Grassley says Trump left office with “best economy this country has seen in 50 yrs”
this is after economy lost 20M jobs in 2020 https://t.co/DeZA1ioa8r
— Eric Boehlert (@EricBoehlert) October 10, 2021
Since we were discussing futile runs against the GOP Death Cult earlier… I just turned this up in my stockpile of draft posts…
Grassley: Yes, yes they are. I will not go back to Iowa and you can't make me https://t.co/wYKUPzOba0
— Tom Nichols (@RadioFreeTom) October 10, 2021
The Hill, “Grassley’s embrace of Trump shakes GOP landscape”:
Sen. Chuck Grassley’s (R-Iowa) enthusiastic appearance at a Trump event in Iowa over the weekend shows that the former president has further strengthened his grip on the GOP following the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.
The Iowa senator’s eagerness to stand next to former President Trump at a boisterous rally in Des Moines only days after Trump repeatedly trashed Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) — a friend and ally of Grassley’s — served as a wakeup call to some Republicans that Trump is back and very much in charge of the party.
Grassley, 88, has worked carefully over his four decades in the Senate to cultivate a reputation as a politician completely in step with Iowans who cherish family values, hard work, ethical behavior and integrity…
“I think it surprised a lot of people,” said former Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.), who served with Grassley for 18 years in the Senate. “Chuck has always marched to his drum, he’s always been extraordinarily independent and a very strong figure in the Senate over the years, clearly.
“So I don’t think he needs Donald Trump, and I was a little surprised he decided to take that leap. But Chuck does what he does and lives to his own drumbeat,” he added.
Other Republicans who have long known Grassley, however, say that he has always been well-attuned to the political climate…
With Trump’s early endorsement, Grassley now appears to be on a glide path to reelection next year.
“I was born at night but not last night,” Grassley said at the weekend rally. “So if I didn’t accept the endorsement of a person that’s got 91 percent of the Republican voters in Iowa, I wouldn’t be too smart. I’m smart enough to accept that endorsement.”
When asked in Iowa about Trump’s repeated attacks against McConnell, Grassley sidestepped the question.
“We Republicans have to stick together. We should do everything to unite each other,” he said…
Can everyone drop surprise that Grassley is a hack? He used to be good on oversight, but in pretty much every other way he’s always been a hack. Not he’s a hack on oversight, just like everything else.
— Dana Houle (@DanaHoule) October 12, 2021
Do I assume Finkenauer has no chance?
Iowans, should I drop some cash on his Democratic challenger, if only on the chance that he can’t live forever?
Never forget what @ChuckGrassley just did and the legacy he now carries and endorses. I can’t and never will and I’m going to beat him in 2022. We need you with us. Now. https://t.co/5SzsYPU5oc pic.twitter.com/wNDxonoN5g
— Abby Finkenauer (@Abby4Iowa) October 10, 2021
Interest in a Weekly Book Club to Read & Discuss Adam Schiff’s Book Midnight In Washington?
zhena gogolia
Lives to his own drumbeat, my ass.
brendancalling
Iowa, lol.
The place that elects folks like Steve King.
Iowa blows.
Dorothy A. Winsor
Grassley embraced the death panels lie. We should not be surprised.
Old Man Shadow
If you’re still a Republican after the last five years, you have no conscience, no patriotism, no morals or ethics of which to speak, so they literally can’t surprise me any longer.
boatboy_srq
One of these things is not like the others. “Family values” is dogwhistle for Xtianistism, anti-LGBT, anti-single-parent-households, anti-choice and a host of other ills the Reichwing advocate.
Omnes Omnibus
@brendancalling:
And you live in a perfect place that has never elected an asshole?
Mike E
@zhena gogolia: I hope his opponent beats his ass like a drum.
Baud
It’s a tough all on how to spend your money,, but I do appreciate Dems who take on tough fights in red areas.
trollhattan
Christmas comes early as Chuck goes full ho-ho-ho.
Same as it ever was.
boatboy_srq
And that’s a shot across the bows of Cheney and Kinzinger who are already straying, and Collins and Murkowski who occasionally stray when allowed. No more stepping out of line, or else the Reichwing will come for you.
Baud
I don’t know why people think old white Republican officeholders will see the world all that differently than old white Republican voters.
boatboy_srq
@Baud: The problem is the young white Republican voters.
The Pale Scot
Amanda Marcotte get to the nub
How the fragility of the male ego fuels the far-right
Excellent observation,
Scout211
Be sure to watch Jordan Klepper’s interview of Trump fans at the rally in Iowa.
