Next week or so will really suck, bc we probably won’t know enough to assess the risks from the new variant, but demand from people to know more about the new variant will be met by a supply of often unhelpful & occasionally irresponsible speculation.
— Dana Houle (@DanaHoule) November 26, 2021
Senate back in session today. House back tomorrow. Work goes on this week behind the scenes to prep Dems social spending bill for the Senate. But the main focus this week is funding the gov’t. The gov’t shuts down at 11:59:59 pm et Dec 3
— Chad Pergram (@ChadPergram) November 29, 2021
A CNN anchor wondered today why public perceptions about the economy are not as positive as the actual economy. Which is a little like the captain of the Exxon Valdez wondering why all those birds have oil on them.
— Mark Jacob (@MarkJacob16) November 28, 2021
i don’t think he’s franklin roosevelt but lyndon johnson is probably the correct analogous president but these guys write stories like he’s sitting in the white house playing scrabble.
five trillion dollars. five trillion. five.
— World Famous Art Thief (@CalmSporting) November 29, 2021
"the politics of climate change"
like… here we are, decades into a problem that might be irreversible and people are still opposed to doing anything about it *because of politics.* and that's normal https://t.co/3AVE4PL3b8
— Gerry Doyle (@mgerrydoyle) November 29, 2021
Winston
Feel good French Bulldog story: https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2021/11/27/tortoise-trap-dog-underground-burrow/
eta: When I was 8 or 9 we had a turtle (Murtle) living in our back yard. Loved that turtle.
satby
AnneLaurie, thank you again. I was beginning to believe we needed to change the B-J motto “come for the politics…”
SiubhanDuinne
Love that Mark Jacob analogy!
Geminid
I was glad to see that the thoughtful Magdi Semrau (aka @Mangy Jay) made it onto Brian Stelter’s CNN show yesterday. Ms. Semrau was identified as “Columnist, The Editorial Board.” The Stelter segment was about media coverage of the Biden administration.
rikyrah
Good Morning Everyone ???
brendancalling
I’m sitting here in my bed, looking out the window at the snow, and what looks like light rain coming down. I need to leave in about 20 minutes to get to work.
I moved here to be closer to my kid and instead didn’t see him for 18 months. Now I’m reading that the omnicron variant (or whatever it’s called) is already in Canada and I’m basically waiting for the border to slam shut again.
I’m not happy with America, or the world for that matter, today.
NotMax
(Repeated from last night.)
Chappy Chanukah!
By now, obligatory.
Alternatively, something which trods a different path.
;)
satby
And I’m off to drive back to Chicago for the third family funeral in 30 days. No condolences needed, this was my father’s last surviving sibling, 91 and with dementia. For him passing on was a blessing.
John S.
@brendancalling:
For whatever reason, whenever I am feeling down about the state of current affairs, this Annie Lennox verse always pops into my head:
ETA: And yes, specifically the Annie Lennox version even though this is a Neil Young song.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@brendancalling: I hear you. We moved here to be closer to our son too, and have seen him twice since March 2020. We’ll have to see how omicron goes. It’s pretty discouraging.
Have some coffee.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
Sitting in airport in Denver. First work trip in almost two years, going back to Central Misery, aka Jefferson City by way of STL. The plus is that the office will be practically deserted. Too bad the surrounding area won’t.
NotMax
C’est si non. To call it hidebound is being too kind.
Winston
I love ramen noodles. So quick and easy. Tried boiling them in Campbells French Onion soup this morning. Add a few Italian meat balls. Fantastic!
delk
I’m off to have a CT scan of my sinuses this morning.
SiubhanDuinne
@satby:
I will honour your request, but you can’t stop John Donne from talking in my head.
May your uncle rest in peace.
Betty Cracker
@Winston: What a harrowing incident for the dog though — trapped underground with an angry tortoise! Glad to read the happy ending, but I hope they fence off some of the yard for the tortoise’s exclusive use or it may happen again. I hear Frenchies are pretty darn stubborn.
SiubhanDuinne
@Winston:
I read your first sentence as “I love random noodles.”
:-)
OzarkHillbilly
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: You have my sympathies.
Betty
When will the MSM acknowledge that anything other than lowering taxes for the rich and reducing regulation (except for abortion) is unacceptable to those they choose to refer to as conservatives? Sigh.
NotMax
@brendancalling
You gotta have hope
That’s the price you gotta pay
You gotta stay loose
That’s the only way to stay
– Nilsson, “Down”
.
OzarkHillbilly
@NotMax: That which does not adapt, dies. That said, the French language will adapt, whether certain people like it or not.
Betty Cracker
@NotMax: Good to know this about Macron’s wife because now I don’t feel so embarrassed about The Beast’s crass comments about her. The French linguistic authority has the right idea: adding a non-gendered pronoun is a better solution than using an existing plural pronoun as a non-gendered option to refer to a singular subject as we English speakers do, IMO.
Betty
@NotMax: It’s hilarious that in protecting the French language, he is using the French word “wokeism”. Since I studied there in 1968 (ancient history), they have been fighting this losing battle against French people using American words or other “foreign” concepts.
Matt McIrvin
I’ve come to believe that the disconnect between public perceptions of the economy and traditional indicators is more than just a media-disinfo thing. The fact is that the US electorate is to some degree predatory–our interests as consumers and our interests as workers are at cross purposes. The people want the economy to be somewhat “bad” according to employment and wage statistics so that they can have cheap, readily accessible goods and services, and so that they can push service workers around with some effectiveness. There’s a history of sneering at European welfare states because they make the waiters rude. If we’re at full employment, and workers can even effectively strike for better conditions, it means that maybe the customer is not always right.
