NEW: Responding to my question what he says to Democrats worried about the midterms, President Obama tells me: “We got a story to tell, just got to tell it.” pic.twitter.com/eBFsi0o9rA
— Peter Alexander (@PeterAlexander) April 5, 2022
Biden's public approval rating up three points to 45%: Reuters/Ipsos poll https://t.co/9c40oaj9zf pic.twitter.com/wcPPxTQlir
— Reuters (@Reuters) April 6, 2022
You don’t understand — Steve has a stylish ‘Roland Headley War Correspondent’ outfit all picked out!
Steven Portnoy of CBS News asks Jen Psaki why the US isn't calling for a world war against Russia at this point pic.twitter.com/NVbnGNavA9
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) April 5, 2022
Top U.S. Senate Republican: Passing COVID aid requires border amendment https://t.co/ieCqlvpRZ8 pic.twitter.com/vWzdddn6zq
— Reuters (@Reuters) April 5, 2022
Study: States won by Trump in the 2020 election have higher murder rates than those carried by Joe Biden. The highest murder rates, the study found, are often in conservative, rural states. https://t.co/jUbtnOzsEX
— Eugene Scott (@Eugene_Scott) April 5, 2022
They agree that NATO is very accomplished, but they can’t support NATO’s legislating from the bench. https://t.co/KJfPxNygYR
— Dana Houle (@DanaHoule) April 5, 2022
A plausible reason for the timing of the invasion, in fact, is Kremlin concern about the closure of a window of opportunity as the damage the previous — and Republican-led — U.S. administration had done to NATO partnerships & Ukraine’s self defense was repaired.
— Greg Greene (@ggreeneva) April 5, 2022
Probably the 20th fully vaxed person who I’ve heard has tested positive in the past three days (one of whom was me).
If you are due for a booster and haven’t gotten it yet, do it. https://t.co/065oUl6ntB
— The Hoarse Whisperer (@TheRealHoarse) April 6, 2022
One needs only see Putin cite cancel culture as a justification for invading Europe while a Supreme Court justice hides his wife's involvement in a coup driven by a belief in extradimensional lizard currency to know this is an astute observation by the President. https://t.co/hXXW3fxHXN
— zeddy (@Zeddary) April 4, 2022
NotMax
A quatloo saved is a quatloo earned.
//
Jeffro
Morning everyone.
Fro Jr and I are off touring colleges again today (day 2 of 3 straight). Hey at least the weather’s much nicer today!
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Jeffro: Have fun. I remember that as being exciting.
SiubhanDuinne
Be well, Congressman Schiff!
NotMax
@Jeffro
If that sort of thing is still done, arrange to obtain guest tickets in order to sample a meal in the dining hall.
;)
sdhays
I also saw today that DirectTV/AT&T finally dropped OAN, which should completely pull the plug on that channel since 90% of their revenue reportedly comes from AT&T. That’s welcome news.
I sure wish there was something similar that could be done to drastically reduce Murdoch’s reach in this country.
mrmoshpotato
And the Rethuglicans will give you proof of this like it’s going out of style!
Soprano2
I posted that Yahoo article on FB yesterday. I’m sure my conservative friends will ignore it. I wish the press wouldn’t, though, and would talk about this problem more. As we all know, it reveals that for Republicans the real conversation isn’t about crime, it’s about “those people” in the cities. There was an article in the paper recently saying crime in our city had dropped by 8% in the past six months. The almost uniform response was that it was because no one reports crime anymore because the police don’t do anything about it. Even if crime dropped by 50% they wouldn’t admit it, they’d just say it’s because people aren’t reporting it.
sdhays
@Soprano2: Not reporting it is exactly the same as it not happening at all. Isn’t that their position on COVID?
rikyrah
Good Morning Everyone ? ??
rikyrah
Uh huh ?
jen psaki’s head tilt before the kill ???? (@CandiceAiston) tweeted at 10:08 PM on Tue, Apr 05, 2022:
The way that the “progressive” wing of the Democratic Party refuses to do their job of building a coalition to pass a student debt bill, instead just tweeting every day that Biden should issue an executive order, is exactly why I can’t take a single one of them seriously. ?
(https://twitter.com/CandiceAiston/status/1511541224053739520?t=L6ZRgJh6KVNE_8dU3hQRDw&s=03)
mrmoshpotato
I know it surprises no one how well Jen handled that stupidity from Steven Portnoy, but DAMN!
She came right up to “Now look here, you stupid moron!…”
Baud
@rikyrah:
Good morning.
Geminid
. Some polling news out of North Carolina surprised me some. Congressman Ted Budd leads former Governor at McCrory 38% to 22% in the Republican Senate race. Budd has been bolstered by a Trump endorsement and several million dollars in ads paid for by the Club for Growth.
Cherie Beasley, a former State Supreme Court judge, is the expected Democratic nominee. The same Emerson poll showed Beasley trailing Budd by 6 points and McCrory by one in general election matchups.
rikyrah
David Darmofal (@david_darmofal) tweeted at 7:37 AM on Wed, Apr 06, 2022:
The Vice President of the United States was a career prosecutor who specialized in prosecuting sex crimes, including crimes against children, & Republicans not only never give her credit for that, they attack her 24/7.
(https://twitter.com/david_darmofal/status/1511684632126889990?t=nxPLqrdmgFq4fV0g-zTqXg&s=03)
Ken
“Do you know, Watson,” said he, “that it is one of the curses of a mind with a turn like mine that I must look at everything with reference to my own special subject. You look at these scattered houses, and you are impressed by their beauty. I look at them, and the only thought which comes to me is a feeling of their isolation and of the impunity with which crime may be committed there.”
— “The Adventure of the Copper Beeches”, Arthur Conan Doyle
germy
Jeffro
@NotMax: oh, totally! ?
rikyrah
?⚖️ Kenneth of House Pfizer??? 1st of His Name (@Needle_of_Arya) tweeted at 4:34 AM on Wed, Apr 06, 2022:
I believe that the real reason why college-educated WW now prefer Democrats over Republicans by such a massive margin, is because WW born since 1965 are the first ones to have begun to derive their wealth & education apart from Patriarchy.
The higher divorce rate may also help.
(https://twitter.com/Needle_of_Arya/status/1511638368853151745?t=ZJG_FvjkFxTIwAcG3js4Hg&s=03)
Cameron
@rikyrah: Didn’t you know that bellyaching is the purest form of 21st-century political activism?
Kay
This was the most high profile BUT there were 3 school board races and in the two others conservatives won running against gay people. So 1 out of 3. Democrats will take it as vindication and so will Republicans.
mrmoshpotato
Well, McTurtle if you insist we go all The Cask of Amontillado on Kentucky…
I swear, these bastards’ hatred of brown people…
germy
narya
@rikyrah: I was born before 1965, but yes to this. At the same time, we’ve also experienced the patriarchy, even as we’ve been able to have credit cards in our own names, own property, etc. It’s not a huge leap from dealing with that jerk at work to seeing that behavior in the R party more generally.
