Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Thanks to your bullshit, we are now under siege.

They are lying in pursuit of an agenda.

Republican obstruction dressed up as bipartisanship. Again.

Republicans: slavery is when you own me. freedom is when I own you.

Proof that we need a blogger ethics panel.

Many life forms that would benefit from greater intelligence, sadly, do not have it.

Never entrust democracy to any process that requires Republicans to act in good faith.

The Supreme Court cannot be allowed to become the ultimate, unaccountable arbiter of everything.

The party of Reagan has become the party of Putin.

Take your GOP plan out of the witness protection program.

It’s a doggy dog world.

Only Democrats have agency, apparently.

I’d like to think you all would remain faithful to me if i ever tried to have some of you killed.

Impressively dumb. Congratulations.

White supremacy is terrorism.

There is no right way to do the wrong thing.

House Speaker candidate unfamiliar with how to win non-gerrymandered election.

That’s my take and I am available for criticism at this time.

Let’s not be the monsters we hate.

‘Museums aren’t America’s attic for its racist shit.’

A thin legal pretext to veneer over their personal religious and political desires

The worst democrat is better than the best republican.

Russian mouthpiece, go fuck yourself.

Don’t expect peaches from an apple tree.

You are here: Home / Politics / Biden Administration in Action / Wednesday Morning Open Thread: Every Step Forward Counts

Wednesday Morning Open Thread: Every Step Forward Counts

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  3. 3.

    Percysowner

    Now, now, we mustn’t say the Democrats do ANYTHING right. Slate was very clear that Democrats Just Set Themselves Up for a Very Unpleasant 2023 by not tanking the economy. They weren’t real clear as to what the Dems should have done, possibly eliminate the Debt Ceiling altogether and give the Republicans a club to use against them in 2022, but the Democrats screwed up again choosing a “short term gain, and long term pain”.

  4. 4.

    Baud

    @Percysowner:

    There’s a whole long list of things Dems “should do” but can’t because we need Manchinema for everything and even more Senators when it comes to eliminating the filibuster.

  5. 5.

    Gin & Tonic

    Maybe Biden can issue an EO telling the National Visa Center to process pending applications instead of sitting on their hands.

  7. 7.

    OzarkHillbilly

    Critical Race Theory run amok:

    How much air pollution are you exposed to in your daily life? The answer may depend on the color of your skin, a new study released Wednesday confirms. The study published in Environmental Health Perspectives found that, no matter which of the main types of air pollutants you look at, people of color are breathing more of it. And while great progress has been made in reducing deadly pollutants in the air in the US over recent decades, the racial disparities have persisted, according to the work by an international team of researchers led by the University of Washington (UW).

    The group modeled the concentrations of a host of different air pollutants down to the neighborhood block level, then computed how exposure levels compared for different races.

    “For all pollutants, where there were noticeable differences in pollution levels, the most exposed group was a minority group,” said lead author Jiawen Liu, UW doctoral student in civil and environmental engineering. And she said “the racial and ethnic disparities existed in all states.”

    The research also showed that race mattered more than income in determining who lives with the most air pollution. The study scientifically confirms what many Black and brown communities, which have endured outsized amounts of industrial smoke and freeway pollutants, have been saying for decades.

    “If you are living in a community that is experiencing the brunt of bad air, this is not news to you at all; you notice it already,” said senior author Julian Marshall, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at UW. “Communities that have been living with the health risks have been speaking up for a long time, and often their voices are not heard,” he said.

    If all they’re gonna do is make white people feel bad, they oughtta get their funding cut.

    eta: for the obtuse, s//

  8. 8.

    OzarkHillbilly

    A Nasa spacecraft has officially “touched” the sun, plunging through the unexplored solar atmosphere known as the corona. Scientists announced the news Tuesday during a meeting of the American Geophysical Union.

    The Parker solar probe actually flew through the corona in April during the spacecraft’s eighth close approach to the sun. Scientists said it took a few months to get the data back and then several more months to confirm.

    Nour Raouafi, a project scientist with Johns Hopkins University, described the news as “fascinatingly exciting”.
    ………………………..
    Launched in 2018, Parker was 8m miles (13m kilometers) from the center of the sun when it first crossed the jagged, uneven boundary between the solar atmosphere and outgoing solar wind. The spacecraft dipped in and out of the corona at least three times, each a smooth transition, according to scientists.

    “The first and most dramatic time we were below for about five hours … Now you might think five hours, that doesn’t sound big”, the University of Michigan’s Justin Kasper told reporters. But he noted that Parker was moving so fast it covered a vast distance during that time, tearing along at more than 62 miles (100 kilometers) per second.

    To quote the immortal Jesse Pinkman, “Science, btches.”

  10. 10.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Baud: I was told that the Dems were incompetent and that the GOP would force us into a default.

    I didn’t hear that, but I’m with David Dayen: apparently the fast-track legislation that Congress passed and Biden signed a few days ago allowed the Senate to pass a debt limit increase of any amount by a simple majority.

    So why just $2.5 trillion, which will be back to bite them on the ass in 2023?  Why didn’t they raise it by enough so it wouldn’t be an issue again until the 2030s, if ever?

    If the Dems hold onto Congress in November, then it’ll just be one of these things that takes too much time away from all the other things we’d like to get through the Senate.  But we’ve seen this year how it keeps pushing other things to the side.  Things like voting rights.  Things like climate change.

    But if we lose one or both houses of Congress, we’ll have handed the new GOP majority a loaded gun, and too many House Republicans are willing to pull the trigger.

    Seriously, explain this stuff to me.

  12. 12.

    Baud

    @lowtechcyclist:

    Dems needed GOP votes because of the filibuster so they had to compromise.  Honestly, I don’t know why people find analysis that compares political reality to some idyllic world interesting or thought provoking.  I think it’s pretty lazy.

  13. 13.

    Gin & Tonic

    @Baud: They are waiting for an interview to be scheduled. It has not been. One of the frustrations in this process is that you cannot monitor its progress in any way, you just sit and wait. Maybe once a year you get an e-mail telling you that a step has been taken. It’s straight out of Kafka. If you wanted to design a more user-unfriendly process you’d really have to work at it.

  14. 14.

    Baud

    @lowtechcyclist:

    But if we lose one or both houses of Congress, we’ll have handed the new GOP majority a loaded gun,

     
    This is also an example of only-Dems-have-agency thinking. If the GOP takes Congress, they will have plenty of weapons to shoot the country with, regardless of the debt ceiling. Either voters them accountable or they don’t.

  16. 16.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Baud:

    Dems needed GOP votes because of the filibuster so they had to compromise.  Honestly, I don’t know why people find analysis that compares political reality to some idyllic world interesting or thought provoking.  I think it’s pretty lazy.

    You don’t seem to have responded to the specifics of what I wrote, but rather just threw out a generic response.  I think that’s pretty lazy.

  21. 21.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Baud:

    This is also an example of only-Dems-have-agency thinking. If the GOP takes Congress, they will have plenty of weapons to shoot the country with, regardless of the debt ceiling. Either voters them accountable or they don’t.

    Nothing else on that level, though.  Biden will still be President, so they can’t pass any legislation.  Aside from the debt ceiling, we’d basically have two years of gridlock.

    Sure, they can have hearings out the wazoo, and they can shut down the government.  But debt default is a whole ‘nother level.

  23. 23.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Gin & Tonic: Shit. I was afraid of that. Very sorry they are going thru the BS. My wife endured the process back in the ’80s but I rather suspect things are far worse in this post 9/11 world.