OzarkHillbilly
Ties that bind: Missouri Senate candidate hopes Trump notices neckwear
Reason # 1,276,322 for why I don’t have TV: The 2022 GOP Senate race in Misery.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@OzarkHillbilly:
My wife was back a year ago when we finally sold the B&B. It was insane then, no mask wearing, etc. I’m debating whether or not to head up to Columbia and go to Rag Tag for movies. They require proof of vaccination to enter and you wear a mask. I’m sure that legion of dumbasses that make up the Cole County area wouldn’t dream of such odious mandates.
Which means I won’t go anyplace there short of the office.
I miss some things about Central Misery but keeeerist am I glad we got out (finally) when we did.
Winston
@Betty Cracker: I thought of Badger when I read it. If anyone knows French Bulldogs, you do. ?
edited for BJ editor error.
OzarkHillbilly
Dancer, singer … spy: France’s Panthéon to honour Josephine Baker
sdhays
@NotMax: In English, lacking a neutral term for she or he has always been awkward and annoying since one doesn’t always know the gender of the person one is talking about, and that’s before the more recent awareness of non-binary gender. I don’t like overusing them/they for singular as well as plural, but it addresses the need and is now fairly well accepted.
I assume French is the same, and that this will be a welcome addition for people who don’t have their heads stuck up their asses. I also assume that the Robert didn’t just dream this up on their own – the addition must be a reflection of already wide-spread usage, so Mrs. Macron and the Education Minister are already too late.
NotMax
@OzarkHillbilly
Fashion courtesy of KKKalvin Clown.
//
Matt McIrvin
@Betty Cracker: The “two pronouns” declaration is hilarious because French already has an indeterminate singular third-person pronoun, “on”, which roughly plays the role of the abstract “one” or singular “they” in English. There is no issue of number agreement.
It seems to me that if they don’t want a new French pronoun, the logical course for the singular case would be to just expand the use of “on”, by analogy to what we do with singular “they” in English (extending it from an indefinite person to a definite person of unspecified or nonbinary gender). That does, however, only cover the singular case since the French third-person plural pronouns are themselves gendered, with a rule that you use the masculine pronoun “ils” in indeterminate cases (which is the kind of sexist rule that bothers people in the first place). Is there an “iels”?
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Betty Cracker:
I just don’t get why she cares so much to comment on it. What does it hurt to add a gender neutral pronoun? It likely would have near-zero impact on her personally. Well, I mean I do. It’s because she’s a bigot
What really gets to me is the derision of “wokeism” that’s seemingly gaining traction everywhere now. Do any of these people understand that term’s origins in African American culture? I doubt it. But given that it’s France who have their own racial issues, I doubt it would matter much if they did
Winston
@SiubhanDuinne: I cook with random noodles too. But Ramen noodles, at $.12 per serving is a no brainer for me.
Betty Cracker
@Winston: Badger is a Boston Terrier, but I believe they and Frenchies share some common ancestry, and they do look alike in some ways. I could definitely imagine Badger doing something that dumb! On the other hand, he’s a big chicken. He’d be more likely to bark at a tortoise from a safe distance. :)
germy
Matt McIrvin
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
Here, at least, I think many people do understand it and that’s precisely where the contempt originates.
NotMax
Call from Mom late at night her time. Once she explained what was (and was not) occurring, fairly easy to surmise her internet is down.
Oddly, her cable TV (same provider) is working, except is showing every channel in letterbox format.
Nevertheless, she’s convinced she somehow, some way broke them both and was in need of reassurance.
OzarkHillbilly
Every morning my wife has 2 eggs and an English muffin for breakfast. And every morning she gives Percy a bite of English muffin with sopped up yolk (well, not exactly every morning, some mornings such pedestrian fare is below his highness’ standards) and Billie Jean gets the pleasure of cleaning off her plate, which always holds a fair amount of egg my wife left behind. This AM my wife was in a hurry and told me it was my job to give the hounds their morning treat. Percy just turned up his nose. OK, ya stuck up little runt, then I’ll give it to Billie with the plate! I offer it to Billie Jean. She buries her head in her security blankie. I prod her with the plate. She goes deeper. Again I prod. Nothing. Apparently only from Momma’s hands will morning treats be accepted.
My feeling is hurt, and it’s the last one I’ve got.
Fair Economist
@Matt McIrvin: I think empowered workers would create complaints about “civility” (=not groveling) rather than complaints about the economy.
Geminid
@Matt McIrvin: A lot of people still believe in the misconception that the economy is a zero sum game. A thriving working class makes for a more prosperous middle class- and a wealthier upper class for that matter. But a lot of middle class people don’t see it that way, even when the evidence is right in front of them. That is one of the challenges Democrats will have to surmount next year.
Matt McIrvin
@Fair Economist: HELP WANTED signs, though, actually make people worry about the economy, and the “no one wants to work” complaints usually blame it on government handouts and what have you.
Winston
@Betty Cracker: I’ve always had doggos except for the last 10 years. The best dog I ever had was a Chow/Golden Retriever mix. He would try to talk to me and believe it or not, I could understand. He understood every word I said to him. Much more intelligent than me in that regards.
Soprano2
I continue to be enraged by reporters and pundits who act like they have no agency. “Why is everyone so worried about inflation? Why hasn’t anyone noticed how good the economy is?” asks the reporter who has spent the past month reporting obsessively about inflation and never talking about the good economy. I wish they would just admit that they’d rather talk about the things Fox News talks about. I heard today that economists think Christmas spending this year is going to outstrip last year, which was a record year, but I bet they all talk about inflation and shortages!
Fair Economist
@Matt McIrvin: Yes, there is an “iels”.
Your idea of extending “on” could work too, though; make a plural as “ons”.
