Readership capture:
Pants pass: Fans of newspaper comics will instantly notice something missing in many of the strips this Friday — pants. More than 25 cartoonists are celebrating No Pants Day in a way that helps charities get clothing to those in need. https://t.co/NHd9SfXkM3 #odd
— AP Oddities (@AP_Oddities) May 5, 2021
I’ll admit, none of my daily GoComic strips seem to have been involved, unless today’s Arlo & Janis is a subtle reference. (Yes, it *is* funny, but only if you’ve been in a multi-decade relationship.) Still, good cause, and you’ll be cleaning out your closets for post-pandemic summer anyways:
… Participating artists are drawing their characters without trousers and urging readers to donate clothing to thrift and second-hand stores hard-hit by COVID-19…
No Pants Day, held on the first Friday in May, is believed to have been started by a group of students at the University of Texas who thought leaving the pants at home on the first Friday in May would be a fun way to end the semester. A winter spin-off was created called No Pants Subway Ride.
Comics creators have noticed that the COVID-19 pandemic has affected people’s ability to get clothing and charities have not gotten as many donations as typical.
In a gracious move among comic strip distributors, King Features reached out to fellow syndicators Tribune Content Agency, Andrews McMeel Universal and Washington Post Writers Group to pull off Friday’s event…
Elsewhere…
55% of Americans approve of the U.S. president, according to Reuters/Ipsos polling. The public was especially appreciative of Biden’s handling of the nation’s response to the pandemic and the moves he has made so far to grow the economy https://t.co/kDUwqLErrL via @allyjlevine pic.twitter.com/EIJlU4goLN
— Reuters (@Reuters) May 6, 2021
A Las Vegas special education teacher known as Ms. Earth for building a community garden is the newly named National Teacher of the Year. First lady Jill Biden congratulated Juliana Urtubey during a surprise visit to her classroom. https://t.co/Yl0bRhYl8I
— The Associated Press (@AP) May 7, 2021
well, for one thing, there are millions of Americans who pray but don't believe in a single God. https://t.co/ip66yMSqnF
— James Palmer (@BeijingPalmer) May 6, 2021
?? We’re so happy! We love being reunited, living here at the White House, with our pawsome parents! We spend lots of time with our mom @FLOTUS, getting snuggles and extra nom noms. We’re now working on a welcoming strategy for the new kitty sibling. So excited to meet her! pic.twitter.com/8pzo1P4vlW
— The Oval Pawffice® ???? DOTUS Fans (@TheOvalPawffice) May 6, 2021
raven
yo
debbie
Brody’s an ass.
Baud
No pants day?!
The world is coming up Baud!
OzarkHillbilly
Wyoming stands up for coal with threat to sue states that refuse to buy it
Yeah, that will go far. Burning $1.2 million dollars in lawsuits that don’t have a chance of succeeding. Only a Republican would think the courts would let them force other people into buying what they are selling. Whad’ya wanna bet they don’t sue CA? The world’s 6th largest economy would squash them like bugs.
The stupid, it hurts.
Baud
The bigger issue is why is there a National Day of Prayer?
mrmoshpotato
@Baud: Nice old Simpsons reference.
OzarkHillbilly
@Baud: Christians.
mrmoshpotato
@OzarkHillbilly: LOL Alright, throw out WY and who else so no new flags are needed when DC and PR get statehood?
What a bunch of boneheads.
Baud
When I’m president, the National Day of Prayer proclamation will invoke all the gods.
I’m sure that will make everyone happy.
Baud
@OzarkHillbilly:
I did not know this.
mrmoshpotato
@Baud:
You’ve already pissed off the Satanists.
MagdaInBlack
@OzarkHillbilly: What the ……?? I can’t even.
Free markets for me but not for thee.
SFAW
@OzarkHillbilly:
” ‘Free enterprise’ means I am free to sell whatever polluting products I produce, and free to force you to buy them.”
Yet another piece of evidence that there is no such thing as a Just God. Because if there were, WY would be a smoking hole
ETA: And Magda said it better than I
Just One More Canuck
@OzarkHillbilly: why do conservatives hate the free market?
Baud
germy
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2021/05/tish-james-wants-in-on-jacob-wohl-election-robocall-suit.html
Good news.
SFAW
@Baud:
And yet you still expect us to vote for you in
201620202024?Baud
@SFAW:
I don’t expect to win Wyoming.
debbie
@OzarkHillbilly:
This whole trend of suing other states because you don’t like what they’re doing is just beyond belief. Can I sue those states for suing other states?
germy
https://dailygazette.com/2021/05/06/hospital-staff-vaccination-rates-vary-across-capital-region-mohawk-valley/
Hospital staff COVID vaccination rates range from 66% to 99% in the Capital Region and Mohawk Valley, underscoring the erratic nature of the population’s willingness to receive the vaccine.
As of April 27, the Capital Region stats are:
The Mohawk Valley stats are:
I don’t why hospital staff vaccination rates aren’t 100%.
OzarkHillbilly
@Baud:Yeah, back in the late ’70s I moved out there with the intention of getting work at the mines. The economy was booming and money was flowing like water but I was just a couple years out of HS and the best I could manage was a job on a ranch paying barely above minimum wage. By the end of summer my savings were all but gone and the writing was in the snow that was falling ever more frequently, so I came back to STL.
I had a hell of a time that summer tho, lucky to have lived it.
AxelFoley
@Baud:
You are the great and powerful Baud. You should expect to win Wyoming.
Immanentize
@OzarkHillbilly: The dormant Commerce Clause will make short work of that crap.
Idjits.
Next up, Sally Fields sues the Academy for not liking her quite enough, thank you.
Immanentize
@debbie: Anti-SLAPP suits?
rikyrah
Good Morning Everyone ???
Baud
@AxelFoley:
I can always claim to have won Wyoming even if I lose it. Republicans are on board with that.
Baud
@rikyrah:
Good morning.
OzarkHillbilly
A feel good story to start your Friday with: How a majority Black school in Detroit shook up the world of lacrosse
debbie
@Immanentize:
Had to look that up. Klutzy acronym, but yeah, and also financial consequences as a deterrence.
germy
Tish James wants to fine them $500 for each call. That would mean a penalty of hundreds of thousands of dollars.
debbie
@germy:
Cyber-redlining!
germy
@debbie:
This is what they said in their robo call:
“Hi, this is Tamika Taylor from Project 1599, the civil rights organization founded by Jack Burman and Jacob Wohl. Mail-in voting sounds great, but did you know that if you vote by mail, your personal information will be part of a public database that will be used by police departments to track down old warrants and be used by credit card companies to collect outstanding debts? The CDC is even pushing to use records for mail-in voting to track people for mandatory vaccines. Don’t be finessed into giving your private information to the man, stay home safe and beware of vote by mail.”
Baud
@germy:
They gave their real names!
debbie
@germy:
I’m almost afraid to ask what 1599 stands for.
germy
@Baud:
“Tamika Taylor” was a nice touch, though.
germy
@debbie:
Maybe Jacob’s favorite sexual position.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@OzarkHillbilly: Good for Cass Tech. When I lived in Detroit, Cass was a magnet high school. You had to compete to get in. Sounds like they’re still rocking it.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@germy: They couldn’t remember 1619?
germy
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
No, they remembered. They’re just doing a parody. They think they’re funny and they think people of color are stupid.
OzarkHillbilly
@Dorothy A. Winsor: It is still a magnet school.
Ken
Some will be a little Thor.
Ken
@SFAW: Baud will surround himself with people who know all that. He’ll focus on the big picture.
Baud
@Ken:
https://youtu.be/uK3YJxSQ-gI
Ramalama
@OzarkHillbilly: As a person who worked plenty of retail, I had this drilled into me: The customer is always right.
Later, working jobs not in retail, I’d read that my political proclivities interfered with the market speaking, as in ‘the market has spoken.’
