Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

We need to vote them all out and restore sane Democratic government.

Sadly, media malpractice has become standard practice.

Sadly, there is no cure for stupid.

Give the craziest people you know everything they want and hope they don’t ask for more? Great plan.

Shut up, hissy kitty!

We can’t confuse what’s necessary to win elections with the policies that we want to implement when we do.

The cruelty is the point; the law be damned.

Damn right I heard that as a threat.

New McCarthy, same old McCarthyism.

People really shouldn’t expect the government to help after they watched the GOP drown it in a bathtub.

In my day, never was longer.

The press swings at every pitch, we don’t have to.

Fear or fury? The choice is ours.

If you thought you’d already seen people saying the stupidest things possible on the internet, prepare yourselves.

You come for women, you’re gonna get your ass kicked.

I am pretty sure these ‘journalists’ were not always such a bootlicking sycophants.

They are not red states to be hated; they are voter suppression states to be fixed.

Thanks to your bullshit, we are now under siege.

A norm that restrains only one side really is not a norm – it is a trap.

Radicalized white males who support Trump are pitching a tent in the abyss.

The real work of an opposition party is to oppose.

Republicans: “Abortion is murder but you can take a bus to get one.” Easy peasy.

… pundit janitors mopping up after the gop

Polls are now a reliable indicator of what corporate Republicans want us to think.

You are here: Home / Economics / C.R.E.A.M. / Tuesday Morning Open Thread: Counting Our Blessings

Tuesday Morning Open Thread: Counting Our Blessings

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I swear, a not insignificant portion of our pundit betters have convinced themselves that only the intransigence of some vague ‘fate’ is keeping us from living healthily on Chocolate-frosted Sugar Bombs with a favorite IPA for every meal.

Irregardless, this is good news:

Reader Interactions

146Comments

  3. 3.

    Spanky

    “But … but … inflation!”

    I’m going to go out on a limb here and guess that most of those higher wages are going to be spent! In our very own economy!

    Hope I didn’t cause too many real economists to get the vapors there.

  5. 5.

    RobertDSC-Mac Mini

    Today is an important day. Today, I give two weeks’ notice at the job I’ve had for 11 years. I found a job close to home that pays more than where I am now, so I’m happy.

    I will miss the relationships I’ve built over 11 years, but with almost everyone at my company working from home, the joy has been drained from the job. Now I’m on to new things and I’m looking forward to that.

  6. 6.

    OzarkHillbilly

    Ohio Court Sentences Black Woman to 18 Months in Prison the Day After Giving White Woman Probation for Same Crime

    While the above headline may seem incendiary, it is important not to draw false equivalencies because all criminal cases are not equal. For example, in this specific story, two women—one Black, one white—were convicted of the exact same crime. However, the two cases are not the same. One is worse than the other.
    ……………………..
    Neither judge could comment on their sentences but Cleveland activists immediately decried the disparity in the two sentences. The white woman committed more crimes, over a longer period of time. She stole more money than the Black woman. She had 21 more charges and cost taxpayers six times more money. She was facing 60 years in prison while the Black woman’s maximum sentence was three years. Yet the Black woman received more prison time than prosecutors wanted her to spend in jail.

    But CRT is a plague upon the land.

  8. 8.

    Bruce K in ATH-GR

    @Spanky: I suppose that it’s technically a word, though breaking it down, it seems to mean “lacking a lack of regard”, which is the exact opposite of how people use it – i.e. it’s technically an antonym, not a synonym, of “regardless”.

  11. 11.

    Betty Cracker

    The long-overdue wage reset has been an unexpected (by me, anyway) bright spot in the pestilential darkness. Even in my disreputable, alligator-infested Confederate backwater, low-wage workers are saying uh-uh, $15 and up or go pound sand.

    ETA: @RobertDSC-Mac Mini: Congrats!

  13. 13.

    hueyplong

    Total flashback to 7th grade era prohibitions on

    • misuse of “hopefully”
    • any use of “irregardless”
    • hitchhiking
  16. 16.

    Betty Cracker

    In other news, this fucker is trying to kill us:

    TALLAHASSEE (CBS Miami) – The Office of Gov. Ron DeSantis announced that the Florida Board of Education could withhold the salaries of superintendents and school board members who defy the governor’s executive order prohibiting mask mandates.

    He just keeps doubling down and doubling down.

  19. 19.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @zhena gogolia:

    Kind of a generalised diffuse “meh,” thank you. But nothing to worry about — I’ve been in this dim place before.

    I hope AL is just doing the troll. I know Merriam-Webster or OED or some “authority” okayed “irregardless” a year or so ago, but I viewed that as mere Trumpism Gone Wild.

  20. 20.

    Kay

    @Betty Cracker:

    It’s interesting. I hope people are studying it. Why do workers think wages went up? How has it changed their daily lives? If they went from 10 an hour to 15 they will go from 20k a year to 30k. That’s a big difference. How has the tight job market and their increased leverage changed how they think about work and their own value?