  24. 24.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Baud:

    What specifiics did I not respond to? You asked a couple of questions of why the Dems didn’t do something more, and I answered it.

    I said:

    apparently the fast-track legislation that Congress passed and Biden signed a few days ago allowed the Senate to pass a debt limit increase of any amount by a simple majority.

    You replied:

    Dems needed GOP votes because of the filibuster so they had to compromise.

    There’s a bit of a mismatch there.

  25. 25.

    Baud

    @lowtechcyclist:

    No mismatch.  The current legislation had to overcome the filibuster.  It sounds like future debt limit increases do not, as a result of the current bill.  Different issues.

  26. 26.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Baud: So the Dems could pass another debt limit increase by themselves, any time they want?

    Cool.  What are they waiting for?

  31. 31.

    Geminid

    @lowtechcyclist: In his short article, Dayen alludes to the reason Democrats did not raise the debt by more than $2.5 trillion: Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema might be “skittish.” He does it in an offhand manner, though, as if it’s hardly relevent to his “Clueless Dems” argument. So I have to give Dayan a D for Disingenuous. And I wonder if Dayan sincerely wants the Democratic party to succeed, at least as presently constituted. A lot of people like Dayan do not, and undermine their readers’ confidence at any opportunity.

  32. 32.

    MJS

    I spent some time last night watching C-Span. It was so nice to see the roll call of votes on the debt limit, Meadows, combating Islamophobia, etc. with zero Dem defections. Nancy is simply the best Speaker of the House, ever.

  33. 33.

    WaterGirl

    @Gin & Tonic: So where are you these days on the anger-rage continuum about this?

    Slow burn that never goes away?  With hot spots of rage occasionally when you think about it? Teetering at the far edge of rage on the continuum, with only a thin string tethering you to sanity?

  35. 35.

    debbie

    Best thing about the debt limit legislation is that it will last until 2023 and we won’t have to go through this bullshit every few months.

  36. 36.

    H.E.Wolf

    Re: the debt-ceiling bill.

    The Senate vote was 50-49, along party lines. (In other words, no Republican was willing to vote “yes” to avert global financial disaster.)

    Electoral Vote blog reports that Senate Minority Leader is alleged to have insisted on the $2.5 billion ceiling as a condition of allowing the bill to be voted on. (In other words, he threatened that Republicans would block cloture and thus prevent a vote altogether.) Further details at the link.

    https://www.electoral-vote.com/evp2021/Senate/Maps/Dec15.html#item-3

  38. 38.

    OzarkHillbilly

    A four-year-old boy left his Sydney family gobsmacked after ordering more than $1,000 worth of gelato on a food delivery app, including a personalised birthday cake and tubs of his favourite flavours.

    Christian King used his father’s phone to order $1,139 worth of gelato and cakes from Gelato Messina on UberEats on Monday. His father, Kris King, had given his son his phone to keep him distracted while his sister’s touch football match was happening. He said his son warned him he had “something on the way”, but he didn’t believe him until an UberEats delivery driver called his wife.

    It was at that moment he realised what was going on. “First of all I thought it was $139. And then I really looked at it and it was $1,139 and we almost had a bloody heart attack. I flicked through the screen about 30 times. That’s how long the order was, it was like 99 cakes. He actually told me he ordered a birthday cake for himself, and I didn’t even believe it. I had steam coming out of my ears first of all, screaming his name down the street. He ran to his room before I told him so.”

    “[UberEats] weren’t aware of anything wrong, but really we thought there should have been something in place. It was a very unusual order. We thought someone would question a $1,000 order of random things, and a personalised birthday cake that said happy birthday.”
    ………………..
    King initially told his son Santa wasn’t coming this year as a result of the order, but it appears the situation has changed. “The icing on the cake was when UberEats said we’ll give you your money back. He’s back in the good books and Santa is coming again.”

    I find my sympathy reserved for Christian here, and feeling as tho UberEats should have just told his father “It’s not our job to watch your child.”

  39. 39.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Geminid: And I wonder if Dayan sincerely wants the Democratic party to succeed, at least as presently constituted. A lot of people like Dayan do not.

    I want to take this on first.  This is just a bullshit, unsubstantiated smear.  “A lot of people like Dayen do not.” What does that mean, to be ‘like Dayen’?  Being a liberal writer with a penchant for digging into the nitty-gritty?  Or just the old “everybody further left than me is inherently untrustworthy” Lieberman-era bullshit?

    FWIW, I’ve been reading Dayen for years, and I’ve never seen anything to suggest this.

  41. 41.

    Immanentize

    @Gin & Tonic: Have you contacted your Senator (Whitehouse, right?) or house member? They can be helpful unsticking stuck things if they have good constituent service folks. Markey, when he was still in the house, really moved a passport problem for us about 10 years ago. It’s worth a call or email to try if you haven’t.

  42. 42.

    rikyrah

     

    Jenn | זלדה ?️‍?✡️?️ (@JennieTetreault) tweeted at 0:52 PM on Tue, Dec 14, 2021:
    I think what bothers me about the student loan rhetoric is that it’s dominated by rich kids whose major barrier was how expensive tuition is at the private schools they covet. There’s no discussion of how poor kids can’t afford basic living expenses even at community college.
    (https://twitter.com/JennieTetreault/status/1470829107499847680?t=__kdXdEKnAvIoNQTNKj_bQ&s=03)

  47. 47.

    lowtechcyclist

    @H.E.Wolf: Can’t say the link added to my understanding, especially because there were two separate pieces of legislation (the one that allowed the fast-tracking of the debt-limit legislation, and the actual debt-limit legislation) and the summary at the link treated them as a single bill.

  49. 49.

    gene108

    @Immanentize:

    My experience contacting my House Rep about an immigration issue didn’t accomplish much. The visa folks at the State Department don’t seem accountable to anyone, with regards giving out information and timeliness.

  50. 50.

    germy

    This is the officer that Ingraham mocked by awarding him “best exaggerated performance" for fearing he might die in the Jan 6 Trump riot, getting a little of his own back. https://t.co/ucbjZ9sx2r

    — Helen Kennedy (@HelenKennedy) December 14, 2021

    "Best Exaggerated Performance" "The winner is Laura Ingraham, who thinks SHE WAS GETTING HURT even though she was not fighting the rioters.

    “Mark, the President needs to tell the people in the Capitol to go home. This is hurting all of us. He is destroying his legacy.” pic.twitter.com/2hJfnGnit9

    — Staff Sergeant Gonell, Aquilino (@SergeantAqGo) December 14, 2021

  51. 51.

    The Thin Black Duke

    I’m sorry, but I think that what the Democrats are managing to accomplish in spite of the GOP, a hostile news media, and lazy, disengaged white voters is fucking amazing. You feel me?

  57. 57.

    Percysowner

    @lowtechcyclist: They didn’t pass a larger debt ceiling because

    1) Manchinema or at least the Manchin part are not on board. We have to have ALL the Senators on board, or nothing passes.

    2) There is an election coming up. If they eliminate or raise the debt ceiling really high, the Republicans have ANOTHER tool to beat the Democrats over the head with. “They have proved they don’t care about saving money! They won’t even pass a Debt Ceiling to keep us fiscally responsible!”

    It’s not true, but it is something the Repubs will use. And YES, they will do the same thing with the budget and the reconciliation bill, if it passes, but right now they are touting all the benefits their constituents get from those, so that can be countered.

  59. 59.

    Geminid

    @lowtechcyclist: I do not read Dayan, so I may be unfairly lumping him in with the others on the left who resent the moderate side of the Democratic coalition, and insist that the party will never succeed until “progessives” call the shots.