Sounds like people are taking their coal dollars elsewhere.
What to do, Reprobates?
Kay
They’re going to get much worse after the next cycle because (the few) Trump-neutrals or never-Trumpers will be culled from the ranks.
They’ll get more obedient to Trump, not less and much further Right. The expulsion of the dissenters has already started.
They had a majority who voted to overturn an election last time- next time it will be unanimous.
Another lurch Right DOES, though, probably help Democrats in Senate races because they aren’t going to be able to contain this and limit it to just House races.
OzarkHillbilly
@Ramalama: You want to know the funniest part of this idiocy? Wyoming has plenty of wind it can sell.
FTR, I don’t mean farts. They have plenty of them too but the market is a little soft for them.
germy
Capitalism! What’s not to love?
RSA
Another thing: the proclamation does mention God in two places, in John Lewis’s reference to “the divine” and at the end where it has all this happening “in the year of our Lord…”
I mean, when your religion is so baked into the culture that you talk about can dates with reference to your deity, I don’t think you have room to complain that “God” is going without mention.
lowtechcyclist
I guess CBN’s David Brody’s God is perfectly OK with cops killing Black people for little if any reason, and would rather us not do anything to avert a global ecological catastrophe.
His God is a first-class asshole. But like they say, men make gods in their own image.
germy
@Kay:
My local NBC affiliate did a story on Stephanik. The reporter is a 20-something woman, new at the station, who always wants to cover both sides. At the end of her report she says “We reached out to Stephanik’s office for comment, but didn’t receive a reply.”
I wanted to yell at my TV “That’s because she was too busy being interviewed by Seb Gorka and Steve Bannon to talk to you!”
Stephanik ignores local reporters while favoring the national RW news outlets. That shows how interested she really is in her constituents here.
OzarkHillbilly
That is also the only reference to god in our Constitution, a fact the Christianists cling to with all the desperation of a drowning man, as proof of the US being a Christian nation. Pretty safe to say is well aware of that.
Uncle Cosmo
@germy: They oughta force those slimy fuckers to pay the fines by selling off their own organs. Excluding any with redundant backups (lungs, kidneys, etc.)…I imagine “Ass” Wohl’s brain would fetch a pretty penny, since it’s never been used…
martha
On the irritating topic of “why don’t you just get over it and stop wearing masks, everything is fine”—I’ll tell you why. Husband and I are fully vaccinated. We had shutters installed yesterday in the house. The installer saw that we both had masks on when I answered the door. He made some comment like “I guess you want me to wear a mask” and put one on too.
Nice guy (mid 40s), did a great job. About three-fourths of the way through, the topic of current events came up. You guessed it, he’s an anti-vaxxer! Argh!!!! On the other hand, he’s worried because he knows two younger people who have died. I tried my best low key encouragement to consider making an exception to his beliefs in this instance.
yes, I feel like I should fumigate the house. (The shutters look great.)
Ken
@Uncle Cosmo:
“Abby something….”
“Abby who?”
“Abby… Normal. Yes that’s it, Abby Normal.”
OzarkHillbilly
@Uncle Cosmo: Who’d want an atrophied brain?
Ramalama
@OzarkHillbilly: I actually don’t know anything about Wyoming other than a very good writer named Alexandra Fuller lives there. I keep meaning to read up on it. Why is no one buying Wyoming’s wind?
zhena gogolia
This is hilarious — be sure to read all the way to the end for a dynamite pun.
germy
I want an itemized list of what Jamie did with his trump tax cuts first.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@germy:
Maven of Finance isn’t very smart. There is certainly such a list every year – it’s called “The Budget”, and he gets to vote for the people who propose it and approve it.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@germy: At every “town” meeting in my building, this one guy stands up and demands to see the financials for the company. Last time the owner finally got tired of hearing it and told him it was a private company and he was never going to see them so stop asking.
Diamond is sort of like that. He thinks he’s in charge.
J R in WV
@Baud:
It’s called the Power River Basin, and the coal seams are over 100 feet thick, and near the surface. So just scrape it up, dump it into RR cars, and unit-train it to power plants. Problem is it is high-sulfur coal, useless for steel, and terrible for the environment, both where mined AND where burnt.
But cheap to mine.
Soprano2
@OzarkHillbilly: Good Lord, I thought Republicans believed in the power of the free market. I guess like a lot of their other beliefs that’s only when it’s convenient for them. I cannot believe they think this has a whisper of a chance of succeeding. I guess that tells you how much taxpayer money they have to just light on fire – $1.2 million.
lowtechcyclist
Wouldn’t surprise me if they’ve outlawed windmills.
germy
It’s not going well for one of the Jan. 6 insurrectionists:
Baud
@martha:
You should have told him how much easier installing shutters is with a prehensile tail.
OzarkHillbilly
@Ramalama: It is still in the early stages of development there, probably due to a lack of infrastructure and a heaping dose of NIMBY. I am sympathetic to the NIMBY as it is a beautiful state and even the shortgrass prairie and deserts have a stark beauty to them. I am out of touch with their politics these days but I suspect there is more than a little ‘old man shaking his fists at the clouds’ resistance to change, not to mention the sunk costs of investment into coal development.
Baud
@germy:
John Kerry was a vet, asshole. You all still mocked him.
danielx
@Baud:
It had to happen sooner or later.
Ramalama
@lowtechcyclist: What if they rebranded windmills by calling them WindNuts instead, I’d bet there’d be plenty of people willing to purchase wind energy to own the libs.
“For each (collective noun) of WindNut energy, you’ll also receive your very own bumper sticker or fridge magnet that proudly proclaims that you, too, are a WindNut.”
martha
@Baud: And how that tail would really get in the way of his skiing…
Baud
@lowtechcyclist:
OzarkHillbilly
@J R in WV: the Powder River basin and it’s actually low sulfur coal:
Kay
@germy:
I thought the most corrosive and damaging part of Trump was the lying. It’s just this profound and huge thing to accept that as a norm- constant, self-interested dishonesty. There’s no real difference between Cheney and Stephanik ideologically- Stepanik was a Paul Ryan Republican – the one and only difference is Stephanik is a better and more shameless liar.
They’re selecting for worse people. Education isn’t the defining characteristic- some of the most successful Trump liars have very expensive educations. Geography? No. A lot of them come from the northeast, not the south or midwest. The requirement is that they be bad people– liars, thieves, sex offenders. The bottom of the barrel ethically.
Trump isn’t an IQ test. He’s a character test. She failed the character test so she gets promoted.
Jeffro
@germy: Jamelle Bouie has a tweet or two up about how it’s time to take half of Dimon’s money and light it on fire, just to remind him that we live in a society. Couldn’t agree more.
We decide, Mr. Dimon. We, not you.
Baud
@Kay:
Education appears to make a statistical difference among voters. People think that should translate to office holders, but that’s false, as you point out.
Jeffro
Sad but spot-on, spot-on.
Soprano2
@Kay: People may not like Rick Wilson for a lot of reasons, but his assertion that everything Trump touches dies isn’t an incorrect one. He’s in the process of killing the Republican Party. I know it’s not disappearing, but the party that used to be is functionally dead. ITA with you about the lying, it was corrosive and promoted the idea that it was OK to lie about things if it was advantageous to you, and that instead of admitting it’s a lie when confronted you just double down and yell “fake news”. I’ve got conservative friends on FB now who will say “fake news” any time I point out something they’ve posted isn’t true. It’s their go-to now whenever you challenge them about anything. I’ve told some of them that they can’t just yell “fake news” any time they don’t like something! It’s why there’s such widespread acceptance on that side of The Big Lie about the election. Before, something like that never could have taken hold.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@lowtechcyclist:
David Brody’s God can be summed up in a neat little list:
1. We’re all sinners and any of our sins is enough to send us to hell.
2. For some unspoken reasons, there had to be some sacrifice provided to God in order to get It to think about pardoning transgressions.