  21. 21.

    Dorothy A. Winsor

    @rikyrah: Yesterday, I talked to one of my neighbors who lives in Florida in the winter. She was horrified by DeSantis’s handling of covid. She said she “liked the way he governed” (gag!) but he’d just gone off the deep end on the virus.

    I hope she remembers the second part of that, rather than the first, if she votes in Florida.

  22. 22.

    hueyplong

    @Betty Cracker: Apparently, the Junior Trump playbook calls for  (1) never conceding anything and (2) always doubling down.

    Somebody on Twitter (can’t recall her name) said that DeSantis is flopping around now, trying to continue to look “tough” when he has no cards left to play.  She emphasized the word “could” in his threat to withhold salaries.

    [In the comments people were trying to figure out why FL school board members get paid any salary that could be withheld in the first place.]

  23. 23.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Betty Cracker:

    This is just grotesque. I had Morning Joe on earlier (I know, I know) and Mika was having one of her patented (but completely justified in this case) screeping* rants about this.

    *screeping = screaming + weeping

  24. 24.

    Betty Cracker

    @Dorothy A. Winsor: DeSantis fooled a lot of low-info voters at first by doing un-Republican things like hiking teacher salaries and enacting/funding conservation and environmental damage mitigation programs. But he’s gone totally off the deep end during the pandemic, as your friend noted. I think we’ll test the limits of the “heighten the contradictions” concept in 2022.

  26. 26.

    RSA

    @hueyplong:

    misuse of “hopefully”

    I remember reading somewhere that this, like many usage rules, is largely arbitrary.  Compare:

    “Hopefully, it won’t rain during our picnic.”
    “Happily, it didn’t rain during our picnic.”

    One of these gets all the hate, while the other just skates by.

  28. 28.

    hueyplong

    @RSA: That was in fact my go-to substitution, and you’re right, it’s is a literal parallel of the “hopefully” issue.

    Happily, I’m accustomed to the “hey, you’ve been an idiot all along” realization.

  30. 30.

    Anonymous At Work

    No one lives happily with IPAs, even their fans. Chocolate-frosted bomb cereal goes best with oatmeal stout, anyway; everyone knows that.

  31. 31.

    sab

    @rikyrah: Good morning, Thunder here, Ponyo the Pitbull is in hysterics. She will get over it and meanwhile the plants get watered.

    ETA NE Ohio.

  32. 32.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @raven:

    LOL. I doubt it, but that’s funny.

    How’s the new pup settling into her Forever Home?

    ETA: Couldn’t remember her name for the moment. Artemis/Artie, is that right?

  33. 33.

    Kay

    I hope liberals are able to study the pandemic economy and put out their analysis. It’s a big experiment in what a country with a more robust safety net and higher wages looks like.

    If elite conservatives are able to define it (bad “socialism”) without anyone looking into how the people most affected by it feel about it we’ll miss an opportunity.

    We got a peek at how bad the narrative can be when they all claimed workers were featherbedding on unemployment. None of that was true.

  36. 36.

    PST

    @SiubhanDuinne: I took a quick peek at Merriam-Webster’s online version out of curiosity. It cautions that “a definition is not an endorsement of a word’s use.” I can’t really blame them for defining it, since it has appeared frequently for many years. If I stumbled across “irregardless” for the first time I might want to make sure that it was a non-standard synonym and not an attempted negation. They’ve done the work and can assure me that those who use it really mean “regardless.”

  37. 37.

    Kay

    Just the stuident loan pause is a big, real world experiment. What did they do with the money they weren’t paying student loans with? How did it change things for them?

  38. 38.

    Jeffro

    @Betty Cracker: 

    He just keeps doubling down and doubling down

    reminds me of…hmm…someone who used to be in the news and on Twitter a lot…can’t quite recall…

    It’s literally all that they do.

  39. 39.

    germy

    In 1736 Benjamin Franklin's son died of smallpox before Franklin could get him inoculated. He had to publish a letter then to tamp down rumors that his son had died *from* the inoculation. Toward the end of his life he said he'd "long regretted bitterly" not inoculating his son. pic.twitter.com/OhNMsDWfvE

    — Jon Schwarz (@schwarz) August 9, 2021

  41. 41.

    germy

    Politico’s Robert Allbritton just emailed staff detailing his opposition to unionization,saying he hopes employees “will conclude after studying this question that a union is not in the publication’s interests, our reader’s interests, or in the interests of individual employees.” pic.twitter.com/9GpBQN7Uwu

    — Max Tani (@maxwelltani) August 6, 2021

    Robert Allbritton is the son of Joe Allbritton, who was good buddies with Augusto Pinochet and owned a bank that he used to hide and launder the money Pinochet stole from Chile. This is all part of the liberal media’s biased liberalism. https://t.co/mqzlVd7bNw

    — Jon Schwarz (@schwarz) August 9, 2021

  45. 45.