    But judging Dayan by his own words, he is disingenuos to gloss over the fact that not every one of the 50 member Ddmocratic Senate caucus was on board for a larger increase. Besides Manchin and Sinema, Hassan (NH), Cortez-Masto (NV), and Kelly (AZ) face tough reelections next year, and Dayan should know that they also might balk at a higher increase. He might have pointed this out if he did not have an ax to grind. But Hassan, Cortez-Masto, and Kelly might not be Dayan’s kind of Democrat anyway.

  60. 60.

    Dorothy A. Winsor

    This morning Duolingo gave me the following sentence: “Doctor, she’s very sick.” And I’m supposed to choose between two possible answers. 1) “I’ll come right away.” 2) “I can see her next week.”

    So do they want the right answer or the honest answer?

  64. 64.

    gene108

    @rikyrah:

    The thing that gets me about student loan forgiveness is most people don’t go to college. This is an issue for the minority that do, and have better access to media and politicians, because enough of them have degrees that get them into these industries to make it an issue.

    It gets attention because issues of middle to upper middle class college educated people get outsized attention.

  66. 66.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Dorothy A. Winsor: I am a computer numbnut who will never have a phone that is smarter than I am, but I am well aware that a child’s brain has an elasticity that allows them to do things I can’t even dream of. Just throw them into the computer world, say “Sink or swim, KId.” and get out of the way.

    That and be ready to shell out $1,139, or maybe get arrested for looking at child porn.

  68. 68.

    Geminid

    @rikyrah: I think @Kenneth House of Pfizer is correct in his analysis. @Mangy Jay has been doing some good writing on this subject as well.

  69. 69.

    Immanentize

    @The Thin Black Duke: I do. Completely. Best quote was VP Harris: “when I vote, we are winning.” The judges confirmed are all awesome! Not a crank in the lot.

    Of course, the GOP continued it’s whites-only jihad by going full bore against Rachel Rollins for Mass. U.S. Attorney. But they lost that one too.

  70. 70.

    Gin & Tonic

    @Immanentize: Been there, done that. Our rep’s constituent services are kind and responsive, but haven’t moved anything. Everything about this process fairly screams “we don’t want immigrants.”

  71. 71.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Dorothy A. Winsor: Yep, we got lucky that time.

    eta: At the time I had to laugh at some of the things he got into, some of the things he said, some of the things he did. It was a coping mechanism. Still is, it helps with the loss.

  74. 74.

    Immanentize

    @OzarkHillbilly: My sister in law sadly hot early onset dementia at about 55. Her kids (my niece and nephew) saw the keys must be taken, so instead of hiding the keys, they disconnected the starter on their mini van. Their mom would call them and say, the car won’t start. They would say something like -+ yeah, we noticed something was wrong, we are taking it in tomorrow. Then my SiL would forget that entire conversation. Rince and repeat. But she never drove again.

  76. 76.

    mrmoshpotato

    @Percysowner:

    Now, now, we mustn’t say the Democrats do ANYTHING right. Slate was very clear that Democrats Just Set Themselves Up for a Very Unpleasant 2023 by not tanking the economy. 

    Aww, Slate wants to be a bigger slapdick than Politico!  Adorable!

    Slapdicks.

  77. 77.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @gene108: This is an issue for the minority that do,

    It is also an issue for those that don’t because they don’t want to take on that debt.

  78. 78.

    gene108

    @Immanentize:

    I do. Completely. Best quote was VP Harris: “when I vote, we are winning.” The judges confirmed are all awesome! Not a crank in the lot.

    VP Harris doesn’t get to vote without Manchin and Sinema voting in agreement with their fellow Dems. Those two still have their uses.

  79. 79.

    Ohio Mom

    @OzarkHillbilly: Children ordering things on their parents’ accounts happens all the time. Vendors are used to cancelling because it’s good public relations.

    The surprise in this story is the kid is only four. He is a smart one.

  81. 81.

    Another Scott

    Student loan issues are in the news.  ICYMI, …

    Thread:

    Dear @MelissaAndretta

    The Democrats have helped you with your student loans and will FULLY forgive your loans. Let's go to the numbers.

    First, your AGI, which student loan repayment is based on is at least 67k.

    Even at 67k, you qualify for IBR. https://t.co/UV8Obz7eGr

    — THEE Black Nympho Suze Orman! (@Geechee4YoDaddy) December 14, 2021

    Government programs often have too much friction, but it’s clear that DougJ-ish stories about “I was a lifelong liberal Democrat until…” are too often nonsensical.

    (via eclecticbrotha)

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  82. 82.

    gvg

    @rikyrah: What? No, I don’t think so. speaking as a University Financial Aid Counselor for 28 years, The Federal student loans have annual and total limits that aren’t high enough to cover private school tuition, let alone elite private schools. for Undergrad. I don’t really want the loan limits raised, I want the schools subsidized so the charge to students is less in the first place, but the poor, whose families can’t help much leave school with a lot higher debts.

    Those students going to elite schools either have scholarships, or take at big PRIVATE loans or have parental help (including parent government loans which need good credit).

    Forgiving all or a lot of government student loan debt would help poor and middle class students far more than the rich. And there aren’t as many rich family kids, so not reforming because it would also help a small % who are rich, is like means testing other benefits. It is a distraction that causes nothing to get done. Don’t means test. Our puritan “fiscal prudence” is actually to benefit the rich who don’t want to pay taxes. We should have been supporting state schools better in the first place, which means state taxes, so the cost to students was more reasonable.

    Another cause is the wage stagnation we have had for decades that meant it was a lot harder to actually pay off the loans, unlike what my parents experienced (college in the 60’s).

  83. 83.

    Immanentize

    @gene108: Those two really do vote for almost everything Dems want. Just not the very expensive, high profile items that make the front pages.

  84. 84.

    debbie

    The Christianists, they fold!!!

    (NEXSTAR) – Hobby Lobby is the latest to announce an increase to its minimum hourly wage for employees, joining a growing trend amid rising inflation. The retailer’s jump to more than $18 moves it ahead of others like Walmart.

    Effective January 1, 2022, Hobby Lobby’s full-time hourly wage will climb from $15 – a rate they set in 2014 – to $18.50. Over the last 13 years, the national chain has raised its minimum wage 12 times.

    No raises in 7 years, preceded by 11 increases over 6 years? I can’t imagine what gummed up the works. //

  85. 85.

    hueyplong

    @germy: The GOPers threatening revenge are the ones whose names will be revealed.

    You wouldn’t lose much money betting on that proposition.

  87. 87.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Immanentize: They would say something like -+ yeah, we noticed something was wrong, we are taking it in tomorrow. Then my SiL would forget that entire conversation. Rince and repeat.

    Yeah, I had to learn to lie with Pop. It just smoothed things over. That is what dealing with dementia is all about: Smoothing out the rough edges, keeping things on an even keel.

  92. 92.

    Frank Wilhoit

    @Percysowner: 2023 probably will be unpleasant; a crystal ball painted in Vantablack™ would tell you that much, but it is impossible to foresee the character of the unpleasantness, that far out.  Unimaginable things have been happening on the order of once a week, and the pace increases.

    Plus which, the old saw about “death and taxes” needs to be updated for the New Style: now it is death and sabotage.

  94. 94.

    Jinchi

    @lowtechcyclist: ​
    apparently the fast-track legislation that Congress passed and Biden signed a few days ago allowed the Senate to pass a debt limit increase of any amount by a simple majority.

    I’ve been confused by the reporting on this. It’s been described as a one-time exemption on the filibuster to raise the debt ceiling. Which I interpret to mean that, the next time they need to raise the debt ceiling, it will be subject to filibuster again.