3. In God’s mind, a good idea to address this weird need for a sacrifice was provide a chunk of itself in a really rapey way to a teenaged girl with a fool of a fiancé, and that chunk of itself would talk to people for a while.
4. The sacrifice would be accomplished by people executing the chunk of itself. Then, completely ignoring the whole meaning and intent of the word “sacrifice”, It resurrected the chunk of itself after about a day and a half. Belief in and acceptance of this weird act as a sacrifice and acknowledgment of the chunk of God as God (which was really just an ugly weekend) would then be required for acceptance of the intact soul into paradise everafter after the death of the human body.
5. For the committed Christian, being a sinner, any future sins are prospectively forgiven so long as you bleat the words of belief and pretend you’ll do better. For the victims of the sins of committed Christians, God will provide comfort and relief in the afterlife (provided, of course, that the victim is also Christian), as the committed Christian has no real requirement to mitigate the consequences of his actions. When you hear about cheap grace and blessed assurance, these are the most heinous of Christian doctrines, that allow awful things to be done without recompense or reparation.
Kay
@Baud:
IMO, one of the best things Biden has done is draw a distinction between voters and electeds. It’s so simple but it works logically on so many levels and it’s very tough to argue against.
They’re doing it with Republicans who are bragging to constituents about the rescue packages. They’re pointing to that as another example of GOP reps opposing things their constituents support. I don’t know what I would do with it if I were the opposition. No one seems to know how to answer it effectively.
Baud
@Kay:
I think it’s also important to recognize the millions of us who passed that test. We need a little self-affirmation to help motivate our people to keep going.
Jeffro
Yes. These are people who most ardently believe in the Gingrichian, trumpian world view – the most Randian, religious, racist, and personally corrupt nuts available.
Baud
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
Chunky Jesus? Interesting concept.
I think your last point is more Protestant theology than Catholic.
Dorothy A. Winsor
I’m still thinking about Jamie Diamond. Biden’s proposal to tax the rich to pay for his programs is MORE popular than the programs themselves. Diamond and his ilk might want to think about the hostility that suggests and reconsider be assholes in public
Baud
@Kay:
Yeah, he’s doing as good a job as can be expected of turning voter cynicism against the GOP.
Kay
@Soprano2:
Stepanik released statements, from her office, during and after the insurrection making wild claims- that 1/4 of Georgia’s votes were fraudulent. There were numbers in the claim.
I mean, once you start doing that there’s no boundary to it. She is not operating under ordinary, lowest level “norms” for truth-telling. Those rules no longer apply to them.
The sort of societal punishment for lying is you lose credibility- that no longer happens in that Party. Instead they gain credibility and get promoted. They have a whole new set of ethics norms. Much lower than what was the “ordinary people” standard.
Geminid
@OzarkHillbilly: Wyoming is also a long way from electricity consumers. Nebraska and western Iowa are closer, but even their wind generation companies have problems getting new transmission lines approved. One solution: Siemans Industries is partnering with wind producers to run a line underground from western Iowa to Illinois, largely along a railroad right-of-way. This will cost more than overhead lines, but is well on it’s way to approval, while a proposed overhead line to it’s south is bogged down in the permitting process. It would pass through Missouri.
Siemans has been developing and constructing underground transmission lines in Germany for some years now. These lines connect the windy Baltic coast with population centers to the south.
prostratedragon
Big music birthdays today (and also the brother Little J—):
Jeffro
Btw I see that Brooksie is upset, UPSET!, that “we” have failed our marshmallow test as a society and as a result won’t be reaching herd immunity against Covid-19.
Hmm. “We”. Wasn’t there one party a while back that said “government was the problem” and then proceeded to turn its base stark raving nuts over the next few decades? To the point where pure tribal signaling took over their little lizard brains and they wouldn’t wear masks (and now won’t get vaccinated)?
trumpov could get tens of millions vaccinated in a weekend if he recommended it on his new Fisher Price kiddie blog.
Another Scott
In other news, ScienceMag – Direct observation of deterministic macroscopic entanglement.
Whaaaatt??!! Quantum means very, very small. How can it be observed in coupled mechanical drumheads??!!!
Macroscopic here means 70 picograms. Teeny-tiny but astronomically large for quantum systems.
Those NIST folks in Boulder are very, very clever.
Cheers,
Scott.
J R in WV
@OzarkHillbilly:
OK, you got me. I misremembered lower BTU for higher SO2… You need more coal for the same energy, not sure how that works out, additional SO2 from the extra coal burned, but obviously not higher sulfur.
Darn, I hate to look/be dumb in front of my friends! Thanks for the correction and extra data!!!
Baud
@Jeffro:
As I noted yesterday, the media is itching to call Biden a failure for not persuading GOP voters to act responsibly.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Baud: Protestants say the ugly parts aloud. Right wing Catholics go through the motions but then don’t do anything of substance to ameliorate the consequences of their wrongs.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Another Scott:
Not wading in to that rabbit hole – it gives me a headache.
Baud
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
I don’t interact with enough religious people to opine on their actual behavior. Theologically speaking, however, I don’t believe Catholic dogma says that you automatically go to heaven if you believe in Jesus.
Soprano2
Ok, today’s jobs report seems super-weird to me. I guess it highlights just how uneven everything is right now. In my city, I’d say at least 50% or more of employers are looking for workers right now. Fed Ex posted “we’re hiring” signs at the WalMart exit! In my department, we have 4 or 5 vacancies we need to fill right now; these are decent jobs with benefits. The last unemployment # I saw for my county was 3.9%; I highly doubt it’s gotten bigger since February.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
No pants, about goddamn time!
Ken
@Another Scott: So. It begins.
Matt McIrvin
@Soprano2: I don’t think Trump is killing the Republican Party at all–he’s transforming it into the future ruling entity of an autogenocidal fascist autocracy. This is what it’s really been trying to be ever since the beginning of the modern conservative movement around 1964.
Matt McIrvin
@Soprano2: Expect this to be spun as a huge failure for Biden and a reason to slash unemployment benefits to starve those lazy asses back to work.
rp
@Jeffro: Has there ever been a better example of “what do you mean ‘we,’ kemosabe?”
satby
It is. The big division incited by Martin Luther was based on his 3 big ideas in direct contrast to the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church at the time:
The Catholic Church believes “faith without works” will not lead to salvation, while Protestants (and especially Evangelicals) believe that faith is the only salvation, and all transgressions are “forgiven” merely by belief. That’s why they bray about being “saved” while they merrily cheat, swindle, and lie continuously.*
* this may be a bit of a trigger for me.
Falling Diphthong
Breaking Cat News did a whole two week long series. Helpful background: Lupin is a white, deaf cat with an exuberant personality.
Start here: https://www.gocomics.com/breaking-cat-news/2021/04/26
Natasha and her stick are slaying me here.
Kay
@Matt McIrvin:
I hope the “anti-cancel culture” people are proud. They ended up with a whole set of state laws that prohibit speech and political assembly. Unfuckingbelievable. And it went bad so fast! They went from free speech warriors to policing public school teachers and forbidding discussion of racism like 20 minutes after all their substacks launched.
It’s the fastest boomerang I think I’ve ever seen in politics. Bam! Came back around and hit em right in the shins.
Uncle Cosmo
@zhena gogolia: I’ve been referring to “InsHannity” for awhile now.
Also to the difference between “hand sanitizer” and “Sean Hannitizer”: One makes your skin feel clean, the other makes you feel dirty the minute you hear its voice.