    Betty Cracker

    @Kay: There’s a piece in The Atlantic about Hakeem Jeffries, likely the next Dem speaker. I was heartened to read that he seems aware of our messaging problem:

    He thinks Democrats have failed repeatedly over the years, getting caught up in litigating details and nuances, too scared to assert themselves. He wants his party to speak in headlines—to learn from the Republicans, who have managed to win with ideas that consistently poll worse than theirs but are packaged better.

  46. 46.

    Nelle

    @Spanky: When i read about inflation fears, it is always Bout the price of food or fuel.  Never about the extrememly low interest rates for bank accounts or term deposits.  Of course, the banks want to use depositor’s money for next to nothing.

    We don’t have pensions and are financing retirement on savings.  While we guessed that the high rates of interest we got in the eighties (at one point, we snagged some T-bills at 20% interest!) wouldn’t last, we thought a 5% return wouldn’t be out of the question.

    When we lived in NZ, I paid $89 for 10 gallons of petrol and groceries were twice the cost as in the States.  Yes, they were NZ dollars but I was being paid in NZ dollars.  So many want everything cheap and spend money on so much crap.  Yep, judgemental.

    • What we didn’t spend money on was healthcare and prescriptions.  Maximum per household per year?  $200.

  48. 48.

    Dorothy A. Winsor

    Tangentially related to wrong words, I belong to two book clubs, one of which drives me crazy. Today we’re discussing Bel Canto, which the leader of the group persists in writing as Bel Condo.

  49. 49.

    germy

    @Nelle:  When we lived in NZ, I paid $89 for 10 gallons of petrol and groceries were twice the cost as in the States.

    Doesn’t NZ have a robust social safety net?  I wouldn’t mind paying extra for groceries if I knew I wouldn’t have to lose my house to qualify for a long term care stay after a stroke or other catastrophe.

  51. 51.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    Hate to drop the C word in a “counting your blessings” thread, but several weeks ago I posted that my wife had gotten a positive biopsy for breast cancer. We are now deep into the Cancer-Industrial Complex, talking to a dizzying array of specialists and trying to absorb gigabytes of info.

    In the “counting your blessings” category, all the indicators are good, it was caught early and it’s so small that the biopsy itself seems to have taken a significant portion of it.

    But we still are looking at the whole thing of surgery, radiation, and long term medication (not chemo). Just beginning that journey now.

  53. 53.

    Jeffro

    @germy: answering ‘yes’ or ‘no’ is, in a way, taking a side

    it’s also a minimum standard (or should be) for holding public office

  54. 54.

    burnspbesq

    @Betty Cracker:

    Good—as long as we remember that $15/hr. Is the starting point, not the end. Ain’t nowhere in this great land of ours that $15/hr. Even remotely resembles a living wage.

  56. 56.

    raven

    @SiubhanDuinne: Yes, we’re going mostly with Artie. She’s really good, she cowers just a tiny bit when I first come in a room but it’s brief. She met all the kids walking to school this morning and is good with them. It’s strange, she shows some signs of having been taken care of. She pops into the van and onto the couch (she a bit quick to jump to so we have to be carful about that). She seems to be nervous about different floor surfaces and room but I’m sure time will take care of that.

  57. 57.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

     thirty percent of the population is running from it like it was conjured by a witch.

    That’s because most of these people think witches; as in flying around of brooms, eat babies and cast spells that turn otherwise manly manful men gay, are true.

  58. 58.

    Nelle

    @germy: Yes, which is why I added tge bit about health care costs.  People aren’t struggling with financial issues over medical bills.  That’s huge.  And there is less of a barrier to entrepreneurship when you dont have to worry about finding an insurance policy.  I cant believd the time i have to waste, to say nothing about cost, dealing with insurance in this country.

  60. 60.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    I think to the majority of USians, “inflation” means, “holy, shit I just had to pay $3.50 a gallon!”

     

    I just heard an NPR interviewer ask Clyburn if Dems couldn’t be hurt by people wanting more focus on fighting Covid. Who exactly would be bringing that greater focus? and how?

  61. 61.

    Kay

    @Betty Cracker:

    What if we just said – “wages went up. That’s good for everyone”. We’re IN FAVOR of higher wages. Our main spokesperson, Joe Biden, isn’t actually required to add 15 qualifiers and explore the nuance. He has maybe 10 minutes a week of peoples attention. There’s thousands of people who can add the qualifiers. That’s what Twitter experts are for :)

  62. 62.

    burnspbesq

    I am no longer a lawyer, but I vaguely remember something about interference with contract being an intentional tort, for which punitive damages can be awarded.

    Somebody needs to call DeSantis’ bluff.

  63. 63.

    Geminid

    @Betty Cracker: I’ve followed Hakeem Jeffries since he was elected Democratic Caucus Chairman after the 2018 midterms. Jeffries is an outstanding  communicator, whether in a short soundbite, a more extensive argument, or a speech like the one he gave nominating Nancy Pelosi for Speaker January 2019.*

    Jeffries had only served three terms in Congress when he was chosen as Caucus Chairman. House leadership and his rank and file peers must have seen a lot they liked.