    How is that different from just deciding not to filibuster this bill?

    It got 59 votes in the Senate, and another two Republicans who lobbied for it but decided to vote against it. This bill was going to pass. The “one-time” suspension of the filibuster was just CYA theater for Republicans who are terrified of being caught not destroying the economy.

    But it does prove that they can change these rules on a whim.

  96. 96.

    gvg

    @gene108: Almost all issues help a minority in a coalition. This is normal and right. Not everyone is going to have a tornado and need Federal disaster relief. Not everyone has an in law stuck in immigration limbo. Not everyone understands how they will benefit from build back better bill etc. The party has to serve ALL the people at the same time, which means multiple kinds of legislation going through about very different things. Complaining about a few things that YOU don’t think are worthwhile is how we get nothing done. It is also a common tactic used on purpose to by people who oppose it, usually because taxes. Label something you don’t need pork or wasteful and get lots of people riled up.  Next result NOTHING passes. Just because it benefits someone else but not you, does not mean it is not needed. A working democracy needs horsetrading. If I was elected for instance I might not think some other state needs some road project, but I know my state needs more agriculture. It is good democracy for me to vote for the other state package if that states reps vote for mine. Nobody gets anything if we stay too self centered. Everybody gets quite a bit if we share.  I should be able to assume that the West Virginia people hear what their state needs and I hear what Florida needs. After awhile you also learn who is crooked or doesn’t know what is needed, but especially who promises a vote in return for something and doesn’t carry through.

  97. 97.

    burnspbesq

    @lowtechcyclist:

    if you’ve been reading Dayen “for years,” and haven’t figured out that he’s not particularly bright and a thorough ass, that suggests a need for a remedial reading class.

  98. 98.

    Ken

    It’s always so pleasant to read Balloon Juice in the morning and learn of all the ways the Democrats have fallen short of perfection.

  99. 99.

    Geminid

    @Starfish: There are good arguments to be made for student debt relief. @Mangy Jay has student debt, and allows that she would benefit from a reduction in her payments. But she is disturbed by the way debt relief advocates center this issue, and put in little effort advocating for free community college or universal pre-K education. She feels that advocates for particular policies should be asking themselves, what about more vulnerable and less powerful groups than my own?

  101. 101.

    Soprano2

    @WaterGirl: I wish all the cashiers were like the ones at Aldi. They get that stuff in the cart so fast I don’t have time to bag it before hubby has finished paying! I read that the secret is that all the products have multiple UPC code symbols on them, so the cashiers don’t have to spend time hunting for the bar code.

    When we were in Germany I saw an Aldi when we were on a bus and I mentioned to the guide that we shop at Aldi all the time at home. He said “Yes, Aldi, where they might try to get you to help them clean the floors if you’re there near closing time”. LOL One of my regrets about that trip is that I never had a chance to go into an Aldi in Germany. I wanted to see how different they were from the ones here, if at all.

  102. 102.

    hueyplong

    @Ken: And I read this place because it’s one of the less gloom-and-dooms of its kind.

    Dems don’t seem to have perfected the 24/7 hatred/fear/triumphalism thing that seems to work so well for the GOPers.  I like to think it’s because you have to be a little slow for all three of those things to exist at one time.

  104. 104.

    Starfish

    @Geminid: What happened with the work requirements on certain welfare programs meant that there were people in school who had no business being in school racking up debt. There should be some limit to how long student debt can hang around, AND private student debt needs to not be some exceptional debt that can never be discharged. The banks should be exposed to at least some risk.

    The Twitter behavior that I saw yesterday was a lot of “cheering for Democrats to lose” that came from younger white voters who seemed out of touch.

    If we think that we are about to lose democracy and need voting rights issues to be fixed, then we better get on that and not be trying to serve some small and loud-on-Twitter group yelling about something that Biden never promised them.

    I think they are acting like this because the moratorium on student loan repayment is about to go away. However, it seems like that is going to happen slowly, and government may take into account how that affects the rest of the economy. No one wants everyone under 40 to end up homeless because their student loan payment is as big as their rent.

  109. 109.

    WaterGirl

    @rikyrah: I was just thinking that if Biden can sign a law to be able to fast track ONE bill in the senate, why can’t he sign a law to fast track the voting rights bill?  And other bills that are critical to democracy?

    Was this an intentional precedent-setting move on Biden’s part?

  110. 110.

    Geminid

    @Starfish: I am for partial relief of student debt. The proposition of wholesale forgiveness seems problematic in terms of politics and equity. I wish advocates for that course would be more open about those questions.

    Forgiving all $1.7 trillion in student debt would require an act of Congress, I believe. Senator Warren says it can be done by executive order; Speaker Pelosi says this would require an act of Congess and I think she is right.

  114. 114.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Geminid:The proposition of wholesale forgiveness seems problematic in terms of politics and equity.

    I get the politics, but equity? As in, “What about all those people who had to pay their student loans before now?”

  118. 118.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    Reading over the GOP congress critters that were involved in the Coup attempt and their messages to Meadows, wow are those guys a bunch of useless, lying shit weasels trying to have it both ways. For and against the coup at the very same time. Small wonder the GOP can’t govern with that level of casual fraud. At least Darth Cheny had a position even it was the wrong one.

  121. 121.

    sab

    @OzarkHillbilly: My dad with dementia has been a nursing home for three years waiting for the contractors to finish repairs on his house. That is the lie we told him when we moved him in. Slow contractors.

  122. 122.

    Geminid

    @WaterGirl: I think McConnell hopes this does not set a precedent. I read that he went along with this particular rule change because a more straightforward approach would have allowed his caucus’ cranks to tie the debt ceiling bill with debate.

    This may become a template for passing a voting rights bill, though. The BBB bill will probably still have to go through the more cumbersome reconciliation process.

  125. 125.

    zhena gogolia

    thanks all. Not sure what to do about grading or next semester but we’ll see. Fell while on a walk on our no-sidewalks road because i was looking up at a Hitchcock style flock of birds.

  127. 127.

    Geminid

    @OzarkHillbilly: People who paid their student loan debt might see an equity issue, and people who never went to college, or worked their way through, might object also. Then, there are the many people who are burdened with medical debt over which they had little choice. They deserve felief as much or more as college grads, although they have do not have as much clout.

  128. 128.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @sab: I like that one.

    Pop was just completely lost when we put him into a home. For about a year visiting him was an ordeal of guilt as he would cling to my arm with tears running down his face and beg me to take him “home” (never could say for sure which home he was referring to). Eventually he got passed that but leaving was just as painful as ever. I finally hit on the lie of, “I’m going to the bathroom, Pop. I’ll be right back.” Then I would go straight to the elevator, secure in the knowledge that before I got on it, he would have forgotten I had even been there.

  131. 131.

    germy

    @Starfish:  …not be trying to serve some small and loud-on-Twitter group yelling about something that Biden never promised them.

    Biden never promised student debt relief?  I thought he did.

  133. 133.

    Soprano2

    @Gin & Tonic: I can only imagine there is a huge backlog because of 4 years of Trumpy people who definitely don’t want any immigrants who don’t come from the “right” places.

  136. 136.

    Soprano2

    @OzarkHillbilly: My grandfather went out to get gas and ended up off the road in a field down by Branson!  Luckily a HIghway Patrol officer saw the taillights and pulled him out of the field, and then called my grandma. That’s when we first realized how bad he really was, and was the night we took the car away. Then, when we got him to check into the hospital to get tested for dementia (he insisted he was just fine, there was nothing wrong with him) he put on his hat and coat after the shift change and just walked out the front door because in that unit they didn’t wear hospital gowns. He ended up walking about 2-3 miles before he fell down and a nice young couple noticed him; they quickly realized something was wrong and called the police. We laugh about it now, but that was a terrifying night for all of us.