Kay
We’re going to have a really nice high school graduation – more and more of the vaccinated are coming- and it’s doubly nice because it’s a surprise. I had written it off for this kid- he got screwed out of everything else he enjoys about high school so I assumed he would miss this too, and thanks to the vaccine he’s not. I’m going to have a full house graduation weekend, which I love. I have to get the baby (another) dress for the big day.
prostratedragon
@satby: And not all Protestants, or at least not all modern ones.
Soprano2
I’m sure, but that’s not even logical – many fewer jobs were created than were forecast, and the unemployment rate went up, not down. However, I’m sure they’ll figure out a way to spin it like that.
Kay
@Matt McIrvin:
I think it’s good for Biden. He’s approached this whole thing like a rescue and this justifies the rescue. He’s never wavered from “folks need help”. The whole Right wing/media theme of lazy moochers relies on their belief that people are voluntarily unemployed. Biden never said any of that. He said the opposite- that “people are hurting and need help”.
Kay
@Matt McIrvin:
Both the “lazy moochers” and “the people are hurting” political message are questionable, I don’t think they know what’s going on with the economy, but low job numbers back up Biden’s message, not the lazy moocher theme.
Soprano2
In spite of the unemployment numbers announced today I still fully expect other conservative governors to follow Montana and South Carolina in refusing the extra unemployment benefits with the justification that it’s the only way to get people to go back to work, evidence be damned. I find myself wondering what they’re going to say when a whole bunch of people don’t suddenly start flooding the job market begging for work.
Jerry
I clicked on the GoComics link, saw that there was a Ted Rall comic, remembered that I hadn’t read one of his in years ‘n years, clicked on it, read it, and wondered if I *ever* thought he was funny
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@satby: Hence all those moronic “I’m a Sinner, but Saved” bumper stickers.
Geminid
@satby: I occasionally listen to a Christian radio station near me. I sometimes hear some funny stuff. But one time I was taken aback by what one Baptist-type preacher said. He’d been talking about the transformative effects of whole-heartedly accepting Jesus as lord and saviour. “You might still sin,” he said. “But you won’t be a Sinner who sins, you will be a Saint who sins.” An especially pernicious doctrine.
Barbara
@OzarkHillbilly: Wyoming is fast becoming a leader in wind generation because it has lots of wind and lots of empty space. Instead of actually doing something to generate useful economic activity, apparently, the state has adopted the kind of strategy that fringe groups everywhere do, which is performative outrage. I guess you can call Wyoming the Phelps family for coal — showing up to protest at states laying it to rest.
The Moar You Know
Had no idea. Ran a few years worth of clothes that no longer fit down to Salvation Army day before yesterday. Probably about 20 pairs of pants in there.
Barbara
@Soprano2: I read that Montana has a 3.8% unemployment rate. I would like to know how many people are actually receiving unemployment since that number is awfully close to what used to be considered full employment.
Matt McIrvin
@germy: I’m heartened that the numbers are even as high as they are. My impression is that the reasons healthcare workers give for not wanting the vaccines are pretty much the same as for the rest of us. Not all of them are necessarily the brightest bulbs and alt-med sentiments are more common among them than you’d think.
In most places, they were among the first people to be eligible for the vaccines, and I think there was a lot of reluctance to be first–they got the “guinea pig” anxiety to a greater extent because they didn’t know anyone who’d been vaccinated already. For some that anxiety may have been sticky.
Robert Sneddon
@Geminid: Transmission systems to deliver stranded electricity generation to consumers cost a lot and don’t add to the actual amount of electricity being generated, they’re an extra cost. The Germans are working on a large-scale transmission system that will cost about a hundred billion Euros by the time it’s finished and that investment will generate zero electricity, just move it around.
Big transmission lines cost a lot and if they’re delivering variable amounts of electricity such as wind they have to be scaled over-capacity to cope with the days when renewables production is high but their average load will be a lot less than that making them less economic.
The infrastructure to ship coal by diesel-powered trains is already in place in America, delivering thousands of tonnes of low-cost mid-Western coal every day to power stations like Labadie in Missouri where it’s turned into electricity for local consumption in places where people live. China is in the same situation, most people live near the coast but the big Mongolian coal mines are thousands of miles from the generating stations that provide the power the urban populations need. They are mostly using electrically-powered trains and not diesels though.
The Moar You Know
@Matt McIrvin: you have noticed this too. Suicide cult behavior writ large, across entire societies. All sharing the label “far right”, which is a stated set of beliefs that only partially encompass what they really want to do.
They aren’t just trying to kill the rubes off, even those nominatively in charge are trying to do themselves in as well. Very end-stage Third Reich behavior; kill everyone and pull down all the works.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
Good long-read on Wyoming and wind power:
https://www.wired.com/story/wyoming-confronts-wind-powered-destiny/
One of our local, Denver, billionaires is building a private wind farm that will sell to utilities and private consumers.
WY actually taxed windmills which seriously dampened construction over the last 8 years. But the article says what was pointed out above: it’s as much about transmission lines as it is local, RWNJ politics.
Soprano2
@Barbara: Google says there are about 25,000 people in MT filing for unemployment. One thing people don’t think about is whether or not the people looking for work are the ones you want to hire, or if they have the skills your job requires. They act like people are interchangeable pegs that can be slotted into any hole you have.
Matt McIrvin
@The Moar You Know: Part of it is that “every man a hero” thing that Eco’s article on ur-fascism talked about–a weird valorization of death, or an idea that risking death even when it’s unnecessary is a sign of strength and courage. It can coexist with a basically fearful mentality, too–a fear of losing status.
L85NJGT
@Geminid:
Wyoming has AC transmission lines in place for coal plants that feed California and SW cities. HVDC transmission will scale so that if the idiots insist on going down with the coal ship, somewhere else will provide the power.
It’s “the feelz” about jobs and industries that drive the political behavior. Work roles are ingrained in self image. I believe the data suggests a higher rate of mortality in communities that lose their work, no matter how much retraining money, or new economic activity is occurring.
rp
@Jerry: Wow…Rall has turned into a full on Greenwaldian nut.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
That’s part of their cheesy “Well I turned my life over to Jesus so if He didn’t want me to I wouldn’t have (embezzled that money and used it to by crack and hookers)” argument.
Gin & Tonic
@mrmoshpotato:
We need to keep WY and every other state, then add DC, PR and USVI so that we can actually be “one nation, indivisible.”
Nicole
@Geminid:
And very erratically applied by these folk. It seems to me, if all it takes is a belief in Jesus as savior, they could lay off the stalking abortion clinics and harassing folks who are gay. I mean, if God is cool with their divorces and their lying and their cheating because they believe in Jesus, God should, applying the same logic, be cool with all the other things the Bible (according to them) says is bad, as long as women who get abortions and gay folk accept Jesus as savior.
It’s almost as if their idea of faith, in fact, more along the lines of demanding a Get Out of Jail Free card for themselves, and no one else.
TomatoQueen
SSA Commissioner has issued the annual top ten baby names just in time for no pants day, along with enumeration procedures:
Popular Baby Names (ssa.gov)
Barbara
@Robert Sneddon: Many coal plants are being closed. I do understand what you are saying, but in a certain light it can be viewed as a version of the fallacy of sunk costs, especially if you are disinclined to overlook the externalities of continuing to use coal.
mrmoshpotato
@debbie:
You damn well better! Or we’ll all sue you for not suing those states who are suing other states!
satby
We’re basically paying $14-15 for a job that only requires HS, because we train in the doctor’s office. And we’re having a hard time finding people in an area where the entry level jobs are $11-13. The unspoken, unacknowledged bar to employment here is that schools are on all sorts of wacky, hybrid, quarantined every other day schedules and someone needs to take care of the children. People can’t plan ahead, two of my workers have to park their kids in our (tiny, inhospitable) break area to do online schooling; it’s a mess. The people they think are just sitting at home scooping up unemployment have moved to Uber Eats gig-type employment, because they can make money while they drive around with their kids in the car with them. Plus, older people who could just left employment, often to take care of sick family members. Add in the estimates of about 900k actually dead in the pandemic, many of whom were workers, and the employment crunch makes sense. Not to mention the years of reduced immigration, too.
