Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Battle won, war still ongoing.

You don’t get rid of your umbrella while it’s still raining.

This blog will pay for itself.

… pundit janitors mopping up after the gop

Black Jesus loves a paper trail.

I’d try pessimism, but it probably wouldn’t work.

“In the future, this lab will be a museum. don’t touch it.”

A democracy can’t function when people can’t distinguish facts from lies.

Cole is on a roll !

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

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

Every one of the “Roberts Six” lied to get on the court.

If marriage is the equivalent of selling yourself into slavery, women with self respect should reject the offer.

Balloon Juice, where there is always someone who will say you’re doing it wrong.

Perhaps you mistook them for somebody who gives a damn.

Optimism opens the door to great things.

Be a traveling stable for those who can’t find room at the inn.

Compromise? There is no middle ground between a firefighter and an arsonist.

The choice is between normal and crazy.

It’s all just conspiracy shit beamed down from the mothership.

Fight them, without becoming them!

How can republicans represent us when they don’t trust women?

Let there be snark.

Stamping your little feets and demanding that they see how important you are? Not working anymore.

You are here: Home / Politics / Biden Administration in Action / Friday Morning Open Thread: All We Can Do Is Our Best

Friday Morning Open Thread: All We Can Do Is Our Best

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The usual suspects and their media enablers are hyperventilating, which is performative outrage at its finest…

… The news triggered a selloff on Wall Street, with major indexes slipping during Thursday’s trading session.

The White House said the American Family Plan, which Mr Biden is expected to lay out in full next week, will not affect any family earning less than $400,000 a year…

The proposal would increase the top marginal income tax rate to 39.6% from 37%, according to the New York Times and Bloomberg.

The move would effectively reverse Donald Trump’s 2017 income tax cut for highest income earners.

The plan would also nearly double taxes on capital gains to 39.6% for people earning more than $1m.

It’s a dramatic increase from the current rate of 20%…

Reader Interactions

253Comments

  2. 2.

    Baud

    The plan would also nearly double taxes on capital gains to 39.6% for people earning more than $1m.

    Another Democratic boot on the necks of working class Americans.

  6. 6.

    p.a.

    With fascist movements churning in the developed world and in populous states like India & Brazil saying the outlook for [ETA: SUSTAINED] positive climate action is grim is the understatement of the century.

  7. 7.

    Low Key Swagger

    The boys club over at MSNBC had a segment wherein Donny Deutch (spelling) has concerns about how much we can keep spending and taxing…as a “business” person.  Nearly no pushback.  Sigh.

  10. 10.

    Nicole

    Tackling climate change? Raising capital gains tax rates to be more in line with wage income? You know, I’m starting to think this Biden guy might work out okay. ?

  13. 13.

    dmsilev

    @debbie: Rand Paul and Mike Lee didn’t vote; guessing based on past performance that they would have been no’s as well.

  14. 14.

    Ken

    @dmsilev: Probably not the case, but it’s lovely to think that now that they aren’t in the majority, some small group of Republican Senators will simply not bother to vote.

  17. 17.

    Dorothy A. Winsor

    @Low Key Swagger: I’m not sure they even know they’re gaslighting when they spew that stuff about how this “taxing and spending” can’t go on. In the Trump era, they were happy enough to cut taxes and still keep spending as long as it was on stuff they wanted. Apparently cutting taxes magically meant you didn’t have to pay for anything. And then they scorn people who just want “free” stuff.

  18. 18.

    Low Key Swagger

    @Betty Cracker: I have a great deal of patience with allies, and most of the time, he’s been good on issues and people.  What irritates me is when he and others say stuff like that but offer no reasons for why that’s their position.  Saying, “I have real problems with this…you know, as a business person” is saying nothing.  Got another way to do it?  Offer it up, or shut the hell up.

  19. 19.

    Low Key Swagger

    @Steeplejack (phone): Apologies, yes.  This is where I get pretty irritated at Willie Geist though.  He’s not stupid, but rarely challenges the truly inane comments some of these favored few cough up in these segments.

  20. 20.

    Ken

    @Nicole: I think I saw a study a couple years ago that concluded that if capital gains were taxed at the rate of ordinary income, it would more than cover the then-current deficit.

  21. 21.

    Betty Cracker

    @Low Key Swagger: To a pampered, self-important douchebag like Deutsch, “I have a problem with it” is reason enough, I guess. I never could stand that guy, even though he’s an ally on some issues, as you noted. He’s such a sexist asshole.

  23. 23.

    eclare

    @Low Key Swagger:  What makes me want to scream is this bs that government *should* be run like a business!  We had a supposed biznessman in there the last four years, how’d that work out for ordinary workers?

  25. 25.

    Ken

    @eclare: My favorite counterargument (not that it works, mind you) is that the average US business lasts less than 10 years, and I’d kind of like the country to be around longer than that.

  26. 26.

    Kay

    @Low Key Swagger:

    how much we can keep spending and taxing

    Guffaw.
    Oh, they have no problem with the spending. It’s the taxing they object to.
    We all knew the phony budget hawks would return like migratory birds with the election of a Democratic President, but I’m always surprised at how completely shameless they are and I this is the 3rd time I’ve watched the cycle repeat.

  27. 27.

    debbie

    @Dorothy A. Winsor:

    In the Trump era, they were happy enough to cut taxes and still keep spending as long as it was on stuff they wanted.

    Even as they constantly lied about the effectiveness of trickle down!

  28. 28.

    Kay

    It would be delicious to reverse Trump’s tax cuts for no other reason than all of these people traded everything for them- they would have happily traded democratic governance itself for the tax cuts- and they should be left holding nothing.

    This deal they made should not work out well for them.

  30. 30.

    Tony Jay

    All we can do is our best

    You ask too much.

    How about 30% effort with time off for bitching and moaning as an opening offer, and we eventually settle at 62% effort plus a hemp goody bag and a crate of ethically sourced IPA?

  36. 36.

    Dorothy A. Winsor

    @eclare: And it’s just wrong that government should be run like a business. The purpose of a business is to make money. The product is a means to money. But the purpose of government is to serve the people. Money is a mean to providing that service.

  37. 37.

    Ken

    @Tony Jay: Throw in a free pink wheelbarrow, and you’ve got a deal!

    (Referencing the latenight thread, in case anyone is puzzled, or worried about my mental health.)

  39. 39.

    Dorothy A. Winsor

    And inherited wealth is dangerous to a democracy. You wind up with inherited power and rule, which is inevitably less competent. At its extreme, this is how you create the conditions of the French and Russian revolutions.

  40. 40.

    Steeplejack (phone)

    @Low Key Swagger:

    Geist sometimes ducks behind his “Hey, I’m only the host” shield. And I can see his dilemma, since he has to introduce these same people regularly

    ETA: And I do hate Deutsch’s “I’m just stating obvious facts” demeanor when he spouts tired conservative dogma (which conservatives never follow anyway).

  43. 43.

    OzarkHillbilly

    The bones of Black children who died in 1985 after their home was bombed by Philadelphia police in a confrontation with the Black liberation group which was raising them are being used as a “case study” in an online forensic anthropology course presented by an Ivy League professor.

    It has emerged that the physical remains of one, or possibly two, of the children who were killed in the aerial bombing of the Move organization in May 1985 have been guarded over the past 36 years in the anthropological collections of the University of Pennsylvania and Princeton.

    The institutions have held on to the heavily burned fragments, and since 2019 have been deploying them for teaching purposes without the permission of the deceased’s living parents.

  45. 45.

    Kay

    The Supreme Court ruled on Thursday that judges need not determine that juvenile offenders are beyond hope of rehabilitation before sentencing them to die in prison. The decision, concerning a teenager who killed his grandfather, appeared to signal the end of a trend that had limited the availability of severe punishments for youths who commit crimes before they turn 18.
    Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh, writing for the majority in the 6-to-3 ruling, said it was enough that the sentencing judge exercised discretion rather than automatically imposing a sentence of life without parole.
    “In a case involving an individual who was under 18 when he or she committed a homicide,” he wrote, “a state’s discretionary sentencing system is both constitutionally necessary and constitutionally sufficient.”
    No specific finding concerning the defendant’s maturity or capacity for change was required, he wrote.
    The ruling drew a caustic dissent from Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who accused the majority of gutting two major precedents.
    Over the past 16 years, the court, often led by Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, methodically limited the availability of the harshest penalties for crimes committed by juveniles, first by striking down the juvenile death penalty and then by restricting sentences of life without the possibility of parole.