  137. 137.

    Starfish

    @Geminid: A lot of people have been concern trolling that “People who paid their student loan debt might see an equity issue.” That has been a narrative with the various journalist types, but there are a number of us who did not carry student debt or who paid off student debt who really do not care. Just because things were unfair to one group of people does not mean we should perpetuate that behavior to others.

    I am concerned about “Could this be structured to help the correct people” like the ones who had to drop out of community college because they could not pay for it or they got sick and not the ones who went for a computational finance degree at U-Penn that was costing $75,000 per year a decade ago.

    Part of “I paid off my own, so it is unfair that you get yours paid” does not appreciate how much the cost of this crap has gone up.

  138. 138.

    Kay

    I thought this was interesting, about the “new Right” particularly in light of the very far Right Supreme Court and what we’re seeing there:

    Sam: Like I said, they’re a lot more sympathetic to embracing some kind of welfare state, as long as it encourages certain kinds of family formation, and they think that even though the conservative movement has presented itself as the representative of religious Christians in America, they haven’t fought hard enough and they haven’t been willing to use the levers of the state, in particular, to enforce some kind of moral orthodoxy in the public. But the big thing is that this sort of fusionist bargain—the operating assumption of the American conservative movement since the 1950s, which is that politics is the place where you guarantee liberty, and privately, you want to foster traditionalism and Christian moral values—has been a really bad bargain for Christian conservatives. Because actually, if you let liberalism just run amok in the public sphere, you lose it in the private sphere.

    They’re not opposed to state funding and state intrusion- they just want it used to promote their cultural and social goals.

    We see this with the really draconian and hugely intrusive pregnancy regulation laws and also with the concerted effort on the Right to sue for state funding of religious K-12 schools.
    I think in some ways liberals haven’t recognized this, we tend to go along as if the “old Right” is still ascendent, with their (if phony) stated belief in “free markets” and “less government intrusion”.

    The (elite) religious Right made a kind of bargain. They would embrace Trump, but they’d use his group to their own cultural ends, which of course is the kind of “bargain” everyone hopes to make in politics, and the kind of transaction everyone in politics always thinks they’re clever enough to come out on top of, and often they don’t. They think they have this tiger by the tail. I don’t think they do. The Left often tries the same alliances- they’ll align with the anti-war Libertarians and it’ll be GREAT because they on the Left are so fucking SMART they can just use the Right for anti-war and dominate them on the economic policy, and that has never once worked.

    Alliances are tricky, as are transanctions. Millions of people just aren’t that easy to manage :)

  139. 139.

    Baud

    @germy:

    Biden proposed to support legislation to cancel $10,000 in student debt.

    It will have to extend unemployment benefits, and provide further direct cash relief, and take care of the people left out of the CARES Act, through an immediate cancellation of a minimum of $10,000 of student debt per person, as proposed by Senator Warren, and Social Security boosts. And so much more.

    https://medium.com/@JoeBiden/joe-biden-outlines-new-steps-to-ease-economic-burden-on-working-people-e3e121037322

  143. 143.

    delk

    @zhena gogolia: get a cheap winter coat that will be large enough to fit over the cast/sling or that you can cut if necessary. When I fractured my wrist none of my coats would fit over the external fixator. Not much fun during winter in Chicago!

  145. 145.

    Kay

    And it’s amusing, right, because it’s a recognition that Right wing cultural issues, if subjected to a real “market” process, where they have to compete, will fail “in the marketplace”. People will choose a more liberal culture. So they have to use the state to engineer it and reward it, because given their druthers people won’t “choose” Right wing cultural and religious dogma.

    It’s the mirror image of what they always accused liberals of doing. It’s a “nanny state”, it’s just a Right wing nanny state. Doesn’t get much more intrusive than tracking and regulating reproduction, having long Supreme Court debates about whether women should be compelled to carry a pregnancy to term because the state can just “place” the baby. If liberals has said that they’d be absolutely fucking freaking out, but because it’s Alito or Barrett conservatives are like “absolutely!” :)

  147. 147.

    Another Scott

    @Jinchi: Tracking down the legislation behind the two votes was difficult for me.

    The non-cloture cloture vote to let the agreement be done was in S-610. That was the 59:35 vote on final passage.

    The $2.5T increase was S.J.Res 33 and that was the 50:49 vote.

    I haven’t had a chance to look at the details of what happens the next time, but the MSM reporting is that this is a “one time” procedure (because the GQP always has to have a hostage).

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  148. 148.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Geminid:That’s what I thought.

    Myself, who never had to pay back a student loan, have absolutely zero problem with SL debt relief. Will I personally benefit? Nope. Neither will either of my sons. Is that an argument for continuing with the currently f’ed up system? No, it is not. Just because I personally will not receive any benefit does not mean others shouldn’t. And screwing over future graduates because past college graduates got screwed is a really bad reason to continue with the current system too.

    If there is a problem, fix it.

    Then, there are the many people who are burdened with medical debt over which they had little choice. They deserve relief as much or more as college grads, although they have do not have as much clout.

    This is apples and oranges, medical debt is another matter altogether. But I do have a thought: Correct me if I am wrong. Unlike student loan debt, is not medical debt dischargeable thru bankruptcy?

    Again, I get that people will complain, I just don’t think it should stop us from doing the right thing. How we do it is the art of politics and one I’m unequal to the task of.

  152. 152.

    Gin & Tonic

    Belarus gets worse every day.

    Yesterday in Minsk, professor of the Faculty of Journalism of BSU, my friend, Ksenia Martul was arrested. The KGB took her in the middle of the lecture. They seized access to her telegram channel. Before, propaganda declared journalism faculty a hotbed of “anti-government” ideas. pic.twitter.com/SbZmEaHxmZ
    — Franak Viačorka (@franakviacorka) December 15, 2021

  155. 155.

    Kay

    @Baud:

    for undergraduate public colleges and universities

    People who didn’t go to college don’t understand that all of the forgiveness plans are for undergraduate debt. I know that may be obvious to Democrats but it isn’t obvious and they need to hit it hard.
    You’re not getting your masters degree forgiven. If you take graduate degrees out of it 90% of the class issues go away. It’s so poorly explained I’m suspicious it’s bad faith, because the truth is the vast, vast majority of people go to college for job training and they don’t pay 60k a year, they pay 10k.
    They need to explain they’re talking about community college and ordinary degree programs– things like nursing and accounting and “business” which are actually the popular majors, so if they just hit the truth hard (undergraduate, vast, vast majority of people don’t go to Harvard) they can win this.

  156. 156.

    Another Scott

    @WaterGirl: There have been something like 50 modifications to the filibuster/cloture rules over the last 100+ years.  The Senate can change its rules and procedures anytime it wants.

    The problem is, as always, getting enough votes to do so.  In a closely divided Senate, every vote maters and Senators enjoy that power (often more than doing their actual jobs…).

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  158. 158.

    Kay

    Community college majors:

    Four of the top five for this summer are engineering professions: petroleum ($80,849), chemical($65,618), computer ($65,618) and mining and mineral ($63,969). The fifth is computer science ($63,402).

    It’s job training.

  159. 159.

    Another Scott

    @zhena gogolia: :-(

    My left-handed mom broke her elbow sometime when she was young.  She had to bowl right-handed after that, but was otherwise nominally good as new.  Here’s hoping that treatment is better now than it was in the ’50s and you’ll be back to 100% in no time.