    *Anyone who needs some joy can find it in Jeffries’ nomination speech. By the end, he had “the once and future Speaker” grinning. (Available on the you tube.)

  64. 64.

    PST

    @Dorothy A. Winsor:

    I’m fighting a lonely battle against “gift” as a verb.

    I’ve gone over to the enemy on that one. The word give has such broad meaning that sometimes it is nice to have a word that implies wrapping paper and a bow. You can give someone a cold, give them the back of your hand, give them a piece of your mind, etc. You can’t gift those. If I give someone something I may be expecting something in return, but not if I gift it. Context makes things clear much of the time, but I don’t mind having a special word for handing something over in an unselfish and celebratory spirit. It’s good of English to make such coinages easy. Now, you could make the same kind of argument for commentate, but I still draw the line there.

  65. 65.

    germy

    I’m old enough to remember when the GOP had an ‘anything goes’ policy to protect the USA after 9/11. We were led to believe torturing ‘enemy combatants’ was for the greater good. Now those same assholes won’t even get a vaccine or let kids wear a mask in school.

    — NoelCaslerComedy (@caslernoel) August 10, 2021

  66. 66.

    Viva BrisVegas

    @germy: Doesn’t NZ have a robust social safety net?

    They even have a state owned national no-fault accident insurance scheme. Everyone in NZ, even non-nationals, are covered in case of accident for medical expenses and loss of income. Financed by among other things petrol taxes.

    Taxes is what buys civilisation.

  67. 67.

    burnspbesq

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:

    holy, shit I just had to pay $3.50 a gallon!”

    Ditch that fossil-burner and get an id.4 while VW is still offering three years of free charging. Oh, and you still get a $7,500 federal income tax credit.

  73. 73.

    Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony

    @Kay: 

    If elite conservatives are able to define it (bad “socialism”) without anyone looking into how the people most affected by it feel about it we’ll miss an opportunity.

    Conservatives will claim credit for the higher wages by claiming immigrant workers increased the supply of labor which depressed wages. Then they will say over and over again that we are for open borders.

  76. 76.

    Amir Khalid

    Open thread gripe:
    I don’t like the “new taste” of Coke Zero Sugar. It feels watered down. Bring back the old Coke Zero!

  77. 77.

    Barbara

    @Ceci n est pas mon nym: ​Wishing the best for your wife and you.

    As for hoping for lucky breaks: “Fortune favors the well-prepared.” Or, you need to buy a ticket to win the lottery. How amazing for us that the vaccine has the best odds a person seeking Lady Luck could possibly encounter.

  80. 80.

    Nelle

    @Viva BrisVegas: Yes, my 16 year old broke his foot and was barred from his Pizza Hut job for a number of weeks.  He got 80% of normal wages during that time ( 2006 – $11 an hour).

    When his best mate was in a horrible accident and in a coma in a hospital several hours away, I was worried about how his parents would pay for their hotel.  Turns out that that, too was covered by the Accident Compensation Corporation.  Civilized society and all that.

  81. 81.

    NotMax

    @Dorothy A. Winsor

    Uncommon in American English, however dates back some 400 years across the pond.

    People talking about gifting items may sound new and grating, but according to the Oxford English Dictionary, “gift” has been a verb for nearly 400 years. It meant “endow,” as in “He has been gifted (or endowed) with a photographic memory,” but more relevant to our discussion today, it also meant “to give” as in to give a gift. For example, “The History of the Church and State of Scotland,” written in the 1600s, includes the line “The recovery of a parcel of ground which the Queen had gifted to Mary Levinston.”

    The OED and the Merriam-Webster Dictionary of English Usage both make a point to mention that using “gift” as a verb is especially common in Scottish English. The OED calls it “chiefly Scottish” and Merriam-Webster says that much of their own evidence for the usage comes from Scottish sources. Source

  82. 82.

    Citizen Alan

    @germy:  Perhaps more importantly, isn’t New Zealand a small island nation which doesn’t have the room we have in the US to grow food nor does it have  is a big trunk of the world’s supply of fossil fuels?

  83. 83.

    Betty Cracker

    @Geminid: I haven’t followed Jeffries’ career closely, but he’s a talented communicator for sure, which sets him apart from Pelosi, IMO. She’s an absolute legend — I expect DC will have buildings named after her if the republic survives — but her talents lie elsewhere, i.e., in understanding the stakes with uncommon clarity and herding cats. She’s just not great at public speaking.

    If Jeffries does get the gig, it’ll be interesting to see what he makes of it. I don’t have any insights into the inner workings of the House, but I get the sense each speaker creates his or her own job description, for good or ill. Maybe Jeffries is great a herding cats too, or maybe he’ll mostly delegate that and focus on messaging. That could work.

  84. 84.

    matt the somewhat reasonable

    Sad for Republicans that their plague rat strategy isn’t having the desired effect on the economy.

  86. 86.