It’s not just about pay.
Barbara
@Nicole: I call this the one size fits all God, the God who is great when something good happens to me, inexplicable when something bad happens to me, and totally just when something bad happens to someone I don’t like. As if God exists to feed their narcissism.
Zinsky
I don’t know about you, but I am not looking forward to No Underpants Day!
OzarkHillbilly
Don’t worry, you’ll get used to it. I certainly did. Besides, better to look dumb in front of your friends who will laugh with you, as opposed to your enemies who will laugh at you.
JPL
@rp: He might be suffering from Foxitus. It apparently is contagious.
smith
Actually, their idea of faith is to set themselves up as a bunch of little tinpot Yawehs and start judging and smiting all over the place. It’s a deep blasphemy.
OzarkHillbilly
@Baud: IIRC, in Catholicism we all spend time in purgatory, it’s only a matter of for how long.
zhena gogolia
@TomatoQueen:
Wow, full speed ahead into the Victorian era (except for Mia and Harper).
Baud
@Nicole:
I believe they way they get around this logic is to require the person to “sincerely” accept Jesus. So if someone sins in the wrong way, it’s evidence that they didn’t really accept Jesus and were just mouthing the words.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@The Moar You Know: I’ve been thinking that for a while, the way the Right keeps on constantly amping up the fear among it’s followers it’s going to end in some kind of mass suicide because that’s the only escape for hard core wingnuts.
Anoniminous
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
“… it resurrected the chunk of itself after about a day and a half.”
Jesus gave up his weekend for you.
Zinsky
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: Good article, thanks!
At the last climate change rally I attended, I held a sign that read, “FOSSIL FUELS ARE NOT PRO-LIFE”. It truly caused some conservative’s heads to explode – I had several people yell idiotic, incomprehensible things at me, like “How would a liberal know anything about being pro-life??” The cognitive dissonance they experience from holding self-contradictory beliefs apparently manifests itself in outward rage towards people who do not agree with them, which is the textbook definition of psychopathy. That is why FoxNews watchers are so angry all the time.
Baud
@Anoniminous: Probably an excuse to get out of going to temple. “Oh, sorry, I’m going to be dead that weekend.”
zhena gogolia
YouTube used to be so great and now it sucks.
rp
@JPL: There’s something deeply weird about the obsessive need on both the right and far left to treat liberals and Democrats as history’s greatest monsters. I’m trying to come up with a historical parallel but can’t think of one.
Someone could write an interesting book about this. (or maybe they already have)
Chief Oshkosh
@Baud: As goes Wyoming, so goes the nation!
Better luck in 2028, loser.
Fair Economist
@satby:
I’m thinking about the effect of Long COVID. The (very rough) estimates I’ve seen are that 5-10% of symptomatic cases have serious Long COVID, and that’s going to be millions of people. Most of those are going to be severely limited in their ability to work, and it could make quite a dent in the economy.
Nicole
@Baud:
Heh. Heh heh heh heh heh. Maybe an absolute lack of self-awareness is a prerequisite for religious zealotry.
Although, I guess these folk aren’t even zealots; they’re just bigots looking for justification for their asshole behavior so they can still stand to look at themselves in a mirror.
satby
That would be correct.
Baud
@rp:
I think the old school European communists hated the social democrats and other “lefty” groups that were less hard core about revolutionary ideals. Before WWII, before parliamentary democracy became the international ideal, revolutionary factions preferred governance through institutions like workers councils rather than legislative bodies.
Others with a better grasp of history should feel free to correct me.
Nicole
@rp: If you look at both the right and the far left as having an interest in maintaining white patriarchy, it’s not so weird or unusual.
Baud
@Nicole: That certainly has been a factor in the U.S. But as I noted in the comment above yours, I think the dynamic has historically existed even in more homogenous societies.
Kay
Lower income young people are going for those online banks in a big way. We see more and more Chime and Ally. Traditional banks didn’t serve them, they were “unbanked” so traditional banks are going to lose a whole group of people. They won’t even be familiar with the concept of a “bank branch”.
Ramalama
@Zinsky: That’s a great sign.
Geminid
@Barbara: I was fortunate to make two trips west two winters ago. I jumped off from my Atlanta friend’s house, so I took I-20 all the way to Sweetwater TX. West Texas was full of windmills, on ridges above grazing cattle and oil wells. But there were just a few in eastern New Mexico, the windiest place I camped.
But that spring,the New Mexico legislature passed extensive clean power legislation, that ultimately will shut down the Four Corners coal generation plant. That has been in operation since the 1950’s, and is so big astronauts in Earth orbit could easily see the smoke plume. The Four Corners plant still will not close until 2031. I hope that date will be moved up.
Kristine
@Geminid:
Underground lines in the winter storm/tornado alley Midwest make perfect sense.
L85NJGT
@Barbara:
mrmoshpotato
@zhena gogolia:
Sorry? The algorithm gave me this one day. Also, searching for something that wasn’t on YouTube months ago lead me to this.
Also, cooking channels. Great googly moogly cooking channels.
Kristine
@satby:
It’s a trigger for me, too. I worked with someone who stated that it didn’t matter what he did in this life–he would be forgiven because he was a believer. One of the biggest jerks I ever worked with.
Reminds me a bit of the old Catholic tradition of selling indulgences. They were still available when I was in Catholic grade school in the mid-60s. The # of indulgences one needed to purchase varied according to the sin being expunged. It was like a big menu board.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
A friend of mine is a pastor and it always drove him nuts that some god mocking Atheists like me knew the Bible much better than most of his congregation. I gather most of the people who went to the church he was a pastor at just wanted to be told how awesome God thought they were and he ended up doing missionary work in Belgium (he has serious health problems so his first choice of South Sudan was right out) because he wanted to minster to people who were actually interested,
Robert Sneddon
@Barbara: The coal plants are being displaced by cheaper gas-fired plants, still CO2 emitting but more efficient so less CO2 per MWh of generation. It’s a lot easier to pipe gas around than transport coal which is in part why it’s taken over the the majority of America’s electricity generating capacity, at about 40%. Coal is really cheap though so it’s hanging on in there and it will be a major part of the US energy portfolio for at least another twenty years or more.
By the way that 40% gas electricity generation doesn’t include the gas used in domestic and industrial situations for home heating and process heat which adds a lot more to America’s over-the-top per-capita CO2 emissions. Not many homes use coal for heating any more.
Basically the 19th century was the Age of Coal, the 20th century was the Age of Oil and the 21st century is shaping up to be the Age of Gas. Fossil fuels forever.
germy
(Ambrose Bierce)
The Thin Black Duke
@zhena gogolia: Sturgeon’s Law.
germy
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@satby: It’s not quite that simple, traditional Protestants say the saved do moral things because it’s their nature. In the 70s the Evangelicals turned it into mass marketing basically, so those who are saved bought the product. Look at their big tenants “Don’t be gay” and “Don’t have an abortion”, there is a real sacrifice to a hetrosexual man.
germy
sdhays
@Chief Oshkosh: I’m sure that if we did an audit of Wyoming’s 2020 election results, we would find that Baud actually won. Especially if we use the methodology being applied in Arizona.
Maybe we can get some of those MyPillow dollars to look into it.
MattF
An item from the recent New Yorker article about Liz Cheney— that letter from former SecDefs warning Trump away from a military coup was her doing.