    Good luck!

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  160. 160.

    Mike in NC

    I’m old enough to remember when we had an evil man sitting in the White House who gloated about cutting people off from food stamps, scrapping school lunches for poor kids, and giving huge tax breaks to giant corporations and billionaires.

  161. 161.

    Baud

    @Kay:

    I hope Biden is able to get his bill, but I think there’s little chance it will be deemed good enough for the people who are talking about this issue.

  162. 162.

    Gin & Tonic

    @zhena gogolia: Ouch. Sorry to hear. Some may recall I broke my dominant arm a few years back, and had surgery to install hardware. Life was, um, challenging for a while. Sweatpants, slip-on shoes, food that didn’t have to be cut up, etc. Hope yours goes smoothly.

  165. 165.

    Geminid

     

     

    @OzarkHillbilly: I am in favor of debt relief, not neccesarily debt forgivness. Possibly a formula that relieved up to 50% for undergraduate school, maybe less for graduate and professional school. For the remaining debt, refinancing at the lowest possible interest coul be done. But I think would be best done as part of a larger package that provides two years of free community college education, and lowers other educational costs. This is assuming that we’ve already passed support for free universal pre-K.

    And while I do not make it a universal standard, I think that in this particular area Democrats need to pass a package that wins support from a majority of voters. Student debt relief is not the political hill to die upon, in my opinion.

  167. 167.

    Quiltingfool

    @Soprano2: My neighbor’s mother lived with them – she had dementia.   One day I was at home (no school, roads were bad), knock on the door.  Neighbors mom – she started telling me how she had been walking all night, and other strange things.  At the time, I didn’t know she had dementia (but didn’t take me long to realize there was something wrong).   So I asked her in and told her we would get help.  I didn’t know the neighbors’ phone number, so I put her in the car and drove to their house (about a quarter mile away).  Her son saw me drive up with his mom and about lost it.  They told me they had to keep the doors locked to keep her from leaving the house, but she got around that.  I’m so glad she came to my house (and I was home) because it was bitterly cold that day, and she could have been seriously injured or died before someone found her.
    I think her family didn’t want her in a nursing home, but after that incident, they had to just for her safety.

  168. 168.

    Another Scott

    @zhena gogolia: I went to a conference in Idaho in the late summer in the Before Times and afterwards was walking/hiking around a ski lift and saw a flower that looked interesting and decided to try to take a picture of it.  I bent over and held my phone out and somehow lost my balance and fell over and messed up my right shoulder (even though I didn’t land on it).  It was painful for weeks, but eventually recovered.

    I rationalized that my balance system got messed up by the sloping hill with lots of different slopes, the thin air, and looking at the small screen.  I subsequently remembered a ballet dancer high school friend who told me the trick they use to keep from getting dizzy while spinning, and have tried to keep my head up and looking at a horizontal plane when doing anything that can mess up my balance since that fall.  Maybe it helps?  Who knows…

    “Yeah, I fell over trying to take a picture.  :-(”

    Good luck!

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  169. 169.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @zhena gogolia:

    Oh ouchouchouch!! I’m really sorry. Hope the recovery is full, fast, and comfortable.

    O/T, but this started me shrieking with laughter all over again. Posted on, I think, Twitter by, I dunno, somebody:

    I heard there was a himbo cat
    And HR had to deal with that
    He’s not a sweet potato like reports show
    He falls into the garbage bin
    And Pam was using margarine
    I can’t believe she fuckin buttered Jorts though

    ??

  170. 170.

    Kay

    @Baud:

    Oh, okay, Baud. What about the other 350 million people? I’m sorry but I think this focus on 621 Twitter Lefties is probably misguided, which is shown by the Democratics assumption that people who didn’t go to college assume “forgiveness” doesn’t include graduate debt, when they don’t know that.

    So tell them. Show them who actually goes to college, where they go, and what they study. The 15,000 NYTimes stories about people who got a 100k masters in film studies is not representative of higher education in the United States, and it’s so stupid I think it’s bad faith. It has to be. They can’t be that dumb. A huge chunk of it, the majority of it, is job training. They’re earning a credential or certificate and they’re doing that at community colleges and less selective state schools- especially first gen college students. The group of people who graduate high school and “go away” to school are not what this is about. I think most community college students are “non traditional”. They’re the people who have to give up earning and juggle college in order to get a cert or a credential and make more. They’ll be the big winners.

  171. 171.

    Another Scott

    @Starfish: The counterpoint to the “fairness” issues that my father was able to pay for college with modest savings and summer jobs and scholarships.  Pell Grants didn’t exist and the idea of student loans for college would have seemed insane.  There are millions of people out there like him, and they need to be reminded of that.

    Too much of the cost of education has been pushed onto the young (and their families).  All of society benefits when young people can study and learn and figure out how to think and have the freedom to create new stuff.  Turning education, and especially education financing, into yet another profit center for big banks is not helpful.

    Yes, education debt of all sorts needs to be addressed, but it can’t just be a reset that starts the debt cycle up yet again.  Similarly with medical debt and any other type of debt that society used to address that has been pushed down on individuals (if there are other examples).  Systemic reform is needed, but by all means do incremental things that make things better in the meantime.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  172. 172.

    Baud

    @Kay:

    Seems like they’re have been a lot of winners since the Dems took over but we’re still underwater in the polls.

    The problem with Twitter lefties is that they dont stay on Twitter.  The media loves to pick up on their themes.

    It’s a political problem, not a policy one.

  173. 173.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    Trinity Trims the Tree @TrinityMustache
    It’s the gaslighting for me. Like if blanket forgiveness everyone’s student loans is so great, why can’t people just advocate for it honestly instead of lying about what President Biden said he would do?

    I think this puts it well. The Will Stancil faction of twitter (he’s the High Priest of the Cult of Do Something!) and their fellow-travelers are gaslighting themselves  into believing Biden is breaking a campaign promise he never made.

  174. 174.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Kay: Graduate school funding is weird–for some fields (such as the “pure” sciences) it’s common for grad students who aren’t blessed with grant money or scholarships to support themselves with assistantships that give them a full ride on tuition (plus a stipend sufficient to keep them barely surviving). That’s how the departments get a lot of their menial educational labor. But then there are professional schools where people are actually paying vast sums to attend.

    One of the more alarming features of the Republican tax bill of 2017 was that initially, they were going to go to taxing the tuition breaks as regular income, which would have basically broken every arts & sciences grad student and killed the whole model. But that wasn’t in the law as passed.

  175. 175.

    Kay

    @Baud:

    Democrats should act as advocates for affiordable higher education because it’s important to a very important part of their base, which is young people. They don’t punch their weight as far as their numbers but if they start voting for Democrats at 20, when 15% of them turn out, they’ll likely still vote for Democrats at 40. They don’t idenitify with a “Party” at 20, but they will at 40 if they’ve been mostly voting for Democrats for 20 years.  We want them. What concerns them concerns us. Twitter Lefties aside.

    Think of them as “the people who are not yet Democrats” but will turn out in presidential elections for Democrats. That’s a worthwhile investment. It’s an investment in “the brand”, doesn’t pay off immediately but always pays off later. Plus it’s good policy! We WANT you to quit your shitty 30k a year job and lose earnings for two years and get a 60k a job. At least don’t punish that kind of initiative. I have a technical degree from a community college. Those students are the hardest working people you’ll ever meet. They’re strivers. They have 2 kids and a job and STILL they’re plugging away to double their earning potential. They should be subsidized. It’s hard. At least pay their tuition. It’ll be 4000 a year. You’ll make it back just in increased tax revenue when they’re earning.