    Ken

    @matt the somewhat reasonable: It hadn’t occurred to me that the Republican strategy is comparable to catapulting diseased corpses into a city to destroy its economy and force it to surrender.  I guess I’m not nearly as evil as the character I play on the internet.

  87. 87.

    lowtechcyclist

    @germy:

    I’ve been saying that we need to apply some of the language of that era to this one, e.g. “are you for America, or are you on the side of the coronavirus?”

    And after decades of the GOP love for the ‘unborn baybeez,’ I think Dem politicians need to jump on the fact that by encouraging people to not get vaxxed, Republican politicians and their Faux News allies are literally killing children.

  89. 89.

    Mike in NC

    I opened the local rag as I sipped my coffee this morning, and there was a column by the reactionary bible-thumper Cal Thomas, praising the actions of America’s greatest governor. If you guessed Ron DeathSantis of Floriduh, come claim your prize.

  91. 91.

    Geminid

    @Betty Cracker: I think James Clyburn and Steny Hoyer will also step aside when Speaker Pelosi does. That would make for a new team. The question is: will they be in the majority or the minority?

    For a while, Ben Ray Luhan of New Mexico, another member of the leadership team, was thought to be Speaker Pelosi’s successor. But when Senator Udall announced his retirement, Luhan’s colleagues started calling him “Senator,” and now he is one.

  93. 93.

    trollhattan

    @Jeffery:

    Same. A modest apartment here goes for >$1,000/month and it’s going to take more than one $15/hr jerb to acquire a living wage.

    Of course that’s what roommates are for.

  94. 94.

    Geminid

    @Betty Cracker: Hakeem Jeffries is very articulate, in a disciplined way. One NY journalist said that interviewing Jeffries was like talking to “a very handsome robot.” But I don’t think the journalist meant this in a bad way.

  95. 95.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Betty Cracker:

    Pelosi, IMO. She’s an absolute legend — I expect DC will have buildings named after her if the republic survives — but her talents lie elsewhere, i.e., in understanding the stakes with uncommon clarity and herding cats. She’s just not great at public speaking.

    some insider said: She’s lousy at all of the parts of the job the public sees, and better than anybody’s ever seen at all the parts nobody sees.

    FWIW, I think that’s too harsh. I think she and Schumer got much, much better at public speaking under the trump era. Must needs, and all that.

  96. 96.

    Roger Moore

    @SiubhanDuinne: ​
     

    I hope AL is just doing the troll. I know Merriam-Webster or OED or some “authority” okayed “irregardless” a year or so ago, but I viewed that as mere Trumpism Gone Wild.

    Most English dictionaries are descriptive, not prescriptive. That is to say they record the language as it is used rather than give rules for how it’s supposed to be used. In that sense, you can think of them as readers’ dictionaries rather than writers’ dictionaries. In any case, the appearance of a word there doesn’t mean that usage is okay; it just means it has been observed in the wild enough to be worth describing.

  97. 97.

    Kay

    @Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony:

    What if we said “look at what happens when working people get some leverage and some support? Fabulous things! Zoom zoom goes the economy! How’s that extra 10k a year going for you, you extremely valuable worker? About time, huh?”

    We’ll stipulate to the people are hurting part.

  98. 98.

    PST

    @Geminid:

    And “regift” has already trotted out of the barn anyway.

    Right. I meant to make that argument and forgot. Regift means something that regive wouldn’t, and gift as a verb may turn out to be productive of other useful expressions given the right affixes or prepositions. How about “gift up”? “Christmas is coming, I’d better head to the mall and gift up.”

  99. 99.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Mike in NC:

    Oh Lord, is Cal Thomas still around?  He was in the Columbia SC and Bristol VA/TN papers when I lived in those burgs in the late 1980s through late 1990s. He was horrible then, and I’m sure he hasn’t improved with age.

  100. 100.

    Betty Cracker

    @Geminid: I hope you’re right about Clyburn and Hoyer. I don’t know how accurate it is, but The Atlantic piece says Jeffries’ friend and House ally Katherine Clark of MA is expected to move up to the #2 spot if he is elevated to speaker. That’s an interesting strategy — setting that expectation kind of defangs a potential rival in the #2 spot. I remember Hoyer being a pain in Pelosi’s ass back in the day.

  101. 101.

    Kay

    Brand new lawyer just cancelled my PM mediation. “Got some weird symptoms, going to get checked, didn’t get the shot”

    It’s a shame. I like him. I felt he had huge potential but now I think he’s not so smart.

    I do appreciate him not infecting the whole courthouse, though.

  102. 102.

    Roger Moore

    @hueyplong:

    [In the comments people were trying to figure out why FL school board members get paid any salary that could be withheld in the first place.]

    I can understand a small school district depending on a purely volunteer school board; my mom didn’t get paid when she was on the school board in my hometown.  But it’s different for a big district.  Being on the board there is really a full-time job, and we need to treat it that way if we want to get anyone other than the idle rich and ideologues with an axe to grind to run.

