“Obama’s constant frustration was that politicians didn’t understand economics. Biden’s constant frustration is that economists don’t understand politics.” https://t.co/kjd9g12ZBo
— Daniel W. Drezner (@dandrezner) April 8, 2021
President Obama was one of a kind. His challenges were different from those of any president before him, as were his responses. President Biden is best in class, for his particular political class. And maybe that’s what we need most, right at this particular moment!
Earnest Ezra would like you to believe (that he believes) Biden has changed — changed utterly! Biden, IMO, remains the very good politician he’s always been, but our *circumstances* have changed. Despite his performative naivete, it’s still an interesting read, especially in the NYTimes. “Four Ways of Looking at the Radicalism of Joe Biden”:
… Over the past few months, I’ve been talking to White House staff members, to congressional Democrats, to policy experts and to the Biden administration’s critics to better understand why President Biden is making such a sharp break with Joe Biden. Here are a few of them, though this is by no means a complete list.
The collapse of the Republican Party as a negotiating partner. Most discussions of the renewed ambitions of the Democratic Party focus on ideological trends on the left. The real starting point, however, is the institutional collapse of the right…
A new generation of crises created a new generation of staffers. I’ve been struck by the generational divide within the Democratic Party. Washington is run by 20- and 30-somethings who run the numbers, draft the bills, brief the principals. And there is a marked difference between the staffers and even the politicians whose formative years were defined by stagflation, the rise of Reaganism and the relief of the Clinton boom, and those who came of age during financial crises, skyrocketing personal debt, racial reckonings and the climate emergency. There are exceptions to every rule, of course — see Sanders, Bernie — but in general, the younger generation has sharply different views on the role of government, the worth of markets and the risks worth taking seriously…
Biden has less trust in economists, and so does everyone else. Obama’s constant frustration was that politicians didn’t understand economics. Biden’s constant frustration is that economists don’t understand politics…
The backdrop for this administration is the failures of the past generation of economic advice. Fifteen years of financial crises, yawning inequality and repeated debt panics that never showed up in interest rates have taken the shine off economic expertise. But the core of this story is climate. “Many mainstream economists, even in the 1980s, recognized that the market wouldn’t cover everyone’s needs so you’d need some modest amount of public support to correct for that moderate market failure,” Felicia Wong, the president of the Roosevelt Institute, said. “But they never envisioned the climate crisis. This is not a failure of the market at the margins. This is the market incentivizing destruction.”…
Biden is a politician, in the truest sense of the word. Biden sees his role, in part, as sensing what the country wants, intuiting what people will and won’t accept, and then working within those boundaries. In America, that’s often treated as a dirty business. We like the aesthetics of conviction, we believe leaders should follow their own counsel, we use “politician” as an epithet.
But Biden’s more traditional understanding of the politician’s job has given him the flexibility to change alongside the country. When the mood was more conservative, when the idea of big government frightened people and the virtues of private enterprise gleamed, Biden reflected those politics, calling for balanced budget amendments and warning of “welfare mothers driving luxury cars.” Then the country changed, and so did he…
Even when Biden was running as the moderate in the Democratic primary, his agenda had moved well to the left of anything he’d supported before. But then he did something unusual: Rather than swinging to the center in the general election, he went further left. And the same happened after winning the election. He’s moved away from work requirements and complex targeting in policy design. He’s emphasizing the irresponsibility of allowing social and economic problems to fester, as opposed to the irresponsibility of spending money on social and economic problems. His administration is defined by the fear that the government isn’t doing enough, not that it’s doing too much. As the pseudonymous commentator James Medlock wrote on Twitter, “The era of ‘the era of big government is over’ is over.’”
Seems like Ezra Klein woke up one morning and realized the median Democrat of 2021 is far to the left of the median Democrat of 1995, and that Biden has always been at that median.
— Tentin Quarantino (@agraybee) April 8, 2021
Is President Biden Looking Out For YOU?
Baud
QFT
ETA: Wow
Alison Rose
In before Raven??
ETA: But not before Baud.
Also too, I just love how flummoxed our dear media has been by this normcore old white man.
Adam L Silverman
It is not, as that last tweet stated, that Ezra Klein woke up one morning and had an epiphany, but rather that Ezra Klein, in any sane system of journalism, wouldn’t actually have the job he has. Klein is someone who blogged his way through the end of a mediocre college performance, one only enabled because his father was a faculty member in the U Cal system, so they had to take him despite his poor performance in high school. I’ll give him credit, unlike Chuck Todd, Klein at least finished his bachelors in polisci. But beyond that Klein has absolutely no work or life experience to bring anything of value to any discussion on any of the topics he writes. He volunteered for a few months on Howard Dean’s campaign before the news media decided that Dean shouldn’t be a candidate. Then he blogged the political convention alongside Markos and someone with funding decided “this guy is a wunderkind”. The problem, of course, is that he isn’t a wunderkind. He’s a conventional wisdom peddler. He’s a more erudite, more numerate, and better behaved Meghan McArdle.
Alison Rose
@Adam L Silverman:
That’s one for the Neg Hall of Fame.
bbleh
ANALYSIS: Four Ways Ezra Klein Is (Trying To Become) The Next Chris Cillizza
Blinding Flashes Of Insight Into The Blindingly Obvious: A Sure Way To The Front Page
Mary G
@Adam L Silverman:
That’s gonna leave a mark. I like it.
piratedan
perhaps, with Biden and Dems yanking the Overton window out of the hands of “big media” and it’s horse-race scandal clickbait idiocy, maybe we can have some discussions on what kind of fundamental change would allow the taxpayers their biggest bang for their buck in attempting to keep the planet from being in a transition period to a Mad Max dystopia.
I’d love to see more options and more freedom and by that I means, high-speed trains, smarter highways, smarter energy production. Maybe even somebody deciding to clean up all of the trash we’ve dumped into the oceans instead of worrying about who is attracted to who and which bathroom someone feels inclined to use.
Josie
At some point, I hope it occurs to all these erudite(?) pundits that Joe Biden is a lot smarter and more dialed in than they are. But maybe it never will. It will be interesting to watch.
Roger Moore
I’ve been pointing to this one for a while. I don’t know how much it affects Biden specifically, but I think it affects most of the centrists in the Democratic party. In the postwar era, the dominant approach to policy was to try to get bipartisan agreement. Centrists in each party would negotiate with centrists in the opposite party. If that meant watering down the measures favored by the extremists in the party, that was still fine; they could usually be brought along by the idea that bipartisan support meant the resulting legislation was stable and wouldn’t be undone the next time the party lost an election.
That worked well as a paradigm well into the Reagan era, but it started to fail in the Clinton era as the Republicans became more and more radical. That didn’t stop the Democrats from trying to scare up some Republican support, and it even worked occasionally into the Obama era. But McConnell has officially declared it dead as an approach. If the Republican leader in the Senate says his goal is to kill everything the Democrats care about, there’s just no reason left to even think about negotiating. I guess Joe Manchin hasn’t gotten the message, but just about everyone else has. If centrist Democrats want a reasonable negotiating partner, it’s going to be the left wing Democrats not the center-most Republicans.
trollhattan
This, I’ll watch.
azlib
I think Biden appreciates Keynesian economists like Paul Krugman, who screamed to the heavens that the stimulus was too small in 2009. I think Krugman understands today’s politics very well and Krugman is urging Biden on.