Miss Bianca
@rp: For a while there I was keeping my leftie friends in varying stages of sputter when they kept bringing up FDR and how we needed a new New Deal, etc etc, by telling them that back in FDR’s day, they would have been calling him the equivalent of a neoliberal sellout. The “Nature and Nurture both agree – everything is all the Democrats’ fault!” vibe is not unique to our times
ETA: I note that others have made a similar point.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Baud:
There were actually two Russian Revolutions – the first was Menshevik, which leveraged broad public opinion to oust Nicholas and govern via traditional legislative and executive functions, and the second was Bolshevik, which leveraged its smaller plurality to sabotage Menshevik governance via strikes and violence.
Ksmiami
@Soprano2: I’m thinking there’s a lot of lag in the system Rt now- college grads haven’t been hired yet etc and people are just starting to get comfortable with Re-engaging in the world. April is historically not a great hiring month but I think the ramp up from here on will be significant
L85NJGT
@Kay:
That’s why I’m leery of progressive hand waving the USPS into banking. They’re starting from the idea that there is some value in brick and mortar, vaults and passbook printers. That’s old people shit.
Anoniminous
@Fair Economist:
Study published in The Lancet back in January reported “6 months
after illness onset, 76% (1265 of 1655) of the patients reported at least one symptom that persisted, with fatigue or muscle weakness being the most frequently reported symptom (63%, 1038 of 1655)”
It’s an open question how many of these people will fully recover.
Ksmiami
@Anoniminous: I’ve heard tho that the vaccines are doing a good job ameliorating long Covid symptoms though
Baud
@L85NJGT:
Plenty of people still aren’t into electronic gizmos.
Baud
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
Yeah, I think one reason the German communists allied with her Nazis is that both parties wanted to end parliamentary democracy as the primary mode on governance.
Gin & Tonic
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
The irony, of course, being that “bolshe” is the root word for “larger” and “menshe” is the root word for “smaller.”
Joe Falco
No Pants Day means it’s time for the No Pants Dance!
https://youtu.be/gFNXlShMc9E
Uncle Cosmo
FTFY!
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Baud: so…. kind of a horseshoe thing that led to the triumph of evil? I can’t imagine that.
Nicole
@L85NJGT: I don’t know- judging from the waiting list for the computers at my public library branch (and the lines at the local post offices), I think there are a lot of people who would benefit from a low-cost banking option run by USPS.
Geminid
@Baud: After the Reichstag Fire, the Nazis outlawed the German Communist Party. But there were elections coming up- the last democratic parliamentary elections under Hitler- and the Nazis shrewdly left the Communist Party candidates on the ballot, to draw votes from the Socialst Party.
RepubAnon
@Baud: Isn’t every day No Pants Day with Covid?
Shouldn’t today be “pants day”?
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Gin & Tonic:
I always took those as describing the level of Marxism favored by each faction.
I don’t think it was ever going to be possible for the Mensheviks to prevail, given the hollowed out Russian state and the relative drought of managerial competence they inherited from Nicholas (who was really a genuinely shitty and incompetent Tsar). Mikhail was the only one in the family with any sense, but he had no choice but to punt.
Jeffro
Nope
Terminal bothsides disease
Baud
@Geminid: Nowadays they just pay the Greens.
Nora Lenderbee
Who even has pants any more?
Jeffro
@Kay: my credit union is seeing this, too. At least they have partnered with Zelle for payment-ish-stuff.
(the CU’s management is like, “we’re noticing that the average age of our members continues to go up and up” and I’m like, “have you ever heard about what happened to Howard Johnson’s?”)
Soprano2
@Ksmiami: I think that’s part of it too. I know the electronic music professor at our local college. I asked him how many kids didn’t move to campus this year, and he said “a bunch”. If they aren’t here, they can’t be hired for the jobs they’d usually fill.
Uncle Cosmo
Which was in fact the case at the Second Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (1903) …
**I.e., that sonofabitch Lenin kept hammering bolshe, bolseh, bolshe regardless, and it stuck.
(I often think that if I could go back in time & change one thing, it would be to derail that “sealed train” the Germans laid on to carry Lenin & the gang from Switzerland back to Russia in April 1917. Maybe send a British U-boat to torpedo the ferry it rode across the Baltic, then gun down any survivors.
(Other times I think nah, have a stray bullet put Ludendorff out of our collective misery as he was leading the storming of the Liege forts. Or better yet, sneak some ricin into Franz Josef’s evening tea & put the old guy out of his misery in mid-June 1914: Franz Ferdinand becomes Emperor, postpones the trip to Sarajevo, & if the next casus belli for a Great War could just be kept from rearing its ugly head for a few years more, Tsarist Russia might well have grown militarily strong enough that the Kaiser might end up flipping the table & wooing France & Britain for protection. Then I say naaah, go back to 1888 and cure the soon-to-be-Kaiser Friedrich’s throat cancer & let him run the Reich for another 20 years while his hotpot rag-armed Kronprinz stews in frustration. Then I say….)
NotMax
@Soprano2
Gosharoonie, automation really has made inroads.
;)
catclub
@SFAW:
There IS a supervolcano under Yellowstone. patience grasshopper.
Anoniminous
@Ksmiami:
Yup. VERY early studies are reporting 30-50% of people with long term Covid have been helped by receiving either the Moderna or Pfizer vaccine.
Why is a mystery ……….. AFAIK
catclub
@L85NJGT:
 
The USPS has an app/website that shows you what first class mail to expect today ( for many values of today). I think they could handle free online banking.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Uncle Cosmo:
If you want to have fun, ask an evangelical about the rationality of an omnipotent, omniscient deity who sets up a system wherein It derives benefit from the eternal torture of the souls of Its dead claymation playthings because said claymation playthings didn’t go along with Its passive-aggressive demonstration of might and psychotic demands for praise and worship.
Personally, I see Satan as the good guy in the whole arc of the storyline.
rp
@Baud: Yes, good point. I think the common denominator isn’t so much race/white supremacy as much as being anti-democratic/totalitarian.
Matt McIrvin
@rp:
Analogous things happened in both pre-Nazi Germany and revolutionary Russia. When you’re itching to bust heads you generally have contempt for liberals who want things to happen by Robert’s Rules of Order.
James E Powell
@zhena gogolia:
I love YouTube for the guitar tutorials.
prostratedragon
@zhena gogolia: Yeah, my somewhat quaint name is top ten for the first time ever. And, Harper is a nice-sounding name, but why is everyone using it?
Citizen Alan
@Soprano2:
Well there’s your mistake!
catclub
@Matt McIrvin:
In January a vaccine prize reward fund should have been started, Cash Reward for the first state to reach 70% vaccinated,
random prizes for vaccinated people once their state reaches 69-70% .
States could do the same thing for counties.
gvg
@L85NJGT: That is also poor people shit. Poor people with precarious income, don’t like relying on the internet which needs a connection, and a device that costs a lot which may also have income issues. I was shocked years ago when my doctor relative explained that their poor patients were always changing their phone number or doing without for a time because they didn’t have the money to pay their phone bills. Sometimes the solution was to just change carrier.
The poor have to pay fees to cash checks because they don’t have a bank account etc. The post office makes a lot of sense and wouldn’t be something new like an online bank. new fangled things aren’t trusted by the poor in my experience.
Basically, your young friends aren’t the same group as the ones the post office bank would help.
frosty
@mrmoshpotato: Put the Dakota Territory back together the way it should have been before the rural states packed the Senate. With the retrocession of Wyoming there’s your two stars on the flag!
satby
@L85NJGT: Um, also “underserved by internet, aka poor” communities. Check the parking lots of public libraries, which have made their internet available for online schooling in those places.
Edit: also what gvg said.
Just One More Canuck
@zhena gogolia: in the year my daughter was born, her name was #71 – now it’s top ten
Citizen Alan
@Miss Bianca:
Hell, I’ve been saying since 2016 that if Bernie had actually won the primary and been elected president, most of his hardcore supporters would turn on him and deride him as a neoliberal sellout within the first 100 days if not earlier. The complaints about how “Bernie sold us out” would probably begin with his first cabinet appointment that wasn’t a Socialist.