    Such a mean-spirited, nasty decision. They grabbed it eagerly, too. They wildly overreached to go back to barbaric punishments of juveniles.
    Another petty and mean decision from the nasty Trump judges.
    On a happier note though, Justice Sotomayor turned out to be great. She is my favorite.

  46. 46.

    SFAW

    @Betty Cracker:

    It’s spelled “Douche,” and fuck that guy.

    That’s not very ladylike. [To which the expected response is “Fuckin’ right. You gotta fuckin’ problem wit’ dat?”]

  49. 49.

    Kay

    Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh, writing for the majority

    Just a reminder- this is the pampered, privileged justice who screamed red-faced at us for 20 minutes about how his being a sexual abuser in high school didn’t matter – just youthful hijinks.
    Some kids get longer childhoods than others, apparently. His lasted long enough to allow a childish temper tantrum in his confirmation hearing.

  52. 52.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    “bIDeN aNd tRuMP aRe jUsT tHe samE!”

    – Extinction Rebellion

  55. 55.

    Kay

    @rikyrah:

    She won’t recuse. Her smug refusal to answer the most basic questions during her rush job coronation is the nature of that beast.

    The rules don’t apply to her.

  56. 56.

    SFAW

    @rikyrah:

    Whitehouse is dreaming. The only relevant precedent (for the RWMF justices) is Scalia’s, when he did not recuse from Bush v Gore, even though his kid was part of the Bush team.

  59. 59.

    Kay

    @Baud:

    So funny. I thought about that last night.

    I literally like everything about her – even her low voice.

    She speaks slowly, like she thinks they are dumb :)

  60. 60.

    Betty Cracker

    @Kay: I love Justice Sotomayor! She called the shitty Trump justices out pretty damn harshly in her dissent:

    The Court simply rewrites Miller and Montgomery to say what the Court now wishes they had said, and then denies that it has done any such thing. The Court knows what it is doing. It admits as much.

    In other words, “you lie.” That’s about as close to fighting words as the SCOTUS gets. :)

  61. 61.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    Restructuring away from favoring capital gains can go a long way toward setting rational equity values and encouraging deductible use of corporate funds toward compensation, benefits and infrastructure.

    Fact is, any corporation can set their tax rate to zero by constantly spending funds, updating, improving. These are all valuable. What isn’t valuable is jacking up share prices by hanging on to money and issuing bogus projections. That only benefits equity holders in the short term.

  63. 63.

    Joe Falco

    I just got my 2nd Pfizer shot! It’s going to be a long day though with a flooring contractor coming this morning to replace the floors in the kitchen and laundry room. Hopefully, I can power through the day.

  64. 64.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    @Betty Cracker:

    Yeah BUT….

    Every time I see somebody post an RBG meme with “I dissent” means another lost cause. The honor is in success; there’s nothing more pointless than a sharply worded dissent.

  68. 68.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Kay:

    Just a reminder- this is the pampered, privileged justice who screamed red-faced at us for 20 minutes about how his being a sexual abuser in high school didn’t matter – just youthful hijinks.

    The part that got me was his rant about how it was a conspiracy by the Clintons.  The Clintons? Srsly?!

    That should have been enough to get his nomination thrown out because he was a nutcase – I expected him to start ranting about strawberries next.  I hadn’t realized up until that point that the GQP was so far gone that that rant would actually rally support for him.  But it was that far gone, and that rant accomplished exactly that.

    That still amazes me. How anyone can think that the GQP in any way resembles a sane political party anymore is beyond me.

  71. 71.

    Steeplejack (phone)

    I need to sic Martin on my brother. We are down in Rehoboth Beach for a midweek vacay. He had to meet some maintenance people yesterday, and we have been sitting around enjoying the blustery weather. (Currently 44°.)

    CNBC mentioned that Biden wanted to raise the tax rate on capital gains (over $1 million), and I said all capital gains should be taxed at the same rate as ordinary income. Bro’ Man said, “Then you would have no incentive to buy stocks.” Then he left to go on a hike, so we didn’t really get into it.

    How about you want someplace to park your money, earn dividends and get a higher return than a savings account?! The low tax rate is a bonus.

  72. 72.

    Betty Cracker

    @Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: True, but I think it’s worth honoring the humane and intellectually rigorous dissents of the good justices even while the shoddy, corrupt Trump judges bag their ill-gotten gains. If only to remind people that superior judicial work is possible and that a majority is worth working for. Wingnut voters get how important the judiciary is. Lots of our voters don’t seem to understand that.

  75. 75.

    Geminid

    @Kay: When Sonia Sotomayor was nominated, I really liked that she had a lot of trial experience as a federal prosecutor and District Court Judge. As far as I know, the other eight Justices’ professional experience came as law school professors, in Justice Department policy positions, and in Appellate Court judgeships. (Elena Kagan did argue cases on appeal as Solicitor General). Sotomayor seems to be better grounded than her colleages.

  76. 76.

    Baud

    @Betty Cracker:

    With all the focus on criminal justice reform by decent folk, this decision will get some play.

    Although I agree with Comte that the ultimate goal is to force the other side to dissent.

  77. 77.

    OzarkHillbilly

    Speculators in Bitcoin have been left nursing heavy losses after reports Joe Biden is planning to raise taxes on the wealthiest Americans to tackle inequality and finance trillions of dollars in higher social spending.

    The cryptocurrency price fell more than 6% to below $50,000 (£36,000) a bitcoin, hitting the lowest level since early March, as the White House puts the finishing touches on plans to almost double the rate of capital gains tax for rich individuals.

    For those earning $1m or more, the tax on investment income would rise to 39.6%, up from a current rate of 20%, as part of plans expected to be announced next week. A 3.8% tax on investment income used to fund Obamacare would also be kept in place, meaning the new top rate would be as high as 43.4%.

  79. 79.

    Soprano2

    @Kay: Such a mean-spirited, nasty decision. They grabbed it eagerly, too. They wildly overreached to go back to barbaric punishments of juveniles.

    A mean-spirited ruling from mean-spirited people, I’m not surprised. Gotta keep those dangerous black kids in prison for life so we’ll all be safer, is what they’re thinking, you know it’s true. I’m hoping that a lot of judges will ignore this and keep doing what they’ve been doing. There aren’t many people who can be justifiably kept in prison for 50 or 60 years. Strangely enough, some conservative states have lead the way in prison reform, because conservatives finally figured out that it’s expensive to keep people in prison long after they’ve ceased to be a danger to society. I was surprised to find that Texas and Oklahoma were two of the first states to start reform. As long as they reform, I don’t particularly care what motivates them to do it.

  82. 82.

    Soprano2

    @Steeplejack (phone): Bro’ Man said, “Then you would have no incentive to buy stocks.”

    Oh bullshit, that less than 1% interest rate on savings is incentive enough. People worry way too much about paying taxes. What do I care if I pay some taxes if I still make money in the end? It’s crazy. My husband said that when he had his print shop in the 1970’s he’d print materials for con artists who specialized in separating doctors from their money. He asked one of them once how they could fleece people who were so intelligent. The con artist said “All I have to do is tell them I can keep them from paying taxes and they’re in. They’d rather lose money with me than make money somewhere else and pay taxes”. It’s a weird psychological thing.

  83. 83.

    Baud

    I didn’t click, but for those of you who are into this sort of thing

    The G.O.P. Is Getting Even Worse (David Brooks/New York Times)

  84. 84.

    Jeffro

    @Kay:It would be delicious to reverse Trump’s tax cuts for no other reason than all of these people traded everything for them- they would have happily traded democratic governance itself for the tax cuts- and they should be left holding nothing.  This deal they made should not work out well for them.

    110%

    Same with expanding SCOTUS and the federal courts in general, same with DC (and Puerto Rico, and and and) statehood, and so many other things.

  86. 86.

    Jeffro

    @Baud: funny, I was just about to post about that!

    Theme: “Um America…if even Brooksie is sounding the alarm about the state of today’s GQP…we really do need to do something here.”