Also what Biden is doing is hardly radical. It is in a great American tradition of investment which goes back to the publicly financed Erie Canal.
Morzer
@Adam L Silverman: To be fair, Media Emperor Ezra didn’t actually suggest that teaching kids to “rush the passer” was a reasonable response to school shootings. So he’s a few blocks ahead of McArdle.
RSA
@Adam L Silverman:
Wow. Now tell us about Matt Yglesias. In fact, do everyone you have an opinion about.
ETA: I forgot to say “please.” I’m interested.
Baud
@trollhattan:
The last Indiana Jones sucked.
Brachiator
I have lots of reservations about this article.
The GOP has been dedicated to obstructionism since the Newt Gingrich era. The GOP may be reeling right now, but they don’t show any signs of changing their ways.
A good chunk of Biden staffers were part of the Obama administration. This gets continually ignored or minimized. And there seems to be a lot of continuity still among Congressional staffers, who have been critical to drafting actual legislation.
This seems like a bunch of malarkey. Treasury Secretary Yellen is a supremely expert economist. Notable economists and, more importantly, the Federal Reserve chair, Powell, have strongly backed Biden’s economic policies. Fed Chair Powell specifically dismissed Republican concerns that Biden’s economic recovery proposals would fuel a dramatic rise in inflation. The Former Dope dismissed, ignored, and downplayed non-partisan analyses of his policies, and McConnell and his gang ignored supposedly sacred conservative economic principles as they settled for a naked power grab.
The analysis offered doesn’t really square with many of the known facts.
Edmund Dantes
@Roger Moore: all you need for proof it was dead in the Obama years was Obama offered to cut social security, Medicare, etc for the GOP, and they refused to take yes for an answer.
Morzer
@Roger Moore: Manchin and Sinema seem to be mentally stuck in their own imaginary versions of the Glorious Bipartisan Past. In Manchin’s case, some of it might well be a performance for the WV rubes (sorry, Sasquatch John!), but nobody seems to know what Sinema’s latest political identity actually is.
smith
A few things that have occurred to me about Biden since he assumed office:
1. He might not have been the nominee in 2020 except for the pandemic. A lot of people tend to seek out the familiar and comfortable when faced with something new, big, and very scary. Who was more familiar than Old Handsome Joe?
2. Along the same lines, I think he may have broken the old trope of the Mommy Party vs the Daddy Party. Joe is a completely different Dad archetype: he’s the Dad who’s your biggest cheerleader, who stays up late to help you finish your science project, you tells goofy jokes you secretly delight in groaning at, and who is endlessly patient about your flubs and false starts. A lot of people had Dads on this model, and a lot who didn’t wish they had. It’s interesting to me that the Republican sniping at Joe doesn’t include attempts to feminize him, as it usually does when Dem politicians want to help people.
3. Joe has been running for president pretty much his whole adult life. At times his obvious ambition had been a bit of a joke, and a bit of a turn off — like, who does he think he is? I’m wondering if what he was trying to tell us was right all along, that he really is good president material.
Morzer
@Baud: Arguably, that is too charitable an assessment of that pseudo-cinematic abomination.
Roger Moore
@Brachiator:
That’s true, but it’s taken a lot of time for the centrist Democrats to recognize it. A handful of them don’t seem to recognize it even today. But I think a lot of them have given up reflexively looking to their right for someone to negotiate with and started looking to their left instead. That’s going to lead to a big change in the kind of legislation the Democrats produce.
hueyplong
If someone likened me to McArdle in a public forum I would be honor bound to challenge that person to a duel.
In the words of Charlie Murphy, someone would have to go.
Brachiator
@trollhattan:
This, I’ll watch.
Phoebe Waller-Bridge is one of four credited screenwriters on the upcoming 25th James Bond film, “No Time to Die.” If this movie ever gets released, it will be interesting to see how her contributions worked.
The last Indiana Jones movie was terrible. Anything that removes the stain that it left will be great.
Still, it will be tough to match Spielberg as a director of action set pieces.
Fair Economist
I think Biden sees himself as the agent of the Democratic electorate – his job is to get them what they want (within the bounds of decency and practicality). This is, IMO, a pretty common, although not universal, attitude amongst Democratic politicians.
The “surprise” is Biden does seemed to have learned a lot about what’s practical and possible over the past 15 years, more than most half his age, and so old preconceptions are slowing him down a lot less than could have been expected.
David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch
@Baud:
The first Democrat to campaign for Jimmy Carter in 1975 was …. Joe Biden.
Fair Economist
@Brachiator:
Good point. Krugman says even in 2010 genuine economists would have preferred substantially more action and stimulus than we actually got, and that it was financiers who dragged their feet.
Another Scott
I think this is fundamentally wrong.
Obama didn’t understand some parts of economics either (e.g. the “federal budget is like the family budget” stuff he said at least once). But a lot of his economic advisers didn’t understand economics either (having forgotten what Keynes taught, and continuing to fear the inflation monster under the bed).
No, what frustrated Obama the most, I think, is that GOP politicians didn’t understand politics. Politics is about winning elections to implement policies for the people. Not winning elections to break the government in the name of smiting one’s enemies. He told them when he visited their GOP retreat and talked with them for an hour or more, but they didn’t listen.
No, instead they had to load up the Lexus and the F-350 with imagined grievances, blow up the world economy twice in less than 2 decades, help kill 3M+ people around the world (and heading toward 600,000 in the USA) from a controllable virus, attempt to break and incite an insurrection against the federal government, and all the rest. And, if there’s any justice, the GOP will cease to exist as a national political party without them holding the White House again.
Grr…
Cheers,
Scott.
Baud
@David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch:
Wow.
Brachiator
@Roger Moore:
RE: Sources of Republican obstructionism
It is unfortunate that there are no moderate Republicans to deal with, but looking to left-wing Democrats does not entirely solve the problem. If Biden ignores the Republicans, which may be wise, he still has to satisfy conservative constituents.
For example, I don’t think that Biden’s plans do enough for small business, and maybe not enough for farmers. I note, however, that he still has much to do.
But the American left is still largely captured by the Bernie Sanders wing, and there is not much here worth negotiating with.
Roger Moore
@smith:
It’s of note that Joe appears to be like this as a father; I can’t help but think his time as a widower made him that way. You can see it in the way he has constantly stuck by Hunter even as he’s quite publicly had all kinds of problems that would make many ambitious politicians abandon him. He has struck an almost perfect balance by sticking by his son while acknowledging his problems.
RandomMonster
I’m dense. I don’t get anything about the arguments in that whole bit.
Another Scott
@RandomMonster: Yes, it’s forced (and stupid). But the lyrics of the “argument” don’t work unless Ezra can make the anti-parallel between Obama and Biden.
(sigh)
Cheers,
Scott.