I grew up in Iowa and I don’t even recognize that state anymore.
mrmoshpotato
This quote is brought by the word “delusional” and the number 455H47 (ASSHAT).
Baud
@boatboy_srq:
Every Republican voter is a problem.
Omnes Omnibus
@Baud: Not the ones who stay home.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Omnes Omnibus: Then they’re not a voter.
Mallard Filmore
@Old Man Shadow:
… and you are OK with baby snatching.
[odd, my first attempt to reply, I went into TEXT move and lost (or never had) the link back to Old Man Shadow]
[my second attempt to reply, the blockquote went BEFORE the link to Old Man Shadow]
Omnes Omnibus
@?BillinGlendaleCA: They are a potential voter until they actually stay home.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Omnes Omnibus: An acorn is a potential oak tree.
The Pale Scot
@The Pale Scot:
Should have said OT, in a meandering sort of way
?BillinGlendaleCA
@mrmoshpotato: A good reply would be…Senator, I wasn’t born yesterday, I remember the 90’s.
Omnes Omnibus
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Or a squirrel meal.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Omnes Omnibus: Yup.
Mary G
MODERATOR since this went into moderation with no links dropped, I take it a a sign it should be deleted so please do so.
I dropped a ton of my money on Sara Gideon, Cal Cunningham, and another one whose name escapes me who were ahead or at least competitive in the polls and went on to lose by more than a few points. Jaime Harrison was a great candidate and though I hate Lindsey Graham, I am less upset by the loss in South Carolina.
I’m saving my much smaller Senate budget for Wisconsin, Ohio, and Pennsylvania.
Another Scott
@mrmoshpotato: He (like TFG) is probably talking about the stock market. That’s all they care about, obviously.
Grassley is an old crank. Has been for a very long time.
Cheers,
Scott.
Baud
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
Grassley remembers the 1890s.
geg6
OT, but just saw on local news a weather report talking about all the tornadoes in the area on Thursday night. Crazy stuff with ten tornadoes in a four county area. What really took me aback was how unusual this is. We usually average 3 per year. This year so far, we’ve had 32. From 1950 to 2020, we’ve had 9 tornadoes in October. We’ve had 15 so far this month. Climate change is real, folks. We are usually protected from much damage from tornadoes because of the terrain in Southwestern PA. Not anymore. We had EF2s and 3s Thursday night.
Baud
@geg6:
Damn. That’s quite an uptick.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud: Or as he calls them the good old days.
SpaceUnit
Oops, see below.
MomSense
@geg6:
That’s scary.
Roger Moore
@Another Scott:
I don’t think it’s necessarily even that. They just want to claim their economy is the best, so they’ll say that. Facts need not apply.
SpaceUnit
@The Pale Scot:
It really isn’t OT. It can’t be emphasized enough how much these losers’ male insecurities are a driving force in the right wing movement. I’ve been seeing it for years. As a guy, I find it embarrassing to watch.
Also nauseating.
Baud
@Roger Moore:
Right. Another go-to for them is that America is respected when Republican is president and disrespected when a Dem is.
WaterGirl
@Mary G: I released your comment from moderation as soon as I came to this thread. There’s not a thing wrong with this comment; I have no idea why WordPress coughed it up.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud: Remember Obama bowing.
Suzanne
@The Pale Scot: It never ceases to amaze me how many men cannot see that MAGA and white supremacy and replacement theory and all the other disgusting right-wing shit is intensely, intensely sexist. To be fair, sexism is a bit different than some of the other -isms because most men still want women in their social circle, just in a highly prescribed place in that circle. But why do you think the right wing is shitting all over college? Because women are kicking men’s asses at it. Women being educated and financially capable and in charge of their bodily autonomy is terrifying to this cohort, because men are no longer needed and they have to step up their game if they want to be wanted. They are terrified of being replaced by women in positions of power in society.
Ruckus
@boatboy_srq:
You mean the children of those old white republican voters are the problem and not their elders?
Ruckus
@Roger Moore:
Facts? We don’t need no stinking facts, we know what we know and facts are not going to inform us any different. We don’t need no stinking facts, they just get in the way of the reality that we like.
I believe that is the correct rethuglican response to any concept of facts that don’t tell them exactly what they want.
boatboy_srq
@Ruckus: Ayuh. They’ll live longer, and they’re just as programmed as their elders. And thanks to four decades’ worth of starving public education and three decades’ worth of charter schools, they’re significantly more iggerant than their parents – by design.
Don’t believe me? Then persuade me that Boebert and MTG and Goetz and the rest of that gen are octogenarians. Go ahead; I’ll wait.