Starfish
@rikyrah: Her take is very bad. If the Democratic coalition can’t even get more COVID-19 funding passed, how are they going to kill student debt?
Biden needs to kill $10,000 of student debt if he has the power to do so. The smallest amounts affect the poorest people.
germy
NotMax
A question.
Very late package of a single inexpensive item ordered via Amazon deigned to finally arrive yesterday. Had been stuck in “label created, item not yet received by USPS” limbo for weeks.
Already had received a confirmed refund through Amazon shortly after they enabled that option for this order. Should I consider it a gift and go on my merry way, or is there a procedure to request an unrefund?
Kay
@germy:
His cars have some serious quality/safety problems. Maybe he should spend less time on social media.
Or not! Who cares, right? Just produce junk and with enough marketing you’re good.
Cameron
@mrmoshpotato: Easy for Mitch to say – turtles can’t get COVID, can they?
Starfish
@rikyrah: It turns out they do not like the right to die during child birth as much as the Republicans think they do.
Dorothy A. Winsor
I made the mistake of reading the transcript of Zelesneyy’s address to the UN first thing this morning. Or part of it. I had to stop. Yesterday, I wrote a line in a book I’m drafting that read, “What would a dragon want with people? People are terrible.” Yeah.
Starfish
@Cameron: Since I cannot resist arguing with randos on the internet, I ended up in the dumbest MedicaidForAll thread where people are stupid and whiny, and they think that their condescension supports their cause.
There are other people holding that position that are not both stupid and whiny, but the thread that I am in is the worst.
montanareddog
In the Auction for Ukraine of Momsense’s knitwear 10 days ago, you may remember that I bid for the Baby Beanie because my niece was expecting her first born in a few days, after several years of trying to bring a pregrancy to term and heartbreak.
Well, the young’un made his appearance on Saturday; he came out at 3.6KG (7 pounds 15 ounces) and 52cm (20 inches), to be christened Duccio (an old Tuscan name). Mother doing great too.
And that makes me a great-uncle for the first time. Looks like I am definitely an old now.
Baud
@Kay:
It works for the GOP.
SFAW
@mrmoshpotato:
No kidding re: Psaki. Were I in her role, it would have taken all my self-control not to respond “Do you have ANY FUCKING IDEA what the consequences of starting a war with Russia would be? Do you understand how many millions would die, probably including tons of innocent people in both countries? No? You don’t? Well, then, get the fuck out of this room until you do some fucking homework, you moron.”
mrmoshpotato
@NotMax:
@Jeffro: “Sir, we don’t have a 22oz ribeye on the dining hall menus.”
Another Scott
@NotMax: If it’s from Amazon itself, don’t bother. They know that it’s part of the business.
If it’s from a storefront using Amazon, I would let them know. They probably be appreciative and thank you.
Cheers,
Scott.
Baud
@Kay: ?
@germy: ?
NotMax
@SFAW
Psaki’s restraint: 1
Portnoy’s complaint: 0
;)
mali muso
@Jeffro: If your college visitation schedule ever lands on my campus, be sure to drop me a line. I think we are in the same basic vicinity, but Fro Jr may be looking further afield. :)
Cameron
In the midst of several years’ worth of bad (or even worse or truly horrible) national and international news, I feel really fortunate to have something good happen to somebody I know. Got a call from an old friend, who got an email earlier today from one of the powers that be in the little town she and her husband live in, advising that a coalition of interested parties are going to join her in creating a Black ecovillage in her community. It’s been her dream for thirty years…..I’m actually wearing a smile that isn’t caused by gas pains.
SiubhanDuinne
@montanareddog:
What delightful news! Congratulations to you and the family, and welcome to the world, little Duccio. Despite everything, it’s still a pretty miraculous place to live.
danielx
@NotMax:
Amazon will never miss it.
SFAW
@NotMax:
Re: Portnoy: Don’t be a jerk-off.
Re: Amazon: I’d try to contact them via the “My Orders” area (if that’s possible), let them know, get they’re response. Well, unless, you’re OK with stealing from them. [Yes, I’m kidding re: the “stealing” part. Not about the “My Orders” thing, however.]
Starfish
@Starfish:
There is a high level of really grinding poverty, and a lot of places chose to do homeless sweeps and not address any of it in a meaningful way, so now we have things like law firms for low-income tenants running out of attorneys to cover the number of cases.
Kay
@Baud:
I’d prefer a serious person make my huge, complex very expensive machine rather than a loud social media celebrity, but I’m obviously boring. His “personal brand” is clearly what matters.
The fucking nerve of these people. Here, Musk advises them about the periods they should NOT buy his cars:
It’s super hard, Baud.
OzarkHillbilly
@NotMax: My wife had this happen to her. Amazon told her to forget about it.
danielx
@NotMax:
Damn straight – if it hadn’t been for yogurt and fresh fruit, I would have starved during my first semester in a dorm at IU Bloomington.
Baud
@Kay: My advice is easier to follow: Never.
OzarkHillbilly
Grendel said, “I hate priests. They sit on the stomach like duck eggs.”
Ken
@Kay: Some people see super hard as a challenge. Others, as a reason not to put in the extra effort to get it right. Personally I would not buy a car from the second group. I would hesitate to buy a vegetable peeler from them.
Kay
@Baud:
DeSantis supposedly has polling that the anti-CRT/anti-gay/teacher speech bans are really popular. But the questions are framed so ridiculously positive toward the laws it’s almost a push poll, so I look at the school board races.
1 out of 3 isn’t bad, but it isn’t a clear message either.
OzarkHillbilly
@montanareddog: Congrats to the new family. And you too.
zhena gogolia
@montanareddog: CONGRATULATIONS!
Cameron
@Kay: He’s talking about something super hard in vertical climb mode? Is this about making cars, or…what, exactly?
zhena gogolia
@NotMax: groan!
sdhays
@Kay: Musk’s friends must not be very bright. I don’t have any trouble figuring out when to not buy his cars.
Baud
@Kay: So much depends on the people involved and the district.
ETA: I wouldn’t trust anything DeSantis had to say about polling.
mrmoshpotato
@Cameron:
I honestly don’t know.
OzarkHillbilly
@Cameron: Good things happen every day, they just aren’t news.
Geminid
@Starfish: I read that California Congressman Eric Swalwell has introduced legislation that would substantially reduce interest on student loans. This is certainly a good idea.
Another interesting approach is supported by Pennsylvania Representative Conor Lamb and others. That is a $10,000 credit available to any American to be applied to either student loan debt or new higher education costs. The number may not be high enough (although I believe it tracks President Biden’s campaign pledge), but I like the principle of a benefit that is available to everybody, not just a fraction of the populace.