BC in Illinois
@smith:
Not only running for president. I have gone to see Joe Biden every two years, when he came to St. Louis. In 2016, he came to speak for Jason Kander. In 2018, he came to speak for Claire McCaskill. Both times, he was a great warm-up speaker. Telling us why were proud to be Democrats. [As I have said, he got me to go door-to-door for Jason Kander, and I SUCK at going door-to-door.]
So in March 2020, I had my *Missouri for Warren* sign on my front yard, when Warren pulled out of the race, the Wednesday before the Missouri Primary. Four days later, I went downtown (you could still have crowds then) to hear –and cheer — Joe Biden and to pick up a *Missouri for Biden* sign. Until then, I was looking for Biden to be the speaker you sent around the country to speak for every other candidate. Who knew that 2020 would be the year for him to speak for himself?
John Revolta
I gotta say, I don’t believe this grew out of what people actually wanted, or thought. It was carefully and skillfully inculcated by the Right.
karen marie
What the fuck?
I am really regretting that I renewed my WaPo subscription.
Baud
@karen marie:
That’s Ezra in the NYT.
Mike in NC
@Brachiator: Wasn’t the last Indiana Jones movie that Crystal Skull abomination? It gave rise to the expression “nuking the fridge”.
karen marie
@bbleh: I’d say it’s less “blindingly obvious” (most of what he says is rank bullshit) and more “finely tuned to the zeitgeist of today’s chattering class.”
LurkerNoLonger
@Alison Rose: Don’t normalize normalcy!
SFBayAreaGal
@Josie: Ssssh, let’s keep this a secret about Biden. That way more of his agenda can be enacted.
artem1s
@smith:
Joe has always been good presidential material who for one reason or another failed to get the party nomination. History has it that his first outing was stymied by some pretty thin accusations of plagiarism by his opponents. But what I remember is he was painted as broken when he admitted seeking counseling after his wife died. The media (and his opponents) whispered around that the country just couldn’t handle someone who may have mental health problems having access to the nuclear codes. Joe has spent most of his adult life breaking down conventional ideas of what a president should look like – despite the fact that he always had the surface looks down cold. It was the personality that didn’t match up with the White, Male, Hairdo, Kennedyesque ideal. And he always seems to recover from what would be considered career killers for most politicians seeking the WH. Not least of which was taking second chair to a Black man in 2008. I always thought he was the most successful VP I had ever seen – he understood the possibilities of the role advancing his boss’ agenda without being an LBJ dick about it. I didn’t think he’d be able to pull off the transition to the oval as well as he has because of the public and media’s fixation on branding competence and experience as undesirable. Maybe we are finally past that nonsense? I certainly hope so.
Baud
@SFBayAreaGal:
All those “Biden is senile” stories have worked to our advantage.
zhena gogolia
@Baud:
Yeah, I had no memory of that.
Baud
@artem1s:
I believe Hillary Clinton tried to make that point in 2016.
Yutsano
@Baud: That’s FTFNYT. Please and thank you.
stinger
@Edmund Dantes:
Can you point to a source for this? Because at the time, all I ever saw Obama say was he’d be willing to *talk* about it. Like a parent “negotiating” with a teenager.
mrmoshpotato
Narrator (me): It will never occur to them, and Upchuck Todd should be chucked into the Sun.
LurkerNoLonger
@trollhattan: I’m gonna say it, Harrison Ford is too old to play Indians Jones. Either recast the role or don’t make another movie. But it sounds like they’re not doing that so we’re getting another one.
Ruckus
@Roger Moore:
Bingo!
SFBayAreaGal
@Baud: Yes. I love that it continues to provide cover for the secret cabal.
Another Scott
@LurkerNoLonger: What makes you say that??!
:-/
Unless they’re introducing an Illinois Jones who will carry the film, it sounds like a really bad idea.
Cheers,
Scott.
Citizen Alan
@trollhattan: I’m actually terribly disappointed to hear about the Mr. & Mrs. Smith series, mainly because PWB is, IMO, the only hope for saving Doctor Who.
Brachiator
@LurkerNoLonger:
There is a noisy segment of comic book and action movie fans who want to see their favorite actors continue a role forever and ever.
I am hoping that the filmmakers come up with a plausible excuse for Aged Indiana Jones.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@trollhattan:
a series version of the movie? I would watch that
karen marie
@Baud: Can’t imagine how I didn’t notice. Oh, yes, I can.
Josie
@mrmoshpotato:
Totally agree about Todd.
Baud
@Brachiator:
Indiana Jones and the Fountain of Youth.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
also, too
and if he fights John Travolta in that disco, Vinnie Barbarino will have a ten-year edge on Indy
Citizen Alan
@Brachiator: I live in a farm state and I genuinely don’t care about farmers anymore, including members of my own extended family. White farmers will never support us under any circumstances. Overwhelmingly, they are lost in a toxic stew of racism and religious mania, and they will never stop hating us for our refusal to support white supremacy. Do what we can to help out black farmers (and, I suppose, legalized marijuana producers) and wash our hands of the flag-wavin’, salt of the earth farmers who would vote for the Antichrist if he wore a red MAGA hat.
AnotherBruce
@RSA: Me too.
Omnes Omnibus
@Baud:
The odd numbered films have been good. So there is hope.
trollhattan
@Brachiator:
After “Fleabag” and “Crashing” I’ll watch anything she appears in. Have not encountered anybody in ages who commands the screen like she does. Fearless. “Killing Eve” demonstrates an entirely different skillset.
Wonder what the stage version of “Fleabag” must have been like.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@trollhattan: over a year ago I donated to some fund for London theaters and companies and was supposed to get access to, IIRC, a filmed version of the stage show. I never followed up. I wonder if the link is still somewhere in my email, and if that link is still active.
Roger Moore
@Brachiator:
I am really glad that Marvel dealt with actors reaching the ends of their contracts and being uninterested in renewing by killing their characters off rather than recasting. It’s a better narrative outcome, and it means fans won’t be endlessly arguing about who did a better job in the role.
The Thin Black Duke
@LurkerNoLonger: Thing is, I believe River Phoenix was earmarked to continue the role as Indy during his younger years, but then You Know What Happened.
Wag
@smith Your second paragraph is one of the best descriptions of Biden that I’ve read anywhere. An excellent summation. Thanks for pointing it out.
Mike in NC
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Let us savor never having had to sit through “Saturday Night Fever 2”!
Mary G
I’ve said it before, but anyone who wins a Senate seat at the age of 29, and stays there until he serves as an active and involved in more than going to funerals VP is by definition a great politician.
Steeplejack
Ugh. Tuned in to MSNBC for Maddow at the hour and found Chris Hayes having a bit of a larf with Ezra Klein about Klein’s piece detailed above.
Omnes Omnibus
@Mike in NC: I never saw the first one.
Odie Hugh Manatee
I got shot… (Gangstalicious), I mean I got MY shot! It was a nice three-way with Johnson & Johnson and now I have my Mark of the Beast certificate. The sad part is that there were no Bill Gates nanobots so I don’t get to have built-in wifi connectivity or Bluetooth.
OK so far, not even a sore arm (yet?).
The Pale Scot
@mrmoshpotato:
I’m hoping Indi is a Prof X type mentoring a younger, female? protégée. Because even with green screen and deep fake I don’t see him doing a Spielberg action scene and being mobile afterward
Omnes Omnibus
@Odie Hugh Manatee: The baby oil should do wonders for your skin.