Ksmiami
@Baud: root for Covid… yes I’ve gone very dark.
El-Man
@Baud: As a furriner (sp?), I can safely say that Trump was quickly recognised as a fool and an incompetent, especially after Obama.
Ksmiami
@SpaceUnit: they’re just as bad as the young unsexed Taliban killers but at least they have an excuse of living in a deprived, tribal country
SFAW
@Suzanne:
Sorry, but by pointing out their sexism, you reveal that YOU are the real sexist.
Ruckus
@Suzanne:
I fully believe this but I don’t think it covers all the ground.
I believe the corollary here is that they are terrified by anyone replacing them in positions of power because they think they will lose everything important to them.
IOW they know they are shit, they only care if they lose, and then they won’t correct anything, just cry and maybe trash more stuff. See Jan 6 for example.
debbie
@geg6:
That was probably the same line of storms that popped up in eastern Ohio. Last I heard, there were 7 tornadoes, from zeros to twos.
SFAW
And who voted TWICE for someone who is/does the exact opposite of those things.
In other words: “cherish”? Bullshit.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I remember when Robert Byrd made a florid speech in the Senate announcing his intent to vote for Samuel Alito, spending several minutes Foghorn Lehorning about how the mean old internet made Mrs Alito cry. I thought, “Wow, he’s determined to die in office”. I think it’s a common feeling among the Senate-brained
ETA, or at least, not uncommon
JPL
@geg6: Yup those are ours. It’s nice to see the tornadoes move north. ha Last year at this time, we had a hurricane pass by that left me without power for three plus days, and one tree down. Halloween night the power came on so I put candy on the porch. Normally I have three children so I made ten little bags of goodies. It was the year that others without power found us. yup I didn’t have nearly enough candy.
jo6pac
Yep those sections against China and Russia have worked out so well. Sadly with this seam to long term for Amerika we’ll all become a third Nation the 99% of us That’s only us less than the 1%. Sad
Demodogs don’t care they like there repugs will only serve they’re puppets masters
Brachiator
@Suzanne:
It works for them, or they think it does. The sexism is an added bonus.
This gets interesting because men who repudiate higher education put themselves at a social disadvantage. There is some evidence that college educated women look for high earning college educated men for partners. High earning men without college may be acceptable, but it is getting harder to be successful without college (e.g., disappearance of high wage union supported manufacturing jobs).
As an aside, there is a reflection of this in all the lame sitcoms with a white meat and potatoes husband married to a hot, smarter woman.
And of course the worst men still fight to keep women from jobs and political offices that confer real power.
JPL
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Well they were mean to her hubby after all.
truthfully her antics sickened me just sayin
Ruckus
@boatboy_srq:
Not disagreeing with you in the least, my point was that it’s not just the olds that is the problem. It’s all age groups that expect something because of their skin color or genitalia. It is a plague that attempt to strip people of color, women, non traditional (open) sexuality, of their rights and yes lives.
SpaceUnit
@Suzanne:
I’ve given this a lot of thought. These guys have been raised in chauvinism, whether it’s within their families or communities or merely their circle of friends. They’re the kind of guys who are constantly calling one another sissies or the f-word when they’re growing up, and they learn to be insecure.
Worse still, it teaches them to view masculinity and femininity as oppositional forces, a view that’s both skewed and unhealthy. The feminine and the masculine are meant to be complimentary, and when you’re incapable of seeing that it sends you into a pathetic, anxious spiral. It dooms you to a life of steroids and rage performances, homophobia, and posing in front of the mirror with your guns.
They are to be pitied. Despised, yes, but also pitied.
Leto
@jo6pac: ma’am, this is a Wendy’s drive through…
Ksmiami
@SpaceUnit: sorry I’m completely out of fucks to give… do you know how many women will suffer and likely die under the new TX abortion ban? As far as I’m concerned, I hope these pathetic incels Darwin themselves out of society
WaterGirl
Clinton and her basket of deplorables and Obama with his “clinging to the guns and religion” were both telling the truth.
We need to update Obama’s to “clinging to their guns, their white supremacy, and their conspiracies”. Maybe conspiracies are the new religion?
Mike in NC
Fuck 88-year-old Chuck Grasshole. I’ll be sending a regular contribution to VADM Mike Franken, my former roommate and drinking buddy, who deserves the Dem nomination.
Leto
@Brachiator:
There was a WGBH interview with Andrew Cherlin about this. I’ll post the quick take away, but it’s a 50 min interview you can listen to on the website.