James E Powell
@gvg:
I was about to say the same thing. And one of the reasons the post office is a good choice is that the buildings are already there, in neighborhoods where there are no banks. Check cashing & payday loan stores are currently the neighborhood banks.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Uncle Cosmo:
My favorite fictional time trips:
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@frosty: I modestly propose the new state of Kanskakota, from the Canadian border south to the Texahoma state line. Missibama, Tennetucky, Monahoming….
Would make for a grand old flag….
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@James E Powell:
I use some of those, too. YouTube taught me how to fix my dishwasher, make some neat Greek dishes, some baking tips, how to tie a bow tie….
James E Powell
@TomatoQueen:
The Baby Name Wizard show how popular names were over the years. Happy to see my name – #1 in the 50s – back in the top ten.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Some of those antebellum flags had awesome patterns.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
witchcraft!
WhatsMyNym
@zhena gogolia:
It just seems to recommend more of what I’m already watching. You tag them “not interested” or give them the down thumb if it applies and YouTube seems to get the message. At least for me.
I don’t even get recommendations for the big, famous YouTubers anymore.
James E Powell
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
Youtube is my go to if I am trying to figure out how to do something.
But I failed to understand any of the bitcoin explanations.
And every programming tutorial.
Geminid
@Uncle Cosmo: When you reference the sealed train that brought Lenin back to Russia, I am reminded of Nina Turner’s bid to replace former Ohio Representative Marcia Fudge. A lot of lefties view the junior Senator from Vermont as a squish, more bark than bite. Nina Turner is the hard, uncompromising politician they want. If elected, Turner will do her best to break up first the Democratic Congressional Caucus, then the party as a whole. Leftists want power, and a unified Democratic Party stands in their way.
Representative Pramil Jayapaul (WA), chairman of the Houe Progressive Caucus, has endorsed Turner. Jayapaul should be careful what she wishes for.
WhatsMyNym
@James E Powell:
There aren’t any, it’s a scam.
Another Scott
@satby: Thanks.
Too many people forget, or never learned, that most parents will do whatever is necessary to provide for their kids and to survive. It makes no sense at all – it doesn’t even pass the laugh test – that vast numbers of people are sitting home collecting unemployment because they’re just lazy bums, and not because of other important considerations.
There’s a huge empathy gap in the GQP and in their enablers. That’s a political opening, if someone figures out a way to exploit it…
Cheers,
Scott.
Captain C
Isn’t every day No Pants Day?
artem1s
@OzarkHillbilly:
Only some dumbass con of a used car salesman would think up something so egregiously stupid and put it in the public sphere for everyone to see. So much for “let’s run our state government like I run my business”.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Geminid:
I haven’t followed that primary closely, but my vague impression was that she had, at least rhetorically, reverted back to her pre-summer of ’16 normie Dem persona for that race?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Looks like Turner has a 2-1 fund-raising advantage over Shontel Brown, her main primary challenger
germy
Off this thread topic of pants, but
Schenectady is doing something good for low-income residents:
Free trolley will connect three low-income neighborhoods to Schenectady Greenmarke
The Greenmarket sells all sorts of vegetables, dairy and meats from local farmers. It’s a great thing.
prostratedragon
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: string a Spanish guitar, install RAM, clean a humidifier or computer, do the jerusalema, …
Steve in the ATL
@Zinsky:
You didn’t say “literally”–I’m finally making a difference in the world! My message has been heard! Praise [deity of you choice, or no deity if you swing that way]!
sdhays
@catclub: We thought we already had that – it’s called “getting past the pandemic”. Unfortunately, too many people put a low value on that.
Gravenstone
@MattF: Given we learned that Ol’ Dick was the one who coordinated the other former Secretaries to write the letter, it really shouldn’t be surprising that his daughter was the one who keyed him into the trouble in the first place.
Geminid
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Turner is a chameleon. Just this summer, she headlined the inaugural meeting of the People’s Party, delivering a fiery speech about the utter worthlessness of the Democratic Party. Then Marcia Fudge’s seat opened up, and Turner the Wolf dressed up in sheep’s clothing.
cckids
Easiest thing is to combine the Dakotas. Hell, toss in Nebraska, call it Dabraska. Corn, wheat & cows. Tornados and great sunsets.
Bruce K in ATH-GR
@Baud:
IOKIYAR doesn’t apply to you, Baud. Insufficient debasement before El Caudillo de Mar-a-Lago, for starters.
:P
Another Scott
@Uncle Cosmo: You’ve obviously read Tolstoy! :-)
Cheers,
Scott.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@germy:
I never can see the word “trolley” without mentioning that one of my paternal great grandmothers got run over by one as she pushed one of my great great uncles out of its way in 1934. My great grandfather, her husband, was a fairly useless con artist who signed the boys into the army at his first opportunity.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Soprano2:
How does the unemployment rate going up not down not mean it’s a “failure”? I don’t think it is to be clear, but I’m not following your explanatio
Edit: NVM. I get it now. Fewer jobs were created
germy
germy
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
The most my great grandson will ever say about me is “He commented a lot on Balloon-juice back in the early 21st century.”
Kay
NOT to speak on behalf of poor people, but we ran into this in our public school. We, the financially secure, were all saying they didn’t have “computers and internet”, which was true (although 3 years ago we gave them all Chromebooks) but what they do have is phones and internet.
They really do. Almost all of them. Which is part of why the online banks are so popular. They’re doing all their banking on a phone.
So obviously they shouldn’t be doing their school work on a tiny phone screen, poke, poke, poke, fucking nightmare, hence the Chromebooks, but they can do everything else on a phone and they do. In that sense the “digital divide” between poor and not-poor is not wide at all.
Gravenstone
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: I always like to ask why we endure a finite mortal existence merely as set up for an infinite post-mortal existence, regardless of whether rewarded or punished for our actions in that finite increment of time. On a good day you can smell the smoke from the wheels turning in their pointed little heads.
Another Scott
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Hmmm… Quite the list there.
The article says the primary is August 3. That’s a **long** time away. Here’s hoping that the sensible, strongest, candidate will win.
Cheers,
Scott.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Jerry: He’s been doing cartoons since at lest GW and his art’s gotten worse, not better. Sounds like somethings wrong there.
Gravenstone
@WhatsMyNym: If you’re watching on a computer, you should be able to click the drop down and select “don’t recommend channel” as well. As long as you’re signed into YouTube at least.
WhatsMyNym
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
As in is most things economics/financial related, headlines don’t tell the full story. You actually have to go read the separate components that make the full report. AP via Seattle Times
WhatsMyNym
@Gravenstone: Thanks, I didn’t know that. I have been using Roku on the TV recently and they’ve changed it a couple of times.
artem1s
@OzarkHillbilly:
no the funniest part is they could be selling coal to the powerplants that would be making electricity for the manufacturers making the damn windmills, solar panels, and electric cars. How much of their coal are they exporting because the US doesn’t have any manufacturing or steel mills anymore? And it’s not like they are only mining coal.
And they won’t be mining coal or anything else either if they had to pay market rates for Federal subsidies they are getting and permits to pillage native lands.
SFAW
@catclub:
Well, if Terry Pratchett was correct about it, then I’m happy to let it stay dormant.
TomatoQueen
@zhena gogolia: And it’s not going to do them any good at all. Still, more euphonious than Rock or Lichen or Dustbunny or 123&456.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@germy:
Mine will say “he made a fantastic Manhattan, and his Martinis were on point despite their simplicity”.
Lobo
Wyoming: All the energy exec’s with ranches don’t want the wind turbines to block their view.
Brachiator
Wow. Late to another fun thread.
During the pandemic lockdown, every day is No Pants Day.