    Republicans and conservatives who believe in the liberal project need to organize and draw a bright line between themselves and the illiberals on their own side. This is no longer just about Trump the man, it’s about how you are going to look at reality — as the muddle its always been, or as an apocalyptic hellscape. It’s about how you pursue change — through the conversation and compromise of politics, or through intimidations of macho display.
    I can tell a story in which the Trumpians self-marginalize or exhaust themselves. Permanent catastrophism is hard. But apocalyptic pessimism has a tendency to deteriorate into nihilism, and people eventually turn to the strong man to salve the darkness and chaos inside themselves.

  87. 87.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Baud: MarkedMan posted it up at OTB. This part stood out to me:

    Maybe Trump was the restraining force.

    Which forced me to reply,

    Only Brooks could say something like that with a straight face.

    These people are addicted to hate and fear. They’ve been getting their daily doses for decades thru FOX and RW talk radio. And then came trump, the embodiment of everything they ever dreamed of. He was Oxycontin in a trailer park. They mainlined him for 4 years and then he was taken away. They are desperate now and will do anything for another jolt.

    So they hit the street corner and buy another $20 gellpack of SuddenDeath ™.

  88. 88.

    Ksmiami

    Being a Republican is a moral failing. The party and its adeherents are too far gone to deserve America.

  89. 89.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    I’m going to digress for a moment to decry the practice of certain household residents to pile dishes into the sink, thereby making kitchen cleanup harder. I am also decrying their practice of what I call Dixie Cups, where each beverage consumed requires a fresh drinking vessel, even if it is a repeated liquid like water.

  90. 90.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    @Jeffro:

    I’m really squicked out on statehood for DC. Puerto Rico is a clear case FOR statehood, and frankly, I’d consider the USVI.

    ETA – Didn’t realize that the pop there was so low. Scratch the USVI….

  92. 92.

    eclare

    @OzarkHillbilly:  All you had to do was watch that batshit crazy 2016 convention.  Even W, after TFG’s “American carnage” inauguration speech said “that was some weird shit.”

  94. 94.

    Jeffro

    @OzarkHillbilly: Brooks was still pretty on point

    (And yes that feels VERY weird to say)

    The level of Republican pessimism is off the charts. A February Economist-YouGov poll asked Americans which statement is closest to their view: “It’s a big, beautiful world, mostly full of good people, and we must find a way to embrace each other and not allow ourselves to become isolated” or “Our lives are threatened by terrorists, criminals and illegal immigrants, and our priority should be to protect ourselves.”
    Over 75 percent of Biden voters chose “a big, beautiful world.” Two-thirds of Trump voters chose “our lives are threatened.”
    This level of catastrophism, nearly despair, has fed into an amped-up warrior mentality…
    With this view, the Jan. 6 insurrection was not a shocking descent into lawlessness but practice for the war ahead. A week after the siege, nearly a quarter of Republicans polled said violence can be acceptable to achieve political goals.

    Granted, a quarter of Republicans = about 10% of the country.  But still.

  95. 95.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: I’m going to digress for a moment to decry the practice of certain household residents to pile dishes into the sink,

    My wife has the habit of sticking dishes willy nilly in the sink without any thought or care, such that all the food and sauce/condiments dry up on them. Drives me nuts.

    “Stack them so they can soak!” is what I mutter under my breath as I restack them so everything can hold water. “A sink is not just a place to put dishes we are too lazy/busy/thoughtless/hurried to stick in the dishwasher!”

    But of course, it is.

  96. 96.

    jonas

    @Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: ​
     

    Thank you. People wonder what’s screwed up about the current corporate tax structure and its not so much the actual rate as this shit. Investment in technology, jobs and wages should be tax advantaged. Giving massive equity packages to the C-suite? Less so.

  98. 98.

    topclimber

    @Ken: Saw a study about the same time myself that said actual enforcement of IRS laws would net a trillion or so per year. It also had a Republican argument that eliminating duplicate government programs would save a trillion as well.

    Guess what argument got the airtime on the business shows. Actually, anywhere in mass media that I recall.

  99. 99.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @eclare: All you had to do was watch that batshit crazy 2016 convention.

    With all due respect, no, I didn’t have to.

  102. 102.

    Bluegirlfromwyo

    @Kay: She’s right. They are dumb. They’re cunning but, ultimately, dumb. I don’t think much gets by Justice Sotomayor.

  104. 104.

    Geminid

    @Jeffro: February’s Wason Center poll of registered Virginia voters showed 25% identified as Republicans (down from 31% in November 2019). The Wason Center has a new poll out. The headlines in reporting on this poll were not a shock: McAuliffe leads Democratic Governor’s race! But the demographic info is always worth checking out.

  105. 105.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    Dried on mustard is awesome. If someone bothered formulating an adhesive out of it, it would give gorilla glue a run for the money.

  107. 107.

    Soprano2

    I’m so tired of hearing people attribute the squeeze in the labor market right now to “people just don’t want to work because everyone is getting that extra money from the government”. (Who is “everyone” anyway?) When I look at official employment and unemployment numbers, this just doesn’t track. (My county’s unemployment rate right now is 3.9%; if the U6 rate is approximately double that, it’s still 7.8%, and how many of those are people you wouldn’t hire on a bet anyway?) The problem is several-fold – too many employers are looking for people at the same time, some people have left the workforce because of COVID (I’m hopeful that as more people get vaccinated some of these will come back), many women with school-age children had to quit working because their kids did schooling at home. The squeeze on immigration is also a factor that lots of people don’t want to acknowledge. I swear, every time I say anything about the tight job market whoever I’m talking to says “Yeah, no one wants to work, they’re getting all that money from the government”.  Then they’ll say something like ‘yeah, at my husband’s restaurant workplace three guys quit just last week”, and I point out that they didn’t quit to collect unemployment BECAUSE YOU CAN’T GET UNEMPLOYMENT IF YOU QUIT A JOB; then they just go “um-hum”. Those people probably quit to go to a better-paying job, because there are lots of them available right now. I resist “people don’t want to work” as a full explanation for the difficulty employers are having right now because it’s a lazy explanation. There’s also the “can’t pass a drug test” factor, which a lot of people seem to have forgotten about. I find myself wondering how Amazon is going to staff that several-football-fields long warehouse they’re building in a community south of here.

  108. 108.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @lowtechcyclist:

    The GOP is pro-rape, in general.  It is a major part of their ethos and their policies that men should get to do whatever they want to women and women should be punished for it.  It shocked and infuriated them that Democrats would deny a rich white man from an aristocratic background his just due for enjoying his just due.  How did they react to Trump’s admissions of sexual assault?  What’s come out about Gaetz and his colleagues?  Republicans think sexual predation makes a man more manly.

  109. 109.

    Kay

    @Soprano2:

    Strangely enough, some conservative states have lead the way in prison reform, because conservatives finally figured out that it’s expensive to keep people in prison long after they’ve ceased to be a danger to society. I was surprised to find that Texas and Oklahoma were two of the first states to start reform. As long as they reform, I don’t particularly care what motivates them to do it.

    This is true- there was beginning to be a bipartisan consensus that there are too many felonies, sentences are insanely long and post-release control has turned into a way to collect fees from poor people to fund the justice system- it’s a scam, a grift. They stay on paper forever.

    Kasich was on board. He bumped a whole suite of felonies down to misdemeanors with a stroke of his pen. I cheered.
    But we’re watching a lurching, abrupt reversal of that on the Right. They see political benefits in draconian law n order. They just proposed or passed 38 new state laws that create a brand new group of felonies.
    Brand new. They duplicate felonies we already have – damaging property is a already a crime as is disorderly conduct- so they’ll be used to charge and charge and charge. They’ll just stack em up.

  110. 110.

    Geminid

    @eclare: After Romney’s defeat in 2012, the RNC produced a review of how and why he lost, with recomendations as to how the party could better connect with American voters. Republicans have pretty much done the opposite of these recomendations ever since.

  111. 111.

    eclare

    @Soprano2:  TN legislature proposed limiting unemployment benefits to twelve weeks because we have that same “problem” with people who are just raking in the Biden bucks and don’t want to work.

  112. 112.

    Steeplejack (phone)

    @Baud:

    I meant that presumably you (should) get a higher rate of return on stocks than you do from a low-interest savings account.

  114. 114.

    Betty Cracker

    @Jeffro: It’s so telling that Brooks can’t resist layering on his “cancel culture” grievances and complaints about campus free speech, etc., onto a column about the GOP gone mad, as if the Oberlin Student Council is a threat to democracy on par with the lunatics who overran the U.S. Capitol.