  107. 107.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Roger Moore:

    Being on the board there is really a full-time job, and we need to treat it that way if we want to get anyone other than the idle rich and ideologues with an axe to grind to run.

    Same with state legislatures.  The money they have to deal with, let alone the other issues, are worthy of full-time pay.

    This business of their being in session for ‘just’ a few months a year is the worst of both worlds: the session’s long enough to prevent you from holding most other jobs, and it’s short enough so that if you want to bug your state rep about something, most of the time s/he’s not there.

  108. 108.

    frosty

    @Dorothy A. Winsor: Right there on your flank. You’ve gifted me with recognizing a fellow warrior.
    My take, if I were an editor, would be that any wording that makes me stop orakes me cringe is wrong.

  109. 109.

    PST

    @Betty Cracker: You are spot-on about Pelosi’s strengths and (few) weaknesses. One thing you didn’t mention was Pelosi’s ability to separate wealthy donors from their cash, and having excess campaign funds to spread around is probably an indispensable part of the cat herding part of the job. Her privileged background may be important there, as is holding such a lock on your seat that you don’t need all the money you can raise. What do we know about Jeffries as a fundraiser?

  111. 111.

    Captain C

    @Ken:

    the Republican strategy is comparable to catapulting diseased corpses into a city to destroy its economy and force it to surrender.

    Except that they seem to be sending more corpses into their own cities than those of their enemies (that is, the majority of Americans).

  112. 112.

    PST

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:

    She’s lousy at all of the parts of the job the public sees, and better than anybody’s ever seen at all the parts nobody sees.

    It helps to remember that up until, say, Tip O’Neill, the job of Speaker consisted only of the parts nobody sees. That’s just one more way television changed everything.

  113. 113.

    Geminid

    @frosty: Editors seem to have cracked down on the use of “quality” as an adjective. That’s a relief. For a while I thought it was too late. Now even sportscasters, who started the cursed practice, seem to have dropped it.

    Now, if “morph” would just morph back into “change,” I’d really be happy.

  115. 115.

    The Moar You Know

    Being on the board there is really a full-time job, and we need to treat it that way if we want to get anyone other than the idle rich and ideologues with an axe to grind to run.

    @Roger Moore: We pay our school board, give them per diem and expenses on top and give them – get this – lifetime gold-plated health care coverage after one term.

    Guess what it is packed full of?  Literally every seat!

    the idle rich and ideologues with an axe to grind

    Yeah.  Paying them isn’t working.

  117. 117.

    Ohio Mom

    @Ceci n est pas mon nym: 
    Having been through a breast cancer diagnosis (eight years later, fine if still taking estrogen blockers and checking in with my onc every six months), I always recommend the site, breast cancer.org.

    Their information is always up to date and their discussion boards (on main page, click on “Community” on upper right) are wide-ranging, thorough, and full of camaraderie. Almost everything I know about breast cancer, I learned there.

    I remember how frightening the first weeks were for me. It really does get easier to manage once the treatment plan is underway. Keep us posted!

  119. 119.

    germy

    @PST:  One thing you didn’t mention was Pelosi’s ability to separate wealthy donors from their cash…

    Doesn’t that cash come with strings attached, though?

    Steven and Mary Swig are big donors, and they didn’t want an executive order canceling student debt.  So guess what happened?

    No executive order.

  120. 120.

    Sure Lurkalot

    @Nelle: I’d love to live in New Zealand. Considering how low my opinion of humans has gone (and reading this thread, justifiably and I appear not alone), a country with more sheep than people sounds mighty fine just about now.

  121. 121.

    hueyplong

    @germy: I was under the impression executive orders are executed by the executive, not the majority leader in the legislative branch.  Maybe I’m misreading.

  122. 122.

    Geminid

    @PST: The son of two New York City civil servants, Jeffries does not come from privilege. But he seems like a persuasive guy. And Speaker Pelosi will be introducing him to her donors, if she hasn’t already. They’ll be looking for the competence necessary for success and I think Jeffrries will pass that test.

    And Jeffries definitely has a lock on his Brooklyn seat.

  123. 123.

    H.E.Wolf

    @PST: ​gift as a verb may turn out to be productive of other useful expressions given the right affixes or prepositions. How about “gift up”? “Christmas is coming, I’d better head to the mall and gift up.”

     

    Tangentially…. In my great-great-grandmother’s diaries (we have 1906 through 1926, when she was 60 – 80), she noted during the middle of one December:

    “Hard at work Christmasing.”

  124. 124.

    germy

    @hueyplong:
    House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Wednesday rejected efforts by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and other progressives to persuade President Joe Biden to unilaterally cancel large amounts of student loan debt, exacerbating a growing rift in the Democratic Party over the issue.
    Pelosi said that Biden lacks the executive authority to cancel student loan debt and also questioned the wisdom and fairness of such a policy, which has been a major priority for the left in recent years.