I was looking forward somewhat to a debate on this issue with the May 1st end of the last extension coming up. But I don’t mind kicking this can down the road some more. There are plenty of other matters for Democrats to be focusing on.
zhena gogolia
If you want to know about Musk, read the Vanity Fair profile of his (now ex-) girlfriend Grimes. He’s abusive.
Kay
@Cameron:
I just love the absolute contempt for customers that says “you may get stuck with crap, but it’s your fault”
Starfish
@Geminid: Right now, there are people in a certain age group that are seeing their rents go up because the moratoriums on rent increases are gone, their student debt payments go back into effect, and are still unable to find childcare.
I am not sure how the late-twenties, early-thirties set is holding it together under all that.
mrmoshpotato
Has MedicareForAll fallen out of favor with the Bernie-would’ve-given-everyone-unicorn-butlers crowd?
Kay
@Baud:
Democrats get delusional about what is popular but so do Republicans. They make mistakes. They have political flops. But I was wondering why they nationalized the “everyone is a pedophile” so aggressively and it seems that DeSantis believes it’s wildly popular. Rufo is an insane Right winger too and they all follow him, so hopefully it backfires on them.
School board races are a good test.
danielx
@Kay:
See, back in the day, it was much simpler to know when to buy an American-made car – try to get one built on a Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday. This was during the time when auto factories were large scale part time detox facilities. Mondays were for getting over weekend fun, then they started getting tuned up for the weekend on Thursday night. Tuesday through Thursday were serious work days.
Baud
@Kay: According to the polling, it failed miserably when it came to Judge Jackson.
Starfish
@mrmoshpotato: No. That is exactly the group having this conversation.
There is a bigger conversation about how we are not doing anything about really grinding poverty that leads to homeless camps in many major cities. Recreating Hoovervilles and pretending they don’t exist should not be a thing.
Matt McIrvin
@Kay: It may be popular enough in Florida, where DeSantis’s core constituency is people too old to actually have much daily contact with schools or children. But you can make them fret about stuff that might be happening to their grandchildren far away. And to get upset about what is being done with their tax money that theoretically funds schools.
Soprano2
@Kay: Well, our school board election was a disaster. The two highest-funded candidates, who were supported by a new MAGA-conservative advocacy group, both won. So now we have at least 3 people on the school board who will probably want to demagogue about CRT and crap like that. One of them used the word “pragmatic” in his interviews over and over again, which to me means “we need to make cuts in the budget”. I’m bracing for a short term disaster here, as these issues overtake important things at least for awhile. This new advocacy group ran a lying attack ad against the incumbent who was running, claiming that he “constantly” brought up CRT at school board meetings. That’s probably partly why he lost.
mrmoshpotato
@montanareddog: Congratulations to all! ??
NotMax
@OzarkHillbilly
Triggered memory of an underappreciated noirish comic book series from last century. No connection to Beowulf.
Live action Netflix adaptation bubbling away behind the scenes.
Omnes Omnibus
@Dorothy A. Winsor: People are terrible, but they are also wonderful. It just depends on where you focus your attention.
Starfish
Matt McIrvin
@Dorothy A. Winsor: I am limiting my exposure to Ukraine news because, to be blunt, I am worried about getting pulled emotionally into advocating a war with a high chance of going thermonuclear and destroying civilization. And whether that is inevitable anyway or not, I promised myself years ago that I would no longer tinker with that particular machinery of death.
Geminid
@Starfish: Student debt is a problem for many people over 40 also. I’d like to see it reduced, but I think across-the-board cancellation is problematic for political and equity reasons. There is a good compromise in there somewhere; maybe the Biden administration and Congressional Democrats can work out something by the new deadline of August 1st. If they cannot get it passed, another moratorium extension may be in order. Depending on how the midterms go, student loan legislation might then pass in the lame-duck session or the new Congress.
Professor Bigfoot
@Kay: to be fair, that’s how Microsoft made its bones.
Throw some junk out there, market the shit out of it.
(Also TBF, Microsoft did constantly improve it’s operating systems so that EVENTUALLY they were all usable…)
Kay
@Matt McIrvin:
I think there’s truth to that. I also think though, that the opponents of the law did a good job with “don’t say gay” – they defined it negatively before DeSantis + media got a chance to define/promote it. These Right wing celebrities are always presented as genuises by political media but they fuck up, too.
I saw Tulsi Gabbard is endorsing these laws. Anyone who didn’t spot her as a fraud should never be listened to again. It’s just all MALICE. She’s a wholly negative actor.
Kay
@Professor Bigfoot:
There’s a difference though. Tesla is testing the product on US roads and it’s a giant, heavy, fast machine.
This comparison came up in the Theranos trial. Elizabeth Holmes presented Theranos as a “work in progress”. The problem was she lied to physicians, regulators and patients and actually rolled the thing out and millions of people got faulty lab test results that could have killed them. The jury didn’t buy it.
Starfish
@Geminid: Just making it like other debt and allowing it to be refinanced and discharged in bankruptcy would be way better than it is now. It should not have been a giveaway to the banks. It is bananas that people’s student loan payments are larger than their housing costs.
geg6
@NotMax:
Of course it’s still done! And the food, at least here on my campus, is very good. Our visitors are always impressed with our food services.
Soprano2
Figures that Republicans would hold the Covid bill hostage to a Covid immigration restriction when they don’t actually believe Covid is a problem anymore. It sure does strip away the fiction that Rule 42 was ever really about Covid. Joe Biden is not allowed to govern as president anymore according to Republicans and some judges on the federal courts.
Kay
@Professor Bigfoot:
What I didn’t realize with lab test results is they go in your “permanent record” and are used as background information for everything that comes after. So if you have junk in there the faulty result compounds because the next physician looks at it and it’s used for decisions, forever. They had to PULL the Theranos results- void them. Millions of them.
mrmoshpotato
@SFAW: Yup. “Your dumb ass knows Putin has nuclear weapons, right? You know NATO members have nuclear weapons, right? Should we still have World War III? How the fuck can you be so stupid?”
geg6
@germy:
I lost a lot of respect for him with this stunt. It’s beneath him and is damaging his image. Until now, the Dem race has been respectful to all. Fetterman’s commercials are strictly about his accomplishments and his family, not attack ads. That may be about to change. Fetterman has a pretty big campaign chest.
WaterGirl
@germy: It sounds like Fetterman’s people don’t mess around. That story reads like Fetterman is watching for stuff like this and is contacting the stations.
Peale
@Geminid: Eventually, maybe, maybe just maybe, we’ll think about ways to reduce the costs of university. A lot of the over 40s did pay off their student debt and have forgotten what a PITA it was to do that when you were starting out. And they have no clue how much the costs have increased. I mean, I managed to pay down what I felt was the outrageous principal of $24,700. That’s not what students are facing. The tendency is to blame them for “choosing underwater women’s studies weaving when they could easily pay it off if they were smart and did engineering.” But the problem actually is that those worthless liberal arts degrees cost too much to begin with. My undergraduate institution had the high price of $14,400 tuition when I was in school. With room and board it was about $20,000 per year. Its now around $50K for tuition alone. Even the “smart engineers” are going to have a tough time starting out with that much debt.