  115. 115.

    Soprano2

    post-release control has turned into a way to collect fees from poor people to fund the justice system

    Most people don’t realize that their taxes don’t fund any part of the justice system anymore – instead, it’s all funded by fines and fees leveled on offenders. It’s what government does when the citizens say “no more tax increases”, because these things still have to be paid for somehow. It’s interesting to talk to people who’ve had DUI’s, because they’re the only ones who know what a huge scam that is. The state has turned something that is a serious crime that merits some punishment into a major way to separate money from people and help the private sector, because they know citizens are afraid of drunk drivers and will support almost literally any penalty you can load on those people. You have to have this useless SR-22 insurance that seems to do nothing other than put money in the pocket of the agency that writes it. I’ve never once heard of it paying for any actual claim. I wish they’d just admit that it’s a fine rather than pretending you’re buying insurance. Then there’s the 20-minute test you have to pay $250 to take. And on and on. Now, they put one of those Breathalyzer things on the cars of first offenders. You have to pay for it, and any time it goes off even if it’s because you used mouthwash you have to pay to have it reset, and the time period until you can get rid of it starts over. I know a woman whose car’s windshield washer fluid set hers off and stranded her by the side of the road! It’s out of control.

  116. 116.

    Soprano2

    @eclare: People in MO are already limited to 20 weeks of unemployment, then they can get 12 weeks of pandemic emergency payments. After that, what do people think they’re living on? That one-time  $1,400 check? It makes a lot more sense to me that lots and lots of employers are suddenly all trying to hire more people at the same time as the economy starts to open up more, and that makes it hard to hire people. Plus, people pretend that everyone who is out there is someone you’d want to hire. One time my manger interviewed 6 women for server/bartender jobs, and only one of them was even remotely acceptable for our pub. Not all workers are suited for all jobs.

  117. 117.

    Bluegirlfromwyo

    @Jeffro: About 1 percent of the country is about the population of Houston. 10 percent is way too many violence advocates to have a stable democracy IMO.

  118. 118.

    Baud

    @Soprano2:

    Anytime any right wing business owner faces any type of challenge, it’s the fault of Dem policies.  They live for the talking point.

  119. 119.

    Jeffro

    @Geminid: I’m already having to eat my words with Mrs. Fro – I told her McAuliffe was yesterday’s news here in VA.  Apparently not.  The rest of the field is just too fragmented.

    ah well…

  120. 120.

    Kay

    @Soprano2:

    The municipal court is across the street from my office. Sometimes the line of people waiting to pay fines goes out the door.
    It’s a fine-generating system that funds itself.
    Defendants are on to the scam. More and more they ask for “straight time” – a longer sentence rather than any post release control because they know they will never fucking get off post release control.
    The juvenile system is even worse. They can keep them on paper until they are 21. A 13 year old can thus remain in the system for 8 years for the lowest level felony. They ALL violate, because of course they do. They’re in there forever.

  121. 121.

    Tony Jay

    @Ken:

    Hey, those wheelbarrows are probably destined for landfill now that the astroturfing operation is over, so I’ll take them for the Community Garden!

    No, seriously, we’ve got three tons of topsoil due any time now, we need them!

  122. 122.

    Soprano2

    @Baud: Yep, but it’s not just business owners. Literally every person I’ve mentioned this to comes back immediately with a version of “Yeah, it’s because people just don’t want to work, they’re getting all that money from the government”. There’s a widespread belief that there is a huge body of people out there somewhere who are just sitting at home on their asses collecting endless unemployment benefits.

  123. 123.

    Jeffro

    @Geminid:After Romney’s defeat in 2012, the RNC produced a review of how and why he lost, with recomendations as to how the party could better connect with American voters. Republicans have pretty much done the opposite of these recomendations ever since.

    Yup.  They avoided a relatively small amount of pain and now they’re in for a world of hurt.  Which, considering what they’ve put the country through (and continue to put us through) is just fine with me.

  124. 124.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    @Soprano2:

    I remember all the stories about New Rome, Ohio, the town that was nothing more than an infamous speed trap, whose only reason for existence was maintenance of the police department that enforced the speed trap. Eventually, they simply dissolved themselves to get rid of the tyranny of the highway to malls outside Columbus.

  125. 125.

    kirbster

    Lower tax rates for capital gains may have made some sense in the 1980s when interest rates were in the teens. After all, why risk money in stocks and bonds (and pay hefty broker’s fees, pre-internet), when you could go to a bank and buy Certificates of Deposit that paid 12% and were FDIC insured?

    Now that interest rates are low and on-line investing costs are negligible, the tax incentive is unnecessary.

  126. 126.

    Jeffro

    @Betty Cracker: oh, he always has to get something in there…he wouldn’t be our Brooksie without the usual disingenuous BS laced here and there in his column.  But the panic is clearly rising.

    Next week, he’ll be talking about how he reluctantly…oh SO reluctantly…must ‘continue walking with the icky Woke Left until the party of Lincoln regains its sanity’, etc etc BSetc.

  129. 129.

    Ken

    @Tony Jay: Bit of a logistics issue getting them to you, unless you’ve moved to the DC area.  Surely the UK has its own wheelbarrow manufacturers?

  130. 130.

    Geminid

    @Jeffro: Most Democrats see McAuliff as a successful Governor. And his tenure coincided with their resurgence in the 2017 state elections. Some hold McAuliffe’s boosting of the two big natural gas pipelines against him, but one has already been dropped. I fault him somewhat for not preparing better for the Charlottesville rally August 10-11, 2017, because as Governor he had the resources and responsibility. Bad as the outcome was, it could have been a bloodbath. But I’ll still vote for McAuliffe.

  131. 131.

    topclimber

    And now, in recognition that is long overdue for a guy who helped to make America Great in the first place:

    PITTSBURGH (AP) — A Pittsburgh suburb on Friday honored pro wrestler Bruno Sammartino by renaming a park in the longtime resident’s honor.

    Sangree Park in Ross Township will be known as Sammartino Park, after the man who lived in the community for more than 50 years.

    Sammartino appeared in the ring between 1963 and 1987. He was the longest reigning champion in World Wrestling Entertainment history and was a member of its Hall of Fame. He was known as “The Living Legend.”

  132. 132.

    Baud

    @Soprano2:

    Oh sure.  The right wing talking point machine goes beyond business owners.  How many regular people spread GOP talking points about the estate tax?

  134. 134.

    Soprano2

    I’m listening to last night’s Maddow program, where she talks about Louis Gohmert’s crazy theory about military people trying to steal a secret server in Germany that proves TFG won the election (including winning CA!), and thinking how on Earth do you talk to people who believe crap like that?

  135. 135.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Soprano2:I resist “people don’t want to work” as a full explanation for the difficulty employers are having right now because it’s a lazy explanation.

    I always reply, “No, they don’t want to work for the shitty pay you are offering.”

    eta: drove past a fast food joint last week in NOLA: “$12/hr to start” said the sign out front. you can be sure some people are still offering only minimum wage.

  137. 137.

    Soprano2

    I always reply, “No, they don’t want to work for the shitty pay you are offering.”

    Sometimes that’s true, but right now it’s more than that. Even places that offer $15.00 as a starting wage are having problems finding people. Freaking Bass Pro, one of the worst companies here to work for (just ask my husband, he can tell you horror stories about the time he worked there running their print shop when the one in Springfield was the only location), just raised their starting pay to $15.50/hr!! Any good restaurant server can make more money than that on average. Right now I think it’s mostly way too many vacancies chasing too few eligible employees.

  140. 140.

    Ken

    @Soprano2: how on Earth do you talk to people who believe crap like that?

    In a better world, once a year at their sanity hearing, before they go back to their padded room.

  141. 141.

    Betty Cracker

    @Jeffro: There’s a former Florida Republican operative turned Never Trumper named Mac Stipanovich who specializes in that sort of thing. Here’s a bit from his most recent effort:

    No Irishman from the hinterland of County Mayo wandering about in Paris in 1692 was more bewildered than I sometimes am by the company in which I now find myself and by the language they speak…

    Every Democrat is in The Squad, and poor Stipanovich and his fellow Never Trumpers are unjustly accused of being racists blah blah blah, but he’ll stick with us because his own party has gone batshit insane. I mean, okay, here’s a cookie? But it’s not surprising he failed to see what was happening in his own party since his powers of observation are so poor.