    House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Wednesday rejected efforts by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and other progressives to persuade President Joe Biden to unilaterally cancel large amounts of student loan debt, exacerbating a growing rift in the Democratic Party over the issue.
    Pelosi said that Biden lacks the executive authority to cancel student loan debt and also questioned the wisdom and fairness of such a policy, which has been a major priority for the left in recent years.

    “Suppose … your child just decided they, at this time, [do] not want to go to college, but you’re paying taxes to forgive somebody else’s obligations,” Pelosi said during a news conference. “You may not be happy about that.”

    Her remarks stood in sharp contrast to the pressure campaign that Schumer, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and other progressives have been organizing for months to persuade Biden to swiftly wipe out the debt for tens of millions of loan borrowers.

    https://www.politico.com/news/2021/07/29/pelosi-schume-student-debt-501521

  125. 125.

    Betty Cracker

    @Captain C & @schrodingers_cat: I don’t understand it either. The polling on this is terrible for DeSantis. A sociopath could do a cost-benefit analysis and conclude that a loud “but muh freedom” message combined with a hands-off approach on policy might work out best politically. That I could understand.

    But actively hampering businesses, municipalities, schools, etc., from taking mitigation measures is not only unpopular, it’s way riskier politically. It’s unlikely that he’ll be challenged from the right, at least for governor. Maybe he figures he has to out-crazy Noem for the presidential primary? Still, he’s got to get reelected as governor before that’s a concern.

  126. 126.

    Ohio Mom

    I am as thrilled as everyone that the pay for entry-level and minimum wage jobs is on an upward trajectory — about time and sorely needed.

    But let’s not forget that this good news  hardly applies to the whole of the job market.

    There are still lots of PhDs who will never find the tenured position they trained for; the vast majority of disabled people who want to work remain unemployed; and don’t get me started on older job seekers and the age discrimination they face. These are just the three examples I can think of off the top of my head, I’m sure there are others.

    There is most definitely NOT a job for everyone who wants one. That framing rankles me because it sounds essentially right-wing: Quit yer bitchin’ peasant, be happy there’s plenty of work mopping floors, what else do you think you deserve?

    (Please note: I am all for floors being kept  clean by well-paid moppers.)

  127. 127.

    germy

    “Suppose … your child just decided they, at this time, [do] not want to go to college, but you’re paying taxes to forgive somebody else’s obligations,” Pelosi said during a news conference. “You may not be happy about that.”

    My children are in their early 30s now.  I still pay taxes to support my city’s elementary, middle and high school.

  128. 128.

    Roger Moore

    @schrodingers_cat: ​
     

    Their constituent killing stance defies logic, commonsense.

    I like Krugman’s explanation: defying logic and commonsense is the point. They’re part of a cult, and they have to prove their membership. They can’t do that by adopting sensible policies, because anyone could do that. No, to prove they’re good cult members, they have to do something crazy and stupid that only cultists would want to do. The crazier and stupider the thing they do, the better proof it is of their commitment to the cult.

  129. 129.

    Geminid

    @Betty Cracker: DeSantis may have believed the stories about him “winning” the pandemic. Now Delta seems to have caught him flatfooted. He thought he would spike the ball, but it turned out he spiked it in Covid’s endzone.

  130. 130.

    hueyplong

    @Betty Cracker: In these times, completely baffling GOPer “reasoning” is usually explained by determining that the absurd position taken is one that was suggested by Trump.

    When you consider that a half million or so American deaths can be attributed to Trump’s horror at the effect a mask had on his orange makeup, the top paragraph seems to be in line with actual experience.

    Kind of wish the dementia would hurry up and finish its work.

  131. 131.

    Bluegirlfromwyo

    @lowtechcyclist: Been there on the killing children issue. They reply that they “at least let them be born” After that it’s all about personal responsibility. Monstrous. We should point it out but know that’s a real response.

  132. 132.

    opiejeanne

    @Geminid: That article about DeSantis “winning” Covid was bullshit. It has been pointed out that at the time that article came out, Washington state was the one to be congratulated.

    That didn’t last. Combined with the Delta strain, WA has enough significantly stupid people living here that our numbers are not great now, but still much better than Florida. King County, home of Seattle, is scary enough on the Covid maps that we’re about to go back to isolation mode, staying home and just staying away from people.

  133. 133.

    lowtechcyclist

    @PST:

    @Betty Cracker: You are spot-on about Pelosi’s strengths and (few) weaknesses. One thing you didn’t mention was Pelosi’s ability to separate wealthy donors from their cash, and having excess campaign funds to spread around is probably an indispensable part of the cat herding part of the job.

    I think that’s a double-edged sword: there’s no way you can raise big bucks from wealthy donors without being indebted to them to some extent.

    Not so long ago, Dems really had no alternative.  But now Dem candidates are raising astonishing sums through ActBlue, and should really be considering whether it’s time for the party committees – the DNC, DSCC, etc. – to cut the cord from the big individual donors in order to have the freedom to better represent the rest of us.

  134. 134.