SpaceUnit
@Ksmiami:
I’m with you 100%. I’m not asking you to feel sorry for them or to protect their tender fee-fees. F*ck them all. When I say ‘pity them’ I simply mean to look past their bluster and recognize how pathetic and inadequate they really are.
Suzanne
@Brachiator:
I remember, back before I met Mr. Suzanne, thinking that all the dudes I met were sooooo eager to settle down. The stereotype of men in their twenties is that they’re afraid of commitment. That was not my experience. They seemed to me to want to lock down a relationship ASAP. Some of them were incredibly resentful that I was not as keen on that. Reflecting on it, I realized that marriage is a great deal for men. And subsequently, I saw research confirming that married men (heterosexual cis men) do great in marriage, they live longer, it’s cheaper to share expenses, they’re healthier, etc.
But man, that insecurity is real. One dude I was seeing when I started grad school got really pissed off that I was working really hard at it and I didn’t want to blow off my work to make time for him. (He actually counseled me, “C’s get degrees”. Like Suzanne gets C’s.) Another dude I dated who was in the Air Force thought I would give up my career to be a military wife. Like, dude, no, I make more than you, you can give up your career. I have more stories like that, but it just illustrated in fucking Prismacolor how many men expect their romantic lives and their marriages a certain way, and are deeply displaced when that doesn’t shake out.
Roger Moore
@Baud:
One thing that I hadn’t thought of at first is that the past 50 years includes the Reagan era, so this is putting Trump ahead of the great Republican hero. So they’re officially throwing Reagan under the bus to feed Trump’s ego.
Benw
Trying to keep track of Ga Tech, the Braves, and my dog who’s trying to chew a hole in his butt is a lot!
The Pale Scot
@Suzanne:
My ambitious blue collar origins Marine (corporal) father should have married an “officers wife”. Instead he married the blonde with big boobs from Bayonne who was a fish out of water when we moved to the suburbs interfacing with all the other college educated wives.
Didn’t work out well for sis and me
Roger Moore
@El-Man:
As a furriner, you are inherently untrustworthy. The question of how we are supposed to determine what foreigners think if we aren’t supposed to trust them is, admittedly, difficult.
Ksmiami
@SpaceUnit: they could always take a little blue pill- or better yet maybe read a real history book once in awhile instead of debt financing some dumb oversized pick up..
debbie
@Roger Moore:
I think it was Pelosi’s acceptance speech as the Speaker where she referred to Reagan, expected applause, but got zero reaction from the GOP. That’s when they tossed him out the door.
Ruckus
@Suzanne:
Many of them have been told for years that the route you describe is the only way forward. Often by their moms in my experience. It’s get a girl, get married and have kids and the same life your parents and grand parents had. I got the condensed version, but my sisters got the full get married, have kids/stay with your husband no matter what trope. It didn’t ring true in our family and it didn’t ring true to my oldest sister or to me.
Ladyracterinok
@brendancalling:
AND TOM HARKIN!!!!
But he is of earlier era
But then when Grassley first ran for Senate he ran on a platform of cutting overspending at the Pentagon.
He would hold up a screwdriver purchased in a small Iowa hardware store for x number of dollars and then hold up a screwdriver the Pentagon but for 10 times that amount to show that the government was not concerned about economy.
When he first ran for Senate I was still able to watch political debates . My then husband was listening to the debate from another room. When the debate was over he said grassley would win the election. When I asked him why he thought that he said that grassley sounded like an Iowan Will Rogers!!!
Suzanne
@The Pale Scot: The dude I was dating used to disparage his fellow airmen’s “dependents”, and he described most of them as poorly educated and lazy and not very smart. But then I had more education than him, was at the start of a fairly respectable career, and was much more intelligent than he was…. yet he had this absolute expectation that I would give up my intentions to follow his career. When I broke up with him, he was shocked. Shocked. And he was a pretty liberal dude.
MAGA is, for dudes like this, a yearning for an older form of gender politics.
Just Chuck
Just a nonstop gaslighting gish gallop. North Korea all the way down. Or is it up? Or is it the same thing today?
Roger Moore
@Ruckus:
The key is that they know they’re likely to lose in a fair fight. Everything they do is about keeping things slanted in their favor. That’s not the behavior of people who are secure in their superiority.
HumboldtBlue
@Suzanne:
I think you hit a nail there.
Matt McIrvin
It’s amazing how Republicans can just make shit up about the history of “the economy” and it just becomes functionally true, somehow. Obama ruined the economy, Trump fixed it and then Biden ruined it again. None of this bears any relation to any actual numbers you can find. They just say it and then that’s the story everyone runs with.