OzarkHillbilly
I empathize. That is always my go to assumption. When the cash register locks up at the local WalMart? Yep, my fault. Traffic lights stop working? My doing.
Matt McIrvin
…I should add, the singular “they” solution also doesn’t directly translate to French because their plural third-person pronouns are gendered. But “on” is the closest French equivalent.
Matt McIrvin
@Fair Economist: Really I think “on” is more indefinite than singular in number too. It can take either “son/sa/ses” (which is gendered by the thing being possessed) or “leur/leurs” as a possessive form. Often it functionally means “we” in informal conversation. But in verb conjugations it functions more like a singular.
Soprano2
@satby: Wow, that’s still tough. Have a safe trip.
When I was 21 I did two funerals in three weeks, but that was my father than then his mother, so completely different. The family had the two funerals in the same funeral home, that made the second one almost unbearable for me. I have no idea what they were thinking other than “This is the funeral home we always use”.
Betty Cracker
@Matt McIrvin: There’s definitely an element of resentment about workers having options among many “conservative” folks, who melt down in public like big babies over the smallest inconvenience. So entitled!
My local paper has published lots of tut-tutting about “kids today” who aren’t flocking to minimum wage burger-slinging jobs and companies having a hard time hiring because the poors would rather lollygag on unemployment. That last bit is especially ironic in FL, which has a purposely broken UI system and starvation benefit.
Soprano2
@NotMax: I’ve said for a long time that English needs a gender-neutral singular pronoun for a person when you’re talking about something where the person could be of either gender. I thought about this long before it became a big issue because I don’t like using “he” as the default pronoun – it’s not right! And I hate using “they” and “them”, because again IT’S NOT RIGHT! There needs to be specific words for those meanings.
Fair Economist
@Matt McIrvin:
Well, maybe, although it shouldn’t. Most people I know get it right – no work available means a bad economy; lots of work means a good economy.
You are right about the conservatives blaming “handouts”. My mom and her friends continue to blame unemployment months after the pandemic benefits stopped.
Quiltingfool
@OzarkHillbilly: My husband gets his feelings hurt (tho he would never admit it) when (sometimes) the cat ignores treats he gives her, but goes crazy when I give her treats. I keep telling him not to take it personally, it’s a cat thing!
Fair Economist
@Soprano2:
Thou has a more pressing concern if using plural pronouns as singular distresses thee.
Soprano2
@OzarkHillbilly: Ugh, that’s my representative. He’s embarrassing. He never has town halls or talks to his constituents because he doesn’t have to – being a Republican is enough to get him re-elected no matter what he does. It’s disgusting. In his first race he used the slogan “I’m Fed Up”; my husband said is should have been “I’m Well-Fed”. LOL
Roger Moore
@Betty Cracker:
English has been using “they” and “them” as the third person singular in the case of a hypothetical or unknown person at least since the time of Shakespeare. It makes more sense to extend it to the case of a known person whose gender doesn’t match “he/him” or “she/her” than it does to make up a new pronoun.
Winston
@Soprano2: Doubling down on deaths of beloveds is so heartbreaking. Same happened to me. During my wife’s funeral, my SIL told me my brother had died that same day. I was in shock for two years after that and I have never gotten over it. At least I don’t sit in a bar all day. I drink at home. And it only helps to forget because of the fog. My best wishes and condolences. Grief never ends.
Soprano2
@Fair Economist: I know, first world problems. It’s just so grating to my ear, I want a pronoun that addresses the specific situation.
OzarkHillbilly
@Quiltingfool: Yeah, I never take such snubs personal, especially with these 2. In the truck, Percy has to be connected to me, at the very least a paw on my thigh. Billie Jean’s security blankie? Is whatever blanket I have been using. The only downside is that sometimes she uses it as a pacifier, and then there is a sopping wet spot I have to avoid.
Soprano2
@Matt McIrvin: To me that’s crazy – lots of “Help Wanted” signs usually mean that the economy is booming and places need more workers. No “Help Wanted” signs is bad.
OzarkHillbilly
@Soprano2: Are you sure you aren’t talking about my own Jason Smith?
Fair Economist
@Roger Moore: What’s particularly hilarious is that most people *who say they oppose using singular they* will proceed to use it in the process of telling people not to use it! If you ask such a person what pronouns somebody intersexual should use, they will say something along the lines of “They should use the pronoun they were assigned at birth”. LOL
And I just used singular they there, also, and most people wouldn’t have noticed that either if I hadn’t pointed it out.
Roger Moore
@Betty:
The underlying issue is that they’re trying to kill the concept by killing the word, which has never worked. The best they can do is to make sure the word people use is a proper French word rather than one imported from English, German, Spanish, or what have you.
Soprano2
@Winston: Oh wow, that’s awful, I’m so sorry. I have always believed that my grandmother died of a broken heart. She already lost one son and daughter-in-law in a car vs. train accident six years before my dad’s death. I think my father’s sudden death from a heart attack was too much for her to bear.
I would tell you to try to get some help, but I assume you’ve already done that. The only thing that really helped me after my sister’s sudden death was time, and the fact that I had been through it with my father’s death so I had some idea of what to expect.
Ken
… where such a large fraction of the population — and I’ll bet an even larger fraction of those who still write letters to the editor of print newspapers — are lollygagging on Social Security.
Kay
@Fair Economist:
The “handouts” theory was fairly mainstream. They just pulled it out of their ass, promoted it as “just asking questions!’ for 3 months and then never corrected.
Maybe people would have come up this themselves- we devalue work and also workers in this country so maybe it would have been kneejerk- but “experts” are supposed to have higher standards than that.
I’m convinced a lot of the inflation freak out has to do with rising wages and the (relative) lack of a powerless, endlessly available low wage workforce. They aren’t going to be able to take the people who are now making 15,17, 20 an hour back to 10 without a lot of resentment and a recognition that they could have been paying 15,17,20 but paid 10.