  142. 142.

    Ken

    @Soprano2: Right now I think it’s mostly way too many vacancies chasing too few eligible employees.

    What, you mean market pricing applies to labor as well?  This changes everything….

    Somehow you never see interviews with restaurant owners complaining “I’m going to have to shut down, I’ve been offering 20 cents a pound for sirloin steak but can’t find anyone willing to meet that price.”

  143. 143.

    Baud

    @Betty Cracker:

    Stipanovich and his fellow Never Trumpers are unjustly accused of being racists

    It’s always presented in the passive voice because if they had to identify who was responsible for the affront, it always ends up as “someone was mean to me on Twitter.”

  144. 144.

    Kay

    and more money funneled through the tax credit to help parents offset work-related child-care expenses.

    Working class parents here already know about this, which they’re describing as “300 a month for childcare” – they knew about it before I did, which rarely happens. I didn’t read all the parts of the stimulus.
    Might explain some of Biden’s good poll numbers with younger people. Child care is huge for them. It’s either 1or 2 of their biggest expense – housing and child care. They should have already been voting for Democrats just on Medicaid for their children, but maybe this will get their attention.

  146. 146.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Soprano2: Right now I think it’s mostly way too many vacancies chasing too few eligible employees.

    And the laws of supply and demand say the answer is to offer higher wages than they are getting now. I have been hearing this complaint for decades and my response has always been the same: You want good people? Pay them.

  147. 147.

    Baud

    They should have already been voting for Democrats just on Medicaid for their children, but maybe this will get their attention.

    Preach!

  148. 148.

    Kay

    @Baud:

    I will never understand it. We now have an entire tier of lower to mid wage working people who have single payer, government paid or subsidized health care for their children and it gets no recognition or discussion. There’s this amazing expansion of health care that happened between 1993 and 2012 and no one mentions it.

  149. 149.

    Soprano2

    @Ken: What, you mean market pricing applies to labor as well?  This changes everything….

    Employers would prefer it if unemployment were always around 8% or so – they act like it’s their right to have that kind of job market all the time. I can tell you this – my manager says that before Covid, when unemployment here was around 3%, any time she posted a job she’d get 10-15 applications at least. Now, posting the same job only gets 3-5 applicants, if that. So that’s why I say there’s a lot of stuff that’s contributed to this situation. In the restaurant/bar industry it’s a nationwide problem, even in places where the pay is high. I think a lot of people have left the industry until Covid is under control; they’re working at other jobs, just waiting for things to get better. Some of them will probably never come back to the restaurant industry. The true tell will be in September, when the extra federal unemployment runs out. If suddenly the labor market becomes flush with workers then those who say “people are just living off the government are the whole reason for this problem” will be proven right. I don’t look for that to happen, though – people will gradually re-enter the job market as employment opens up and Covid gets better. I do think it would have been a good idea to taper off that unemployment in anticipation of the pandemic getting under control and the job market getting better.

  150. 150.

    Kay

    @Baud:

    Shouldn’t people be studying it? Tens of millions of children had access to medical care when they didn’t before. The first group are now 25 years old.

    We have a dentist in town who does nothing BUT children on Medicaid. His whole practice.

  151. 151.

    SFAW

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    “Pay a decent wage? What’s that?”

    They’re much happier with making the term “wage slave” — both literally and figuratively — as close to reality as they can.

  152. 152.

    Baud

    @Kay:

    You know how I feel. Before Trump, it was more culturally fashionable to hate the system, of which Dems are a part, than to give credit where it was due.  It remains to be seen whether Trump broken that spell.

  153. 153.

    Baud

    @Soprano2:

    There was no assurance Biden would be as successful as he has been with Covid.  Still possible for things to go sideways.  Fine tuning with hindsight is not very strong criticism IMHO.

  155. 155.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    Math and I had a falling out in middle school, and for the last forty years have maintained a relationship of cool mutual hostility, but even as a dumb guy, I have a basic grasp of “marginal tax rates” and the difference between “assets” and “income”– I even get the difference between earned income and capital gains! Over the next few months, we will hear several GOP backbenchers– I’ll set the low estimate at 8– in the House and Senate making fiery speeches about the two-income, middle-class family who have worked hard and saved and bought a home and paid their mortgage and contributed to their IRAs and now just because they’ve had a little success Joe Biden and KAMALA HARRIS want to confiscate half their savings!

  156. 156.

    SFAW

    I’ve been through a couple of employees-getting-extravagant-perqs cycles, and each time the employers whine about it. My general response to that has been: the market will eventually return to a “buyers’ (i.e., employers) market,” and when it does, the employers will shit on employees even harder, whether those employees are prospective or actually hired. So, to those employers, I raise both middle fingers.

  158. 158.

    Kay

    One of my aquaintances got covid at work- she’s a nurse. She was really sick but recovered and now she’s had a (mild) heart attack and her doc (who is absolutely loved in this town and is a good doctor) says he thinks it’s covid-related. She’s probably mid-forties. Scary stuff.

  159. 159.

    Baud

    @SFAW:

    So, to those employers, I raise both middle fingers.

    Thanks to the vaccine, I also raise my third middle finger at them.

  160. 160.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    I have no idea what her chances are, but this is a campaign I would donate to early (and I’m sure my  pledge of a cool one hundred dollars will be decisive in her decision!)

     Rep. Val Demings is seriously considering running for statewide office in Florida.

    “I’ve received so many calls, and texts, and emails, and have been stopped when I’m out and about by people who are asking me that very same question. Matter of fact, they think I should run for statewide office and maybe challenge the governor or challenge Sen. Rubio next year,” she told your Huddle host in an interview yesterday. “I’m seriously considering a statewide run. And we’ll see what happens.”

  161. 161.

    JaneE

    So if you have an income over 1 million, your cap gains get taxed at the same rate as ordinary income? Sounds fine to me.

    Didn’t all capital gains used to be taxed as ordinary income?  Why not just give an exemption to the first $X of cap gains and tax the rest as income, which it is.  Make X big enough to handle the gains off the average middle class home sale or two or three times that if you feel generous.  Maybe allow the gains to roll over if you use them to buy a new home, but then you need to make sure the estate tax will capture them.

    The flat taxers always said tax every bit of income. Let’s do it.  When the national debt is down to a reasonable level and the federal government has a rainy-day fund big enough to keep things going if we should get another great recession, then lower the tax rates, or maybe just start providing the benefits that other developed countries provide to their citizens.

  162. 162.

    Kay

    @Baud:

    Right but this isn’t even partisan politics. Health care people should care about – study it.

    Where are Kay’s eggheads? :)

    Poor and low income children didn’t have access to regular health care and then they did. Good, bad, doesn’t matter? We’re just not going to mention it?

  163. 163.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @SFAW: Years ago I was listening to an NPR story on undocumented immigrants. One Maine seafood processor said something to the effect of “If I couldn’t hire illegal aliens I’d have to go out of business!”

  164. 164.

    Baud

    @Kay:

    Where are Kay’s eggheads? :)

    It’s similar to the “hack gap” that was talked about for a while.  There is very little appetite for doing or popularizing research that might conclude that government policies to help people actually work.

  166. 166.

    rikyrah

    @Kay:

     

    It would be delicious to reverse Trump’s tax cuts for no other reason than all of these people traded everything for them- they would have happily traded democratic governance itself for the tax cuts- and they should be left holding nothing.

    This deal they made should not work out well for them.

     

    I cannot clap hard enough for this comment.

  167. 167.

    Another Scott

    I’m shocked, shocked…

    “London-based debt bankers at JPMorgan were central to the planning of the Super League and had been working on the project for several years, according to people with direct knowledge of the matter.” https://t.co/y2viYgBkWz

    — southpaw (@nycsouthpaw) April 23, 2021

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  168. 168.

    WaterGirl

    @Betty Cracker: It’s hard to comprehend that the Rs are just as horrified by Biden’s appointments as we were by Trump’s.

    Native American being Secretary of the Interior and an environmentalist running the Bureau of Land Management.  The horror!

  169. 169.

    Ben Cisco

    @Kay: This does do one thing – every time they pull some shit like this, it lets Joe/MVP know there’s one more thing to put on the pile. Keep knocking them down, I say.

  171. 171.