Jeffro
WHAT??!
I heard that the Erie Canal was hand-dug by a stout-shouldered (and visionary!) Libertarian, who then proceeded to negotiate separate contracts for passage with each of the 1,578,930 barges and ships that then passed through his blessed handiwork.
cain
I also did poorly in high school and got into Purdue because my dad was a professor (I think, but it could also be I was local and our taxes support the school) But I think I still turned out okay and even got a masters. I know I’m not Klein but sometimes you feel like.. “uhh.. what?”
RSA
@trollhattan:
Remember Roger Moore seeming kind of old as James Bond in a A View to a Kill, at least in the action and romance scenes? He was 57.
zhena gogolia
Woke Abbott and Costello
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mETrbHTqBXs
Baud
@cain:
Yet here you are.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud:
Does that take place in Floriduh?
Brachiator
@Citizen Alan:
Farmers and small businesses are important to the economy. It’s not just about rewarding those who support us.
People continued to eat during the lockdown. That food did not come from replicators. But there were significant disruption to the food industry. There are, for example, big differences between some agricultural products meant for home consumers and products meant for hotels and restaurants. And international markets took a hit as well.
We have to look at all segments of the economy that may need help.
And yeah, some of these people have supported the GOP against their own best interest. It would be good to pull some of them away from the Republicans, but the main thing is that it makes sense to help them anyway.
Also, I agree with you big time that black farmers need all the assistance that has been promised to them, and which was cruelly denied them over the years.
Baud
@Jeffro:
The original name of the Erie Canal was Galt’s Gulch.
raven
@The Thin Black Duke: River, Natalie Merchant
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud: And not at the coveted #2 spot.
Gin & Tonic
@Omnes Omnibus: You know, olive oil is made from olives, sunflower oil is made from sunflower seeds, grapeseed oil is made from grape seeds….
Odie Hugh Manatee
@Omnes Omnibus:
I need it.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud: I’m headed to Vicent’s Gulch on Monday.
raven
@cain: I quit high school and joined the Army at 17. With the help of a friend in Vietnam I weaseled my way into Illinois on the strength of a GED!
Jeffro
@Baud: Galt’s Ditch, maybe? LOL
It’s like nothing EVER has been created through mutual effort/collective action. “See that aircraft carrier over there, son? That there marvel of not-so-modern naval warfare was hand-welded by…”
Oh hell, you get the idea. These people…
?BillinGlendaleCA
@cain: The thing is Young Ezra wasn’t admitted to the campus where is dad was a prof, he got into Santa Cruz, which is generally considered to be on the lower tier of the UC campuses. After a year he did transfer to UCLA and graduated. My understanding is that he was on the staff of the Daily Bruin while he was in Westwood..
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Another Scott:
Make a Logan-style Indiana Jones movie. Don’t tie it into any cinematic universe whatsoever. Just do a rough, beautiful, emotional tale about an older Indiana Jones. Have George Lucus direct. Give him full control. Watch the box office explode.
Gin & Tonic
@Jeffro: I think I’ve told this story, but we’re mostly old here and don’t remember well. I was going skiing one day, driving north in I-91 through Massachusetts, when I was passed by some asshole in a Tesla with a “Who Is John Galt” bumper sticker.
OK, dude, you’re driving on a no-toll Interstate highway, financed 90% by the feds, in an electric car, so you don’t pay the gasoline tax that is the primary source of financing for construction and upkeep of the road you’re on. That, to me, spells “parasite.”
I wanted to get to the slopes, so I didn’t run him off the road.
Gvg
@LurkerNoLonger: the young Indian Jones tv series supposedly had some cameos of the really old Indiana grandpa Jones reminiscing about his young adventures to his descendants. I would think they could expand on something like that. I haven’t seen the whole series but I read he had a daughter and grandchildren.
raven
@?BillinGlendaleCA: My niece is perfectly happy as a Banana Slug thank you very much.
HumboldtBlue
Eric Boehlert has a good piece on Haberman and her access journalism.
AliceBlue
@Mike in NC: There actually was a Saturday Night Fever sequel–Stayin’ Alive. Yes, it’s as bad as it sounds.
Villago Delenda Est
There are precious few economists who don’t live in a fantasy world where humans have no interaction with the sacred market. One such was Adam Smith. Another was John Maynard Keynes. Still another John Kenneth Galbraith. Then there’s Paul Krugman.
The entire Austrian/Chicago School is made up of those who truck in make-believe.
NotMax
@Jeffro
The market for bespoke aircraft carriers is infinitesimal.
;)
Omnes Omnibus
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Lucas directing an emotional tale? The mind reels.
Villago Delenda Est
@Omnes Omnibus: “I don’t like sand.”
NotMax
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
Heck, spin it off into 49 additional franchises.
Utah Jones. Nebraska Jones. Vermont Jones. &c.
;)
RSA
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): I like the possibility. A lot would depend on the plot and execution. I don’t know if the Indy franchise has enough richness or history to carry it off, though. Bring back some of the characters from earlier movies, and it might be doable.
Brachiator
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
Not a bad idea. Not bad at all. But other approaches might work as well.
Lucas and Spielberg came up with the idea for the series, but George Lucas never directed any of the films. Not too sure that I would want him as the director.
I am not too concerned about the box office. I just would like to see a good movie.
BTW, I am not sure that movie theater attendance will recover from the pandemic.
Wag
@NotMax: Kim Jung Un might have the market cornered.
Amir Khalid
@Brachiator:
Another thing: At the end of the fourth Indy movie, Indy gets married to Marion Ravenwood (Karen Allen), his love interest from the first movie and the mother of his grown son. If he is to have a love interest in the new movie, the story must either explain what happened to that marriage or pretend it never happened. As a fan, I find neither alternative appealing.
NotMax
@RSA
Indiana Jones 3000.
“Yeah I dug it up, but don’t have a clue. What in Saturn’s seven hells is a ‘Trump?'”
:)
Steeplejack
@Mike in NC:
As AliceBlue mentioned, apparently you have (mercifully) forgotten Staying Alive (1983). Bonus: directed by noted auteur Sylvester Stallone.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Omnes Omnibus:
How dare you insult the greatest auteur of the 20th century! I’ll have you know I’ve based my entire personality around a film series about space wizards. Do you know every little single piece of trivia from the Star Wars Extended Universe*? I do. George Lucus, you are our only hope!
*Damn Kathleen Kennedy, Jar Jar Abrams, RUIN (ha! Get it?!) Johnson, and Di$ney for making the EU non-canon! They literally murdered my childhood!
/This is a joke btw
Baud
Balloon Juice needs an extended universe.
Steeplejack
@The Pale Scot:
I don’t see him being mobile during the action scene.
Brachiator
@Omnes Omnibus:
“American Graffiti” had some honest emotional moments, but that was a long time ago.
NotMax
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
Right up there as a “thanks but no thanks” with having Michael Bay direct a remake of Lawrence of Arabia.