Matt McIrvin
@Kay: The fact that so much of Florida’s economy depends on out-of-state tourism creates special obstacles. I personally know of some dollars they’d definitely lose if it became too unsafe to be gay there.
Wapiti
@NotMax: I think if you were to ask Amazon customer service, they wouldn’t want it back. If it were me, I’d ask, just to stop me from second-guessing.
WaterGirl
@Jeffro: Oh my gosh, worries about dorm food are so yesterday.
They don’t serve crap in the dining halls anymore – what and how they feed the students has EVERYTHING to do with recruiting students nowadays, and recruiting students is big business.
Here at the University of Illinois they are revamping a set of dorms so there are something like a dozen different “restaurants”. You go to the “restaurant” of your choice – asian, bbq, grill, etc. You can go to all of the restaurants if you want, and you can eat as much as you like. Even non-students can purchase entry into the “restaurants”, and they too can eat at all 12 of them for the same meal if they want.
So it still makes sense to eat there so you can be sure that your school isn’t still in the dark ages with crap institutional food, but it’s all different now.
Professor Bigfoot
@Kay: Right. You can upgrade an operating system pretty easily; and if a desktop computer blue-screens it won’t turn into two tones of steel hurtling towards the bridge abutment.
That South African shithead has applied a software development ethos (go fast, make your mistakes early) to a product that’s simply not amenable to it.
In a previous life my company supplied the tire and wheel balancing machines to several plants of various marques; and believe me, pay through the nose for anything that might improve their warranty/quality metrics. I had to figure if they were pouring money into us “lowly tire and wheel guys” like that, they were REALLY dumping into teams for the engine, transmission, suspension……..
Starfish
@Peale: Exactly. And it is not just the people with a liberal arts degree in some niche field struggling. Smug people with engineering degrees are now carrying around student debt. Student debt was not meant for all this small undergrad nonsense.
Student debt was for people getting terminal degrees in high paying fields. But with the Boomers all getting old and needing more medical care, there is an argument that we should not be restricting the high-paying medical fields to people who have wealthy parents.
mrmoshpotato
@Professor Bigfoot:
All? WindowsME laughs in your face! ?
Omnes Omnibus
@Peale: Ah, the argument that everyone should major in business or engineering. That’s a really great way to organize a society.
Peale
@Kay: The framing is very important. Even at the turn of the millenium, conservatives had dicey records with similar referendums. They pretty much stopped after they kept losing with these “You can only mention homosexuality in the classroom if its to say bad things about it.” These are the same damn initiatives that we were able to prevent in the past. But if its framed as “Do you support giving kids pornography”, we’re not going to win. Its very hard to tell voters that what the right wing means by gay porn is a gay wedding photo on a teacher’s Facebook feed and a book about a girl with two moms.
OzarkHillbilly
It was meant to make up for all the cuts in higher education funding (because tax cuts) and enrich banks in the process.
Just One More Canuck
@Jeffro: Good luck and have fun. My wife is taking my daughter to an ID camp (soccer) at Cornell this weekend.
WaterGirl
@montanareddog: So happy for all of you!
Especially after everything they had gone through before, I’m sure there were worries that something would go wrong, even though everything looked good ahead of time.
They must be over the moon. So glad mom and baby are doing great!
montanareddog
@WaterGirl: Thanks. And to everyone else upthread
Just One More Canuck
@mrmoshpotato: I was going to go with “Were you dropped on your head as a child?”
Matt McIrvin
@Peale: This double standard in which anything heteronormative can be innocent, but anything non-heteronormative is about the mechanics of sexual acts and is the same as pornography and is somehow about child molestation, is the same bullshit they’ve been pulling for half a century. They were doing it with witch hunts against gay teachers back in the 1970s. Anita Bryant going “the homosexual cannot reproduce so he must recruit.”
Ken
“And, your Honor, though we realize the law probably doesn’t allow it, the jury wants to require the defendant to register as a subject for at least four experimental drug or surgery trials per year for the rest of her life.”
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: What works for the Republicans is the desire for privileged white people to keep everyone else from enjoying the privileges they do. Its a zero sum mentality. Orange Tan was the living embodiment of that sentiment. Hence his success with that group. That’s why he won a greater percentage of white women in 2020 than in 2016
Let’s see how many white women break ranks and vote D in 2024 since the Rs have now gone full Hand Maid’s Tale on them.
Matt McIrvin
@WaterGirl: When I was at William and Mary in the 1980s, there was a traditional cafeteria at one end of the campus, and a place more like you’re describing at the student union at the other end, both of which were on the meal plan. Though the stuff served at the student union place did lean toward junky food like pizza and hamburgers, not the best thing to eat every day.
Starfish
@Matt McIrvin: They are so eager to harm gay folks that they might be legalizing pedophilia in common law marriages in Tennessee..
NotMax
@WaterGirl
No more gruel and unusual nourishment?
//
O. Felix Culpa
@NotMax: Ouch. You are awfully good. Literally. :)
OzarkHillbilly
Say hello to the $6 million boy:
ian
@Kay:
Once they have convinced enough of their voters this is true it creates justifications to do anything they want to their opponents. Up to an including violence.
zhena gogolia
@schrodingers_cat: Do you think 2003 Shah Rukh Khan would marry me?
Cameron
@OzarkHillbilly: Thank you.
Omnes Omnibus
@zhena gogolia: One has questions regarding this.
WaterGirl
@montanareddog: MomSense tells me that all three baby hats have gone out. The baby hat to NY is out for delivery, the one to OH is in OH and should be delivered tomorrow.
Yours, to Italy, is en route to Italy – and MomSense has the tracking number. She’s at work but I imagine she will send me that when she gets home.
The original Jasper Hat will go on the mail tomorrow.
WaterGirl
@NotMax: There’s a vegan “restaurant” and I believe a gluten-free “restaurant” and apparently any other option you can imagine.
schrodingers_cat
@zhena gogolia: No. He was already married to his college sweet heart by then. They have been married for over 30 years now.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@WaterGirl: My mother was a bad cook. My brother and I started college the same year, and neither one of us could understand why everyone was complaining about the dorm food. It tasted fine to us
lowtechcyclist
@rikyrah:
Can I ask why they should put the work into this rather than something else, when Biden can in fact do this via executive order?
Omnes Omnibus
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Dining hall food was better than the school lunch at my high school. OTOH my fraternity had a truly fantastic cook. From my sophomore year on, I ate very well as an undergrad.
Omnes Omnibus
@lowtechcyclist: What makes you think that Biden can or will do it by executive order?
montanareddog
@WaterGirl: Thanks for the update. I have notified my niece to expect a small package from America.
Sure Lurkalot
@WaterGirl: Whaaaat? No more shrimp shapes?