  176. 176.

    debbie

    @Geminid:

    refinancing at the lowest possible interest could be done

    And you trust the banks with that? This would be too much work for the government to manage without getting complaints about bureaucracy, so it would fall to the banks.

  177. 177.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Baud:

    The problem with Twitter lefties is that they dont stay on Twitter.  The media loves to pick up on their themes.

    I think twitter overall has done more harm than good to Democrats, but there was no twitter or Facebook (was there?) in 2000.

  178. 178.

    Baud

    @Kay:

    Democrats should act as advocates for affiordable higher education because it’s important to a very important part of their base, which is young people.

    I see many Democrats “advocating” for this.  The complaint seems to be about the absence of action yet on student loan forgiveness (except for those loans that have already been forgiven, apparently).  It’s certainly true that Biden hasn’t yet gotten a bill from Congress to forgive even $10,000 in student debt.  The pertinent question is how people will choose to deal with that fact.

  181. 181.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: There was a nascent blogosphere, but the only political operator who got mainstream media attention was Matt Drudge, a right-wing Clinton-hater. The attention paid exploded after 9/11, and, again, initially most of the exposure was on the right, functionally if not by official party affiliation.

  185. 185.

    Geminid

    @debbie: My finance knowledge base is pretty small. But if the federal government cut out private banks as the primary lender a low rate would seems possible to me. Maybe a percentage point above the 10-year Treasury Note, which is about 1.5% now I believe.

  186. 186.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Kay: The problem is that if Joe Manchin keeps anything from happening, it gets blamed on Joe Biden and on the Democratic Party as a whole. Two or three people on the extreme right wing of the party (in cahoots with 100% of Republicans) can cause the social-media Left to rebel against the Democratic Party and liberalism in general just by putting up trivial obstructions. I guess it’s a specific case of the general rule that democracy breaks if the people have wrong ideas about cause and effect.

  188. 188.

    ian

    @Starfish:

    there were people in school who had no business being in school

    Last time I checked, advancing oneself through education was a tenet of a free society.

    If they had no business being in school because it is too expensive, we should seriously re-evaluate the cost of schooling, not blame people without means for attending.

  191. 191.

    debbie

    @ian:

    Definitely, and you can also bet the colleges/universities won’t be lowering their costs, but instead, they’d be looking for  all kinds of financial assistance from the government.

  192. 192.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @debbie: IANAL, but I’m also wondering if: a) he’s working on showing remorse and whatever else his lawyers are telling him he’ll need to show for early release; b) if he’s running out of money.

  193. 193.

    Subsole

     

     

    @rikyrah: This.

    Half these fckers acting as socialist spokesmouths would be carrying a tiki torch for trump if he just forgave their personal debt. Not anyone else’s, not their class or cohort or even their friends’. Just theirs.

    Of all the bullshit I hate Bernie’s worthless guts for, hiring a bunch of scumbag Glibertarians in Marx masks to discourage the next generation of voters is right near the top.

     

    @The Thin Black Duke: It is absolutely astounding that these people and their supporters are single-handedly carrying our democracy. I mean, the only thing more amazing than the resources the right has marshalled to strangle us is the fact that it ain’t actually working.

  195. 195.

    Kay

    @Matt McIrvin:

    Well, who should it be “blamed” on? Manchin and Sinema are Democrats. You can’t talk about the Democratic brand without including the Democratic senators you don’t like. It’s a brand. It’s the whole thing. If the whole Party gets blamed with what was presented as the huge blunder of “defund the police” (as centrists insisted they were) then the whole party also gets blamed for the corrupt, egomaniacal Manchin. That’s the deal.

    When Trump couldn’t get anything passed other than a huge tax break for rich people we said TRUMP didn’t get anything passed. When Biden passed infrastructure that Trump didn’t pass we credited it to Biden. That’s the ordinary way this works. Biden knows that. It’s “Obamacare”, not Pelosi-care. Although Pelosi-care is delightful and would be fun! :)

  197. 197.

    Baud

    @Kay:

    If the whole Party gets blamed with what was presented as the huge blunder of “defund the police” (as centrists insisted they were) then the whole party also gets blamed for the corrupt, egomaniacal Manchin. That’s the deal.

     
    That doesn’t follow. The BJ view is that it is
    wrong to blame the whole party for defund the police. That’s consistent with the view that it is wrong to blame the whole party for Manchinema.

  198. 198.

    Kay

    @Matt McIrvin:

    I worry less about the “social media Left” than I do the information that gets to regular voters. It concerns me that Democrats didn’t understand that closing schools for extended periods was really bad for parents and students. Maybe justifiable! But really fucking bad. I think that’s clueless and it concerns me because Democrats pay a lot of people a shit ton of money to tell Democrats what people care about. There’s some kind of disconnect here.

    If none of your student loan forgiveness proposals include graduate school but people don’t KNOW that and you don’t even KNOW they don’t know you are not talking to voters in a productive and informative way. You can’t just throw up your hands and say “media”. Talking is 90% of their job. They have to be really, really good at it. I know it’s hard! So is going to community college with 2 kids and a job.

    I think when labor declined Democrats didn’t just lose “labor voters”. They lost a line of communication. Local people, on the ground, saying “they’re pissed about THIS and not THIS”.  They have to restore it. Don’t go to Georgetown to sell affordable college. Go to a community college in Cleveland that’s 60% AA. Those are the people who need to understand it.

  199. 199.

    Geminid

    @Kay: I have no problem blaming lack of progress on Manchin and Sinema. But blaming the whole party, or even half of it, for the Senators Arizona and West Virginia voters elected is not right. Many of the people doing this want to undermine the party in general. They fear the success of a liberal/moderate coalition as much as Republicans do. You can tell the bad faith arguers because they never advocate for electing more Democratic Senators and Representatives, except for a favored few.

  200. 200.

    Geminid

    @Kay: Well, at least the Biden administration is listening to labor, and trying hard to give unions a bigger say in policy. I’ve believed for while that a defect of the party is the dominance of upper middle class people. I have no problem with that in principle,  but too many haven’t really cared about the working class except in the abstract. President Biden does care, and in real terms.

  201. 201.

    J R in WV

    @Starfish: ​
     

    @rikyrah: Yes! You are completely right on this one.

    I find that rikyrah is almost always correct. Sometimes disappointing, but even so, correct, mostly.

  202. 202.

    Kay

    @Geminid:

    I think we spend too much time on the “online Left”. Obviously I’m a minority on that, but that is what I think. There’s this whole “5th column in the Democratic Party” energy that just feels off to me. Not “off” in the sense that I’m defending them, but “off” in the sense of get around them.

    The “online Left” can’t be controlled. Manage something you can have an effect on. I tend to think people who focus on things they can’t control rather than things they can control are looking for a reason not to focus on what they CAN do. That’s been my experience. Get off defense. “Biden forgave a billion in student loan debt!” over and over and over.

    Drop the qualifier – “although the online Left wanted more” :)

    I joke about this with Democrats locally but it’s really true. A Democrat will go out to announce his or her accomplishment and start with “I know people are hurting”. Why anticipate criticism? They’ll be LESS of it if you lead with it? They’ll be MORE.

    When I used to do performance reviews smart people (who also are a little controlling) would try to PREEMPT me. “I know I have not met this goal”. I’m doing the review! If I wanted them to do it I would have them do it. The public does Joe Biden’s review. He doesn’t issue the grades. They do.

  203. 203.