No Pants Allowed
Hoppie
@Ramalama: We ran our own business selling retail at shows and conventions. Our motto was “the customer you want to keep is always right”. And not too sure about the “always” part there, either.
zhena gogolia
I guess it’s No Posts Day.
John Cole
My time has come, people.
Gloomyjim
@zhena gogolia:
Um…left theirpost in their pants pockets?
Ksmiami
@Soprano2: plus with the extra federal financial support ppl are probably being more choosy about accepting jobs which often translates into a delay
Ksmiami
@John Cole: but based on your history of unfortunate yet surreal accidents, plus Steve, you if all people should wear pants for protection
catclub
@WhatsMyNym:
is someone with a million subscribers big or small?
I follow channels that size, (and smaller) but have never gotten any rec’s (that i remember) for anything extraneous, but big.
Ken
@Robert Sneddon: I was intrigued when I learned a couple of years ago (from Derek Lowe’s blog, of all places) that the production of ammonia by the Haber process uses around 2% of the total energy supply, and 5% of the natural gas. So natural gas isn’t going away any time soon.
The gas, by the way, is mostly used to produce hydrogen by the steam reformation process. Methane and water are combined at high temperatures, producing hydrogen and carbon monoxide. The monoxide is burned to carbon dioxide.
Ruckus
@Ramalama:
First, they aren’t selling it. Or using it. Their reasoning is “We have coal, damnit!”
Second, while I’m sure there are good people in WY, they have little in the way of resources, it snows a bit for a good part of the year, so solar is not as effective and while all that open space leaves room for a few windmills and they could export a lot of electricity, that’s not what they have done for a long time. And change is hard, especially if one stores their head up their ass and can’t actually see anything.
Third, the people with money and some jobs to fill own the coal. And that’s it. Of course coal fired electric generation plants are closing down because they are about the dirtiest way to make electricity. No one wants that crap any more and the market shrinks daily. But they are going to sell that coal, if they have to sue you to take it.
Geminid
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: The Ohio race will have no runoff. With good financing and fervent support from her supporters, Turner can win a plurality among a field of five or six. I am hoping that Shontel Brown can get some separation from the others, and make it a two person race. I suspect that the spending on this special election will set a record for Ohio primaries.
Another Scott
Nancy LeTourneau at Horizons – Psaki and Both Siderism:
A good read.
Cheers,
Scott.
Another Scott
AJC – Atlanta Mayor Bottoms not running for re-election.
Hmmm… Interesting.
She doesn’t outline her future plans here.
Cheers,
Scott.
Brachiator
@Kay:
What also added to the problem of phones and phone bills was if people lost their apartment or were evicted, they had to jump through hoops to restore phone service when they finally got a new place to live. Having cellphones, even if you don’t pay the bill for a while, makes it easier to maintain phone service.
But you still make a great point. There is a lot of cell phone use among lower income people. Phones are also likely to serve as their main computer.
There is still a digital divide when you consider the number of phones and other devices used by lower income people, and the phone plans available to them often have lower data caps or lack tethering so there is less ability to connect the phone to a chromebook or laptop.
StringOnAStick
WY does have some wind farms, we drove past some massive installations last fall. There’s apparently been some technology improvements because when winds get especially high, there’s the potential for damage to the blades and turbines; this is a big area for research. NREL’s wind research facility was sited between Boulder and Golden, CO decades ago because of the known windiness in that area, though it’s often very gusty to the point where the turbines are decoupled and the blames left to free rotate to avoid turbine damage. Your best site for wind production is steady winds without the hurricane level speeds that happen several times a year there.
Something I wonder about given its WY and high paying mining jobs are shrinking and guns are huge there, is gunshot damage to these expensive windmills, either now or most likely in the future. Tuckems will no doubt suggest this approach at some point.
Brachiator
@satby:
Some really great examples of factors that affect employment coming out of the pandemic.
Here is Southern California, a lot of actors and musicians would work at restaurants to supplement their earning. But when the lock downs happened, their primary jobs disappeared, so a lot of these people moved out of the region, or took other jobs are so simply are no longer part of the pool of potential restaurant workers.
Older people, even those who have been fully vaccinated, are sometimes reluctant to return to jobs or take jobs in work environments that may not be safe anymore.
James E Powell
@Geminid:
I wonder how much impact money will have on a special election. It’s a turnout race & Brown is an elected official, presumably with organization at the precinct level.
Brachiator
@Another Scott:
A lot of Balloon Juice commenters and liberal activists are adamant about “fuck the GOP” and “Biden needs to stop trying to reach out to these people! It will never work!”
Part of this just seems to be Biden’s thing. It is part of his nature to exude some optimistic hope of reaching some bipartisan agreements. But despite people who gnash their teeth and rend their garments over Biden’s statements, he does not let the Republicans get in the way of his plans.
And a good politician knows that it never hurts to reach out. In the real political world, sometimes an bitter opponent still needs to make a deal to get something done for his constituents.
And the biggest thing still may be that the average citizen does not keep up with who does what in Washington. They simply expect shit to get done. And sadly, a lot of average people seem to believe that political gridlock is the fault of both sides. And it gets absolutely crazy when they refuse to give Democrats for trying, but that is also part of the political reality.
Jerry
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: For sure. I remember seeing his cartoons in places like free weekly independent newspapers during the Clinton administrations. I just honestly cannot remember if any of them ever made me laugh, or hell, even chuckle. Today’s cartoon, though, is just outright bonkers.
Robert Sneddon
Actually it’s normal to stop the rotation and lock the blades of wind turbines in too-high winds otherwise the shaft bearings and gearbox will overspeed and damage themselves or even catch fire. The towers have to be rated for multiples of the maximum shock load expected from a tornado or similar derecho so they can usually take a constant side-load from stopped blades in very strong or gusty winds.
Another Scott
@Brachiator: Not only that, but ambitious people do switch parties when they see an advantage in doing so. As closely divided as many governments are these days, holding the door open for the not-totally-insane to join us is a good thing. While we’re also playing hard-nosed politics behind closed doors to weaken Moscow Mitch and the GQP leadership as much as possible…
Cheers,
Scott.
Geminid
@Brachiator: As a perceptive commenter pointed out early in this thread, Biden is speaking past Republican elected officials to their voters. When Biden’s Covid relief package passed with no support from Congressional Republicans, polling showed substantial support for this legislation among Republican voters, and majority support among independents. Politically, this is a very potent form of bipartisanship.
Brachiator
@Geminid:
Yep. Totally agree. Some of the Beltway press don’t get this, or ignore it. Especially the Fox News rogues. They keep asking “Why doesn’t Biden do more to compromise with the GOP leadership?”
As you note, the better solution is to craft policy that makes citizens happy.
not_a_cylon
I’m surprised this isn’t making the rounds yet.
Remember when FCC asked for public comment regarding net neutrality rules repeal in 2017? Turns out ISPs (surprise!) paid millions of dollars to various companies to provide public comments supporting their position. Except it turned into a griftathon, and they were instead provided with 8.5mil fake comments with real personal info attached to them. Some New Yorkers noticed, and their AG got involved.
https://ag.ny.gov/press-release/2021/attorney-general-james-issues-report-detailing-millions-fake-comments-revealing
Quick check of MSM shows only Fox News reporting on it :/
Brachiator
@Another Scott:
Yep. Good point. Unfortunately, I don’t think that too many Republicans are brave enough to make the leap.
Yep. And do Beltway reporters ever ask McConnell why he doesn’t do more to reach out to the Democrats?
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
No. They aren’t the type that would kill themselves. They are the kind that will violently attack others.
Ben Cisco
@James E Powell: Today I learned my name is of Scottish origin!
Origuy
@SFAW:
The Yellowstone supervolcano says, “Give me time.”
The Lodger
@Brachiator: I read the message as “There’s a new game in town and it’s up to the Republicans to get in it.”