My parents didn’t want me living in a dorm beyond the required 1st year because instead of putting on the freshman 15, I went the other direction. Good to hear things have changed for the better on the food front. The price tag, however, is ludicrous.
Kropacetic
Why is it easier to convince people that children are being taught about sex acts in classrooms and that there’s a sudden scourge of pedophile teachers being protected by pedophile Democrats rather than that the Republicans are just lying about all this?
When looking at the politics of confirmed pedos, where we know their politics, which side were most of them on, again?
In reality, I bet even they know this is bunk. The Christian extremists know it but know that good faith argumentation gets them nowhere. The rest of the thugs know it and maybe don’t want to see LGBT people getting hurt, in theory, but go along if it will save them ten bucks a month on their taxes.
Shameful.
Brachiator
Boris Johnson and UK Tories: Us, too! Us, too! We will kill you.
Sure Lurkalot
@Peale: Worthless liberal arts degree! Drink!
No degree is worthless if by way of earning it, you learn how to learn and study skills, find the love of learning, become intellectually curious. All these are valuable in the workaday world.
Baud
@Sure Lurkalot:
Thank you! You should see the condescending looks I get when I tell people about my astrology degree.
Kropacetic
@Sure Lurkalot: Absolutely true, this is why universities have diversity of study requirements for students seeking degrees. Also, too, at least one of the vaunted “good” degrees that will make you money does so by simply training people to manage and manipulate money.
These are neutral skills, as they go, but given the structure of our economy are being weaponized against most working people. Useful work by essential employees is grossly underpaid, while the real money is in finding access points to glean wealth off that useful work.
Kay
I knew the “reasonable conservatives” would come up with a way to blame liberals for the CRT/gay panic the “reasonable conservatives” started and promoted and here it is.
“Stop making Right wingers punch you!”
It’s amazing- there is absolutely no accountability or agency on the Right- everything they do is attributable to liberals. That’s why it gets more and more extreme. No one hold individual actors on the Right responsible for anything they do.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Sure Lurkalot: FWIW, I took Peale’s comment to be parodying the arguments of people like my late uncle who couldn’t understand why anyone needed to go to college when he got rich in the janitorial supply business
@Omnes Omnibus: Elizabeth Warren, somebody with some pretty high-powered credentials, says he can, and that’s all a lot of people need to hear. I’m not one of those people, and I think her twitter strategy is bad politics, but it’s not like the “Why doesn’t Biden just kick Joe Manchin in the nuts until he votes for BBB!” or “Abolish the Supreme Court!” theory of politics
Brachiator
@NotMax:
It is far easier to issue a refund than to debit an account. It is often not worth the time to even think about how to do it.
I order a lot from Amazon, more during the pandemic. Once got an extra of a small item and customer service said “just keep it,” and moved on.
There might be some value in letting them know that the item was received very late.
NotoriousJRT
@rikyrah:
FWIW, many of us born before 1965 derived wealth apart from the patriarchy, and valued a life not spent in bare feet and the kitchen or nursery – not that there is a thing wrong with those who choose and love some version of that life I just caricatured. I recall a conversation with my bother-in-law in which I explained that I could not vote for Republicans because of their miserable policies WRT women’s issues. He sincerely responded with the requisite utter lack of awareness that there were “other things than women’s issues.”
cain
My wife who is an educator tells me her mentor, a principle was getting sued by some dark money funded lawyer because of her diversity and inclusion forum.
Several mean looking men in trucks (of course, it can’t be as priuses) showed up at her school to intimidate her, and the school refused to call the cops. She called a cop friend she knew and they showed up and the school decided to give a slap on the wrist for calling the cops. I don’t know if the school system is scared of right wingers or there is some racism involved – my wife’s mentor is Chinese.
This woman is quite staunch in her opinions and support. I can only guess that that might be one of the reasons. This happened to my wife as well and as people know that she’s building the race blind curriculum – (eg no white washing) – the same thing is going to happen to her. Her district though is primarily non-white, but also fairly well off.
geg6
@OzarkHillbilly:
This. That is exactly what happened.
Kropacetic
Republicans are bad about loads of shit. They have a whole catalogue of awful, come see, there must be something you like
Modern Republicanism is just a mutual agreement among people too dug into their worst personal value that their awful value will be protected just as long as they protect the others. And no taxes!!!
lowtechcyclist
@Omnes Omnibus:
Can: Because he’s already been doing it piecemeal, several months at a time.
Will: I don’t know, but I figure Biden might be more persuadable than Manchin and Sinema.
cain
@Kay: Much as I hate the man, I can’t really say the same for the cars. I owned one, and I think what the company has done is simply amazing at least in logistical challenges of power delivery across the country, re-imaginging the car and so on. I think it’s because of Tesla, 2022 is all electric cars as Tesla has proven that there is a market.
Secondly, I totaled my Tesla – I got broad side hit by oncoming traffic and I have to tell you – I walked away from it without a scratch. If you saw what that car looked like afterwards. It has very high ratings – yes, there are issues with software. As a software engineer, software is never perfect. The fact that we depend on it so much on safety stuff scares the hell out of me and pretty much any software engineer since everything we have is full of errors.
Kay
One would think such a brilliant jurist as Barrett would have anticipated that her directive to “read the opinion” would only draw attention to the fact that for their most controversial decisions, where they simply pretend federal laws don’t exist, they don’t bother to write opinions.
Maybe they should stop doing GOP campaign tours petulantly demanding we find them credible and do some actual work.
More low quality Trump hires.
cain
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Something came up on my kindle feed about a dragon exacting revenge on people who enslaved them as a race. Good stuff. :-)
geg6
@Sure Lurkalot:
Our meal plans are $4300 for the smallest (which is still a LOT), $5000 for medium and $5600 for large. That comes to about $600 a month for the students who choose the medium, which is usually males and athletes. It’s about $540 a month for the small one. Almost no one gets the largest one because it is a ridiculous amount of food and almost no students will eat that much. So the two most popular meal plans come to about $18-20 a day. That’s less than the per diem I get when I travel on University business.
That seems a reasonable amount for 3 meals a day.
Kay
It’s not for emergencies. It’s for when Republicans need a quick result. And these hacks always deliver.
Time to send more conservative judges out to the speaker circuit to insist they’re not hacks! Maybe if they harangue us enough we’ll respect them.
“I …AM… CREDIBLE!”
Okey doke. Cause that’s how credibility works. You just shout over and over that you are entitled to it.
cain
@Kay: Btw – I saw the ex-ceo of Sun Microsystems (who is a glibertarian) retweeting a guy who think that schools should just be run by the market. These people live in a completely different world.
They don’t even like the fact that the market has already decided that transgender, LBGTQ+ and all that are all worth marketing to.
Kay
There’s an episode of The Office where the boss “declares bankruptcy” by shouting “I… declare… bankruptcy!”
It’s what the demands for “credibility” remind me of- it doesn’t work like that.