Suzanne
@Ruckus: Absolutely right. I think so much of the love for Trump is based in this male fantasy. Like, Melania is an objectively attractive woman, but she’s, like, the cheap kind of attractive. She’s not the kind of woman that any successful modern man would marry. She’s obviously stupid and it reflects poorly. But there’s a cohort of dudes who want the arm candy wife and don’t care if she’s smart. But when I point this out, I’m called an “elite”.
Ruckus
@Suzanne:
A cousin did just this. She has twin boys and they have adopted kids. I haven’t been able to contact her for a number of years so I have no idea how she’s doing or her now adult children are doing or her retired husband. Last I saw her was about 9-10 yrs ago, she walked into my shop with her sister who I hadn’t seen since she was a child of like 4. (That 4 yr old is now a grown woman with gray hair and is likely retired from her job at a large computer company.) I saw her once about 1990 when when I was able to stop at her house in Dayton OH, while her husband was stationed at Wright Pat AFB. They moved about every 18 months. I can see not wanting that life. She loved it.
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
I don’t run with it.
Mousebumples
@Suzanne: 100% feel you on this.
One of my first post college boyfriends (I’m a PharmD, for those who aren’t aware) ended up breaking things off because I made like 3-4x what he did. He wanted to feel “needed” (financially)… a few months in.
The guy in question had dropped out of college. I didn’t care about that (that he’d dropped out) but we were not compatible long term.
I learned quickly that I’d rather be single than put up with this kind of crap. Trumpism makes it way easier to weed out the morons, I’ll admit.
Matt McIrvin
@Another Scott: But if you’re talking about the stock market… the stock market has continued to rise under Biden. And before Trump, it rose under Obama. The biggest recent drops happened under Trump, though there was recovery after. So you can’t even say that Democrats are doing bad things to it.
Matt McIrvin
@Baud:
By “respect” they mean fear; this goes back to conservative childrearing styles.
SpaceUnit
@Ksmiami:
Most of them are beyond help. They don’t read books. I think you’re correct about letting Darwin take care of them.
Suzanne
@Ruckus: I wanted no part of that life, but I was just seeing this dude for fun. He mentioned to me one time we went out that he had talked with his parents earlier in the day, he told them about me, and they had apparently gotten into a whole conversation about my prospective suitability as a military wife. Like, WTF. What surprised me was that he brought it up like I should be pleased that this was “the direction”. Like… no. Just a perfect example of a dude who had been raised with this anachronistic idea of manhood and could not adapt. This is the absolute core of contemporary white male resentment, IMO.
boatboy_srq
@Ruckus: The Reichwing Olds are keeling over. They have three, perhaps four elections left before they’re in nursing homes.
Their offspring will be voting in 2060. And they’ll be at least as anti-ecology, anti-choice, anti-queer and anti-Blah/Brown as their grandparents were. They’re doing their damnedest to prove it right now.
Suzanne
@Mousebumples:
You and me both. And lots of other straight cis women, which is making incels of a lot of that cohort.
The Pale Scot
@Ruckus:
Officer or non-comissioned? Big difference. Especially in the AF. If he went to the academy in Colorado Springs they are probably evangelical nut jobs.
Ksmiami
@boatboy_srq: on the bright side, if they’re anti-vaxx, they probably won’t make it…
Ascap_scab
Grassley has his own “Pee tape”.
Mousebumples
@Suzanne: haha, so true. It’s great to have a partner that i *want* to spend time with, versus feeling trapped by a lack of options, and pigeonholed into whatever I’m “supposed to be”. Lol, no thanks.
In some ways this kinda dovetails with the hiring problems for bosses that refuse to offer more pay and benefits and a better work environment. Workers have options so you can’t just force them to take your crap when they know they can get and deserve more.
JMG
Chuck Grassley has been for some time, to use the fine old Boston expression, soft as a sneaker full of shit. He may no longer recognize much of the state he represents. He can get from his DC digs to the Capitol, from the Capitol to Dulles or National, and get picked up by people who drive him around Iowa, but that’s probably it.
Ruckus
@Suzanne:
I think it depends a lot on the time and the parents. If your parents get to set a lot of goals when you are young it is often hard to break that mold. And if one or both of them actually do not support you having any choice in your life, which it seems a lot of parents do (they think they know you better than you have any right to know yourself or find out about…) then you can easily fall into that mold. I fought that mold for a long time but got zero support to go to college after the navy, while my sisters got full rides, I had to work to support myself. My life has been OK, had it’s ups and downs but I learned skills that I use today, even after I “retired” – I worked yesterday because I have skills that I’m the only employee my semi ex boss has and he can not stand at a machine for 8 1/2 hrs because he’s running the business and the rest of the employees. But it can be hard to get out of that mold for many.