    Soprano2

    @OzarkHillbilly: I think this is a factor in the current hiring problem that no one wants to talk about. Lots of employers depended on this labor pool, and now it’s a lot smaller than it was a couple of years ago. That has an effect.

  172. 172.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    I know he’s rather less than beloved by most here, but….

    Matthew Yglesias @mattyglesias 33m
    Stopped by this Biden Country diner and his base isn’t bothered by the idea of taxing the top 0.3%

    Matthew Yglesias @mattyglesias 4m
    Obviously their first choice would be universal assent to their ideas, but in a world where controversy is inevitable don’t underrate the extent to which the White House and Senate Dems welcome a national debate about billionaire tears.

  173. 173.

    Another Scott

    @Baud: Yeah.  It’s more the “… working on it for years …” part that I thought was notable.  The excuses about Real Madrid being  nearly bankrupt so we gotta do this now now now to protect the game,  we’ll fill in the details later, etc., etc., don’t seem to fit with that.   But it’s rarely surprising when the right hand doesn’t coordinate with the left.

    Big Finance always gets their cut, no doubt.  John Kerry was making a big point yesterday about how important it was that the big banks were committing to spending $40T (or something) on clean projects in the next N years.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  174. 174.

    J R in WV

    @rikyrah: ​
     

    If Justice Barrett doesn’t take herself off the case, this will further damage the legitimacy of the Supreme Court & will reinforce that we MUST add justices to mitigate the damage done to the court & the nation by the Trump/McConnell corrupt court packing years.

    Actually, if Justice Whiny Barrett doesn’t recuse herself, she should be impeached for a lack of judicial ethics, so that she looses that big Judicial paycheck and eternal full-pay pension, as well as her law license.

    She is less fit to be a judge than my smartest dog was…

  176. 176.

    germy

    President Biden in the next few days will unveil eye-popping new tax rates for the wealthiest Americans —a top marginal income tax rate of 39.6% and a capital gains rate of 43.4%. https://t.co/BmIB8YFwiP— Axios (@axios) April 23, 2021

    Axios describing a return to the tax rates of four years ago as “eye-popping” in what is supposed to be a news story should tell you all you need to know about Axios. https://t.co/LKqFUfuK5T— Timothy Burke (@bubbaprog) April 23, 2021

    I'm pretty sure that the capital gains tax wasn't 43.4% four years ago. That's a massive jump and probably what the "eye-popping" refers to. But by all means I think we should impose that tax.— Dialecticution (@Dialecticution) April 23, 2021

  179. 179.

    germy

    “We are not a match”

    A New York man, Robert Chapman, has been charged with entering the Capitol on Jan 6. The FBI began investigating Chapman after they got a tip from one of his Bumble matches. The FBI included the Bumble screenshot in the charging documents. pic.twitter.com/ctHHYk44a5

    — Daniel Barnes (@dnlbrns) April 22, 2021

  184. 184.

    Ken

    @germy: The feds say both assaulted police officers while wearing Trump hats.

    I’m seeing a lot of that — not the Trump connection itself, but the emphasis on it in the charges.  Are they setting up for conspiracy charges?

  188. 188.

    dww44

    @Kay: On last night’s RM show, Rachel highlighted the sheer irony of Kavanaugh writing the majority’s opinion to literally take away any ability on the part of the judicial system to be merciful in the case of juvenile offenders.  He, of all people, benefited from that sort of generosity. Notwithstanding that his behavior in his Senate hearing should have disqualified him from be confirmed for his seat.
    As as a side note, every single time I see him with his wife and family on my tv I always pay particularly close attention to her.  Maybe I’m misreading what I see, but she is NOT a happy person.  Also, too, Sotomayor is my most favorite of the justices, liberal and otherwise.​

  189. 189.

    Tony Jay

    @Ken:

     Surely the UK has its own wheelbarrow manufacturers?

    Yeah, but since they’re all owned by Tory donors they’re retooling their lathes to produce thousands of unusable ventilators that the Government will sign multi-billion pound, no-fault, no-oversight, commercially confidential contracts for*.

     

    *referencing just the latest crony corruption scandal Johnson and Co are smirking their way through.

  190. 190.

    Another Scott

    @Kay: I just had a brilliant insight (which is probably more of a Duh!).

    1. The GOP supports the rich.
    2. The rich used to get a lot of income from interest on bonds, etc.  Ergo, those with money to lend like high interest rates.
    3. It used to be that large government deficits would drive up interest rates (“crowding out!!11”).
    4. One way to increase deficits is to cut taxes, which the rich also likes.
    5. Ergo, its not that the GOP doesn’t understand economics or that they really think that cutting taxes increases economic growth.  It’s that they’re trying to drive up interest rates to benefit their rich supporters.  Q.E.D.

    The bankruptcy of their approach is illustrated by low and falling interest rates (especially long-term rates) for decades on end.  They’re pushing on a string.  There’s too much money out there that isn’t doing anything because taxes are too low and economic activity is too low.  People who need the money to spend don’t have it, and people who have too much aren’t doing anything productive with it.

    tl;dr – Watch what they do, not what they say, part MMXCIX.  Tax and spend is good and necessary for a healthy economy.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  191. 191.

    Betty Cracker

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: I like Demings a lot. Not sure what her chances would be statewide either. I don’t think Florida has ever elected a black woman statewide, and I can’t think of any black men who’ve won statewide office, although Obama won the state twice as president, FWIW.

    Our bench is so damn shallow down here that people like Charlie Crist are floated as possibilities, and he already lost to Rick Scott once, so I hope he’ll just cling to his damned House seat and stay out. David Jolly too — he could really screw us if he pulls a No Labels thing.

  193. 193.

    Betty Cracker

    Also, if Demings runs, I think she’d have a better chance of taking out Lil’ Marco for the US Senate seat than unseating DeSantis as governor. But of the two, DeSantis is by far the most dangerous, so I almost want to take a bigger risk with our best candidate to get rid of him. Fortunately, it’s not up to me!

  195. 195.

    Geminid

    @OzarkHillbilly: Apple farmers, building and landscaping contractors, and other business owners in Virginia rely heavily on undocumented workers. The owners generally vote Republican. This is one reason Comprehensive Immigration Reform will be a big wedge issue for Republicans when Democratic Congressional leaders bring immigration legislation to the floor this year.

    And bringing these immigrants into the documented workforce will change Social Security funding for the better. Another pragmatic reason for such legislation, in addition to considerations of justice.

  196. 196.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Geminid: I don’t think the several stories about the undocumented workers at trump properties scratched the surface of the reality, and I’m sure the Kushners employ even more– most of their money comes from mid-level apartment complexes, as I understand?

    I believe John McCain was the most overrated politician of my lifetime, but I did appreciate the time he told some guy bitching about “them taking our jobs”, “are you gonna pick lettuce for ten hours a day for minimum wage? You couldn’t do it, my friends!”

  197. 197.

    Ken

    @Another Scott: People who need the money to spend don’t have it, and people who have too much aren’t doing anything productive with it.

    Are you saying speculation in bitcoin and NFTs isn’t productive?  It creates tens of thousands of coal-mining jobs in China and Mongolia.

  199. 199.

    rikyrah

    Former Chicago Bear Steve ‘Mongo’ McMichael reveals he is battling ALS

    by: Joel Liberatore

    Posted: Apr 23, 2021 / 10:24 AM CDT / Updated: Apr 23, 2021 / 10:27 AM CDT

    https://wgntv.com/news/former-chicago-bear-steve-mongo-mcmichael-reveals-he-is-battling-als/

     

    CHICAGO — Former Bears defensive lineman Steve McMichael revealed to WGN’s Jarrett Payton this week that he’s been diagnosed with 36-month onset ALS.

     

    McMichael was first diagnosed with ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig’s Disease, at the Mayo Clinic in January, a second opinion at Rush Hospital confirmed the Mayo Clinic diagnosis.

     

    “I’m not going to be out in the public any more…you’re not going to see me out doing appearances, hell I can’t even sign my name any more, and everybody’s going to be speculating ‘Where’s McMichael, what’s wrong with him?” McMichael said.

     

    “I’m here to tell everyone I’ve been diagnosed with ALS, Lou Gehrig’s Disease, so I’m not going to be a public figure any more.”

     

    McMichael was a major part of the Bears’ success and helped them win the 1985 Super Bowl. He played for the team for 13 years.