    Matt McIrvin

    @opiejeanne: DeSantis could still come out ahead on this–Republicans love these loyalty tests where you have to hang on in the face of blatant absurdity and risk to life and limb. The fact that he remained adamant even in the face of huge numbers of his constituents dying due to his decisions… in the post-Trump environment that makes him presidential nominee timber.

  135. 135.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Bluegirlfromwyo:

    @lowtechcyclist: Been there on the killing children issue. They reply that they “at least let them be born” After that it’s all about personal responsibility. Monstrous. We should point it out but know that’s a real response.

    Good point.  My answer to that is that the fundamental premise of the so-called ‘pro-life’ movement is that the life of an embryo or fetus is worth the same as the lives of those of us already out of the womb.

    And the past year and a half has proven that they don’t give the least goddamn about those lives.  So there’s no reason to take their concern for the ‘unborn’ seriously.

    One can argue that the life of a fetus is worth as much as your life or mine, but there’s no argument that it’s worth more.  The value they put on those of us who are already born is a ceiling on the value they put on the unborn, and they’ve demonstrated that it’s a damned low ceiling.

  136. 136.

    Bluegirlfromwyo

    @lowtechcyclist: As far as I’m concerned, they proved their lack of concern about children who are here long ago (kids in cages, not wanting to expand CHIP, not wanting to pay property taxes once their kids are out of school, etc.) and I’ve told them so. My line: if you’re going to use government to enforce birth, better use it to enforce care. If you don’t like that choice, STFU and the woman makes it.

  138. 138.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @lowtechcyclist: well, there’s a sort of chicken and egg question there. Is Nancy Pelosi opposed to Warren’s ‘stroke of a pen!” plan because of one donor, or because it’s the kind of politics that led Elizabeth Warren, in spite of boatloads of small donors, name recognition and enthusiasm, to finish third in her home state to a guy who spent no money there, didn’t even have a campaign office, and also opposes the “stroke of a pen!” fantasy. Nancy Pelosi is not only the first woman Speaker, she’s the first Speaker to take back the gavel since, I believe, the 1950s

  140. 140.

    JaneE

    @Betty Cracker:  My state has rules about payment of wages.  There are legal reasons to withhold them, but I doubt that Governor’s snit is one of them.   Florida OTOH????

  141. 141.

    Audrey

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:  There is also the fact the the “one donor” (in the same missive) encourgaed student debt cancelling legislation.  Somehow, that doesn’t get as much play in the fog of information out there.  If only people who wanted to cancel student debt were members of some legislation writing organization….

  142. 142.

    Victor Matheson

    “Chocolate-frosted Sugar Bombs with a favorite IPA”

    Wait a minute, how did you guys know what I had for breakfast?

    I bet it is the 5G technology you guys injected me with when I got the vaccine…

  143. 143.

    Betty Cracker

    @Audrey: That’s the salient point here — that the fat cat donors also support cancelling student debt — not that cancelling student in general is such an absurd leftist fantasy that the good voters of Massachusetts rose up in righteous indignation to punish Warren for supporting it.

    So, thank you for pointing that out. Also, it’s interesting that it took The Intercept eight paragraphs to note that the donors are would-be debt cancellers, albeit via legislation rather than THE STROKE OF A PEN.

  144. 144.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Betty Cracker:

    ot that cancelling student in general is such an absurd leftist fantasy that the good voters of Massachusetts rose up in righteous indignation to punish Warren for supporting it.

    I wasn’t referring to student debt in general, the posts above were specifically accusing Nancy Pelosi (of the Legislative Branch) of stopping an executive order (of the Executive Branch) at the behest of a single donor.

    And I didn’t suggest that voters of Massachusetts rose up in righteous indignation to punish Warren for this stance. I do think her showing in her home state primary, among Democrats in one of the bluest states in the country, does say something significant about the approach to politics she has taken since 2017 (BIG AND BOLD and unpopular IDEAS WILL CARRY THE DAY BECAUSE THEY ARE BIG AND BOLD), and what it says is that it’s not a very good one. I think Warren’s (self) righteous Green Lanternism leads to ‘not a dime’s worth of difference’ politics among the comfortable and young (and those who wish they were), and we’ve seen where that leads, in 2000 and again in 2016.

    Finally, I don’t think we have the luxury of being romantic about, or personally invested, in bad politics or bad politicians because we think they should be popular.

  146. 146.

    Kayla Rudbek

    @Ceci n est pas mon nym: tell your wife to have plenty of soft bras, old t-shirts, and soft/old sleepwear that she won’t mind having all full of ointment to wear post-surgery. I’m finishing off my second week of silver sulfadiazine 1% cream because my skin got so red from the radiation, and between that and the Aquaphor, I will have a fair amount of sleepwear and old shirts that may have to go to the rag bin if I can’t find a way to get the oil/grease out. Full bra replacement will wait until I’m 3 months post-irradiation to give everything time to settle down and stop swelling.

    I will probably wind up buying some more Gloves in a Bottle lotion to apply once I’m done with the silver sulfadiazine. It seals off the skin quite well without getting grease all over the place.

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