Cameron
@OzarkHillbilly: I can’t even sneer at him. That’s just pathetic.
Ken
@Roger Moore: IIRC, the “rule” to use he when the person’s gender is unknown was made up by grammarians in the 19th century, about the same time as “don’t split infinitives” and “don’t end a sentence with a preposition”. Before that, singular they was in common use.
Kay
Left/Right alliance on “populism” is going as well as it usually does, like the other 5 times they rolled it out as “new”.
Remember when they allied with Grover Norquist in 2010? They roll this out once a decade. Oddly it’s always Right wing economics.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Kay:
Tulsi Gabbard was always a right-winger in left-winger clothing. Glad she’s no longer in Congress
narya
Because of my previous history as a freelance copyeditor/proofreader, where subject/verb agreement was a thing, I at first had a hard time with they/them pronouns. Where I work has a lot of variety when it comes to gender expression and pronoun preferences, so lots of folks use it, and the more I thought about it, the more I decided I really don’t care (in a good way). Whatever pronouns you choose are the ones I’ll use; language is a living thing. That said, I still would have preferred a new neutral pronoun, because it does sometimes take a beat to figure out whether we’re discussing one person (who uses they/them pronouns) or multiple people. There have been attempts over the years to create such pronouns, but none stuck.
mali muso
Meanwhile, in some of the languages I’ve learned (Bambara, Indonesian), there is ONLY a gender neutral singular pronoun. If you want to know if the pronoun refers to him or her, you have to rely on the context of the conversation. Maybe having functioned in those languages helped reprogram my brain, but it doesn’t bother me in the least to use they/them in English now.
OzarkHillbilly
@Kay:
That’s funny, I never worry about the IRS harassing me. Maybe that’s because I pay my taxes.
SiubhanDuinne
@Winston:
That is shocking and heartbreaking. I’m so sorry for your terrible double loss. Please treat yourself gently.
Fair Economist
@Kay:
Not sure whether this was intentional, but that’s another propaganda technique. Talk about some falsehood a lot and then don’t mention the refutation; since people’s beliefs are primarily driven by what they remember, that makes most people believe the falsehood.
prostratedragon
@Winston: Pantry staples. I also keep homemade broth around to doctor up those or other prepared soups and leftovers.
Betty Cracker
@narya: Same. In the abstract, I think a non-gendered, singular pronoun to reference identified individuals would have worked better grammatically, but it’s certainly not a big deal. Like you said, language is a living thing. Respecting people’s preferences is more important.
germy
Any theories as to what happened to Lara Logan’s mind?
Leto
@OzarkHillbilly: (WaPo) Opinion: Don’t let the inspiring story of Josephine Baker erase France’s pervasive racism
Ken
@mali muso: Hungarian is another language without gendered pronouns. I only know this because of an article on how machine translation has picked up gender bias, with examples from Hungarian to English along the lines of
“O is politician” => “He is a politician”
“O is washing dishes” => “She is washing dishes”
PST
@OzarkHillbilly: Are you sure your beasts aren’t cats in disguise? That doesn’t sound like dog behavior to me.
Kay
@OzarkHillbilly:
Just odd that this pillar of Right/Left “populism” doesn’t want taxes collected. They’re all just so full of shit I can’t stand it.
Kay
@Fair Economist:
I think it was intutive to them- that they had a predilection towards the idea that low wage workers are lazy and unmotivated, so it was a natural fit. If they were better people they’d make more money, right?
I have to say, it was completely fascinating to watch play out. People couldn’t believe that the government was actually going to rescue them. They’d heard some vague murmers about the federal bump for unemployment and when it came they were shocked.
You just realize how much Right wing economics has become the norm. They just assumed they’d be pushed off a cliff again, like their actual role in the economy is to suffer acutely when there’s a downturn or bump. The People Who Get Hurt.
Leto
@Betty Cracker:
There are too many people on this blog, this specific thread, who disagree with that notion. And they say they have nothing in common with conservatives! /s
Kay
@Fair Economist:
And we all know this now, right? We know that the federal government can actually muster a really robust reponse to an economic event, if they want to. They always had a choice about whether to push 50 million low and low middle wage workers off a cliff – they chose “push them”. This time they chose something else, and, miraculously, the entire lower middle class didn’t suffer for a decade. The suffering was optional.
prostratedragon
@Soprano2: Ten years ago this month my mother’s last sibling and my father were within a couple of weeks. I don’t think she ever really recovered.
mrmoshpotato
? Blame her emails, assholes.
OzarkHillbilly
@Kay: Every time somebody starts to complain to me about paying taxes, I reply that taxes are the price we pay for a civilized society.
NotMax
@narya
Have been dangling “hown,” a shortening of “his/her own (self)” in the pond of pronouns since the late sixties.
To a veritable vacuum of bites.
;)
Kay
@OzarkHillbilly:
I feel like there’s a majority tax paying group that can be reached on the issue of “fairness”, regardless of ideology. They pay their taxes. Why should cheats get away with it? Keep it simple.
PST
On a completely different subject, I was sorry to miss the Hanukkah thread last night. (I was too drunk to check in; now I’m only too hungover to focus.) I want to propose that for the next eight days we honor the Speaker of the House by renaming her Nancy Shamash.
NotMax
@PST
I blame it on it being five in the morning. At first read that as “Are you sure your breasts aren’t cats in disguise?”
OzarkHillbilly
@Kay: I had a friend complaining to me about how much taxes they pay. I pointed out that the *rich* don’t pay a tenth of what my friends do.
She didn’t know how to respond to that.