     

    After retiring from professional football, McMichael wrestled at WCW.

     

    A GoFundMe was started to help with the cost of medical care. Other websites where people can help are obviousshirts.com and teammongo76.com

  200. 200.

    Gin & Tonic

    Way OT, but I was wandering down the soup aisle of my local grocery yesterday and saw both chicken broth and chicken stock, in similar packaging (those sterile foil-lined boxes, whatever they’re called.) Anyway, who can succinctly define the difference?

  202. 202.

    rikyrah

    @Kay:

     

    Oh, they have no problem with the spending. It’s the taxing they object to.
    We all knew the phony budget hawks would return like migratory birds with the election of a Democratic President, but I’m always surprised at how completely shameless they are and I this is the 3rd time I’ve watched the cycle repeat.

     

    The difference is, nobody is even having it. I love that the Democrats are bringing receipts and paying these muthaphuckas no mind. Nor, their enablers in the MSM.

  203. 203.

    rikyrah

    @Frankensteinbeck:

     

    The GOP is pro-rape, in general.  It is a major part of their ethos and their policies that men should get to do whatever they want to women and women should be punished for it.

     

    You do not lie.

  204. 204.

    dww44

    @Gin & Tonic:  Per the google machine, chicken stock is made from the bones and chicken broth from the meat.  Or, at least that’s the primary source of the liquid.

  205. 205.

    NotMax

    @Gin & Tonic

    Stock is made using meat and bones and is generally unseasoned. Broth is made from meat, veggies and usually includes seasoning. Stock is a bit thicker and richer; can be used interchangeably in recipes.

  206. 206.

    catclub

    @Spanky: ​  The ‘selloff’ apparently lasted one day. Stocks are up today.
    CNN headline writer also blames bitcoin struggles on cap gains proposal. yeah, right.​

  207. 207.

    rikyrah

    @Kay:

     

    There’s this amazing expansion of health care that happened between 1993 and 2012 and no one mentions it.

     

    Who gave it to them, Kay.

    They have never minded socialism.

    As long as it was WHITE socialism.

  208. 208.

    rikyrah

    @Kay:

     

    One of my aquaintances got covid at work- she’s a nurse. She was really sick but recovered and now she’s had a (mild) heart attack and her doc (who is absolutely loved in this town and is a good doctor) says he thinks it’s covid-related. She’s probably mid-forties. Scary stuff.

     

    Long-term COVID, Kay.

    We haven’t begun to scratch the surface of the medical issues , long-term for COVID SURVIVORS.

  209. 209.

    WaterGirl

    @rikyrah: That’s a terrible diagnosis.  Is there reason to think that ALS is related to brain injury from football?

    The idea that these athletes that made zillions of dollars for their leagues have to have a GoFundMe for medical expenses seems crazy.

  211. 211.

    catclub

    @Geminid: ​
     

    And bringing these immigrants into the documented workforce will change Social Security funding for the better.

    Not sure about that. my understanding is that some undocumented workers use a SSN, but they will never collect at the other end. To the extent that is true, SS is getting free money.

  213. 213.

    Another Scott

    @catclub: +1

    There is always some volatility in the stock market when indices are near record highs, because market timers always want to get out at the peak, and don’t want to be left behind if it’s not a real final peak.

    Plus, there’s no “one reason” why things happen when trillions of dollars are moving around every day.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  216. 216.

    Ken

    @dww44: @NotMax: I feel compelled to note that your definitions are correct for home cooks working from The Joy of Cooking, but may have little or no bearing on what’s in the packages at the grocery stores. For that you need to check the USDA’s legal definitions of the terms, if any.

  217. 217.

    trollhattan

    That’s it then, Newsom’s stint as governor is doomed to end early.

    Caitlyn Jenner, the former Olympian turned reality TV star, officially launched her bid for California governor Friday morning after weeks of speculation that she would run to unseat Gov. Gavin Newsom in a recall election.

    In a statement, Jenner, 71, said she’s running because “California is worth fighting for.”

    “California has been my home for nearly 50 years,” said Jenner, a Republican. “I came here because I knew that anyone, regardless of their background or station in life, could turn their dreams into reality. But for the past decade, we have seen the glimmer of the Golden State reduced by one-party rule that places politics over progress and special interests over people. Sacramento needs an honest leader with a clear vision.”
    https://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article250891699.html#storylink=cpy

    Lemme think, aged reality show “personality” considers self worthy of running the nation’s largest state. Where have I seen this script before?

  218. 218.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    @rikyrah:

    ALS bites ass. An old friend had it, and to see the wasting and suffering was heartbreaking.

  221. 221.

    Geminid

    @catclub: There are some undocumented immigrants who have Social  Security numbers and pay into the system. The vast majority do not, but will under a reformed immigration law. The few who pay now will be able to collect, but their cohorts will more than make up for that.

    But when this legislation is introduced, there will good analysis of it’s impact on the Social Security system. Estimates I have seen say the impact will be substantial.

  222. 222.

    J R in WV

    @Betty Cracker:

    …

    There’s a former Florida Republican operative… named Mac Stipanovich who specializes in that sort of thing. Here’s a bit from his most recent effort:

    No Irishman from the hinterland of County Mayo wandering about in Paris in 1692 was more bewildered than I sometimes am by the company in which I now find myself and by the language they speak…

    Funny, Stipanovich doesn’t sound Irish, not at all~!!~

  223. 223.

    Ken

    @catclub: CNN headline writer also blames bitcoin struggles on cap gains proposal.

    Some years ago I toyed with the idea of a stock market game, where one mechanic would be to match a “market move” card with a “headline” card.  So you could pair “tech stocks up 3” with “FDA announces new rules for suppositories”.

    Obviously the headline card wouldn’t need to have any relation to the market move card, since they don’t in real life.

  224. 224.

    germy

    Just a reminder that the Former Guy's office is a converted bridal dressing room and he is living in a small glorified hotel suite at a club that is not supposed to have residents. Ask yourself why.

    — Richard Signorelli (@richsignorelli) April 23, 2021

  225. 225.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Ken: this story from NPR a couple weeks ago gave some serious pets dot com vibes

    Millions of people joined the ranks of stock investors for the first time in 2020. They have pumped billion of dollars into the stock market. That is reflected in the way the market behaves these days, which is quite differently than a few years ago.

    One of those stock market rookies is John Hollywood, a motorcycle salesman in Las Vegas. He started investing in stocks for the first time in June of last year.

    “I always just thought it was a little bit more intense or harder to get into, but when my friend came back and showed me the app he was using, I saw how easy it was to actually do, so I started trading the next day,” he said.

    Hollywood joined an estimated 10 million people who started trading stocks in 2020, a record, according to JMP Securities.

  226. 226.

    Kelly

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:contributed to their IRAs and now just because they’ve had a little success Joe Biden and KAMALA HARRIS want to confiscate half their savings!

    Worth noting most middle class stock holdings are in IRA, 401K, etc tax DEFFERED accounts. When we spend money out of those accounts it taxed as regular income not capital gains.

  227. 227.

    trollhattan

    That does it, I’m going back to bed.

    A nationwide boba shortage has rippled into Sacramento’s bubble tea shops, threatening to deny them the tapioca pearls customers crave as summer nears.

    Shipping delays and pileups at West and East Coast ports have left American distributors without enough tapioca balls or starch, which predominantly come from Taiwan and Thailand, respectively, to satisfy demand.
    https://www.sacbee.com/food-drink/restaurants/article250840499.html#storylink=cpy

  229. 229.

    Kay

    @rikyrah:

    I thought about you when I saw this:

    Rachel Cohen

    “An Omaha Public School district program in a partnership with the University of Nebraska found that infection rates in schools were 2.5 times higher for staff and nearly 6 times higher for students than what was being reported” sans asymptomatic testing

    I knew we weren’t picking up infections at schools because we weren’t testing. I supported opening schools anyway because I think it’s so damaging and disruptive for them to be out, but I didn’t kid myself that those bullshit low numbers were correct.

    My kid was quarantined 3 times and had one covid test and that’s one more than 99% of the kids in his high school got. We have no idea how many of them were infected.

  230. 230.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    @Another Scott:

    I never did get the appeal of the lip synch act with her. It’s as unfunny to me now as it was then.

    Different strokes….