:)
Baud
Maybe Indiana Jones will be the ancient artifact that needs to be found.
raven
@Brachiator: Charles Martin Smith looked just like a friend I lost in 1968.
Another Scott
@Baud: Frozen in Carbonite?
The ultimate crossover!!11
Another Scott™ ®
Don’t be stealing my ideas now!!11
Cheers,
Scott.
CaseyL
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
Is this sarcasm? Lucas is horrible, has been horrible since he stopped being a movie maker and became a Movie Mogul. The SW movies he directed (after the first one) sucked.
Spielberg, who I really like and admire, didn’t exactly cover himself in glory with Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, either. That one was just stunningly, gobsmackingly bad.
I dread another movie in that franchise. Ford is way the fuck too old, the theme is played out, and hardly any of the major players involved need the huge payday. It just sounds like pure exploitation of the fanbase to me.
NotMax
@Baud
“It ain’t the years, it’s the mileage. (groans while coming to a standing position) I tell a lie. It’s the years.”
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@NotMax:
LOL!
@RSA:
@Brachiator:
Sorry guys, it’s a copypasta. I couldn’t resist referencing it : )
Feathers
Twitter appears to be on the case, but Prancer, chihuahua with too much personality, needs a home. Read for the wonderful description
Brachiator
@Amir Khalid:
Sometimes I try to pretend that the Crystal Skull movie never happened.
But I take your point. I always liked the Marion character. Didn’t much care for the grown son. Maybe would have liked to have seen an Indy daughter instead.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Brachiator:
I’ve never watched American Graffiti, but read the synopsis on Wiki. I was surprised it came out in 1973, if only because that doesn’t seem very far from 1962, the setting of the movie. That doesn’t seem far enough removed for nostalgia to develop imo
The Pale Scot
@Citizen Alan:
It’s still Doctor Who. New writers, producers, new doctor, trying to incorporate new memes. The subplot of her not remembering former incarnations is promising. They don’t seem to have a meta identity for the 13th yet. Semi psychotic warrior with PTSD (Eccleston), War veteran of horrific defeats desperately trying to save everyone (Tennant), Then those guys running away and trying to forget (Smith). It was an awesome arc, Capaldi seems to me to be an attempt to emulate the First Doctor. If Whittaker sticks around something will gel. She needs a Donna Noble or a younger Capt. Jack type to play off of. John Barrowman isn’t aging well, he headed off to Harkness’s Face of Bo stage.
Gin & Tonic
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): It’s Lucas.
The Pale Scot
@Brachiator:
Mummy’s Curse?
Gin & Tonic
@CaseyL: I never particularly liked or admired Spielberg, but Bridge of Spies turned me to disdain.
The Thin Black Duke
@raven: Thank you.
Edmund Dantes
@stinger: he put the cuts into his budget proposal.
And he started further right then the GOP proposals at the time. They refused to take yes for an answer as can be seen by their responses.
https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/04/reality-check-obama-cuts-social-security-and-medicare-by-much-more-than-the-gop/274919/
NotMax
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
“Nostalgia, as his Uncle Joshua had said, ain’t what it used to be.”
– Peter De Vries, The Tents of Wickedness
.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@CaseyL:
It was sarcasm, rest assured. Lucas is well known for his terrible dialogue in the first Star Wars movie that had to be improved by the actors and others.
Harrison Ford is famously quoted as saying, “You can type this shit, George, but you sure can’t say it!”
Plus, the Prequel Movies were infamously bad. Some dopes actually try to argue the Prequels were better than Disney Sequel films
I agree that the theme is played out. A lot of the main themes of the series were addressed and resolved in the 3rd movie. Indy and his dad patched up their relationship, etc
As an aside, I’ve noticed one thing in common with a lot of Ford’s post-Star Wars movies: he’s always shouting about his wife and family in every film lol
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Gin & Tonic:
Really? I liked Bridge of Spies. What didn’t you like about it? Also, what did you think of Schindler’s List, if you’ve seen it?
@Gin & Tonic:
Whoops. Thanks for correcting me
gwangung
@Brachiator: Well, if we assume Indy got around as an adventurer, it would be no great stretch to have Phoebe as a daughter.
Villago Delenda Est
Calling the ruthless capitalist swine at Disney!
RandomMonster
I don’t know why we’re treating this all like it’s meaningful then.
Villago Delenda Est
We need something to keep busy until the next Matt Gaetz bombshell drops, which should be just before noon tomorrow.
Another Scott
@RandomMonster: It’s meaningful because it gives us a topic to scream about into the endless void of the Internet on a Friday evening during the plague.
;-)
Cheers,
Scott.
stinger
@Edmund Dantes: Thanks for the link.
Gin & Tonic
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Too many things to count. First, it was ahistorical – the Berlin Wall went up in August, and he had it going up in the winter, with people in overcoats. Tom Hanks was playing Tom Hanks, not James Donovan. The scene where he goes to the East and is robbed of his overcoat by a gang that is about as threatening as the Jets or Sharks – I expected a dance number there. The only good thing about the movie (and a very good thing) was Mark Rylance. The rest was dreck. Spielberg invariably has to Make!! A! Film!!
cain
@Baud:
?? – yes, true enough – I don’t have any defense :D
cain
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
Had to kick me when I was down didn’t ya? I missed the #100 spot too :( :(
cain
@Gin & Tonic:
What about grape nuts? What comes outta that?
Jeffro
@Gin & Tonic: also: learned to drive at a public school, probably; electric car charged on a publicly-built grid; etc etc.
Jeffro
@AliceBlue: but the soundtrack ROCKED! ;)
Eolirin
@The Pale Scot: She’s leaving after this season. Keeping the 3 season run tradition intact.
I feel Chibnall is growing into his showrunner role more as time has gone on, with the last season much better than his first, but he’s definitely taken it in very different direction than Davies or Moffat, and it in many ways feels more reminiscent of the original run than the rebooted show.
cain
@raven:
Honestly, what has all that book learnin gotten me? I still just survive with fool mouth. :)
zhena gogolia
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
My son, there was a huge difference between 1962 and 1973.
Jeffro
Balloon Juice has a nearly-infinite political (and also pet, recipe, insurance, etc) inside baseball universe, fer sure. Will that do?
SFAW
@Gin & Tonic:
GTFO until you get your priorities in order, OK?
The Thin Black Duke
@Gin & Tonic: Spielberg peaked with Schindler’s List. Afterwards? The ghosts of past glories. Maybe if you gave him an iPhone, a pocketful of loose change and a hard deadline to shoot it in a week, he would make an interesting movie again.
Mary G
@zhena gogolia:
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
Yes, so much happened between 1962 and 1973 that the conservative backlash is STILL going on now. The world changed.
Another Scott
@Edmund Dantes: Really? Taking Paul Ryan’s budget proposal seriously??!
Krugman:
DeLong (from 2012):
Some of us still remember those days. You’ll need to find a better link than something from a credulous Derek Thompson if you want to beat-up Obama on cutting Social Security and Medicare.
Cheers,
Scott.
JanieM
@Mary G: I agree, and it makes me wonder how that transition time compares to the one we’ve been living through for the past few years, especially the pandemic year. I feel like it’s just as wide a gap, if in a different way.
