to Harry puts her in place of precedence over other aristocrats not in the Royal Family. Nothing can change this short of divorce. Which is something that the haters deeply desire.

  173. 173.

    Ken

    @J R in WV: Google thinks she is still a US citizen… evidently marrying an heir to the throne doesn’t render you a UK citizen any quicker than any other immigrant.

    Which reminds me for some reason of Blackadder Goes Forth:

    CAPT. DARLING: Look, I’m as British as Queen Victoria!

    BLACKADDER: So your father’s German, you’re half-German and you married a German?!

  174. 174.

    Dan B

    @schrodingers_cat:  Your details add to my disdain for Meghan’s self centered “They weren’t protecting me, wah!”  And the MSM neglecting any context, or history, or the stories of any other people suffering under a decrepit, rotted, and heartless institution.

    Does Harry believe the Queen, who essentially shunned him, will steer the Throne on a progressive or visionary course?  White heterosexual hanky panky is fine.  All others, no matter how dutiful or love filled, are too beastly to consider.

  175. 175.

    Dan B

    @germy: One reason for worse traffic on expanded freeways is people imagine it will be quicker because bigger must be.

    The other reason is it’s more complicated when there are more lanes to navigate.  I got caught in the left lane on a six lane, in each direction, freeway and realized I had to exit in the far right, which was seven lanes away when I realized my mistake.

    If I had a fender bender it would have stopped 6 lanes of traffic instead of two or three.

    So, accidents are more likely with more lanes and more lanes come to a halt.

    I learned this in Urban Planning in 1967.  Everyone has doubted me ever since.  It’s nearly impossible to budge beliefs.

  176. 176.

    Brachiator

    @Dan B:

    Your details add to my disdain for Meghan’s self centered “They weren’t protecting me, wah!” And the MSM neglecting any context, or history, or the stories of any other people suffering under a decrepit, rotted, and heartless institution.

    Man, you keep beating that dead horse in trying to make Meghan and Harry look like self-absorbed twits.

    Does Harry believe the Queen, who essentially shunned him, will steer the Throne on a progressive or visionary course? White heterosexual hanky panky is fine. All others, no matter how dutiful or love filled, are too beastly to consider.

    The available evidence is that the Queen doted on Harry and accepted Meghan.

    I don’t know if there is any such thing as a progressive or visionary monarchy.  Can you say “contradiction in terms.”

    But even the Queen has only a limited say. If this dumb and largely useless institution is to survive, it may largely be due to what Charles and William decide to do about it.

    And the last time there was an informal poll about it, a good chunk of the public preferred that Charles be bypassed and the crown go to William.

  177. 177.

    Dan B

    @Three-nineteen: She seemed to demonstrate that lack of awareness in the interview.  I’m not sure why but it was not a good look.  The Royal’s institution has a built in resistance to change and to discussing structural racism, colonial history, and current challenges in the UK.  That discussion would have been a great place for Meghan to make her mark.  Instead she talked about betrayal by individuals and the bureaucrats in “The  Firm”.  It saddened and angered me.  She has the experience.  Where was the larger vision?

  178. 178.

    Elie

    @dmsilev:

    My thought about this is that the republicans are smarting from their series of defeats and the growing and obvious irrelevance of T**** and the other repub leadership.  This vaccine denial is a pout.  They need to be ignored and that means stop taking their temperature on every issue every couple of minutes.  Without attention they will quietly get vaccinated and return to regular life (for them anyway), eventually, and sooner than folks think.  Ignore them.  That’s what Biden is doing.  Not giving them a chance to really show off their opposition.  Being level and doing the people’s business and ignoring the brats tantruming in the back of the room.

  180. 180.

    Elie

    @Dan B:

    She is worldly but not a sophisticated intellect.  She does have a bachelor degree but I suspect she has not been exposed to many of the larger issues that could have more substantively defended her situation.  I agree.  Missed opportunity but at least she didn’t spend all her time identifying specific individuals naming names in the royal family to blame.   The whole situation is too bad not just for her but the rest of the royals who could have demonstrated truly remarkable leadership and humanity by changing some of their practices.  No one is intelligent enough to see that unfortunately.  Ideally, it would have been Charles or William.  Neither seems particularly bright or a visionary for the modern crown.

  181. 181.

    StringOnAStick

    My father’s late mum was very, very protective and loud about her upper class British heritage, and some French as well because both were perceived by her as classy, wealthy, etc.  Her son, my father, preferred to emphasise the Irish in the mix because it gave him permission to be a hard drinking mining engineer, though when he gets together with his siblings, it’s “we’re as close to royalty as you can get without living at Buckingham Palace” and they close ranks and freeze out their spouses and kids just as effectively as the Winsor’s.  It’s all bull shit; they aren’t royalty and their attitudes are racist in so many ways, even against themselves.

    The whole concept of royalty is utter bull shit.  John Oliver speaks for me when he goes after the idea of royalty.

  182. 182.

    Soprano2

    @Nicole:  I am not real confident that a Dem has a legit chance to pick up the seat.  Missouri residents who read B-J, please feel free to set me straight if I’m wrong.

    Our junior senator is Josh Hawley, who won the seat over incumbent Claire McCaskill in 2018. Enough said. I think Blunt saw the writing on the wall that even though his lifelong conservative credentials are impeccable (he’s been living off the government for his whole adult life!), he’s not part of the GQP, and decided not to defend traditional Republicanism from the Trumpublicans. No, you are not wrong, it’s an incredibly heavy lift for a Democrat right now. Plus, look at how much they slag on Claire, who is the best Democrat who could win statewide office here.

  183. 183.

    Dan B

    @Elie: I’m with you on that.  It seemed to me that there were 20 minutes of good points about the dysfunction of the Royal apparatus and 80 minutes of topics of interest to palace intrigue.  I felt that Oprah steered the interview to cult of personality and could have asked questions about their view of the direction the monarchy should go or what programs and issues the family should address.

    My partner had to watch Gail King’s breathless cheerkeading for what I felt was a two dimensional media event.  There were touching family moments and I’d hoped that Meghan and Harry had communicated their understanding of their place, and importance, or relative unimportance, in world events.

    Meghan and Harry seem like nice people who haven’t established their merit but their foundation may do that.  I’m hopeful.

  184. 184.

    Soprano2

    @Immanentize: No, I can tell you what will probably happen – bad boy Greitens will run for that seat, and if he does he’ll probably win it. Ugh…..

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