  232. 232.

    trollhattan

    @Kay:

    This is happening in a tony Sacramento suburb, in a state with a tiny fraction of the Covid infection rates of Texas and Florida, those bastions of Freedom.

    Hundreds of El Dorado high school students quarantine

    By Sawsan Morrar

    [email protected]

    More than 200 El Dorado Hills students at Oak Ridge High School are in quarantine after possibly being exposed to COVID-19.

    The quarantines come after 19 students recently tested positive for the virus at the school, according to the El Dorado Union High School District’s dashboard.

    There are currently more than 300 students across the district’s five high schools who are now quarantined, and a total of 24 current positive cases, according to the dashboard.

    Students are required to stay home, according to county and state guidelines, if they have been exposed to others who have COVID-19.

    According to the district, 215 out of the school’s 2,400 students are now home. There are currently no plans to place the entire student body in distance learning.

    District officials said the rise in cases are attributed to an increase in COVID-19 testing for athletes.

    That last graf is very Trumpish, “We wouldn’t have all these cases if we weren’t doing all this testing.”

  237. 237.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Kelly: one of my theories of politics is that a lot of Republicans, mostly middle-aged, upper middle-class white guys, think they’re richer than they are, think they’re going to be richer than they ever will be, and think they pay a lot more in taxes than they do, and don’t make the kind of distinctions you’re making. The Fox News version of temporarily embarrassed millionaires.* “Biden wants to tax everybody with a million dollars! My house/retirement account will probably worth a million dollars soon!”

     

    *I read a few years back, three or ten or twenty?, I’ve lost track, that around the time “millionaire” became common in American English, a million dollars was the equivalent of $20M in the early 21st century.

  238. 238.

    Ken

    @germy: Former Guy’s office is a converted bridal dressing room and he is living in a small glorified hotel suite

    Does he ever leave the club?  I think I’ve seen all of one report of him going to a Republican convention.  I haven’t even seen that he’s still golfing.  Maybe he’s had that narcissistic personality collapse that someone (HoarseWhisperer?) was predicting for so long.

  239. 239.

    Fair Economist

    @WaterGirl:

    That’s a terrible diagnosis. Is there reason to think that ALS is related to brain injury from football?

    I’ve never seen any epidemiology on that, can’t recall any other cases, plus ALS is as much a spinal disease as anything and so linkage to the chronic brain trauma of playing football is unclear. I’d say very likely not linked.

    My stepfather’s son is in the end stages of a fairly aggressive ALS. 2 years from normal activity to complete loss of speech and almost all other motor functions. Horrible situation, especially for my extremely elderly and very frail stepfather, who can’t even visit anymore.

  240. 240.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Amir Khalid: My guess: 1) trump is not nearly as rich as he claims to be, but he is very rich, and willing to spend more money in court than the municipality, and 2) his tax cuts and open racism have made him more popular with his neighbors than he ever was before. I thought we would see scores of abandoned memberships at Mar-A-Loco once he left office, but if that’s happened, I haven’t seen it reported.

    As to why he stays there– he owns at least one other big, waterfront house in the area, maybe two?– It’s big and gaudy and has the association with the old American gilded-age aristocracy (Marjorie Merriweather Post, and there’s a Merrill in there somewhere) he’s always craved recognition from, and he thinks people think of it as the “winter White House”

  242. 242.

    Doc Sardonic

    @Betty Cracker: If she doesn’t go after Desantis, wouldn’t mind seeing her husband Jerry take swing at him, first African American Chief of Police in Orlando and Sheriff of Orange County now OC mayor.

  243. 243.

    Kelly

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: Every time the estate tax comes up people with assets that are a small fraction of the $11 million+ individual exempt amount are convinced all their savings will go the government instead of their heirs.

  244. 244.

    Another Scott

    @Fair Economist:

    NIH (from 2007):

    Abstract

    Recent data showed that soccer players in Italy had an unusually high risk of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and repeated head trauma might have contributed to this increase. The authors examined whether head injury was related to ALS risk in a case-control study of 109 ALS cases and 255 controls and conducted a meta-analysis of published literature. Overall ever having a head injury was non-significantly associated with a higher ALS risk. When compared with individuals without a head injury, a statistically significant ALS risk elevation was found for participants with more than one head injury (odds ratio (OR): 3.1, 95 percent confidence intervals (CI): 1.2, 8.1) or with head injury during the past 10 years (OR=3.2, 95 percent CI: 1.0, 10.2)). For participants with multiple head injuries in the past 10 years, the risk elevation was more than 11 fold. The meta-analysis also indicated a moderately elevated risk of ALS among individuals with previous head injuries (OR=1.7, 95 percent CI: 1.3, 2.2). In our study population, physical injuries of other body parts, including trunk, arms, or legs, were not related to ALS risk. These data support the notion that head injury may increase the risk of ALS.

    IIRC, there was a lot of speculation that Ali’s decline was directly related to accumulated head trauma. Similarly with Jim McMahon of the Bears.

    My MIL had symptoms of Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.

    All of these brain diseases probably have very fuzzy boundaries.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  247. 247.

    Fair Economist

    @rikyrah: From the your article about long COVID mortality:

    At the six-month mark, excess deaths among all COVID-19 survivors were estimated at eight people per 1,000 patients. Among patients who were ill enough to be hospitalized with COVID-19 and who survived beyond the first 30 days of illness, there were 29 excess deaths per 1,000 patients over the following six months.

    This is comparable to estimates for acute COVID mortality (currently around 0.5%) Will be strongly affected by age and pre-existing condition of the study group, of course, but those are still nightmarish numbers.

  249. 249.

    Another Scott

    @WaterGirl:

    Harvard Health:

    […]

    The group publishing this paper is led by Dr Ann McKee of the Center for the Study of Traumatic Encephalopathy at Boston University. (Their article is available here.) It’s the same group that has described a connection between repeated head injury in football and problems ranging from intellectual decline to depression.

    And now they suggest an association between head injuries and a motor neuron disease that looks like ALS.

    Gehrig’s history comes up in the context of this research not just because the disease carries his name. He was known — paradoxically — for his durability. He played in 2130 consecutive games (a record that stood for more than 50 years). It is also known that he played several times after being knocked unconscious. Some people familiar with his sports history surmise now that his motor neuron disease may have been related to his head injuries.

    Since this paper reports on only three cases, it’s tough to draw many conclusions from it. It is probably not enough evidence to change the historical view of Gehrig’s illness.

    But the findings do underscore an important principle to keep in mind when thinking about many neuropsychiatric diagnoses. Relatively narrow terms like ALS — but also broader ones like major depression — refer to syndromes where the root causes and the neurobiology are not very well worked out. That is, two people can have illnesses that look similar, but the underlying pathology can be quite different. This principle is as true for common illnesses — for example, depression in its various forms or schizophrenia — as it is for rare illnesses like ALS.

    Anything that illustrates the complexities of brain function is a good thing. There is not just one depression. There isn’t one schizophrenia. And my bet is that there is not one ALS either.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  250. 250.

    catclub

    @Baud:

    “Blame Trump form killing over half a million Americans for your labor shortage.”

    I like it.

     

    Best because highly inaccurate. the majority of those deaths were old. unlikely to be employees.

  251. 251.

    StringOnAStick

    @Another Scott: I know someone with 3 generations of ALS in their family, grandfather, mother, and two identical twins who had onset 20 years apart.  Apparently about 10% of ALS  cases have a genetic link, and the links are identifiable with DNA testing. The rest are idiopathic in cause, which basically means unknown.  Some patients can go on for decades like Prof. Hawking, some are gone in a matter of months; there’s a huge range And that likely means different kinds of ALS, all of them horrible.

    As complex as the brain and nerves are, it makes some sense that constantly experiencing head trauma is something to be avoided.  A few years ago there was talk of forbidding heading the ball in US kids soccer, I don’t know if that’s still a thing.  Every time I see kids playing football, I cringe.

  252. 252.

    WaterGirl

    @Another Scott:

    Anything that illustrates the complexities of brain function is a good thing. There is not just one depression. There isn’t one schizophrenia. And my bet is that there is not one ALS either.

    Interesting.

  253. 253.

    Betty Cracker

    @Doc Sardonic: I don’t know anything about Jerry Demings, except that he had the good sense to marry Val Demings. One advantage both Demings have as Florida politicians: no one can credibly paint either as anti-cop since both WERE cops.

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