My mother died at 96 on April 29, 2020. We far-flung next three generations have still not been able to gather in person to remember her together. Imagining what we would have done a year ago if COVID hadn’t hit is like trying to imagine a different, long-lost world.
Brachiator
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
You have some oddly reductive views. The movie was inspired by Lucas’s own life. The movie sparked all kinds of 50s and 60s retro movies and TV shows.
It is also a sweet film. Universal studio executives thought little of the film, and thought about dumping it as a tv movie of the week. They wuz wrong.
NotMax
@zhena gogolia
Indeed. Two disparate culturzoic eras, tectonic shifts in society.
Geoduck
@RSA: One reason A View To Kill was Moore’s last Bond film was his horrified discovery that he was older than co-star Tanya Robert’s mother.
One good thing about the last Indy film was getting Karen Allen back. I hope she at least gets a cameo this time around, if she wants one.
cain
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
ah, ok – so not directly – that I think I missed the point clearly. :)
CaseyL
@Villago Delenda Est: The state of US cinema was bad enough before the pandemic, all franchises and franchise-wanna be’s sucking up most of the production and distribution resources.
Now it’s likely to get worse, with the audiences not inclined to go back into theaters for quite a while, and hardly any movies coming out that really and truly need to be seen on a huge screen.
I have my hopeful moments, thinking audiences might be ready to embrace independent films, on smaller budgets, made for streaming. Keep the theaters for the CGI/FX extravaganzas. But the studios’ financial models can’t accommodate that, and unfortunately they’re the ones who own the streaming channels.
smith
@Mary G: Even just the 5 years from 1963 to 1968 was whiplash-worthy.
JanieM
@smith: Agree with that, too. I was in college from 1968 to 1972, and people who were there four years before or after that phase had vastly different experiences from mine. Especially the cohort that was four years ahead of me.
Brachiator
@The Thin Black Duke:
Minority Report and Catch Me If You Can, both from 2002, is a hell of a oone-two punch. Lincoln and The Post are excellent films.
I have reservations about Saving Private Ryan, but the opening sequence is not just harrowing, but better than most other entire films.
The Pale Scot
@Feathers:
The scottie I grew up was so use to being the darling of anyone who visited. Then on day one of my mom’s friends brought her new baby over.
The Outrage!! someone other than her was being picked up and doted on. Aaaarrrrooooohhhh! repeatedly. She sulked for the rest of the weekend. Scotties don’t forget their grudges, very Celtish of them, quite like some cats I’ve known.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Another Scott: Derek Thompson’s current piece in The Atlantic looks at Georgia and scolds Democrats who invoke Jim Crow and echoes the right wing talking point that NY’s election laws are worse than GA’s.
smith
Before the day is over, I’d like to wish everyone a happy Traitor Surrender Day. May we have many more days on which to commemorate Traitors surrendering.
Josh Marshall noted the day this morning, and I realized on reading his piece that people on the left at least are no longer dignifying the losers as “Confederates”, but as “Traitors.” Over at LGM they have a longstanding tradition of calling the Civil War the “War of Treason in Defense of Slavery.” It’s by adjustments in language such as this that you can see clearly how the enormity of that treason was minimized for so many years.
Amir Khalid
@Brachiator:
That first half-hour is one of Spielberg’s best movies. Right up to and including the chilling bit where the GIs shoot the Polish SS troops who are trying to surrender. The rest of the movie is an extended episode of Combat!
Another Scott
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I’m shocked, shocked.
Thanks.
Cheers,
Scott.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Brachiator:
Like I said, I’ve never watched the movie myself and didn’t know much about it
@Mary G:
@zhena gogolia:
That’s true and I feel silly for not considering that the 60s were an extremely transformative period and a lot happened. I feel like the last 10 years has been the same, especially the last few years. Yet at the same time, I can’t really tell that much has changed from a personal perspective. Pandemic aside. Like, everyday fashions haven’t changed drastically in like 25-30 years. Technology hasn’t changed that much since 2011 imo. It’s actually incredible looking back at how much society and technology shifted from the mid-1940s until the 1970s. I mean, Bing Crosby and Perry Como were the top selling artists of the 1940s and 1950s. That was pop music at the time. Comparing that style of pop music to what came later just a few years afterwards is mind boggling
The Thin Black Duke
@Brachiator: Thing is, I think Minority Report and Catch Me If You Can have the same issues as Saving Private Ryan: they’re so-so movies wrapped around one brilliant cinematic sequence. Rather than plod through an entire movie, it’s more rewarding to check out the five minute snippet on YouTube.
The Pale Scot
@Eolirin:
If you don’t have a good idea for how the whole universe/dimension is in peril and only the doctor can save it there’s a lot of other stuff. Wonder if the companions will stick around. I think the younger ones have simmer for a season and define their starting point. Catherine Tate and Freema Agyeman start out with gravitas, or anti-gravitas in Donna Noble’s case.
The end of the fourth season was the pinnacle for me, Donna makes a right turn instead of a left and the whole universe changes, and Donna fixes it knowing her actions will end who she is. Fate and personal action in a nutshell.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Have you heard of The Beatles?
Amir Khalid
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
Go find American Graffiti and watch it. then. There’s a reason it’s a classic.
Fair Economist
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
Rise of Skywalker at a 51% score manages to squeak in as worse even than the Phantom Menace at 52%, according to Rotten Tomatoes. Both the prequel trilogy and the sequel trilogy are profoundly flawed, just in very different ways.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
Yeah, who hasn’t? Love Hard Days’ Night, Yesterday, We All Live in a Yellow Submarine, I Am the Walrus, Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds, Let it Be, Get Back, etc
@Amir Khalid:
I just might. I wasn’t dumping on it, btw
Omnes Omnibus
@Gin & Tonic: But Rylance was enough to carry the movie.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Fair Economist:
I’ve read that what made Rise of Skywalker bad is that it tried to pander to the reactionary fan brats
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Omnes Omnibus:
Oh by the way, never got the chance to thank you for correcting me about that court case. Thanks again, Omnes : )
Omnes Omnibus
@SFAW:
He wanted to get to the slopes. I think his priorities were just fine.
The Pale Scot
@Jeffro:
Balloon Juice is a 4 dimensional expanding sphere that theoretically allows you to start moving in one direction and then eventually arrive back at your starting point. But in practice that is unpossible because of the quantum warping from the posting of cats, dogs, ducks, ducklings, birds, more cats and dogs, horses, (did I mention ducklings?) pictures means you will find yourself hurtling way past a proper bedtime and find yourself at 6am with bloodshot eyes and a lot of other shit you’re suppose to be doing that day.
Omnes Omnibus
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
The article was clickbait.
HumboldtBlue
This bird ain’t afraid of no cat!
Also, talk about your water taxis.
NotMax
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
Come to think of it, ’62 to ’73 isn’t significantly different as an interim than Barry Levinson’s Diner (1982), set in 1959. Plenty of other examples of semi-autobiographical write/direct what you know as first full length feature efforts.
Original Lee
@trollhattan: I’m concerned that Kathleen Kennedy’s involvement in the project will tie a rock to the ankles of the Indiana Jones franchise. Disney has had to treat the Star Wars sequels that she headed up as alt-universe, in-the-spirit-of-but-not-really in the timeline stories.