** the Musks of the world
Immanentize
@Kay: I heard a guy on the radio complaining that he had raised wages “almost 40-50%!” and was still having trouble getting workers at his retail place.
Quick math — minimum wage is 7.25. so his big boost was probably to $10.50 – 11/hr? Ok, that’s a boost, but not as much as he was trying to make it out to be. Offer more, see what happens.
Omnes Omnibus
@germy:
I presume you are not making a joke about her sexual assault during the 2011 revolution in Egypt.
PST
@NotMax: That could cause some confusion among guys trying to get to second or third base.
randy khan
I am having a little Twitter dialogue with someone who says that the Biden Administration isn’t doing anything to fulfill its promises and thinks the two bills that have been passed have nothing to do with those promises. (He also doesn’t count actions to reverse bad Trump actions because, well, why should Biden get any credit for fixing things?)
It kind of epitomizes how people on the performative left are approaching the Administration, which really doesn’t help.
Kay
@Immanentize:
When unemployment is at 4.6% it’s more difficult to hire. This has always been true. I don’t get why they’re all acting as if it’s some complicated psychological problem on the part of workers.
Read ALL the fucking numbers. Put them together. What do you get?
No employer was guaranteed an endless supply of low wage workers. That’s not in the constitution. They’re supposed to be managers. They have to deal with changes in markets.
We can give them 10% unemployment, but they’ll have fewer customers and less demand. Better now? It’s downright childish how they insist on all the upside and no downside. No. You can’t have that.
germy
@Omnes Omnibus:
No, her opinions on the covid virus and variants.
germy
@randy khan:
We’re supposed to be the opposite of a dictatorship, but some of these critics expect a dictator.
Kay
@Immanentize:
I exempt restaurants from this and some other personal services- they really got slammed- but you also need to look at why you didn’t keep employees. Retention is important. I don’t care what the business is. They’re not interchangeable.
Two different approaches. FedEx took the “treat employees like shit” model and it works as long as there’s an endless supply of employees to churn thru. UPS keep people because although it is extremely tough to work there- they’re really demanding- they pay well and the model relies on experience paying off.
Both UPS and FedEx do “last mile” delivery for the postal service, so I got to know their drivers. The (ever changing) FedEx drivers would beg for a USPS job opening- the UPS drivers never did.
mrmoshpotato
@randy khan:
Children…
germy
@Kay:
The companies with the “treat employees like shit” model. I believe eventually the customers suffer along with the employees. As morale drops, so does the customer experience.
Citizen Alan
@germy: I have been saying for years that the far left and the far right are both groups of authoritarian cultists. They just disagree on what they want the absolute dictator to do once he takes over.
lowtechcyclist
@Ken:
Bull Durham (1988) – Bunch of Lollygaggers Scene (5/12) | Movieclips – Bing video
OzarkHillbilly
I wish somebody would tell them that.
germy
@Citizen Alan:
You’re right. The concept of checks and balances is a foreign one.
Betty Cracker
@Citizen Alan: I think that’s accurate as long as you recognize the number of lefty cultists is vanishingly small and has no political power, whereas the authoritarian cult on the right comprises the overwhelming majority of the Republican Party and poses a grave threat to democracy.
zhena gogolia
@Betty Cracker: Yeah. It’s scary. I am so depressed about Congress. And the Supreme Court.
NotMax
@germy
“Please stay on the line afterwards for a short survey about satisfaction with our customer services. To which no one will pay the slightest attention.”
//
Kay
@germy:
I do too. Even “easy” jobs are not that easy. Knowing how to do “it” matters. You don’t notice it when it’s done well, but you will notice it when it’s not.
FedEx didn’t even want them classified as employees. Okay, but then you don’t get to complain when your rugged individualist employees stop showing up. You made it clear they weren’t at all valuable and could be replaced. So replace them. They wanted indepedent contractors but with all the benefits to the company of committed, invested employees. That’s not how this works.
Betty Cracker
@zhena gogolia: Maybe I’m paranoid, but it seems like there’s been an uptick in pundits on TV and in opinion columns who are trying to lay the groundwork for normalizing the overturning of Roe v. Wade before the debate even happens. The Post has a guest column today from Mississippi’s AG, who claims abolishing Roe would return power to the people. As if it’s okay to put MY constitutional rights to a vote.
germy
@OzarkHillbilly:
Captains of industry never listen.
Kay
This is what I object to. It’s just bad work to focus on one area. I mean, my God, they used to at least do the “on the other hand”. Now they just focus on “supply” rather than “demand”, or “price increases” but not employment or wage increases. It functions as a lie, because of the focus and ommissions.
When people say they “can’t hire” could “really low unemployment” at least be mentioned? It always would have been mentioned before. They were like “let’s find the lazy moocher zebra!” instead of looking at the boring herd of horses right in front of them.
Soprano2
@OzarkHillbilly: I assume they’re cut from the same Republican cloth.
NotMax
@Betty Cracker
Am so old can remember when punditry meant givers of learned, wise counsel.
;)
Kay
@Betty Cracker:
I agree. There’s a story out there that includes a quote from an anti-abortion physician that really hit me. She’s coldy stating her view that a raped 9 year old can handle childbirth because the 9 year old got pregnant. Nightmarish. In it she refers to the rapist as “the father”.
I just think people have no idea how bad this can get. The leaders of this “movement” are absolutely rigid ideologues and they WILL impose this on all of us. The lunatic zeal of the true believer runs through everything they say. You saw they’re already setting up the camps for the “unwed mothers” in Texas.
It makes me angry, how cavalier this country is regarding women. How they supposedly support women’s right to bodily autonomy by 65% but they won’t take the slightest action to protect it.
It’s a backwards country regarding women. Lurching backwards as the rest of the developed world keeps moving forward.