Kay
There’s an episode of The Office where the boss “declares bankruptcy” by shouting “I… declare… bankruptcy!”
It’s what the demands for “credibility” remind me of- it doesn’t work like that.
Brachiator
@WaterGirl:
For me university dining in the 70s was generally great. I had a meal plan, which included all meals. But as a lazy, spoiled student, I generally skipped breakfast, except on weekends.
Good variety of food, except for a strip of beef that was often served on a Wednesday or Thursday, and which was always tough and stringy.
One dorm had a student run eatery that served tasty burgers and snacks late at night.
Ironcity
@Professor Bigfoot: You never used Windows ME did you. But NT Server…..ah.
Kay
@cain:
It would just be such a shame if Americans traded their only universal public system for this crappy “market model”. It’s such a bad trade. They’ll deeply, deeply regret doing it. It never goes back, either. The privatized model could be absolute junk and we’d never get public schools back. The only instance I can think of where privatization failed and a system went back public is Germany and electricity. They privatized and then took it back public when it was crap.
skerry
@NotMax: I’ve had a similar experience. I reported to Amazon that the package had finally shown up. They told me to keep it. They didn’t unrefund my refund. Too much hassle for them.
laura
@OzarkHillbilly: Gee that is a great story. I recollect that MS commercial from long ago- “In dreams, he runs, but only in his dreams.” This is an actual dream come true and I’m so grateful that we live in an age of medical miracles and wonder.
Kay
@geg6:
The tuition increases are kind of shocking though. It went up a lot just between my oldest child and youngest child. We have enough to pay their undergrad (they have to pay for grad themselves) so it doesn’t affect me as much, but it’s still “whoa- why the big increase over 10 years?”
Kay
Someone is going to have to rein them in. They simply don’t recognize existing US law.
It’s a problem!
catclub
Radio Rwanda, wonderful. Is calling the enemy pedophiles better or worse than calling them cockroaches and vermin? Opinions differ.
ksmiami
@Starfish: The AMA needs to stop restricting medical school acceptance rates. They keep the doctors undersupplied to artificially raise salaries. It’s a really really big issue.
ksmiami
@Kay: How many units does the SC command? Ignore them. The institution is compromised
Dorothy A. Winsor
@cain: That does sound good
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I’ve heard his daughters are still in Western Europe, and that they’re in a secure facility with bunkers far to the east of Moscow. His mistress and their four (rumored) children are, according to British tabloids so FWIW, said to be in a fortress-like compound in Switzerland.
Jeffro
LOL
That’d be the last thing I’d go looking for in a college dining hall!
They’ve all had Chick-fil-As in their campus centers so far, though.
Jeffro
@mali muso: will do and thanks!
Ruckus
@SFAW:
You know, Jenn delivers a clear, adult worded message with the correct emotion so that the message is clear and the language is correct.
I like your response better.
Even if I know her’s is the correct one.
Jeffro
@WaterGirl:
Yup, I know – been doing this for a while now. ;)
schrodingers_cat
@cain: Khosla? Wouldn’t be surprised if he was a bhakt or an enabler.
Kay
@ksmiami:
I think they really left themselves open with the “shadow docket” bullshit. They could have done this properly and people would have to accept far Right rulings from a far Right court, but instead they’re relying over and over on these issued orders. It’s dumb. It plays directly into the perception that they’re purely political and accountable to no one.
They’re going to be on there for life. What’s the rush to impose the far Right agenda? At least hear the cases.
Entitlement. It’s a hell of a drug. Rules don’t apply.
Kay
Ah, the Right wing Democrats. Their “ideas” are terrible AND they’re horrible politically.
Kay
If he really cared about the credibility of that court as an institution he’d resign and let Biden appoint his replacement.
I’m perfectly serious. Show us how important it is, Justice Roberts. Fall on your sword. Make a sacrifice.
lowtechcyclist
@ksmiami:
That’s a solution of limited applicability. Suppose, for instance, the Bogus Scotus (hereinafter ‘BS’) guts the Clean Air Act. How does the President require polluters to obey it anyway?
He doesn’t. The path of enforcement is to take violators to court, and if the lower courts don’t follow the BS’ ruling, defendant can appeal all the way up to the BS and get the ruling they want there.
So unless Biden wants to go all autocrat and send the U.S. Army around to enforce the Clean Air Act, which he wouldn’t and I wouldn’t want him to, he’s SOL and so are we.
Amir Khalid
@NotMax:
I’d keep the item as a gift from Uncle Jeff.
Peale
@Kay: Ah, but if we lose in the fall, its clearly going to be the fault of radical Democrat pedophiles grooming students and using pronouns and open borders activists getting in the way of them being able to sell their infrastructure bill properly. I mean, they are out there doing that, those Moderates, right? Talking up the idea of Roads but Nothing Else You Voted for Us For is superior to something that tangibly benefited people in a noticeable way.
Hopefully the construction on all this new infrastructure will be done by August so they can attend ribbon cutting ceremonies.
Sure Lurkalot
@geg6: I actually was referring to the cost of college, not the meal plans but I find the info you posted interesting, thanks! I get the comparison to a business per diem but I frankly think a $540/month meal plan is kind of pricey. Yes, I went to college in the 70’s. Probably the last decade it was actually pretty cheap.
Ksmiami
@Kay: disband it or expand the court and nullify the Rt wing.
Ruckus
@Kay:
I am not a fan of Elon in any way. But.
His speech is pompous and arrogant. But that matches his personality so should be expected. But.
He’s actually correct. There are a lot of details to get right on a production line to make a good product. And most of them have to be attended to in the design phase of the product, long before actual production. Each step in the process is important. Each part of the product has relative importance. It requires actual thought, reflection, effort, review each step of the way, for each part, unless you don’t give a crap about the product/outcome. And any step can still end up being wrong because of how much has to work together to make a decent end product when humans are involved. Which in the world we live in, is everything.
I started making things 60 yrs ago, most of my life I did rather high precision manufacturing. My last project, the tolerances were in millionths of an inch. 2 1/2 millionths. You have to pay a lot of attention.
Elon’s product is decent. It is not perfect. It is a good product. Is it as good as it should or could be? I don’t think so, but it isn’t, overall, bad.
Elon OTOH, is a pain. At the very least. Just one person’s opinion.
Omnes Omnibus
@Kay: I like Wilkinson’s idea.
Lacuna Synecdoche
@NotMax:
I suspect this has already been answered multiple times (haven’t read the whole thread yet), but: Amazon has an obligation to deliver in a timely manner. You should probably consider the refunded money a penalty for not delivering in a timely manner, which I suspect it actually is (check their polices, if you want), rather than either a gift or trying to return it.
P.S. One time Amazon delivered 10(!) packages to this building that were intended for people at other addresses. I tried to look for a way to notify Amazon about this online. When I couldn’t find one, I tried calling them, was told by an automated voice that there was a 25 minute wait time to speak to anyone, and said to myself, “Fuck it. If Amazon can’t be bothered to make it easy for people to help them, then why should I give a damn? I’m not their delivery person.”