The Pale Scot
@JanieM:
If you didn’t have a drivers license during the oil crisis, you are not a boomer
Fair Economist
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
Yeah, that’s a big part of it. The problem with the sequel trilogy is that while the acting, action, and dialogue are good, it doesn’t make sense as a whole. If 9 hadn’t tried to unwind 8, it might have come out fine. But then, if the prequel trilogy had had competent writers, it might have come out fine too.
SFAW
@Omnes Omnibus:
The slopes weren’t going anywhere, and have not been known to be impatient re: when any particular skier gets there. And the particular opportunity he had would probably not be there apres ski.
Steeplejack
Popehat is back! D.b.a. “VenmoCrimingHat” for the time being.
ETA: Nice photo of the growing-up office assistant, a.k.a. “Murderball.”
Brachiator
@The Thin Black Duke:
We disagree about both films. No big deal.
Catch Me was slyly funny. But I thought it an excellent character study, and liked how Spielberg gave space to secondary characters to play out the themes. Christopher Walken was glad that his son was a criminal who was sticking it to the man. There was interesting complexity to his hatred of the Establishment, something that you almost never get in a caper film.
I loved the fictional universe of Minority Report, hadn’t felt so into the world of the story since maybe Bladerunner. And I absolutely loved the pre cog’s question when rescued from the tank, “Is it now?”
It is hard to create a future or alternate society and then let your characters run loose in it and have it feel lived in. Minority Report absolutely worked on that level.
I also mentioned The Post. A solid work. I enjoyed it almost as much as I did Spotlight. But I admit that there were a couple of scenes which were oddly flabby. Almost took me out of the movie.
But The Post ain’t no All the President’s Men.
SFAW
@Steeplejack:
From that Popehat thread, MeidasTouch wrote:
“Matt Gaetz must have misunderstood when he was told people use Venmo to make minor purchases.”
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@NotMax:
I suppose not. I guess my misconception came from the fact that I didn’t know it was semi-autobiographical
KSinMA
@Brachiator: Thank you.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Besides Elvis, can you think of any pre-1964 musical groups?
oatler.
Just checked out Scott Adams’ Twitter to see if he retired after the defeat of TFG. No, he’s now pro-Chauvin and uses “democrat” as an adjective.
JanieM
@The Pale Scot: What does that have to do with what I wrote?
Poe Larity
@Fair Economist: There is only one great Star Wars movie and one good one.
Everything else just pining for the good ole days when Reagan was President and unions voted for him. Just stahp.
Another Scott
@Steeplejack: Yay! Hat!!
Cheers,
Scott.
frosty
@Amir Khalid: They can’t ditch Karen Allen. No way, no how. Periodnn
Steeplejack
@JanieM:
Adding to the point that boomers “before or after that phase had vastly different experiences from mine.” A late boomer, born in the early ’60s, would have been a tween when the oil crisis hit, would not have had a driver’s license and would not have directly apprehended the shock of car culture with no gas.
The Pale Scot
@JanieM:
I was just referring to how fast culture and perspectives changed at that time. Feeding a car in ’76 was way different than ’70. that bleeds over into a panoply of culture, especially for rural areas
JanieM
@Steeplejack:
@The Pale Scot:
Ah, okay. I’m a little slow-witted tonight it seems.
The Pale Scot
@JanieM:
It’s all good :)
James E Powell
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
My theory: It wasn’t the lapse of time, it was the whole national nightmare known as the 60s. It began when JFK was killed and culminated in the realization that we lost the war in Vietnam.
The nostalgia of the early 70s – Grease on Broadway, American Graffiti at the theater, Happy Days on TV – was a reaction.
Many people wanted to go back to an idealized “better time” before all that happened. Many still do.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Steeplejack: There were two oil shocks, 1973 and 1979.
James E Powell
@Amir Khalid:
You say that like it’s a bad thing. Next to Keith Richards, no one influenced my young life more than Sgt Saunders.
Seriously though, I’m with you. All that build up and . . . what? They’re going to defend a bridge? Was there a meeting where this was discussed? What were the other choices?
Omnes Omnibus
@?BillinGlendaleCA: I didn’t have a license during either of them.
Jinchi
I’m pretty sure Ezra Klein thought highly of Megan McArdle, at least in his blogger days. He, Megan, Ross Douthat and Matt Yglesias all seemed to consider themselves peers as the new generation of the political opinion superstars.
Ezra was probably the brightest of the bunch, with Douthat being the most pathetic.
In other words, he probably agrees with the McArdle comparison. He just doesn’t consider it an insult.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Debbie Dingell said on MSNBC tonight that most of the hospitalized patients are under 50.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
The Boomer Remover, remember?
oatler.
@James E Powell:
“Many people wanted to go back to an idealized “better time” before all that happened. Many still do.”
I suspect John Hughes was one of those.
Steeplejack
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
Yes, and what’s your point? Only the first was unprecedented, and at the time it was called “the oil crisis.” The “first and second shocks” terminology arose later, maybe mostly in your econ subculture. I would bet that when most people refer to the oil crisis of the ’70s they’re talking about 1973. As it seemed clear that The Pale Scot was.
James E Powell
@Jinchi:
McCardle and Douthat have been writing stupid things since I first heard of them. McCardle it was pink salt and Douthat was chunky Reese Witherspoon.
When I first read Ezra Klein, his desire to be a Villager was his most striking feature. Long before any of them noticed him, he was seeking their approval. Years back when he was just another blogger, I predicted Ezra would be the Richard Cohen of his generation and I stand by that prediction.
I have tried to figure out why anyone ever cared what Matt Yglesias says and have never succeeded. He says things that I’ve heard from all kinds of people my whole life. Does he have some special knowledge or insight into the world that justifies reading him?
Why can’t we have smart people who know what they are talking about?
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Steeplejack: We had gas rationing in ’79 as well, tags ending in even numbers on some days, odds on others.
Jinchi
@Fair Economist:
The prequels have been rehabilitated quite a bit by the Clone Wars series, which has the some of the most well developed character arcs and best written story lines of the entire Star Wars universe.
James E Powell
@JanieM:
@The Pale Scot:
My go-to dividing line that splits the boomers in half is, for the males anyway, whether you were ever eligible for the draft. I was born in 1955, so it was never anything I had to be concerned with.
Edmund Dantes
@Another Scott: we’ll take it up with Carney saying it the cuts were part of his budget and Obama’s budget including them then. They had the cuts in them. Ryan’s budget really isn’t pertinent to the question at hand other than to compare them to.
did Obama propose cuts to social security and Medicare in his budget? Show me he didn’t. He did. It was stupid. And he had to be talked out of it by others. He thought he could get something for trading it away for tax increases.
Still a great president, but we can acknowledge how monumentally stupid of an idea it was. Obama had some blind spots (and a lot of Dems on that subject).
Why do you assume I wasn’t around for it? I was even here on this blog.
James E Powell
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
1973 was the OPEC boycott – a response to US support for Israel in the Yom Kippur war. 1979 was the fall of the Shah & the Iranian revolution.