Soprano2
Without a doubt people would have come up with it themselves. It seems to make sense, that if you give people a lot of money they won’t want to have a job. People think that if you gave them a lot of money like that they would quit working; I think they underestimate how bored they would become. I agree that this has persisted even in the face of evidence to the contrary; the pandemic unemployment was stopped here in June, yet I’m still hearing people say the worker shortage is due to it! When I challenged our resident former cop on this in September, he claimed “just wait until they are done selling all the crap they bought with that money, then they’ll have to get a job!”. Well, I looked over the weekend, and I still see as many “help wanted” signs now as I saw in September, so evidently they bought a shit ton of crap and aren’t done selling it yet. LOLOLOLOLOL They like this explanation because it blames those “lazy others” rather than the system or employers.
Kay
@Betty Cracker:
And all the media attention that “me too” got, but only for women in entertainment or white collar positions.
Yeah, we’re “feminists” all right. As long as you’re not a pregnant 9 year old rape victim in Texas.
Hey, but it’s “not Afghanistan”. The United States is still Not Afganistan, so no complaining!
Cameron
@OzarkHillbilly: We live in a civilized society? I’ll see your MAGA and raise you a QAnon.
Soprano2
@Leto: Oh no, I think language is a living thing for sure. It just hurts my head to hear they/them used with a singular verb. It feels wrong to me.
Kay
@Betty Cracker:
We just saw this play out in Virginia. Roe will be overturned and the new VA governor will ban abortion, and voters simply didn’t care. Ohio and Florida are definitely going with a ban- Ohio’s proposed ban is more draconian than Texas.
They’re going to have to learn this the hard way.
Matt McIrvin
@Kay:
The solution there is to go meta–don’t talk about things being good or bad, talk about Democratic branding on the economy being ruined. If you can avoid the substance entirely, the standards are different.
Matt McIrvin
@Betty Cracker:
And I think we all know WHICH people they think it’s important to return power to.
Kay
@Betty Cracker:
Overturning Roe by decree was really brilliant. Now they know no one gives a shit and they can go full bore with no repercussions or even real discussion or debate. Big yawn from national media.
Cameron
@Kay: The wealthy will find a way to get abortions and the lessers will be left sucking wind. Why would Our Liberal Media give a shit?
Kay
They cannot wait for Trump to come back. The NYTimes political team ran on Clinton hatred for 30 years and now, having vanquished the Clinton Threat, they run on Trump love.
OzarkHillbilly
Did I say we did? No.
Kay
@Cameron:
It’s much more than abortion. It impacts pregnancy care. This will only come to the fore after the bans are in- the cavalier treatment of women’s health in general is why the “debate” has been (ludicrously) limited to “abortion” when actually it’s a brand new pregnancy treatment regime.
It’s already happening. Physicians are sending high risk pregnancies that might result in termination to protect the women’s health out of Texas. Every. Single. Pregnancy is affected by this. It’s a pregnancy regulation code written by religious extremists, one that has never been tried before. Women will die.
Soprano2
@Kay: Pundits – “People are telling pollsters that they think the economy sucks and the country is going in the wrong direction”.
Also pundits – “The forecast for Christmas this year is that purchases are going to break last year’s record sales”.
And then they don’t even talk about the contradiction of these two statements. I think what the “country going in the wrong direction” is actually measuring is people’s unhappiness with what happened with Covid and them freaking out about gas prices getting higher, which is totally normal under the circumstances. Then, when they hear the news talking about how people “feel” the economy is bad, their feelings have been vindicated.
Kay
@Cameron:
All you had to do was look at US maternal death rate to see that the health of pregnant women was never a priority in the US. We don’t even care for them now. We don’t care about abortion because we don’t care about them at all.
Betty Cracker
@Kay: Republicans won’t be able to hide behind the SCOTUS skirts once they strike down Roe. The fanatics will be thrilled to pieces, but maybe there will be political blowback. I’m not counting on it. But maybe.
laura
@Kay: Well, jeez, it’s not professional sports, it’s just women and nobody gives two shits about women. I’m sure at some point, a prominent villager will hear about an ectopic pregnancy that kills a suburban white Texas gal, and possibly consider covering it, so some measure of comfort can possibly maybe be worth anticipating.
On a related note, despite being a women with a lot of law degrees and avid follower of the Court and known in our social circle as a proponent of women’s rights and a desire to burn the patriarchy to the fucking ground, a man ‘splained to me – to my face, that the Supreme Court won’t overturn Roe because he’s a man who just knows that Supreme Court wouldn’t do that. QED! When I suggested that the Court has been signaling a hostility to the concept of privacy that exceeds Roe and goes to Griswold and now has the majority he told me I was making a big deal over nothing. So ladies, I have it on good authority From A Man that our Rights are safe.
Ohio Mom
I still maintain hope that the anti-abortionists are overreaching and there will be a backlash.
A few months ago, the city council of Lebanon, Ohio, a small, middle class and conservative town about 30 miles northeast of Cincinnati, banned abortions and prohibited anyone from helping someone get an abortion.
Now there are no abortion clinics anywhere near Lebanon but there sure are loads of families who wouldn’t waste a moment helping their young daughters get one.
The loudest council members got booted out on Election Day and there is a petition circulating to overturn the new law. The new council may beat the petitioners to it and repeal the law by themselves.
ETA: this isn’t to say that nationwide, women won’t suffer when abortion is banned, or that it won’t take a huge effort to right things. I recognize that. I just keep the image of Irish women flying home to over the abortion ban in my mind.