The packages sat in the lobby for a couple months before … the bldg. mgmt., I guess? … finally took away the packages that hadn’t been mauled or stolen by that time.
Geminid
@Peale: A lot of Congressional Progressive Caucus members are also talking up the Infrastructure bill. I only checked out what Jaime Raskin, Katie Porter, Joe Neguse and Veronica Escobar said after the bill was signed, but I think those four are fairly representative of the other 84 Progressive Caucus members who voted for the bill.
lowtechcyclist
@Omnes Omnibus: But how does Wilkinson’s idea work in practice? If the Bogus Scotus issues a shadow-docket ruling invalidating a regulation, the Administration can say it regards the opinion as advisory, but how do they enforce the regulation now?
Brachiator
@Ruckus:
Great points. I guess we want Musk to succeed in the EV market because we want others to come after him with better, cheaper, more reliable products.
Or I guess we could all ride bicycles.
Omnes Omnibus
@lowtechcyclist: Regulators issue fines, etc. Send it to the courts. Have the fight. Say that a decision that comes with an opinion and order has guidance that can let the government use the decision as a guide to actions. Might not like it but can live with it.
Kay
The phrase “shadow docket” was coined by one of Robert’s clerks – not intended to be negative- and it drives Alito crazy when it’s mentioned so I think we should use it constantly.
Alito’s right- it does sound bad :)
Enironmental issues are one of the reasons I’ll never be a conservative. Who wants dirty water? WTF is wrong with them that they’re like “yeah! Pollute the SHIT out of that resource and RUIN it”. It’s just gross.
Ruckus
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
I had the opposite experience. Mom was a good cook. Not always a good shopper, she would buy brussel sprouts and expect me to eat them. Once went 3 days without dinner because she decided that I had to eat the brussel sprouts from the day before and the day before that…. After the third day she threw them out. I believe that was the only time I won. It was worth it. To this day I have never understood how everyone else liked them. Worst food on the planet. And I ate navy food.
Omnes Omnibus
@Brachiator: Lot’s of early car manufacturers did not survive. The future of electric cars is not dependent on the success of Musk and Tesla.
Ruckus
@Brachiator:
There will be better products out there. There are already better electric cars on sale. But. Tesla isn’t bad. It could be better. But it works. I do wonder why so many think that an electric (or any) car needs 400 or more horsepower. It is a complete fucking waste. Must be a lot of undersized, underpowered genitalia out there that needs reassurance.
Ruckus
@Brachiator:
Or I guess we could all ride bicycles.
Not me. 2 wheeled vehicles require reasonably normal balance. Not all of us have that. I have a disease that effects balance. It’s not as unheard of as one might think. I still function OK but say in the shower, when my eyes are closed, I have to have a hand or elbow touching something solid. Putting pants on can be stressful. (Yes I still wear them….) It’s not just one leg at a time, it’s staying standing. Stairs are fun, curbs can be fun. I’m not even trying a 2 wheeler, just to find out that my brain is trying to kill me.
Brachiator
@Ruckus:
I know what you mean. Take care of yourself.
sdhays
@Ruckus: No one is disputing that building cars is difficult (other than Elon Musk from a few years ago). But Elon has insisted on building his cars in ways no one in the industry does, avoids unionization like the plague, and his factories are toxic work environments. Poor build quality is the result.
Whining that building a car is hard isn’t constructively attacking those problems.
catclub
For a while there, it looked like ALL the new Electric car makers – as judged by their stock prices, were expected to become as big as tesla .
Tesla is already absurdly high on a stock price to cars sold ratio, compared with say, Toyota. Now imagine 6 or seven more like that.
catclub
@Ruckus:
Next you will be asking why the housewife across the street needs a 9 passenger, 3 ton, Chevy Suburban to ferry her two kids to school. That way lies madness.
...now I try to be amused
@Professor Bigfoot:
Reminds me of this: “If we built buildings the way programmers write programs, the first woodpecker to come along would destroy civilization.”
The Truffle
There is a perfect way to frame these don’t-say-gay laws. The GOP are hypocrites of the highest order. Say that. Point out that they don’t support laws that prevent children from being gunned down in schools. Point out Mark Foley and Dennis Hastert. Hell, point out that Gaetz is under investigation for sex with underage girls. Point out all the ways the GOP doesn’t protect children.
Also? Point out that the right is going after Disney, which children love.
That’s how to frame it–as the GOP being full of shit.
The Truffle
@Kay: It’s 46 to 43 percent.
Maybe bring back the child tax credit or something?
Another Scott
:-(
Bicycling in the USA is far too dangerous.
RIP, Eric. Your important voice will be missed.
(via EcleticBrotha)
Condolences to all who knew and loved him,
Scott.
James E Powell
@Kay:
Republicans all voted against the tax credit, so it makes sense that those voters now prefer them. Right?
SiubhanDuinne
@Another Scott:
Oh no no no no no. What a terrible day of bad news.
lurker dean
@Another Scott: crap, i really liked his twitter, he had a way of cutting through the media BS.
Kay
@The Truffle:
I just think it’s sad. They reduced child poverty 40% with that one thing. It might have been this amazing experiment to see what would happen if we took just (at least) children out of poverty, but it didn’t last long enough. I think there’s a group of people who don’t want to know what would happen- they’re afraid the results of this experiment would be good.
Joe Falco
@Kay:
Chief Justice Sotomayor has a nice ring to it.
prostratedragon
@Another Scott: I know or know of a few people who have been killed like that, and recall experiencing gratuitous thrills myself on Manhattan streets. It’s both the street layouts and the attitudes of too many drivers.
Boehlert made solid contributions, and will be missed.
Kay
The story DeSantis tells about why they need the don’t say gay law turns out to be a lie made up by a Republican parent.
The parent emailed the school and asked that the child be treated as nonbinary:
Tough situation for schools though. There’s an email record showing that this parent is lying and still the lie continues to be repeated by the governor of Florida. It’s not enough to get it in writing with these people. It’s impossible for schools to protect themselves from these smears.
TonyG
@rikyrah: Not naming names, but some “progressives” consider compromise of any kind to be selling out. Some “progressives” would rather be pure and lose, then win a partial victory.
The Moar You Know
@Brachiator: I wish. I used to be a (fairly good) mountain bike racer, state-level competitor. I had an accident. Back injury. I’m largely fine but one thing I cannot do anymore is…ride a bicycle. It fucking sucks so bad, it was the only physical activity I’ve ever been really good at. I still have my last racing bike in the garage, I cannot bear to get rid of it. It’s going to be twenty-five years old this year. Rode it well for four.
Kay
Can we start fact checking all these claims being made about public schools?