VOR
@Scout211: it not just local Iowa people. Trump rallies pull people from all over the country. Several outlets have talked to people who have claimed to have attended 10s of rallies. It’s like a deranged version of following a Grateful Dead tour.
boatboy_srq
@Brachiator:
Smarter women will likely be self-assured women. Women who won’t take the kind of bad behavior Reichwingnut males are inclined to dish out. The college-educated woman is the Stacy to their incel selves. They weren’t available in the first place.
The question remains, though, what woman would be desirable and attainable for these cretins? They’ve discounted POCs, and educated women are off the table.
Ruckus
@The Pale Scot:
He was an officer. She is religious but so is my sister and she has nothing to do with ex military guys. They may be fundies but she really does not strike me that way. Remember I’ve seen her once since 1990, and he had been in approx 18-20 yrs then. He has been retired for a long time now and not everyone in the AF is a fundie. I don’t know if he was AF academy he might not be and he would have been in 45-50 yrs ago if he was.
mvr
@Baud: Grassley was occasionally surprising because he was mostly a dick and it was surprising when he wasn’t. Now he’s more consistently a dick, and one who will do what he can to keep the cushy gig he’s got. As he said himself.
Why Judd Greg thinks this is an interesting cross-rhythm on his own personal drumbeat, I don’t know. Nor do I really care. Iowa will go back to being swingy when Trump is as dead as the small towns he helped kill off, along with the unvaccinated residents.
Which may be too late to head off the worst effects of climate change but also sooner than the Rs think.
Ruckus
@Roger Moore:
True.
Geminid
Someone may have already pointed this out, but Pat Grassley, Charles Grassley’s 38 year old grandson, is Speaker of the Iowa House of Representatives. There is a theory that Senator Grassley’s plan is to win another term and later resign so his grandson can be appointed U.S. Senator in his place.
Leto
@Suzanne: @Mousebumples: Read this a few days ago about the intersection of femcels and incels.
‘ I feel hurt that my life has ended up here’: The women who are involuntary celibates What is it like to go without a partner when you long for one – and when even a fleeting sexual connection feels impossible?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Obama had a busy day today, first Virginia, then New Jersey. You get the impression he’s missed the campaign trail….
Suzanne
@Ruckus:
Well, yes. The shorthand that is currently in use is “college-educated”, as if having a diploma in hand is the truly relevant factor. I don’t think that’s exactly right. It’s not a real analysis, it’s not getting to what makes those two groups different. The reason that people are going to college, even though it has never been more expensive, is because the kind of people who are looking ahead to what the future holds, for themselves or for their children, believe that it is necessary to go to college to compete in the future economy. It is an expectation of competition. If there is any common thread to the MAGA people, the incel cohort, the Proud Boys types, etc… it’s that they didn’t ever really expect to compete. They expected a social hierarchy stacked in their favor to produce pretty good outcomes for them without them having to do much work, they expected to win by showing up. A lot of families didn’t raise their kids to see the world competitively, and now women, racial minorities, immigrants, etc. are all kicking their asses.
The Pale Scot
Yea, that’s long before the current reign of Xtianist terror started.
That the organization which have the Warthog pilots in Iraq and Korean/Vietnam pilots breaking norms to succeed was specifically targeted by the fundie nut jobs because they’re are the ICBM force have partially succeeded blows my mind. Totally different service. And they’re going to get smoked by a peer adversary if this inflexible thought process continues.
Just like the Japanese were terrible pilots because they were carried around on their mother’s backs making their heads wobble and ruining their balance.
Ruckus
@boatboy_srq:
I think your math may be a bit suspect. They are my age. In 4 presidential elections I’ll be getting close to 90 yrs old, and only one person in mom’s family lived that long, mom. And dad was an only child. I’m the third oldest out of all my cousins. The youngest cousin is in the neighborhood of 60. Any kids we have are in their 30s-50s. My nephew is now 51. With 2 adult or almost, children. Many of the children you are talking about have been voting for a while. Yes some of them haven’t but many have. There are for sure young republicans, and as much as the shame should work on them, it won’t. This is a problem that is more than just politics, read Suzanne’s comments. She’s not near my geezerdom but she’s got her teen years behind her. The cohort you are talking about is about 18-50 and beyond that is their parents. This is voting age people, those over 18, and their parents. They aren’t voting in 40 yrs, they are voting now.