Another Scott
@Edmund Dantes: I’ll play briefly, assuming that you are sincere.
NPR:
It was an offer in a negotiation. The GOP refused to offer anything in return, and bargained in bad faith about it, and it didn’t happen.
HTH.
[Eta] I didn’t say you didn’t remember, I said that I did. Regurgitating 10 year old GOP talking points isn’t helpful.
CBPP.
Cheers,
Scott.
Jinchi
@James E Powell:
I remember Matt Yglesias stumbling across the realization that if you know the miles-per-gallon that a truck gets you could actually puzzle out the gallons-per-mile that it requires.
Understanding this is apparently the only way we’ll solve climate change.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@James E Powell: Different causes, same effect.
mrmoshpotato
@Another Scott:
Illinois Jones? ?Ooo baby ooo ooo ooo?
Or someone z-grade “movie” where Indiana errr…. Illinois Jones teams up with Jack and Elbow Green to go beat the shit out of some Illinois Nazis?
edmund dantes
@Another Scott: When I said he put the cuts in his budget. I meant he literally put it in his budget…
Chained CPI were cuts. It reduced the benefit over time. It wasn’t 11 dimensional chess. It wasn’t him just negotiating. He put it into his actual budget.
Also, Reid is part of the reason why those other talks didn’t go anywhere. It wasn’t Obama seeing the light.
I was there. I remember all of this. People want to re-write the history on it for some reason, but Obama was dumb on this subject. (Again, still a great president). He did it. He bought into the Simpson’s Bowle’s bullshit grand bargain stuff. He tried to push for it in exchange for stuff (even though cuts to social security are monumentally stupid).
Link
Eta – it’s not a GOP talking point. The man put the shit in his budget proposals
edmund dantes
When the President was preparing his 2014 budget early last year, Republican leaders strongly urged him to include the chained CPI, and he did. But House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan then failed to put the proposal in his budget, which included no Social Security savings (and fewer Medicare savings over ten years than the Obama budget). More importantly, Representative Greg Walden, chair of the National Republican Congressional Committee, called the President’s chained CPI proposal “a shocking attack on seniors,” attacked the President for “trying to balance the budget on the backs of seniors,” and signaled that Republican challengers in 2014 would attack Democratic incumbents over it. He and other Republicans also noted that their budget — the Ryan budget — did not include the proposal.
So our defense of it is now… no no.. he didn’t really believe in it. HE was just dumb enough to cave into the GOP demands and put forth the proposal himself at their insistence?
Ummm… okay.
Fair Economist
@edmund dantes: Chained CPI isn’t really a cut. It produces slight cuts over time, but it really is a technical adjustment, and pretty necessary over long periods of time because otherwise the CPI estimates become heavily influenced by prices of things that aren’t even sold anymore and not affected by things that are.
Mary G
@Amir Khalid: Second this, Goku. A number of young unknown actors who were in American Graffiti went on to big careers, Harrison Ford among them.
edmund dantes
@Fair Economist: Social Security is already inadequate at its current levels.
A slowing in growth of it’s benefit only exacerbates that problem. Chained CPI results in a smaller benefit in the future than under the old formula. It’s a cut.
Isn’t really a cut… then in next sentence “it produces slight cuts over time”… I mean… come on.
Fair Economist
@Jinchi:
I’ve never watched them, but I’ve heard just that about the Clone Wars series, and that’s what the prequels *should* have been. They have some great themes – the rise of authoritarianism, doomed love, temptations of power – but the execution was ****. Attack of the Clones in particular should have been great – love vs duty, Natalie Portman, *and* Yoda – and that Lucas made such a hash out of such promising materials just adds to the disappointment.
Brachiator
@Jinchi:
Coming back late to the thread.
I have to disagree here. A movie is a failure if I have to do extra assignment homework in order to flesh it out.
It’s almost as bad as insisting that I have to watch a 10 hour director’s cut in order to make sense of a movie.
The prequels suck. The later films are bad for many reasons.
I am sure that somewhere there are college courses on my the Star Wars saga fell apart.
Connor
@Fair Economist:
For a lot of us it peaked at THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK, and everything has been downhill since.
Jinchi
@Brachiator:
The original point was that “Phantom Menace” polls better than “Rise of Skywalker”. It’s not about you in particular. There’s an entire generation of children and young adults who grew up on the Clone Wars and saw the prequels as pieces of that series. And they shift the numbers in those polls. They never had the same reaction to those movies as those of us who saw Luke, Leia and Han for the first time in the theaters.
I think a lot of people forget that George Lucas was making movies for children and adults just happened to love them, too. The droids, the ewoks, young Anakin and Jar Jar were put in those movies for children. People who saw those characters as adults thought they were ridiculous. People who saw them as children still love them when they reach adulthood.
Brachiator
@Jinchi:
Polling is not arts criticism.
If movies can’t stand by themselves, they fail. You cannot demand or expect people to read secondary material. This is an excuse of the fan obsessive.
I saw the original Stars Wars movie in the theater. The audience was teens and young adults. I agree that Lucas softened the movies beginning with Return of the Jedi.
The prequels are shitty movies. Children deserve something better. The last films are shitty movies no matter what age group is discussed.
Another Scott
@edmund dantes: David Corn’s book “Showdown” covers all this. I don’t buy your interpretation.
https://youtu.be/FlP_bELilDs
No president’s budget is enacted by congress unchanged – it’s a negotiation.
Why you think that it’s useful to rehash this stuff, and yes they’re GOP talking points, is beyond me.
Obama protected the federal social programs during his presidency. That’s the bottom line.
FWIW.
Cheers,
Scott.
Another Scott
@edmund dantes: Again, you’re leaving out the context. Obama wasn’t a secret troll wanted to cut grandma’s catfood allowance, or an idiot who bought into economic buzzwords of the day. It was the time of the sequester and the GOP talking about default and all the rest. He was trying to get things in return for something that they said they wanted.
And remember when a deal was had on certain items, and the GOP thought they had won, it actually turned out that Team D had gotten the better end of the bargain.
Obama wasn’t working by himself. Harry and Nancy were there, and Obama proposing something that he knew they wouldn’t accept was part of the tactics in the negotiation with the GOP – to force them to vote for something that they claimed they wanted. To break the logjam of them never voting for his proposals. It didn’t happen, and he knew it was unlikely to happen.
Of course it wasn’t ideal. Yes, SS payments should be larger. But that wasn’t in the cards because of the Teabaggers, not because of Obama.
FWIW.
Cheers,
Scott.
Uncle Cosmo
Never, ever forget that
and
and
Disclaimer: Last millennium I worked nearly 5 years as the stats & computers guy for a bunch of PhD economists in the MD state gummint – a real UN (e.g., my supervisor was a Turk, the fellow I worked most with a Greek). Wildly interesting & mostly nice people…but I soon decided “the dismal science” was a dismal failure & have never had any reason to revise that conclusion.
** Alternate & equally valid ending: “, it’d be a good thing!”
evodevo
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Yeah…the last good one was the Holy Grail one..that was great…Crystal Skull? Really reaching there…
evodevo
@HumboldtBlue:
That parakeet was doing the bird version of leg-humping lol…