Soprano2
@Kay: Missouri has an abortion “trigger law”, so as soon as the court overturns Roe abortion in the second trimester will become illegal here. I’m sure the state legislature will immediately pass a law to make it illegal in almost all cases at any point in time, because that’s who they are. The governor will convene a special session to do it if they aren’t in session when it happens. Vicky Hartzler, one of the Republican reps in MO, got an editorial in our local paper yesterday to ask why people are so concerned with Covid deaths when they don’t care about the millions of “babies” killed since Roe made abortion legal in the U.S.
Kay
@laura:
I’m leaving Ohio when they pass a state ban. I’m just not staying in a state that has such a cavalier approach to women’s health. I don’t want to pay them or contribute to it.
I can, of course, leave, and I’m aware that I have more options than many but that’s dealbreaker for me.
I had a delivery that “fell off a cliff”. It’s life threatening. I don’t want religious extremists running health care access and it’s a real measure of how little value women have that all of this was conducted like it’s a legal seminar. No real world impact at all- not even a discussion of the risks.
No effort at all to reduce maternal mortality, but a huge effort to ban abortion. That’s the priority.
Soprano2
Because they know that the “right” people will still be able to get abortions when they need them. They don’t care about the rest of the women who will be affected. I also think there’s a certain amount of denial here – abortion has been legal in the U.S. in some way for 50 years, they cannot believe the court will change that. It’s as if they haven’t been listening to Republicans for the past 10 years at all. They are totally dedicated to trying to change all the laws back to the way they were before those “awful ’60’s” happened, because that’s when they think things were the way they want them to be. Just wait until they use the overturning of Roe to go after safe, effective contraception as “abortion”. They’ve been signalling that they’ll do this for at least 10 years, but the national pundits haven’t paid any attention to that.
Soprano2
@Kay: Have you seen the graph about how all the cable news ratings have fallen off a cliff since Trump was removed from social media and the presidency? Of course they want him back – he makes money for them. Never mind that it would be horrible for the U.S., it would be great for cable news viewership and newspaper site views!
Kay
@Soprano2:
Look, your bodily autonomy is just not a big deal. Any random religous nut can write a new “best practices” for medical treatment of pregnancy and have it codified. Because who cares? Not the United States- not with our rock bottom maternal health outcomes. Remember- “better than Afghanistan”.
Cameron
Anybody going to be following Biden’s two announcements today? One of them is scheduled to start right now.
cain
@Winston: OMG – I am so sorry – how absolutely tragic. I don’t know what else to add other than my sympathies from one human to another.
Kay
@Soprano2:
And the book sales! How many media Trump millionaires are there now?
He knows it too- he absolutely knows it’s a profitable alliance. God almighty he’s been adroitly using the NY media for 60 years. He’s better at their jobs than they are.
UncleEbeneezer
@Geminid: I was pissed when I watched that segment and the CNN reporter talked about interviewing “back row” Americans in the heartland etc., they’re just mad that Covid is still a problem and blame Biden for it. And NOBODY on the panel pointed out that maybe these voters should be aware of the fact that Covid is largely still around because of one party’s (the GOP) actively encouraging it by constantly promoting disinformation, stoking anti-vaccine sentiment with the public and literally banning the mask/vaccine mandates that could help us get the problem under control. The whole segment was strangely lacking in any focus on the GOP. Even Semrau, who I love, only wanted to talk about the Media not reporting on Dems, with no mention of the GOP. I don’t think you can have an honest discussion about the MSM’s failure without a serious focus on it always gives the GOP a pass on their bad faith actions.
evodevo
@Kay: Yep – USPS rural carrier for 24 years here…the job was hard, especially during the Xmas rush, but became absolutely overwhelming when the PO contracted out with Amazon. We went from 2-3 hundred packages a day to over 800, for a small office with 2 1/2 routes, which were 90 miles long. At the last it was taking me from 7 AM to almost 8 PM to get through a route. I finally gave up…and they still have nothing but temps doing Rt 2, after 2 years. Everyone requests to be sent back down to the subdivision routes after a few months doing what I did lol
Leto
@Betty Cracker: @Kay: @zhena gogolia: There was a long form opinion piece in the WaPo yesterday that spoke about the impact of having 6 conservatives sitting on the SC. One of the big take aways was how Roberts has essentially lost control of the court because he’s not needed anymore to secure a vote. Sure he can still assign cases, but for the most part the other 5 are such hardline idealogues that they’re simply going to go exercise their power however they see fit. The writer went through a few of the biggest topics (guns, abortion, religious freedom), talked through some potential scenarios, but also spoke about how dangerous this is right now. Thought it was an interesting piece, but as always YMMV.
The Rule of Six: A newly radicalized Supreme Court is poised to reshape the nation
Kay
@UncleEbeneezer:
But something has to give here. We can continue to talk about “working the refs” (does it work? can we do it?) or we can look for a way around.
Staying stuck on “working the refs”, IMO, leaves no room for a different discussion or different ideas.
Say it’s a given- they lean Republican in reporting. I agree. Now what?
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Kay:
What do you think should be done?
mali muso
@Kay: Honestly, this is one of the major reasons that I’m still actively pursuing emigration to Canada – for the sake of my 5 year old daughter. Call it cutting and running, abandoning the fight, whatever, but my first duty is as a mother, and I’ll do what I have to do to protect her future. I myself experienced two failed (desired) pregnancies that required abortion care to resolve, and the experience has made me even more insistent on full autonomy when it comes to fertility choices.
Kay
@evodevo:
Right? Hard work.
Where you there when UPS went on strike? That was amazing. Just the volume they do.
My husband was once a UPS driver. It’s really hard too. They were the first to track their employees down to the minute. That’s why they run. They have to. The USPS managers used to get training sessions that were 100% about whatever process UPS was using, although they would never mention the name. We all knew they were the best.