Ruckus
@The Pale Scot:
WTF?
Are you 12? Have you read about the war in the Pacific?
The Lodger
@Matt McIrvin: When you’re as unconstrained by fact as the Republicans you can say anything you please.
Jay
@Ruckus:
I think he is referring to the start of WWII and the period before the war when racist tropes about the Japanese combat troops by Allied Forces resulted in under-training, inadequate prep and defences, hubris and underestimation.
Ruckus
@Jay:
Likely, because while any particular pilot may not be the best, the Japanese did pretty good for their side during WWII. Their upper ranks were sometimes rather cautious but a lot of that might of had to do with what could be termed supply side issues.
I’ve read a lot of WWII books, I think because I was born in the same decade. And I’ve never heard that before. It just seemed strange. But it is the US and not so unlikely to be true.
Uncle Cosmo
Which was a bald-faced lie, as I discovered when I joined the logistics support division of a defense contractor in the early 1980s.
What happened is very simply explained: A lot of the cost of military procurement isn’t hardware, but things like development of repair concepts and manuals, other tech data, training and support. In the old dispensation, all of that added expense was allocated to deliverable hardware, and (since everyone knew it had to be bought & paid for) contractors would often allocate the the extra cost equally to each deliverable hardware item. That’s how you’d get $500 toilet seats – $10 for the seat and $490 for its share of the added cost – when the hotshot electronic gizmo at the heart of the radar, priced at $500,000, ends up costing $500, 490.
The solution was equally simple: Allocate the added costs to the hardware deliverables according to their fraction of the total hardware cost. So if the added cost is (say) 40% of the hardware cost, the gizmo is priced at 140% of $500,000 or $700,000 while the toilet seat is priced at 140% of $10 or $14. Total cost is the same either way, but proportional allocation removes the ability of nitwit politicians to grandstand about it.
(In retrospect, contractors should’ve been doing proportional allocation from the gitgo – but as noted, either method of allocating costs ended up with the same dollar figure, so no one paid much attention, until numbnuts like Gr(ass)ley started blowharding…)
/pedantic rant
Jay
@Ruckus:
Canadians thought that Hong Kong would be a cake walk, because of various racist tropes about the Japanese.
It was, for the Japanese.
https://www.usfca.edu/sites/default/files/arts_and_sciences/app_xiii1_03_seto_08-17-15.pdf
Jay
@Uncle Cosmo:
and with some of the programs, there is MILSPEC standards and other programs. I worked on one project for the USN where basically every component had to be tracked, tested, certified from tested ingot to finished part, then assembled, installed, welded by somebody who met certs, and those were tracked, attached and documented as well, with all the certs, tests, documents filed and recorded in the ERP software and paper files. A commercial 2” bronze valve was $47, a “nuclear reactor” rated same valve was $259, our project valve was $1734, mostly because of all the documentation and tracking.
Even glow sticks in the emergency kit had to meet standards, prove they met standards, had a documented test system, chain of custody and met expiry dates.
Soprano2
@Scout211: That was an amazing piece of work. Somehow he gets them to tell on themselves and mostly they don’t even know they’re doing it!
Another Scott
@Uncle Cosmo: My dad worked for Lockheed in the days of the $600 toilet seats and $500 hammers. IIRC, the explanation I heard was that there were multi-hundred-million dollar contracts and billing against it cost a fortune because of all the paperwork, signatures, etc., that were required to do so. The company newsletter explained what was going on and said that they were going by the book in the billing, but it was such a nightmare that they were going to do tiny purchases differently (and not bill stuff picked up at Sears to such contracts). So, if a single C-130 needed a new one-of-a-kind toilet seat, they would find a way to provide it outside the $300M (or whatever) contract.
It’s a consequence of understandable but often excessive oversight. “Demonstrating that you’re not wasting taxpayer dollars” is a worthy and important goal, but it’s expensive. A little bird tells me that it’s at least as bad (but different) now even with the vast improvements in computerization.
Cheers,
Scott.
El-Man
@Roger Moore: Oh, it’s simple – just don’t pay attention to us furriners and do your own thing anyway. What do we know, we don’t have your freedoms.
eddie blake
@Soprano2: there are no mirrors in trumpworld.
SFAW
@El-Man:
Well, you DO hate us for our freedoms, ya know.
Wait, is that furriners? Or furrin terrists (as opposed to the homegrown
terristslone-wolves)? I can never rememberJay
@Another Scott:
most of the tracking, tracing, documenting, certs evolved because somebody, or a lot of somebodies died because of a defect.