    Kay

    @Geminid:

    To me, Geminid, it’s like this. There’s the Right of the Party and they’re a PITA. They almost killed Obamacare, they are working on killing BBB, they go fucking insane on things like “defund the police” but ignore that Manchin spends his days basically screaming that Democrats are socialists and they insist they are the “real” Democrats. Then there’s the Left of the Party, who insist that it’s all corruption and broken promises and THEY are the “real” Democrats. They can both be bad for the brand, but they exist, they aren’t going anywhere and they have to be gotten around.

    I don’t know who the “real” Democrats are. I think an organization is composed of its members, so they’re both “real”, but I think the centrist Democrats probably have more numbers in terms of voters. But you want the thing to grow, so you have to stretch some and the Left of the Democratic Party stretches and the Right does not, so I think of the Left as the “potential growth” side where the Right is the “hold gains” side. You can have both. You need both.

  204. 204.

    J R in WV

    @zhena gogolia: ​
     

    won’t be posting much. Broke my elbow yesterday — surgery tomorrow

    So sorry you were damaged. Best of luck with treatment and rehab. I hope you get a Physical Therapist who knows elbow therapy in and out, that’s important. And do what the PT person tells you to, that’s important as well.

    You have a big crowd of people wishing you well, I hope thinking of that helps a little!

  205. 205.

    Citizen Alan

    @Kay: I’ve said for many years that most conservatives would be perfectly fine with Scandinavian style socialism so long as none of the benefits went to minorities.

  206. 206.

    Kay

    @Geminid:

    Here’s the other thing- this only becomes an issue with Democrats when the brand is underwater. If Biden were polling at 60 there would be criticism by the Left but it wouldn’t matter. So centrists have to be popular. Their whole pitch is “we’re popular”. If they’re not, that leaves an opening for the Left, which they understandably exploit. Centrists should worry less about The Left and more about making centrism bulletprooof. In a weird way they don’t take any responsibility for their ideological approach, I think because they assume they are “the norm”. It’s arrogant and it makes them complacent.

  207. 207.

    Citizen Alan

    @Kay:

    I’ve been depressed for days (and let me tell you, studying for an taking exams while your depression is active really sucks) after an interaction with a friend on FB clarified the issue for me: Basically the future survival of this country depends on there being an anti-fascist coalition that’s bigger than the pro-fascist coalition. And elements of the anti-fascist coalition are so selfish and egotistical that if the anti-fascist coalition doesn’t give them 100% of what they want, they will withhold their support even if it lets the pro-fascist coalition win.

  208. 208.

    Kay

    @Citizen Alan:

    It’s funny because we just got back from Denmark and you know what the families reminded me of? Amish. Stylishly dressed, but black clothing :)

    The whole society supports families- all of it- the education system, the family leave system, even public transport. Kids are king on a Danish train. Just wild that there’s this model of true support for families and it’s ….socialism.

    We were in Copenhagen (big city, especially for such a small country) and they BUS the lower income kids to the suburbs so they can frolic in the “forest”. It’s the “child garden”. Can you IMAGINE that here? They really put their money where their mouth is in valuing families. It’s neat. I mean, it has a down side- the uniformity, I think, could be stifling- but the parents are so relaxed! You’re like “oh, look, at the cafe just chatting with their tiny children at 3 PM!” But if felt “strict” to me as far as “norms”, like, what if you don’t much like kids and are a 30 year old woman who doesn’t want any? Are you an outcast? You’d certainly feel like one.

    They use these buggies to transport the kids because it’s a wholly bicycle/train/bus designed city and the little kid wagons (the parents ride the bike and push the little kid carrier) look like a mini Amish buggy. But it must be great for kids.

  209. 209.

    Soprano2

    @Quiltingfool: When my mother was researching her dad’s side of the family, she got confirmation of a story she had heard but not believed, that back “in the day” there was a woman in someone’s house who was “in a cage”, which was really that she was locked in a room. Evidently her family lived out in the country and she developed dementia, so that was the only way they could think of to keep her safe because evidently she was a wanderer. My grandfather was a wanderer, too, which is why we had to put him in a locked Alzheimer’s ward. We were also afraid he was going to hurt my grandmother and not even realize he did it. Dementia is a cruel thing to get, it terrifies me. I watched my mother like a hawk but never saw any sign of it in her at all.

  210. 210.

    Soprano2

    Not as bad as Zhena’s elbow, but this morning as I was carrying in my purse, lunchbox, and the cake carrier with the cake for our company Christmas dinner, my foot slipped and I fell on my right knee right in front of a camera in our office, as well as several witnesses (including the safety guy!). He insisted that I file a report just in case my knee started getting worse, but so far nothing but some bruising and pain. Mostly it was humiliating. I’m surprised someone hasn’t clipped it, made it play on a loop, and e-mailed it to everyone in our section!

  211. 211.

    Geminid

    @Kay: The online left used to bother me more than it does now. One reason is the fierce pushback they get from Democrats on Twitter, especially from Black Democrats like @electricbrotha aka Ragnarok Lobster, and @Black Professor, to name just a couple.

    The other reason is that the progressive wave some people thought would sweep the party after 2016 never materialized, and responsible liberal/progressives like Pramila Jayapal understand they have to work with the moderates in the larger Democratic Caucus, and the moderates know they have to work with the liberals. Now, with a chance  to actually get needed initiatives signed into law, there is a spirit of pragmatism. The online lefties are complaining mightily, but even liberal Democrats think these soreheads are just sulking in their tents.

  212. 212.

    Kay

    @Geminid:

    The other reason is that the progressive wave some people thought would sweep the party after 2016 never materialized

    Oh, I disagree with that. I think they succeeded in pushing the Party Left on policy. Credit where credit is due- their “Overton Window” theory seems valid to me. In sum, the Party is more progressive than it was. Activists push- that’s what they do. It’s true on the Left and it’s true on the Right.

  213. 213.

    Geminid

    @Kay: On the other hand, Tom Perriello tried to chase a progressive wave when he jumped in the 2017 Virginia Governor’s election, and moderate Ralph Northam beat him by 11 points. When Ocasio-Cortez won a low turnout primary in 2018, people saw that as a big party shift (despite the almost forty moderates who flipped seats that year). Now Ocasio-Cortez’s Justice Democrats faction has stalled after adding only two “Squad” members last year. And Bernie Sanders was thrashed last year when he went head to head with Joe Biden, who many progressives believed was too moderate. Sanders could not carry one county in Michigan or Florida. That is what I talking about- the electoral theory that Democrats must nominate the most progressive candidates that they can. Conservative Democrats in swing districts are extinct now, and it is a more ideologically cohesive group of politicians. But I think it is a center-left party, not a left party that groups such as the Justice Democrats want.

  216. 216.

    different-church-lady

    Biden approval bounces back…

    We should keep right on working the refs hard, it’s helping.

  217. 217.

    different-church-lady

    @Geminid:

    The online left used to bother me more than it does now.

    Without an active presidential campaign to sabotage, the hazards are lower, and the media isn’t nearly as interested in amplifying their every bellow.

  221. 221.

    Geminid

    @Another Scott: Aha! Thank you for the correction. I’ve seen that handle a couple hundred times now, but as Holmes would have pointed out to Watson, I saw, but did not observe.

  222. 222.

    Ruckus

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    Those with far more have to pay a little extra to benefit all a minimum amount than they are willing to pay to benefit themselves greatly.

    And that is way, way beyond the pale for those who think conservative means holding on to all the money, because those people should never get anything, they aren’t worth anything, especially if measured against those who have screwed others to get that money. It’s the survival of those with fewer scruples. All the rest of it is the justification for their beliefs in those fewer scruples.

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