Geminid
@UncleEbeneezer: Semrau has pointed out the Republican complicity in the sustained Covid epidemic before. One of her tweets to that effect made it to the top of a Balloon Juice Covid post. But I think this was Ms. Semrau’s first cable tv appearance and she was concentrating on her talking points, so I’ll cut her some slack. She’ll probably do better next time. Eventually, they’ll just have to give Semrau her own show. She’s that good. “Next Saturday on Mornings with Mangy, we’ll talk about….”
evodevo
@Kay: We have a union (OK…several unions), but as federal employees, we are not allowed to strike. The unions help out with manager overreach or wage fiddling or harassment claims, but that’s all they can do. The pay is excellent, and I made a bundle on the car allowance (since I drove subarus and not Jeeps like the other guys), but not enough to kill myself. and we are not even talking about the dog bite problem or the hernia operation I had to have because of the 50-70 lb packages…so, yeah, people have NO idea…
Brachiator
@Soprano2:
Naw. They would be able to play video games 24/7. Life if good.
It’s funny. In Alaska, each resident gets around $1,100 each year from a fund based on oil wealth. What do they use the money for?
Because Alaska is perceived to be the home of white people, a few indigenous people, and Sarah Palin, no one much worries about free money going to lazy, unproductive people.
It is strange how many conservatives believe in serfdom. They want people to be so poor that they will be forced to take any shitty job.
Soprano2
@Brachiator: When I was 23 I dated a guy who had moved down here from Alaska. He refused to transfer his residency to MO because he wanted to keep getting that check every year. Back then I think it was around $3,000, which was a lot more in purchasing power than it would be now.
Brantl
@Betty Cracker: Yep, ‘they’ as the singular is just stupid, causing no end of confusion.
Brachiator
@Soprano2:
I’ve seen stories that Alaskans are fighting over their God-given right to free money. Some want to increase the payment amounts. Others want to increase the amount given to schools.
But no one says, “we should give up the free money because it is making us lazy, or worse, turning us into … Democrats.”
And so it goes.
Matt McIrvin
@Soprano2: Like I keep saying, through most of the 1970s inflation was fueled by purchases remaining high even though people couldn’t afford what they were buying–they were buying now rather than later because they were pricing in inflation and were afraid their money would buy less later. Part of the solution was to allow people to save at high enough interest rates.
Brachiator
@Matt McIrvin:
So what does that mean when the interest rate is kept to zero, or close to it?
brendancalling
@mali muso: Also considering the same. That’s where my kid is, that’s where I should be.
Kay
@evodevo:
The rural carrier union was ferocious- much more aggressive than the city carrier union. I felt like it was good for me though, to learn how to navigate it as a manager. I am not opposed to negotiating. I sort of love to fight :)
NOT PERSONAL. They used to bitch so much about the safety checks on their cars. You know, the checklist, where I have to stand behind the car and tell you your brake lights are out? That’s the only place I felt they were unreasonable. It was for their safety! And lawsuits! :)
Matt McIrvin
@Brachiator: I suppose it means that inflation isn’t high enough to alarm the Fed, or that’s not what they’re prioritizing. It could be at some point (they are notorious in recent decades for being more keen on keeping inflation down than on juicing the economy).
In the early and mid-70s, there was a weird situation where the Fed kept jacking up the prime rate but it didn’t translate to high interest rates on savings accounts because of regulatory barriers. Some think that made stagflation a lot worse.
Kay
@evodevo:
Dogs really were a problem and I used to get mad at the owners for not being more sympathetic to the carriers. I know the dog doesn’t “know” the carrier. If they want deliveries to their house they have to put up the dog.
I had one jump thru a rotted screen in a door and knock me down so hard I saw stars. The owner was like “he’s very protective”. I felt like saying “I have a CONCUSSION here- can we not talk about how great this dog is?”
Leto
@Kay: guess none of those people ever served in the military because that was standard every time you got into a vehicle. Get the AF1800, go through the checklist, move along. If you had to turn your vehicle in to Vehicle Maintenance, and your 1800 hadn’t been filled out? That was never a pleasant conversation. It’s for operator’s safety, and on a more practical matter to catch vehicle problems while they’re still small/manageable/not that expensive.
Kay
@Leto:
Some of them were really bad about maintaining the vehicle. We had one who was a hobby pilot so he would tip me off on bald tires and things – tell on his cohorts. It’s crazy. They’re professional drivers. They have to put some money into it.
mali muso
@brendancalling: Maybe we’ll be neighbors someday. Wish that we lived in a different world, but we have to operate with what we’ve got.
Ruckus
@Leto:
If you’ve been alive and paying any attention whatsoever for say over 50 yrs, you should have noticed that gender should be either neutral or have more than 2 descriptions. Or maybe it’s people who have been exposed to the fact that gender is an artificial language construct, but nature is not nearly as restrictive. The people that are that restrictive could also mind their own damn business but that seems rather unlikely.
Ruckus
@OzarkHillbilly:
We have a civilized society?
Gretchen
Ireland had a huge movement to change their abortion laws when a very sympathetic woman died: a married dentist who had already decorated the nursery for her much-wanted and anticipated baby. Her water broke at 18 weeks, dooming the pregnancy, but the doctors, afraid of losing their licenses over doing an abortion, wouldn’t end the pregnancy until the heart stopped beating, She and her husband pleaded for three days for them to save her, but the heart kept beating until she had an overwhelming infection, and died a needless death. The same thing happened in Poland recently. But MS gov Tate Reeves was on tv yesterday saying he wanted to “save babies”, as if those dirty sluts just want late abortions to kill cute chubby Gerber babies. He got absolutely no pushback.
Torrey
@NotMax:
Hahahahahahahahahahaha! Ah, monsieur le ministre has such a wry sense of humor!