Leto
@Jay: That’s something a lot of people really fail to recognize; that the part from the hardware store might cost $2, but that’s for a home application. The types of scenarios we find ourselves in, in the military, is very far from that. The reliability factor we’re looking for is orders of magnitude higher. Going back to that valve: the homeowners valve fails, it might result in a flooded bathroom, maybe flooded basement. Valve failure on a nuclear powered sub could result in 111 people never making it back.
@Another Scott: part of it is oversight, the other part is just the contracts themselves. I’ll give you an example: back in 1999, Shaw AFB was upgrading their voice recording system for Air Traffic System. ie the device that recorded what tower/RAPCON officials said to the pilots, pilots to officials, and the landline communications from the tower/RAPCON to other ATC agencies. That contract was written at least 7 years before and specified specific cpu/OS requirements. 7 years later, in terms of computer upgrades, is an eternity. When I asked the install team, who was training us on the new system, why didn’t they use 386 CPUs and windows 95, they said, “This is what was specified in the contract. The entire system is designed around this. To go back in and redo everything would take years and $$$.” Any time you make changes to the contract, it’s time and money. At some point the system needs to get out the door, otherwise you’re stuck chasing an ever moving target that will never be struck
Edit: when I went through project management school, they showed us this video. It’s still as applicable today as it was then. (11 mins)
Jay
@Leto:
we had 4 guys doing the welding, silver solder was NFW. (Thresher). They each had to do 100 cylindrical welds, stainless and 3 different grades of steel, ( all with MILSPEC tracing and docs, all in one day, observed and documented by a certified 2nd party, they had to be sent out to a testing agency, a certified 3rd party, ultrasonically tested and xrayed, and then, if 100% of their welds passed testing, they were certified to weld, for the next 4 months.
And all of this had to be filed, ( paper) and documented in the parts list, (ERP).
El-Man
@SFAW: It started out being the furrin terrists, but it soon expanded to be lots of other furrin countries too.
I can’t speak for your
homegrown terristslone wolves, but it might be that they consider themselves to be the only REAL Murkins…The Pale Scot
@Ruckus:
I was referring to the Xtian AF, seeing foes thru a racist perspective, compared to A-10 and SE Asia pilots respecting their foes
The Pale Scot
@Jay:
Thanks, better than my version
The Pale Scot
@Ruckus:
Pre war, the IJA and the IJN had the hardest standards bar none. Jumping off 20ft towers doing flips and catching flies was the first six months of two year program. They were the SAS of military pilots
Jay
@The Pale Scot:
they also had years of combat experience in China.
they also built a full sized mock Pearl Harbour and practiced their attacks for over 2 months, day in, day out and at night.
( which is weird, because Western racist tropes said that the “Japs” couldn’t see a night, //).
The Pale Scot
@Jay:
Their total obsession about keeping an offensive tempo kept them from emphasizing damage control and convoy protection. But with a narrow production bandwidth and the Samurai obsession whatever they were fucked going in
Jay
@The Pale Scot:
like Germany, ( The Wages of Sin), it was mostly resources and industrial capacity. Japan never lacked for manpower.
No oil, little steel, like Germany.
In 1939, the Soviet Union made 3x the amount of steel as Germany, and better quality.
Jay
@The Pale Scot:
in the Malaysia/Singapore campaign, they were out numbered 3:1 by the Allies. Normally, you need a minimum of 3:1 as an attacker to succeed.
Like Germany, they stuck with what had been a recipe for success, earlier in the war, even though conditions had changed.
evodevo
@The Pale Scot:
This strikes a chord with me…my son is an AF pilot, evangelical (not raised as that by ME) – as is the wife – and I got into a discussion with him about the Afghan debacle last month, with me defending the withdrawal, saying it was a strategic error to think we could maintain in a country which shares a 1600 mile border with Pakistan fighting a religious fanatic insurgency. He was adamant about staying, ignoring every point I brought up, and gish-galloped through all sorts of excuses, bringing up strategically unrelated areas where we DO have an interest in keeping a presence. No evidence was going to convince him otherwise – finally we agreed to disagree, but if his mindset is typical, strategic blunders are going to be part of our foreign policy for a long time to come..
m.j.
Are the Freemasons a group no one talks about anymore? Grassley is a longstanding member.
Fancycwabs
Anytime someone moves into the Trump camp I assume there’s blackmail involved.
Chris Sherbak
@Baud: Agreed. Also don’t want to discourage Dems there voting for all the races up and down the ballot. We may not get the Senate seat, but her voters may be encouraged to come out and vote (and not feel national Dems have “given up on them.”)