If this hugely high profile example is complete bullshit, the rest are absolutely suspect too. Maybe schools shouldn’t conduct any discussions with conservative parents unless it’s in writing or, preferably, taped. Maybe a deposition? Put them all under oath? They don’t seem to be trustworthy.
Elizabelle
This blog used to be able to walk and chew gum.
Brachiator
@The Moar You Know:
I was being snarky. I used to love my bike as well, but those rides are all behind me.
Eolirin
@Kay: I think the party needs to run on restoring it, even if it means throwing Manchin under the bus. We need advantages like this.
Kay
@Eolirin:
I think, on balance Democrats have been good for poor children. They’ve done a lot, especially on health care. If you’re poor and you’re a child you’re covered. That’s 100% Democrats. Republicans did nothing.
But if this one thing can take 40% out of poverty? Wow. Try it for a decade. See what happens.
Pennsylvanian
Oh lordy, have you all seen this?
Wealthy GOP Donors Form Secret Coalitions to Wield More Influence – The New York Times (nytimes.com)
The super-rich crabs want to be on top of the bucket from now on and not have to work within the GOP party framework to get their fascist agenda through. Ugh.
Uncle Cosmo
(IIUC all threads on this site can be considered open, but so as not to intrude on the Mary G remembrance, I thought it might be better to drop this here:)
Zelenskyy’s speech to the UN today brought to mind Emperor Haile Selassie’s July 1936 address to the League of Nations after Italy invaded Ethiopia. Here is a link to the full text. Note many similarities and differences.
Elizabelle
@Uncle Cosmo: Wow. What an interesting parallel. Thank you for coming up with that. Will give it a look.
Shakti
@rikyrah: Intriguing theory but I think the tweeter overstates the amount of wealth and education college-educated white women get apart from the patriarchy. The more educated you are the more likely you are to get married and to a man who has more education and wealth, not less. Marriage is increasingly for rich people.
Anyways, as I’m doing my taxes, I remember Dorothy Brown (The Whiteness of Wealth) saying the tax system is most advantageous to married couples with very unequal incomes.
Eolirin
@Kay: We need to win a few more senate seats and be able to hold the house to do it. The party needs to make things like it a priority in their messaging.
They used to. Then the right successfully managed to make being pro making poor people’s lives better into a racial thing. And I think the party got skittish about it. We need to reclaim that messaging space. We’ve been successful at doing so with Healthcare, though only after ACA actually came into effect. It was successfully used as a wedge until people started being affected by it.
Which I guess goes to show that we need successful programs to be able to campaign on too (defend from attacks is better for driving turn out, even), which is a problem when we need to win more in order to get them. I’m not sure how we fix that.
Ruckus
@sdhays:
I’m not disagreeing with you. Just the opposite.
What I am saying is that lots of jobs actually suck donkey balls and that people like Elon, with what I think is a sucky view of living can make that worse. Most of us, myself some times included, have had to work a lifetime just to afford to eat at the end of a long time of jobs that suck those donkey balls. I just retired after 60 yrs of jobs, some of them decent, some not so much. When I was the boss/owner I tried my damnest to make the job as good as possible because I’d been on the other side. Want a good job? Try being a volunteer mental health counselor and spending an hour on the phone with a woman talking about committing suicide, having her say goodby and not knowing if she was just hanging up or just not existing. Try working on a machine that can cut off body parts, and almost has. I have lots more stories. What I am saying is that a Tesla isn’t a bad car. The owner of the company is an ass. He talks about it like he designed it, engineered it, built it, sold it and it is an extension of his greatness. It’s better than that. Could it be a better car? Sure it could, what made by humans couldn’t be? (And yes I’ve helped or made lots of stuff. Could it be better? Absolutely) Some of the ways that cars have been made over the decades has been crap and needed to be changed, much of it is being changed and some is to how his company builds cars. The old ways are not always better, but yes sometimes the old ways are. In my 60 yrs of machine work the differences sometimes are extreme and sometimes exactly the same. Life changes, life stays the same – both are true.
The Moar You Know
@Kay: we have a school board member who is head and shoulders above the rest as far as being a vile piece of shit. He is no longer permitted to talk to any staff member whatsoever without two witnesses being present because, as you note, he’s a fucking liar.
Superintendent laid down those terms. Well, she was his pet appointee! What happened?
She spoke out at the board meeting about that. He’d been sending her texts threatening her life if she didn’t show more fealty. She took him at his word.
sdhays
@Ruckus: I think the only point we slightly disagree on is that, for me, the build quality issues make it impossible to state that Teslas are “good cars”. And the cavalier way they treat safety with their automated driving technology is also “not good”. Those don’t have anything to do with Musk’s personality, except that he’s part of the problem.
There’s clearly good technology in Teslas and they’re clearly doing a lot of things right. Not enough to be considered “good”, though. At least for me.
SiubhanDuinne
@Pennsylvanian:
People like Peter Thiel scare the everloving blue-eyed shit out of me.
lowtechcyclist
@Another Scott:
That truly sucks. I always got a lot out of reading his stuff.
All too true. I’m lucky to live in an area where I’ve never felt threatened by cars while cycling, but that’s not the norm.
Brachiator
@The Truffle:
If the Democrats can’t do BBB, the child tax credit and other credits will be reduced, but they will not go away.
But Joe Manchin is screwing things up and causing confusion here.
The Truffle
@Brachiator: Makes me want to help the Dems gain Senate seats.
And I’m glad that Obama is returning to the White House. The Dems need to sell ACA and remind everyone that the GOP tried to abolish it. There are some good things they can campaign on.
Geminid
@SiubhanDuinne: The Club for Growth is pretty bad too. It’s leader, Mr. McCormick (I think), keeps in touch with that churlish Mar-a-Loco guy.
lowtechcyclist
@Omnes Omnibus:
Regulators issue fines, corporations don’t pay, citing SCOTUS. Go through the courts, ultimately get the written decision. Whatever.
I’m not saying it shouldn’t be done: the Five or Six Bozos should be forced to follow up their shadow decisions with some sort of pretense of legal rationale, but that’s all it does. It doesn’t undo the shadow docket ruling.
When the Bozos hand down a decision requiring the Administration to do or abstain from doing something, the possibility exists for the Administration to tell the Bozos to fuck off. But when their decision invalidates laws and regs that private actors had to follow up until then, there really isn’t anything the Administration can do to change the result.
planetjanet
@Another Scott: I did not know that he was one of the founders of Salon. I was a subscriber way back when. Loved it. So sad for his family and friends. Journalism has lost a great talent.
Pennsylvanian
@SiubhanDuinne: I cannot decide if he is just toxic or really dangerous. He took down Gawker, but now he is a known quantity with a sort of weird agenda. Still,it can’t be good.
I like that they are fracturing into obscenely wealthy and more obscenely wealthy and want this other agenda for billionaires and having a purity/libertarian war, but ultimately the whole thing is bad for us as a nation. Ultimately, sad face, but only for now . We cannot entertain fascism in any form, but I do fear we are far too late.